# Who were among the earliest globally famous celebrities? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 30, 2009, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368 "2009-03-30T22:47:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/1 "2009-03-30T22:47:31Z")
“Globally famous” in the sense of “visually recognized in more than one continent”. I can go back perhaps to Sarah Bernhardt and Nelly Melba (I suppose) … and perhaps Enrico Caruso a little later. But we need not limit it to singers. Perhaps Harry Houdini could be considered? Celebrity, as we understand it today, is pretty much a 20th-century invention, correct? Maybe late-19th century at best? Relying on types of media that did not exist in, say, 1800 – such as photography, radio, wide-spread press? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/2 "2009-03-30T23:02:31Z")
Charles Dickens was massively popular in the US, and people flocked to his lecture tours. The same with Oscar Wilde. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/3 "2009-03-30T23:07:59Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Charles Dickens was massively popular in the US, and people flocked to his lecture tours. > > The same with Oscar Wilde. I’m glad you brought up writers. Celebrities need not be performers at all. Royalty would count, for instance. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/4 "2009-03-30T23:52:37Z")
Benjamin Franklin was certainly visually recognizable. When he was in Paris a sizable industry sprang up putting his likeness onto hundreds of items that were wildly popular faddish collectibles. He was also well known in London. He wore a coonskin cap before Davy Crockett and probably institutionalized its popularity. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelQReilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@MichaelQReilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelQReilly)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/5 "2009-03-31T01:05:15Z")
Franz Liszt maybe? Wasn’t he the equivalent of a rock star in his time? ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/6 "2009-03-31T01:14:43Z")
Daniel Boone became an international celebrity in his 50’s (around the 1780’s) when a very imaginative biography of him was published in the U.S. and Europe. Much of the common image of Boone, including the coonskin cap, which he never wore, come from this biography and subsequent works based on it. For the rest of his life, people would come to visit the famous frontiersman, and there are a number of stories from other 18th and early 19th century historical figures about how they got to meet Boone. ---
**Author:** ![picker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/picker/32/13969_2.png) [@picker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picker)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/7 "2009-03-31T01:19:26Z")
Wasn’t Charles Lindbergh a trans-Atlantic celebrity? Also I’d guess most Popes would qualify, no? ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/8 "2009-03-31T01:42:43Z")
I would guess the entire population of the world knew Adam. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MPB_in_Salt_Lake)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/9 "2009-03-31T02:05:48Z")
Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show were a huge hit in Europe, and Annie Oakley was also world famous… ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/10 "2009-03-31T02:21:13Z")
> [@SpoilerVirgin](#): > > Daniel Boone became an international celebrity in his 50’s (around the 1780’s) when a very imaginative biography of him was published in the U.S. and Europe. Much of the common image of Boone, including the coonskin cap, which he never wore, come from this biography and subsequent works based on it. For the rest of his life, people would come to visit the famous frontiersman, and there are a number of stories from other 18th and early 19th century historical figures about how they got to meet Boone. You may be confusing Flint’s book with Filson’s > **[Daniel Boone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Boone)** > > Daniel Boone (November 2 \[O.S. October 22\] 1734 – September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer and frontiersman whose exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. He became famous for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of the Thirteen Colonies. In 1775, Boone founded the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky, in the face of resistance from Native Americans. He founded Boonesborough, one of the fir... > [@](#): > > Boone emerged as a legend in large part because of John Filson’s “The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon”, part of his book The Discovery, Settlement And present State of Kentucke. First published in 1784, Filson’s book was soon translated into French and German, and made Boone famous in America and Europe. Based on interviews with Boone, Filson’s book contained a mostly factual account of Boone’s adventures from the exploration of Kentucky through the American Revolution. However, because the real Boone was a man of few words, Filson invented florid, philosophical dialogue for this “autobiography”. Subsequent editors cut some of these passages and replaced them with more plausible—but still spurious—ones. Often reprinted, Filson’s book established Boone as one of the first popular heroes of the United States.[29]Today there are schools named after Daniel Boone in Birdsboro Pennsylvania, Douglassville Pennsylvania, and Chicago Illinois. > > Like John Filson, Timothy Flint also interviewed Boone, and his Biographical Memoir of Daniel Boone, the First Settler of Kentucky (1833) became one of the bestselling biographies of the 19th century. Flint greatly embellished Boone’s adventures, doing for Boone what Parson Weems did for George Washington. In Flint’s book, Boone fought hand-to-hand with a bear, escaped from Indians by swinging on vines (as Tarzan would later do), and so on. Although Boone’s family thought the book was absurd, Flint greatly influenced the popular conception of Boone, since these tall tales were recycled in countless dime novels and books aimed at young boys.[30] However, I don’t know of any evidence that either author depicted Boone as wearing a coonskin cap. It probably was a third biographer. [http://www.boonesociety.com/articles/Daniel%20Boone%20Was%20A%20Man.htm](http://www.boonesociety.com/articles/Daniel%20Boone%20Was%20A%20Man.htm) > [@](#): > > While there may have been pen and ink illustrations in Flint’s book, I do not have a first edition copy and can not share what they may have been. However, I do have a first edition of Daniel Boone and the Hunters of Kentucky by W. H. Bogart (1854) and in keeping with the “natural man” image Daniel is illustrated with a fur cap. Possibly this is where the coonskin cap image first originated. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/11 "2009-03-31T02:31:51Z")
Queen Elizabeth I ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/12 "2009-03-31T02:37:27Z")
[Jenny Lind](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Lind), already famous in Europe, gave concert tours in the USA starting in 1850. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/13 "2009-03-31T03:07:47Z")
[This map](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Iberian_Union_Empires.png) shows Spanish and Portuguese global settlement from 1580-1640, with colonies or bases on 5 of 7 continents. Given that the English finally got around to settling Australia in 1788 (slackers), the preconditions of being “globally famous” actually came rather late. 😉 So I’m going to say Jesus. If you need somebody living at the time, Napoleon. Or Robespierre. Of course, they were much more than celebrities, but they were known world-wide, especially Napoleon. ---
**Author:** ![First\_Amongst\_Daves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/4491bb/32.png) [@First\_Amongst\_Daves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/First_Amongst_Daves)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/14 "2009-03-31T03:16:03Z")
I’m assuming that the definition of fame for this question means something apart from either being powerful or having a religious following. I have no examples, but I suspect sportsmen (including gladiators) in ancient Rome achieved considerable personal fame. Diogenes the Cynic was famous enough in his day for Alexander the Great to reportedly have swung out of his way to visit him in his kennel. I did read in a Michael Palin book that the first two men who stormed Tyre in the Second Crusade were famous throughout Europe. Bit hazy on the details, but Palin compared them to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in terms of their notoriety. Many famous explorers through-out the 1800s held lectures describing their adventures, which attracted big crowds. ---
**Author:** ![meanoldman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@meanoldman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/meanoldman)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/15 "2009-03-31T03:52:48Z")
IMHO, if you are talking truly big “G” Globally famous, it would almost by necessity mean someone fairly recent, such that his/her image, likeness or voice could be recognized throughout multiples of cultures. I can think of no one else that better sums that up than Cassius Clay/Mohamed Ali. And I might have misspelled his name too, since I don’t really follow boxing. But that speaks more for his recognition. People that don’t even follow the sport know and recognize Ali. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/16 "2009-03-31T13:04:21Z")
> [@First\_Amongst\_Daves](#): > > I’m assuming that the definition of fame for this question means something apart from either being powerful or having a religious following. Yes … being recognized on sight is the main criteria. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/17 "2009-03-31T13:06:39Z")
> [@meanoldman](#): > > I can think of no one else that better sums that up than Cassius Clay/Mohamed Ali. Muhammad Ali is an excellent nomination. Maybe not the earliest, but perhaps with the deepest reach, as he was a hero in sub-Saharan Africa (IIRC). ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/18 "2009-03-31T15:25:18Z")
Enrico Caruso toured much of the world and sold many, many records. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/19 "2009-03-31T15:26:59Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > [Jenny Lind](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Lind), already famous in Europe, gave concert tours in the USA starting in 1850. She was who I came in to mention. Barnum was her manager during her first USA tour and he was the father of major promotional campaigning in the U.S.. She was a rock star of her time, largely because she had to be if Barnum was to make a cent on her tour (he’d pretty much mortgaged everything he had to pay her huge fee and entourage- and he did make back his money and quite a bit more). Speaking of Barnum: Chang & Eng Bunker were internationally famous. (I have some porcelain figures of them from their 1830s German tour [mass produced inexpensive low quality souvenirs made to sell at their exhibitions]). General Tom Thumb was also. When he [married](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Charles_Sherwood_Stratton_and_Lavinia_Warren_marriage.jpg) receptions were given for him at the White House (during the height of the Civil War) and in Europe and he had private audiences with presidents, Brigham Young, European royalty, and one of the popes (can’t remember which). ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368/20 "2009-03-31T15:57:20Z")
To be a truly global celebrity, one would have to have lived in the modern era. Before the 20th century, only a tiny percentage of the population had the opportunity to see or hear even the most famous actors and singers perform. That changed with the advent of movies and recorded music. To be a “global” celebrity, I think you’d have to pass this test: if I went up to a random stranger in Paris, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, Mumbai, Chicago, or Lagos and did a bad imitation of you, or drew a bad caricature of you, would that stranger instantly know who I meant? Using that test, among the few “global” stars I can think of are: Charlie Chaplin Humphrey Bogart John Wayne Elvis Presley Pele Muhammad Ali [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-were-among-the-earliest-globally-famous-celebrities/491368.md?page=2)