Portrait of Chips Rafferty

Birthday profile

Chips Rafferty

Chips Rafferty, Australian actor (died 1971)

Born
March 26, 1909
Died
May 27, 1971
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1909

About Chips Rafferty

John William Pilbean Goffage MBE, known professionally as Chips Rafferty, was an Australian actor. Called "the living symbol of the typical Australian", Rafferty's career stretched from the late 1930s until he died in 1971, and during this time he performed regularly in major Australian feature films such as Wake in Fright, as well as appearing in British and American productions, including The Overlanders and The Sundowners. He appeared in commercials in Britain during the late 1950s, encouraging British emigration to Australia. While promoting the film in Hollywood he met Hedda Hopper who said Rafferty "created quite a stir. Their first movie was The Phantom Stockman (1953), directed by Robinson and starring Rafferty, and produced by them both.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Chips Rafferty was born

Chips Rafferty was born in 1909. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1909

  • Best-selling book"The Inner Shrine" – Basil King

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentHonus Wagner leads Pittsburgh Pirates to World Series victory
  • Top headlineRobert Peary claims to reach the North Pole
  • Technology milestoneBakelite (first fully synthetic plastic) invented
  • Notable inventionBakelite plastic
  • World population~1.69B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWilliam Howard Taft
  • U.S. population88.8M

1909 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Chips Rafferty's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19092026
Population88.8M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, IMDb, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.