Charlie Chaplin Was In A Racing Movie?

Did you know that Charlie Chaplin was in a racing movie? He was, it was called “Kid Auto Races at Venice”.

Near as I can tell, it has not one, but two races contained with in the movie. There’s both an actual automobile race going on, but in the last bit of the film, there is also a kid’s soapbox derby-style race going on. They seem to be going on side by side, and the same track … which I presume to be a street circuit in Venice CA.

I found out about this odd little bit of car racing trivia from this blog I check out written by a comedian/writer.

Racing movies are, by and large, crap.

Even the “good” ones are pretty flawed. “Grand Prix” is overly long and has that horrid tacked on soap opera “plot” and “Le Mans” has no plot at all. The less said about “Driven” & the regrettable “Days of Thunder” the better.

“Kid Auto Races at Venice” is also pretty thin on plot … essentially Chaplin is a real pain to a camera crew trying to film the race.

The Film itself and more after the jump.

I can’t tell what kind of cars are racing, I’m pretty shaky on a lot of that brass era stuff … they look like Mercers and smaller engined cars, but I don’t know for sure.

Amazingly slow too … which is good, since there is literally no crowd control, and a mechanical failure or driver error would result in a path through the crowd not unlike a scythe through a wheat field.

Dennis Perrin, the comedy writer, said this about the movie:

“Kid Auto Races at Venice” … Shot on location January 10, 1914, it is Chaplin’s second film ever, and the first where he wears the Tramp costume. … Chaplin pretends to be a nosier member of the crowd behind him. Since Chaplin was unknown at the time, many of the bystanders assumed he was a real pest to the camera crew. Sort of like what Andy Kaufman would do much later, only not as strange nor potentially violent.”

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Filed Under: Movies