Kid Auto Races At Venice is a 1914

1914 in film

The year 1914 in film involved some significant events, including the debut of Cecil B. DeMille as a director.-Events:*The 3,300-seat Mark Strand Theatre opens in New York City....

 American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

-made motion picture starring Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin

Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...

 in which his "Little Tramp

The Tramp

The Tramp, also known as The Little Tramp was Charlie Chaplin's most memorable on-screen character, a recognized icon of world cinema most dominant during the silent film era....

" character makes his first appearance.

Synopsis

Made by Keystone Studios

Keystone Studios

Keystone Studios was an early movie studio founded in Edendale, California in 1912 as the Keystone Pictures Studio by Mack Sennett with backing from Adam Kessel and Charles O. Bauman, owners of the New York Motion Picture Company...

 and directed by Henry Lehrman

Henry Lehrman

Henry Lehrman was an American actor, screenwriter and film director and producer.Born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, Lehrman emigrated to the United States at a young age and although he is best remembered as a film director, he began his career as an actor in a 1909 Biograph Studios production...

, in it Chaplin plays a spectator at a 'baby-cart race' in California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. The spectator keeps getting in the way of the camera and interferes with the race, causing great frustration to the public and participants. The film was shot during the Junior Vanderbilt Cup, an actual race with Chaplin and his co-stars improvising gags in front of real-life spectators.

Unusually the camera "comes out of shot" to show a second camera filming (as though it were the first), to better explain the joke. At this stage Chaplin only gets in the way of the visible camera on screen, not the actual filming camera. In so doing it takes on a spectator's viewpoint and becomes one of the first public films to show the film camera and cameraman in operation.

Cast

• Charlie Chaplin
  Charlie Chaplin
  Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
  
   - Tramp
• Henry Lehrman
  Henry Lehrman
  Henry Lehrman was an American actor, screenwriter and film director and producer.Born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, Lehrman emigrated to the United States at a young age and although he is best remembered as a film director, he began his career as an actor in a 1909 Biograph Studios production...
  
   - Film Director
• Frank D. Williams - Cameraman
• Billy Jacobs - Boy
• Charlotte Fitzpatrick - Girl
• Thelma Salter - Girl
• Gordon Griffith
  Gordon Griffith
  Gordon S. Griffith was an American assistant director, film producer, and one of the first child actors in the American movie industry. Griffith worked in the film industry for five decades, acting in over 60 films, and surviving the transition from silent films to talkies—films with...
  
  - BoyBrent Walker (quoted by the BFI) maintains that Chaplin, Lehrman and Williams were the only professional players, the other being members of the public.

External links

• Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. at The Charlie Chaplin Encyclopedia - A different version which is missing the ending.