For nearly a century "Zepped," a 6-minute 1916 film of mysterious pedigree starring Charlie Chaplin, was lost. Now it’s found.
Earlier this year, an Essex, England, film collector named Morace Park made a successful eBay bid of £3.20 (or $5.68 American) on a nitrate film canister containing unlabeled footage. The footage turned out to be the obscure Chaplin short, a World War I propaganda effort designed to buck up British morale, combining stop-motion animation and outtakes and unused alternate shots from films Chaplin made for both Keystone and Essanay studios
The hybrid, over which Chaplin apparently exercised no creative control, includes a shot or two from "His New Job," the short film Chaplin made for the Chicago-based Essanay during his 23-day residency here in late 1914 and early 1915.
"It’s very interesting stuff," said David Kiehn, manager and historian of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum of Fremont, Calif. Chaplin expert Kiehn saw portions of the film last week.
Park and business partner John Dyer went public with their discovery Nov. 1. The Chaplin short’s considerable historical interest will be the subject of a self-financed documentary.
"Zepped" begins with an animated version of Chaplin dreaming of leaving America to fight the Germans back home in England. In one animated segment the Kaiser emerges from a German sausage. In what appears to be newsreel-type footage, according to Kiehn, a genuine and eerily low-flying Zeppelin is seen hovering over London during a wartime attack.
The movie contrives to make Chaplin — under fire at the time for his lack of participation in the war effort — the hero of the hour. A 1916 Manchester newspaper account reported that the ending depicts "the Zeppelin in flames and the gallant Charlie running away."
Kiehn speculated that the cobbled-together Chaplin outtakes may have been assembled and augmented with animation in London under the supervision of Harry Spoor, who ran the London office of Chicago-based Essanay, co-founded by his brother, George K. Spoor. Other suggest that "Zepped" was put together in another country altogether, albeit one under British rule at the time: The surviving nitrate print of the film carries an Egyptian censors' certificate.
Even if "Zepped" turns out to be something less than "THE cinematic find of the last 100 years," as Park and company touted on their web site, it’s better off than was reported three years ago in a Russian film journal. "The film has not survived," the magazine stated.
The Little Tramp, as always, has gotten the last laugh.
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