Year

Country

Home

People

Films

Articles

Store

Morace Park was looking for bargains on auction site eBay when an ‘old film’ caught his eye.  He was actually more interested in the tin the film came in than the film itself, and snapped it up for just £3.20.   When Park received the tin he didn’t even bother opening it for a while but when he did, and saw the title frame ‘Charlie Chaplin in Zepped’, his curiosity was aroused because a search on the internet failed to come up with any results.

By a strange quirk of fate, Park’s neighbour in Essex was John Dyer, former head of education for the British Board of Film Classification, whose excitement at Park’s discovery was enough to send the men on a ‘wild journey’ to find the story behind the unknown film.

The 35mm nitrate film, which ran just under seven minutes, was a compilation of Chaplin footage and animation reminiscent of the style of Monty Python according to Park.   ‘It starts with live shots of Chaplin,’ he said. ‘.It then turns into a dreamscape.   We see a Zeppelin bombing attack.   And then we see Chaplin taking the mickey out of the Zeppelin, at the time a powerful instrument of terror.’

Park and Dyer concluded that the film was a WW1 propaganda film aimed at calming British people’s fears of German airship bombing raids which began early in 1915.   In some of the film’s early frames, reference is made to Essanay, the California-based production company Chaplin was contracted to from December 1914.

Michael Pogorzelski, the director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences archives believed the film was comprised of shots of the German Zeppelin and animated material spliced together with out-takes and footage from previous Essanay films.   He described the film as, ‘definitely important and definitely interesting… [an example of] either piracy or entrepreneurship – depending on which side of the fence you’re on.’

David Robinson, the author of Chaplin: His Life and Art, said that when Chaplin left Essanay the studio tried to exploit his name by adding unused footage to existing films to create ‘new’ films which it would market as such.   This action resulted in legal action by Chaplin, which might account for why Zepped was never apparently released.   The print found by Park was possibly classified for exhibition in Egypt, a British protectorate at the time.

[ADD]