The 1914 short Kid Auto Races at Venice introduced the iconic character that would become synonymous with silent film, sparking an international sensation
By Zach Armstrong
The year was 1914. Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run. Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination ignited the First World War. The Panama Canal officially opened for shipping. And from Venice, Calif., a then-little-known actor introduced what would become one of movie history’s most significant characters.
Kid Auto Races at Venice, a six-minute silent comedy short produced by Keystone Studios and directed by Henry Lehrman, was the second released film to show Charlie Chaplin on screen. Shot in the beachside neighborhood during the Junior Vanderbilt Cup, it depicts Chaplin as an obnoxious spectator who frequently steps in front of the camera and interferes with pushcart racers, visibly irritating attendees and the cameraman attempting to capture the event.
Chaplin’s role in the picture—a mischievous yet lighthearted vagrant who sports a bowler hat, toothbrush mustache, walking cane, and baggy clothes—would reappear throughout the English actor’s illustrious career, including in some of cinema’s most iconic projects: City Lights, Modern Times, The Gold Rush, and The Kid. The Tramp, originally conceived for a separate film shot earlier but released later than Kid Auto Races, is now considered the silent film era’s most recognizable character.
“We are all the Tramp. He has no nationality. When a kid watches Chaplin, it’s simple. He doesn’t speak; he just shows. He shares the most common values of generosity,” documentarian and film preservationist Serge Bromberg told the Los Angeles Times.
“The genius of the Tramp’s long gestation is that Chaplin created a character who was an everyman before he was identified as an outsider—which is partly how he eventually came to win the audience’s sympathy for an unlikely leading man,” film critic Pamela Hutchinson noted in The Guardian.
Movies released around the same time as Kid Auto Races often portrayed characters in the Tramp’s garb as antagonists: robbers, hobos, drunkards, and womanizers. But Chaplin redefined this archetype, portraying a well-meaning figure who warmed the hearts and brightened the spirits of audiences. Although the Tramp’s early portrayals leaned toward the bumbling and annoying, he later evolved into a sentimental figure who cared for children (The Kid) or raised money to restore a blind woman’s sight (City Lights).
The Tramp quickly became an international sensation.
Chaplin’s image was widely used on merchandise such as dolls, toys, cigarette cards, and postcards. Imitators performed Tramp routines in vaudeville shows and on street corners. During World War I, British soldiers installed Tramp cutouts above trenches “so the Germans would die laughing,” while morale was bolstered among wounded troops by Tramp films projected on hospital ceilings.
Chaplin officially retired the character with 1936’s Modern Times. At the end of the award-winning film, in which Chaplin plays an assembly worker driven mad by the obsession with production efficiency, the Tramp walks down a highway toward the horizon.
The Tramp was envisioned a year after Chaplin joined Mack Sennett’s Keystone Film Co., where he worked alongside a throng of comedic actors. While filming Mabel’s Strange Predicament, Sennett told Chaplin, “We need some gags here. Put on a comedy make-up. Anything will do,” Chaplin recalled in his memoir. He then conceived of the outfit on his way to the wardrobe.
“I wanted everything to be a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small, and the shoes large. … I added a small mustache, which, I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression,” Chaplin wrote. “I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on stage, he was fully born.”
Though the Tramp was conceived on the set of Mabel’s Strange Predicament, it was Kid Auto Races that introduced him to audiences. The latter was shot days after Mabel’s but released first, debuting the Tramp on-screen on Feb. 7, 1914.
A contemporary reviewer in The Cinema praised Kid Auto Races, stating, “Kid Auto Races struck us as about the funniest film we have ever seen. When we subsequently saw Chaplin in more ambitious efforts, our opinion that the Keystone Company had made the capture of their career was strengthened. Chaplin is a born screen comedian; he does things we have never seen done on the screen before.”
Venice Beach has more connections to comedic cinema’s most household name beyond Kid Auto Races.
He was an early tenant of The Waldorf, now called the Venice V Hotel, which hosted many stars of the time. The Venice Beach House at 15 30th Ave., a nine-bedroom estate completed in 1911 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places, was another regular haunt of his. It now commemorates his legacy with a room titled “The Tramp’s Quarters.”
In 1972, after spending two decades estranged from the United States as a target of McCarthyism, and three years before being knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, Chaplin returned to accept a special Academy Award. He was noticeably moved by the 12-minute standing ovation he received.
Chaplin died on Christmas Day in 1977 at his home in Switzerland. He is remembered as one of the most significant and influential figures in film history, particularly in the comedy genre.
Kid Auto Races at Venice, which was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2020, can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HksFtwqmtO0.
