I’m looking forward to attending the 46th annual Cinecon Classic Film Festival at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood California over Labor Day weekend, September 2-6, 2010.
The big event at this year’s festival is the screening of a previously lost Charlie Chaplin film, “A Thief Catcher” from Keystone Studios, 1914.
Film collector Paul Gierucki found a 16mm film print in a trunk at a Taylor, Michigan, antique store last year.
“I could tell it was a Keystone comedy, so I haggled and got it for $100.”
When he put it on a projector, he was astonished when Chaplin appeared as a cop about six minutes into the film for an extended two-minute cameo.
“My heart stopped,” Gierucki recalls. “I recognized him immediately.”
“A Thief Catcher” was in production between January 5-26, 1914, soon after Chaplin arrived at the Keystone studio, and it represents the second or third screen role for the soon-to-be world famous comedy star.
Robert Birchard, Cinecon’s president and author of multiple tomes on Hollywood history, reminds us that this film was shot in Edendale, L.A.’s nascent boulevard of filmmaking, now Glendale Avenue in Echo Park.
Read about Edendale here: