The Search For Charlie Chaplin

sound an unpardonable exaggeration. But what discovery can equal it?1

Collectors had hailed the discovery of the occasional lost Keystone

comedy in which Chaplin played, but nobody had the slightest idea that

somewhere in England, somewhere in France, and somewhere in the

United States lay three separate treasure troves of silent film which

would, for the first time, reveal the working methods of the greatest

single figure of the cinema. It was a treasure hunt involving innocence

and guile, accident and coincidence. A treasure hunt which took us to

Switzerland, France and the United States. The treasure, when it was

uncovered, revealed information as precious as the film itself. From the

material, we compiled a television series called Unknown Chaplin, three

hour-long documentaries produced for Thames Television.

Apart from the experience of making the series, we learned so much

about Chaplin we could not squeeze into the commentary we decided to

preserve it in the form of a book.