Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses

Mabel Normand

MABEL NORMAND Mabel Normand. The name has a distinctive and euphonious quality to it. a pleasing ring summoningforth an attractive presence. One immediately thinks of later cinematic beauties-of Marilyn Monroe-whose images are symbolic of both beauty and an undercurrent of fun. At the same time. there is a sense of lower-class unpretentiousness. almost a cheapness. to the name of Mabel. It evokes images of a back street urchin with a hint of tomfoolery. a working girl that knows the score. Mabel Normand. The name provides a complete definition of the woman. It is beauty. It is humor. And ultimately. justlike Marilyn Monroe. it is tragedy. The life story of Mabel Normand (Staten Island. New York. November 9. 1892-Monrovia. California. February 23. 1930) reads like an early-twentieth -century Hollywood novel. perhaps written byTheodore Dreiser-or Fannie Hurst. A quick recounting of its content dispels any suggestion that Mabel Normand was the twenty-first Century concept of a stereotypical silent star. overendowed with innocence. sweetness. and light. Like most of her contemporaries . Mabel Normand was tough. Being so was the only way to succeed in an industry where. literally. an actor or actress might have to fight his or her way to the top. Or. as with Mary Pickford. Mary Miles Minter. and others. one had a mother to do it. Mabel Normand's film career began in 1910 after an earlier vocation posing as a model for some of the best-known illustrators of the day. At the Vitagraph Company. at the beginning of her film career. she even had her own screen character. Betty. but soon her on-screen character would be known simply as Mabel. She was the only silent star indelibly linked by name to the heroine she portrayed onfilm. To the public. onscreenand off. Mabel Normand was one and the same personality. As Normand came to fame. she worked with two of the cinema's greatest pioneers. D.W. Griffith and J. Stuart Blackton. but neither has left any indication that they were particularly impressed with the actress. It took a rough. tough. and by some accounts crude Irish-Canadian named MackSennett to recognize Normand's comedic talents-in 191 I-and from then on. no matter for whom she worked. Mabel Normand's name was always to be associated with that ofMackSennett. the so-called King of Comedy. When he formed his Keystone Company. Mabel Normand was with him. and when Charlie Chaplin joined the company. Mabel was his earliest leading lady. She was was also his director. an occupation with which she is not generally associated and which Chaplin chooses not to acknowledge in his autobiography. This area of her career deserves far more research and study. In all. in 1913 and 1914. 272 Mabel Normand Normand directed twelve comedy shorts, in all of which she was the star, and in five of which she was supported by a young Charlie Chaplin. The breakup of the Mabel Normand-Mack Sennett relationship came in the summer of 1915, when a purported engagement fell apart, supposedly after Normand found Sennett in a compromising situation with another actress , Mae Busch. True or false? Who can tell? Sennett never married, and this bachelor's private life remains shrouded in mystery. Certainly, the end of Normand's early years with Sennett did not restrain her career, and there appear to have been no hard feelings when the comedienne returned to his employ in the early 1920s. But the 1920s was not a good decade for Mabel Normand. There were two scandals-involving her relationships with director William Desmond Taylor and oil tycoon Courtland S. Dines-and, of course, there was an overindulgence and overreliance on drugs. It was the last that killed her, four years after her only marriage to actor Lew Cody. The marriage was probably one of convenience, but one can hope that it brought some happiness to the pair. Had she lived, had her life been scandal-free, would Mabel Normand's career have prospered with the coming of sound? Would she have been reduced to playing supporting roles in those dreadful Al Christie Educational comedies? Or would she have followed in the footsteps of sister Mack Sennett graduate Louise fazenda, married a major producer, and become a reliable supporting comedienne in feature films, a familiar face to American moviegoers and a beloved figure within the Hollywood community? It is...