Mack Sennett's Fun Factory: A History and Filmography of His Studio and His Keystone and Mack Sennett Comedies, with Biographies of Players and Personnel (review)
- Mack Sennett's Fun Factory: A History and Filmography of His Studio and His Keystone and Mack Sennett Comedies, with Biographies of Players and Personnel
Mack Sennett's name is synonymous with American silent comedy. After a four-year apprenticeship from 1908 to 1912 at the Biograph Company, Sennett produced more than one thousand films for the Keystone Film Company and Mack Sennett Comedies over a twentyone year period. He brought Charles Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Harry Langdon, Charley Chase, Edgar Kennedy, Ben Turpin, Mack Swain, Billy Bevan, W. C. Fields and others to the screen. The size of Sennett's accomplishment and his self-mythologizing overwhelmed any comprehensive documentation of his achievement until publication of this amazing book, the fruit of more than twenty years of research. [End Page 285]
Mack Sennett's Fun Factory is the size of an encyclopedia volume; it is many things in one.
The first 235 pages are an historical overview of Sennett and the movies: a chronological discussion of his career at Biograph (1908–1912), Keystone and Triangle (1912–1917), Paramount (1917–1921), First National (1921–1922), Pathé (1923–1929), Educational (1929–1932) and Paramount-Publix (1932–1933). The next 232 pages are a chronological filmography, beginning with Sennett's appearances as an actor for Biograph and extending through to theatrical and television compilations using footage from Mack Sennett comedies. This is followed by 116 pages of biographies of Keystone and Mack Sennett studio personnel, separated into sections: performers, creative and technical people, and "other notable personnel" who had either minor association with Sennett or for whom little information was available. There is a stunningly comprehensive index: sixty-two pages of very small type, four columns per page. In addition, the book contains approximately 280 rare, really rare, photographs, all nicely reproduced, large enough to be studied, and scrupulously captioned. The quantity of data is truly staggering.
Brent Walker reviews the existing literature and finds it riddled with errors, Sennett's career too-often treated as a "hazy idea rather than a solid body of work". Walker is never tendentious, but he corrects hundreds of published errors and goes far, far beyond any previous work in supplying accurate information. The organization of the book allows a reader to take or leave as much of this as is desired.
At the outset there is a six-page discussion of Sennett's themes and plots, and the social context of his work. His career on stage and at Biograph receives a modest but sufficient eleven pages of consideration. Once Walker starts discussing Keystone, he can astonish us. The structure of this chapter is mirrored in the others: it is chronological, but at the same time a mini-thematic review with sections on the myth of the Keystone cops, blackface and other ethnic comedy, other Keystone genres and the bases of their humour, principal performers, various directors and their special skills, the mix of location and studio work, and exploitation of actual special events. Walker details studio expansion, structure and administration, and identifies both the personnel and the physical plant associated with the company's growth, until at one point he finds seven separate producing units simultaneously at work. Walker explains that Sennett regarded story and gag construction as his greatest gift and he details the recycling of comedy ideas from earlier films to new ones. He makes clear that the overall production program was far more important to Sennett than the retention of any individual talent: Sennett welcomed actors and technicians who had left for other comedy companies if they later wished to return to his employ. Walker also discusses and sometimes celebrates lesser-known performers who added special distinction to the films they populated.
Walker personally viewed every surviving Sennett comedy he could access, and studied available scripts for those no longer extant or within his reach. Sources for these films are acknowledged within the text as well as in the filmography (twenty-two archives...
