Mabel Normand

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Mabel Normand (November 9, 1892 – February 23, 1930) was an American silent film comedienne and actress. She was a popular star of Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios and is noted as one of the film industry's first female screenwriters, producers and directors. Onscreen she co-starred in commercially successful films with Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe Arbuckle, occasionally writing and directing movies featuring Chaplin. At the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Normand had her own movie studio and production company.

Throughout the 1920s her name was linked with widely publicized scandals including the 1922 murder of William Desmond Taylor and the 1924 shooting of Courtland S. Dines, who was shot by Normand's chauffeur with her pistol. She was not a suspect in either crime. Her film career declined, possibly due to both scandal and a recurrence of tuberculosis in 1923, which led to a decline in her health, retirement from films and her death in 1930.

Early life and career

Born Mabel Ethelreid Normand in New Brighton, Staten Island, New York, she grew up in extreme poverty. Her father, Claude Normand, was sporadically employed as a carpenter at Sailors' Snug Harbor home for elderly seamen. Before she entered films at age 16 in 1909, Normand worked as an artist's model, which included posing for postcards illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the Gibson Girl image. She met director Mack Sennett whilst at D. W. Griffith's Biograph Company and embarked on a tumultuous affair with him; he later brought her across when he founded Keystone Studios in 1912. Her first films portrayed her as a bathing beauty, but Normand quickly demonstrated a flair for comedy and became a star of Sennett's short films. Normand appeared with Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe ("Fatty") Arbuckle in many short films.

She played a role in starting Chaplin's film career. Chaplin had considerable initial difficulty adjusting to the demands of film acting and his performance suffered for it. After his first film appearance Making a Living, made by Sennet was filmed, Sennett felt he had made a costly mistake. Most historians agree it was Normand who persuaded him to give Chaplin another chance.

In 1914 she starred with Chaplin and Marie Dressler in Tillie's Punctured Romance. In 1918, as her relationship with Sennett came to an end, Normand signed a $3,500 a week contract with Samuel Goldwyn and opened a film studio in Culver City. Her breakup with Sennett seems to have caused Normand to re-evaluate her life and she embarked on a program of self-education, developing keen and lasting interests in reading and books.

Scandals

Director William Desmond Taylor shared her interest in books and the two formed a close friendship. He was murdered in 1922 only minutes after Normand had left his home. She was closely scrutinized by police but never considered a serious suspect. Newspapers speculated wildly about Normand given reports of her drug use along with her many past appearances in films with Roscoe Arbuckle, who had also recently become enmeshed in scandal.

In 1924 her chauffeur Joe Kelly shot and wounded millionaire oil broker and amateur golfer Courtland S. Dines with her pistol At the time Dines was romantically involved with Normand's friend (and frequent Chaplin co-star) Edna Purviance.

Later career and death

She continued making films and was signed by Hal Roach Studios in 1926 after discussions with director/producer F. Richard Jones, who had directed her at Keystone. At Roach she made the film Raggedy Rose plus four others which were released with publicity support from the Hollywood community (including her friend Mary Pickford).

In 1926 she married actor Lew Cody with whom she had appeared in Mickey in 1918. They lived separately in nearby houses in Beverly Hills before Cody moved in with her. However, Normand's health was in decline. After an extended stay in a sanitarium she died from tuberculosis in Monrovia, California at the age of 37. She was interred as Mabel Normand-Cody at Calvary Cemetery, Los Angeles.

Mabel Normand has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to Motion Pictures, at 6821 Hollywood Boulevard.

Her film Mabel's Blunder (1914) was added to the National Film Registry in December 2009.

In June 2010, the New Zealand Film Archive reported the discovery of a print of Normand's film Won in a Closet (exhibited in New Zealand under its alternate title Won in a Cupboard), a short comedy previously believed lost. This film is a significant rediscovery, as Normand directed this movie as well as starred in the lead role, so it is a showcase for her talents on both sides of the camera.

Quote

Say anything you like, but don't say I love to work. That sounds like Mary Pickford, the prissy bitch.

Cultural references

A nod to Normand's celebrity in early Hollywood came through the name of a leading character in the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard, "Norma Desmond", which has been cited as a combination of the names Mabel Normand and William Desmond Taylor.

The 1974 Broadway musical Mack & Mabel (Michael Stewart and Jerry Herman) fictionalized the romance between Normand and Mack Sennett. Normand was played by Bernadette Peters and Robert Preston played Mack Sennett.

Stevie Nicks wrote a song called "Mabel Normand". It was never officially released and exists in demo form.

Normand is played by actress Morganne Picard in the motion picture Return to Babylon (2008), by Marisa Tomei in the 1992 film Chaplin, and more recently by Penelope Lagos in the first bio-pic about her life appropriately titled Madcap Mabel (2010).

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