Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett was a Canadian-American producer, director, actor, and studio head who was known as the "King of Comedy" during his career.
Born in Danville, Quebec, he started acting in films in the Biograph Company of New York City in 1908, and later opened Keystone Studios in Edendale, California in 1912. Keystone possessed the first fully enclosed film stage, and Sennett became famous as the originator of slapstick routines such as pie-throwing and car-chases, as seen in the Keystone Cops films. He also produced short features that displayed his Bathing Beauties, many of whom had acting careers.
After struggling with bankruptcy and the dominance of sound films in the early 1930s, Sennett was presented with an honorary Academy Award in 1938 for his contributions to the film industry, with the academy describing him as a "master of fun, discoverer of stars, sympathetic, kindly, understanding comedy genius".
Early life
Born Michael Sinnott in Danville, Quebec, to parents of Irish Catholic descent, John Sinnott and Catherine Foy. His parents married in 1879 in Tingwick, Quebec and moved the same year to Richmond, Quebec where Sinnott was hired as a laborer. By 1883, when Sennett's brother George was born, Sinnott was working as an innkeeper, a position he held for many years. Sennett's parents had all their children and raised their family in Richmond, then a small Eastern Townships village. At that time, Sennett's grandparents were living in Danville, Quebec. Sennett moved to Connecticut when he was 17.He lived for a while in Northampton, Massachusetts, where, according to his autobiography, he first got the idea to become an opera singer after seeing a vaudeville show. He said that the most respected lawyer in town, Northampton mayor Calvin Coolidge, as well as Sennett's mother, tried to talk him out of his musical ambitions. In New York City, he took on the stage name Mack Sennett and became an actor, singer, dancer, clown, set designer, and director for the Biograph Company. A distinction in his acting career, often overlooked, is that he played Sherlock Holmes 11 times, albeit as a parody, between 1911 and 1913.
Keystone Studios
With financial backing from Adam Kessel and Charles O. Bauman of the New York Motion Picture Company, Sennett founded Keystone Studios in Edendale, California – now a part of Echo Park – in 1912. The original main building which was the first totally enclosed film stage and studio ever constructed,is still standing, as of 2023. Many successful actors began their film careers with Sennett, including Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand, Charlie Chaplin, Harry Langdon, Roscoe Arbuckle, Harold Lloyd, Raymond Griffith, Gloria Swanson, Charley Chase, Ford Sterling, Andy Clyde, Chester Conklin, Polly Moran, Slim Summerville, Louise Fazenda, The Keystone Cops, Carole Lombard, Bing Crosby, and W. C. Fields.
Dubbed the King of Hollywood's Fun Factory, Sennett's studios produced slapstick comedies that were noted for their hair-raising car chases and custard pie warfare, especially in the Keystone Cops series. The comic formulas, however well executed, were based on humorous situations rather than the personal traits of the comedians; the various social types, often grotesquely portrayed by members of Sennett's troupe, were adequate to render the largely "interchangeable routines: "Having a funny moustache, or crossed-eyes, or an extra two-hundred pounds was as much individualization as was required."
Sennett Bathing Beauties
Also beginning in 1915, Sennett assembled a bevy of women known as the Sennett Bathing Beauties to appear in provocative bathing costumes in comedy short subjects, in promotional material, and in promotional events such as Venice Beach beauty contests. The Sennett Bathing Beauties continued to appear through 1928.File:Mabel's Dramatic Career 1913.jpeg|thumb|right|300px|Movie theatre audience members Roscoe Arbuckle and Sennett square off while watching Mabel Normand onscreen in Mabel's Dramatic Career.
Independent production
In 1917, Sennett gave up the Keystone trademark and organized his own company, Mack Sennett Comedies Corporation. Sennett's bosses retained the Keystone trademark and produced a cheap series of comedy shorts that proved unsuccessful. Sennett went on to produce more ambitious comedy short films and a few feature-length films.Many of Sennett's films of the early 1920s were inherited by Warner Bros. after Warner had merged with the original distributor, First National. Warner added music and commentary to several of these short subjects, and the new versions were released to theaters between 1939 and 1945. Many of Sennett's First National films physically deteriorated due to inadequate storage. Hence, many of Sennett's films from his most productive and creative period no longer exist.
Move to Pathé Exchange
In the mid-1920s, Sennett moved to Pathé Exchange distribution. In 1927, Hollywood's two most successful studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount Pictures, took note of the profits being made by smaller companies such as Pathé Exchange and Earle Hammons's Educational Pictures. MGM took over the Hal Roach comedy shorts from Pathé, and Paramount reactivated its short subjects. Hundreds of other independent exhibitors and moviehouses switched from Pathé to the new MGM or Paramount shorts. Sennett fulfilled his contract to deliver silent comedies to Pathé through 1929, but he began making sound films for Educational in late 1928.Sound films
In 1928, Sennett canceled all of his talent contracts and retooled his studio for the new talking-picture technology. His leading star at the time, Ben Turpin, was suddenly unemployed and moved to the Weiss Brothers studio.Sennett's enthusiasm for sound on film was such that he was the first to get a talking two-reel comedy on the market. The Lion's Roar, starring Johnny Burke and Billy Bevan, was released by Educational in December 1928, launching a four-year succession of Mack Sennett sound comedies. Sennett occasionally experimented with color as well.
In 1932, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film in the comedy division for producing The Loud Mouth. Sennett also won an Academy Award in the novelty division for his film Wrestling Swordfish, also in 1932. He directed at least two two-reel comedies under the pseudonym Michael Emmes : Hawkins and Watkins Inc. and Young Onions.
Mack Sennett often clung to outmoded techniques, making his early-1930s films seem dated and quaint: he dressed some of his actors in eccentric makeups and loud costumes, which were amusing in the cartoonish silent films but ludicrous in the new, realistic atmosphere of talking pictures. Sennett was also having financial problems during the Great Depression. One of his biggest stars, Andy Clyde, left the studio after Sennett, wanting to economize, tried to cut Clyde's salary.
In 1932, Sennett attempted to re-enter the feature-film market on a grand scale with Hypnotized. Remembering the successful campaign for his very first feature-length comedy Tillie's Punctured Romance, which in 1914 was the longest comedy film ever produced, Sennett planned Hypnotized along similar lines as an epic production that would be shown first-run in select roadshow engagements. Sennett announced that Hypnotized would run 15 reels, or two-and-a-half hours, more than twice the length of a typical comedy feature of the day. Sennett wanted W. C. Fields to star as a carnival hypnotist, but Fields declined, and the role went to Ernest Torrence, sharing the spotlight with blackface comedians Moran and Mack, "The Two Black Crows". Production was completed in August 1932, but fell far short of Sennett's grandiose predictions. The finished film ran an ordinary 70 minutes and was released through ordinary channels by World Wide Pictures in December 1932.
Sennett was also having differences with his distributor, Earle Hammons of Educational. Jack White, Educational's leading producer, explained, "We put Mack Sennett out of business. Theaters had comedies booked solid. Sennett was very temperamental and wanted the exhibitor to do certain things, but they wouldn't stand for it. Sennett wouldn't stand for Hammons not telling him how much he was cutting out of the grosses for himself. Sennett told him to go to hell." Sennett left Educational and signed with Paramount Pictures.
Later projects
Rumors abounded that Sennett would be returning to film production, but apart from Sennett reissuing a couple of his Bing Crosby two-reelers to theaters, nothing happened.Sennett did appear in front of the camera, however, in Hollywood Cavalcade, a thinly disguised version of the Mack Sennett-Mabel Normand romance.
In 1949, he provided film footage for the first full-length comedy compilation film, Down Memory Lane, written and narrated by Steve Allen. Sennett made a guest appearance in the film, and received a special "Mack Sennett presents" credit.
Sennett wrote a memoir, King of Comedy, in collaboration with Cameron Shipp. The book was published in 1954, prompting TV producer Ralph Edwards to mount a tribute to Sennett for the television series This Is Your Life. Sennett made a cameo appearance in Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops.
Sennett's last appearance in the national media was in the NBC radio program Biography in Sound, relating memories of working with W.C. Fields. The program was broadcast February 28, 1956.
Personal life
Sennett was never married, but his tumultuous relationship with actress Mabel Normand was widely publicized in the press at the time. According to the Los Angeles Times, Sennett reportedly lived a "madcap, extravagant life", often throwing "lavish parties", and at the peak of his career he owned three homes.On March 25, 1932, he became a United States citizen.