Mabel normand

As soon as she recovers from her accident, Mabel Normand is coming east to locate permanently. She will be assigned to the Keystone‘s Fort Lee studio and work with Roscoe Arbuckle.

Keystone comedies have never been made in the east and the experiment will be watched with interest by the trade.
* from Variety, October 8, 1915

STOLEN MAGIC

This two part Keystone (Triangle) production is a much more felicitous scenario for the exploitation of Raymond Hitchcock’s comicalities than the one shown at the Knickerbocker last week. In it he plays a helmeted gentleman who has just returned from India, bringing with him a collection of snakes and a knowledge of magic that is highly amusing. The escape and wriggling of the snakes creates numerous humorous situations, but the big scene is Hitchcock’s recital of how he stole from a temple a scroll entitled “A Key to Magic,” the possession of which gives one the pleasure of having his every wish gratified. At the opening of the story Hitchcock visits his newly married friend (Mack Sen­nett) and gets all tangled up with his friend’s bride (Mabel Normand). Hitchcock, standing behind a pillar in the temple, sees a bewhiskered potentate wave the scroll and command a “cooch” dancer to materialize from a bathing pool and wriggle for him. Hitchcock gets possession of the coveted script and does likewise. Seated with legs crossed underneath him upon a divan while a juicy Oriental dancer wriggles before him, makes for an ideal opportunity for Hitchcock’s display of libidinous appreciation of this form of entertainment.

 Paul Conlon

Mabel Normand is on the way to recovery, and her thousands of friends are sighing with relief. For four long days the little Keystone actress lay unconscious, and the doctors held out little hope. Mabel was injured in a fall at the studio about two weeks ago.
* from Photoplayers Weekly, October 16, 1915

While Miss Mabel Normand, Keystone Film Company star, is still confined to her home as a result of the nearly fatal injuries which recently resulted from an accident at the studios, she is out of danger and well on the road to complete recovery. During her illness bulletins were read in cafes, theaters and other public places not only in Los Angeles, but in many other parts of the country. Miss Normand has probably made more people laugh than any other screen comedienne and the millions who have admired her beauty…
* from Photoplayers Weekly, October 16, 1915

Mabel Normand has completely recovered from her recent serious illness and has gone to San Francisco, where she’s due several weeks taking a complete rest visiting the Exposition. Miss Normand was in San Francisco with Roscoe Arbuckle and a company early in the year, and while there made a number of comedies, but was unable to spend much time at the Exposition. She is now taking advantage of the opportunity, and as soon as she has sufficiently rested, will return to Los Angeles.

* from Motography, October 30, 1915

Mabel Normand, featured Keystone star, who recently passed the crisis of an illness that very near had a fatal termination, has fully recovered and is up and about again. She will take a rest of several weeks, however, before resuming work.

As she is now up and about again, Mabel Normand has decided to take a well earned vacation before returning to her work. Miss Normand’s condition was not so critical as the report that was given out tried to make it. There is always danger when one is rapped on the head with a speeding shoe, when you stop to consider the size of the shoes that are used in all comedies.

Appearing in her first picture since the accident which nearly resulted in her death some weeks ago, Mabel Normand, the Keystone star, was injured Wednesday when a runaway monoplane got beyond control of its amateur driver, comedian Chester Conklin. The movie queen was dragged along the rough ground for nearly 100 yards. She was given immediate medical attention and rushed to her home, where she is reported as recuperating rapidly.

Conklin was in the driver’s seat and before he could extricate himself was severely burned on the legs and arms by gasoline which caught fire from the hot motor.

The machine, completely demolished, was a military monoplane and was being used in the filming of a comedy. Conklin was instructed to cut off the power after he had rolled a short distance down the field. Becoming confused, he opened the throttle and the increase in power caused the machine to shoot into the air.

Miss Mabel Normand, featured Keystone star who recently recovered from the effects of an almost fatal accident and who has been enjoying a vacation at the San Francisco Exposition during her convalescence, will leave for New York shortly, accompanied by Roscoe Arbuckle...

On September 7th the ballot-boxes closed on what was perhaps the most remarkable contest ever conducted. We offered over $2,000 worth of prizes to the winners, the first prize to go to the player receiving the largest number of votes for any one part. Mrs. Mary Maurice, having won first prize, promptly called at this office, at our request, and, after looking over the prizes, selected the $500 Columbia Grand Grafanola and $50 worth of records. We then telegraphed Charles Chaplin, who is in California, and he wired that he preferred the $100 gold watch and chain as a memento of his having won second prize. Next came little Bobby Connelly and his mother, and they decided that they preferred the $175 Columbia phonograph. Mr. W. Chrystie Miller was next notified, and “The Grand Old Man of the Movies” came in from the Actors’ Home on Staten Island, and selected the $75 gold watch and chain for the fourth prize. We next telegraphed Mabel Normand, who is in California, to select the fifth prize, but to the time of going to the press (October 13th), we have not heard from Miss Normand. Perhaps she has not yet recovered from her recent illness, and therefore we and our readers, and the other eighteen winners, must await Miss Normand’s selection before the other prizes can be awarded.

Earle Williams........1,571,655 Charles Chaplin........1,934,550

2. Leading Woman 8. Comedian (Female)

Mary Pickford..........1,615, 160 Mabel Normand.......1,709,390

3. Old Gentleman 9. Handsome Young Man

W. Chrystie Miller...1,725,450 Antonio Moreno......1,664,825

4. Old Lady 10. Beautiful Young Woman

Mary Maurice...........2,277,500 Anita Stewart.........1,523,990

5. Character Man 11. Villain

Romaine Fielding.....1,115,985 Bryant Washburn....1,445,605

6. Character Woman 12. Child

Norma Talmadge......1,201,070 Bobby Connelly......1,732,710

When Mabel Normand has nothing else to do or the publicity man gets short on copy the little comedienne shows her obliging disposition by going out and getting hurt. Remember how all the papers nearly had her dead some time ago? To see her now one would never imagine that so slight a sickness could possibly get so much space. This time the accident occurred in the aeroplane that is being used in one of the Keystone productions. Joe Murray thought he had he had the thing tamed down, but, like a great many other professionals, it realized its own importance and simply acted all over the place. Chester Conklin, who was badly burned by the explosion of the gasoline, and was unable to appear for work for quite a while. The accident happened when some one, instead of shutting off the power when the machine got out of range of the camera, turned the throttle wide open. The plane first leaped into the air then buried itself in the ground from sheer mortification. Neither Mabel nor Conklin had ever handled a machine of the sort and both were dragged a distance before the plane was stopped. Several mechanics and assistants who reached the scene shortly after the accident, extinguished the fire and carried the players to the studio, where they were given medical attendance and then taken home. A few days later the plane did the same stunt, with the result that another propeller has been put down on the wanted list. Really, they will have to try harsher means, such as salt, to tame the wild flyer.

Mabel Normand, “The Keystone Girl,” arrived in New York yesterday. Roscoe Arbuckle, “Fatty,” accompanied her from Cali­fornia and they are to remain here for some time making comedies for the Triangle at the Knickerbocker Theatre. Before they left the Coast they completed “Fatty and Mabel Adrift,” which will be shown soon at the Knickerbocker. A company will be recruited in the East to work under the direction of Arbuckle. Miss Normand will be the feminine star in the new Keystone production.

Wednesday morning there drifted into Chicago from the west a gay party of twelve Keystoners, headed by Roscoe Arbuckle and Mabel Normand. The company left Los Angeles on Sunday and is headed for New York City, and more particularly the Ft. Lee studios of the Triangle Film Corporation, where some three months will be spent by the Keystone folks in making comedies with an eastern setting and perhaps even more laugh possibilities than those which the public has already seen.

Though a stop of but a few hours was made in Chicago, the party leaving on an early afternoon train for the east, time was found for a merry luncheon at the College Inn, where the Keystoners, between bites, shook hands with numerous press representatives of the daily newspapers and talked as they ate of the things they hoped to accomplish in the east. Both Mr. Arbuckle and Miss Normand are delighted at again having a chance to renew eastern acquaintances and once more see the bright lights of Broadway, for many months have lapsed since either of them have been outside California. Among the party gathered about the College Inn table were William N. Selig of the Selig Polyscope Company, Julian Johnson and James R. Quirk of Photoplay Magazine and Kitty Kelly of the Chicago Times.

After their three months’ sojourn in the east the Keystone folks expect to return to Los Angeles, making a picture as they go, and on the return trip pausing in Chicago for several days, during which time many scenes will be taken in the Windy City.

Mabel Normand and Roscoe Arbuckle spent their first New Year’s in several seasons within the charmed circle of New York stageland. The white lights beamed merrily for them, the cup of joy effervesced, and the plaudits of admiring throngs for their real selves brought a novel pleasure. In plain vernacular, Fatty and Mabel are on the job in New York. With their Eastern Keystone Company, including Minta Durfee, Al St. John and others, they arrived in the metropolis Thursday afternoon, December 30. The party came through direct from the coast, escorted by Traveling Passenger Pike of theSan Pedro Road. They were met at Grand Central Station by Frank Myers of the New York Central, and a number of the New York Motion Picture and Triangle executives.

Miss Normand is looking fresh as a daisy, but it was deemed best not to break the journey for picture-taking en route, since her recovery from serious accident has been so recent. Mr. Arbuckle, the director of the company, said he would start work soon at the Willat studios in Fort Lee.

Mrs. Ford Sterling (Teddy Sampson) and Syd Chaplin were among the friends who greeted the newcomers at the station.

On New Year’s night, Mr. Arbuckle, Miss Normand and the other Keystoners were the guests of the New York Globe at the Lexington Opera House. They saw “Peter Rabbit in Dreamland,” and two thousand people saw Fatty and “the Keystone girl” and applauded the flesh-and-blood authors of millions of laughs. After the hard, grueling work at Edendale, the Keystone folk enjoyed every minute of the New Year’s festivities.
* from Photoplay, February 1916

Mabel Normand’s jinx seems vigorously alive. But recently she recovered from being brow beaten by a brick she fell out of an aeroplane only a week or two after returning to work. Fortunately the vehicle was just landing, and she got away with nothing more than a whole basket of scratches and a little bag of sprains.

Picture is amusing with some new and good effects, without the customary dose of messy slapstick one expects in a Keystone with these principals...The picture is a sure laughmaker and as it is fairly clean, it is the more worthy.

Philosophers who write on feminine psychology on the women’s page of daily papers tell us we must not expect to find a pretty woman with a sense of humor. Marital advisors warn men who would marry beauties that they must be prepared to have all their best dinner table jokes fall flat. Your real beauty, these sages declare, is a person of limited moods and those moods are serious ones. Her soulful eyes will still remain soulful even when you are doing your best to get off something really good, and her cupid’s bow mouth won’t stretch even a little bit when you read her a particularly choice bit from your favorite humorist.

In living refutation of these theories is Mabel Normand of Keystone-Triangle fame. That Miss Normand is unusually pretty, all those who have seen her in Keystone comedies know, and she might have easily gone through her life playing pretty and polite little heroines if Fate had not thrown her into Keystone farces.

Once started on a comedy career, however, Miss Normand proved to the world in general that it is quite as possible to laugh at a pretty woman as to sigh for her. Audiences began to watch for the pretty girl who did not seem to mind being tied to a rock in the middle of the ocean, or hit with a blueberry pie or thrown from an aeroplane. And no matter how rough the comedy, Keystone Mabel never flinched but emerged at the end with her hair still in curl and a smile on her face.

And now it is understood that as a reward for her patient comedy work Miss Normand will be given an opportunity to do more serious things. There is a chance that she may follow the lead of Willie Collier and other New York Corporation stars by paying a short little visit to Inceville. And while she is paying calls there is a possibility that she may be sociable and drop in the fine Arts studio and make a feature or so. So Keystone Mabel is quite likely to become Triangle Mabel in the near future.

A representative of the Morning Telegraph went to Fort Lee to get Miss Normand’s answer to the question of “How to be funny though beautiful,” and found her just about to start work on a scene from her latest comedy with Roscoe Arbuckle.

“This will be the second comedy that we have made since we came East about the first of the year,” Miss Normand explained. “Our first was ‘He Did and He Didn’t,’ which has just been shown at the Knickerbocker. It was just a little bit different from most of the comedies we have been doing because it really had a plot.”

“I hope that all the pictures we are to do in the future will have plots. Even the slenderest kind of story helps a lot and gives us many more opportunities than the kind with no kind of background at all.

“Do I mind doing rough work? Well, not especially, though I would really rather not. I am not exactly fearless about it either, though I don’t like to refuse to do anything that is put up to me. I am not at all the kind who can take any risk without thinking about it first, so I don’t suppose you could call me really brave.

“You will probably remember that we have done some very rough work in our time, but I think that farce comedies are going to get quieter all the time. In fact, I believe I can say that I have been hit by my last pie.

“Have I any ambitions for serious acting? Perhaps I have. You know I was in the Biograph company with Mary Pickford, Blanche Sweet and the Gishes and I always played straight heroine roles. D. W. Griffith still insists that I am no comedienne and some day I may go back to drama.”

The Morning Telegraph representative then asked Miss Normand if she thought it was hard for a pretty woman to be a success in film comedy.

“Yes,” she answered. “Most pretty girls who go into comedy work are content to be merely pretty. The great difference is to put character into acting without either distorting your face or using comedy make-up. Anyone who photographs well can walk on a scene and flirt with the comedian which is all that most good- looking girls are required to do in comedies. It takes very little ability on their part for all they have to do is follow direction. (And here Miss Normand gave an imitation of a comedy coquette flirting according to the commands of her director). But to make a farce heroine more than a mere doll, you must think out the situation yourself and above all you must pay great attention to every little detail in the scene. The little bits of business that seem insignificant are what make good comedy.”

And so after all, according to Miss Normand, this business of being funny is a rather serious affair. As everyone know it takes an intelligent person to be effectively foolish and it is only clever people who are good at being nonsensical. You cannot make other laugh at a joke that you yourself do not understand, and so an actress cannot hope to make a situation funny to her audience unless she herself makes good use of every humorous possibility.

Miss Normand confesses that when she is not actually filming pictures, she is out looking at them. The tremendously increased output has kept her pretty busy, but so far she has managed to keep step with the producers and she is as well posted on the very latest thing in the very latest releases as the first small boy you may meet on the street.

But motion pictures are not Miss Normand’s only source of instruction. Being an artist in her line and having a sense of dramatic values as well as a sense of humor, she knows what fundamental principles underly all pantomime.

“Do you know what I like best about working here in New York,” she asked. “It is the wonderful opportunities you have for seeing the best theatrical performances. I don’t mean the Broad­way productions, but the entertainments that you can see here and nowhere else. Why, you have the opera at the Ballet Russe and the French theatre all here at the same time. The pantomime of the French players is really wonderful. Even though one doesn’t always understand what they are saying, it is worth while to watch the work of foreign actors. They are so careful and con­scientious. Each minute piece of business is a marvel of accuracy and precision, and they are never so anxious for big effects that they overlook smaller chances. I have learned a lot from them.”

Wise Mabel Normand. She not only knows what she wants to learn, but where to go and learn it.

Mabel Normand again writes us, apologizing for delaying the awarding of the prizes, due to her illness. But bless her heart, such apology was not necessary. Miss Normand’s charming note follows:

My Dear Mr. Brewster:

I feel sure you will accept my humble apology for what might appear to be absolute neglect in acknowledging your letter and my delay in wiring my thanks for the support and your kindness which I received in your Great Cast Contest. During my recent illness my personal affairs were sadly neglected and I am now trying to catch up.

I want to thank you, first, for the lovely photograph reproduced on the cover of your January number; second, for your telling the Answer Man that you admired my taste in selecting the painting for my prize; third, for the treatment which your Magazine accorded me during my illness; fourth, your personal kindness in seeing that the painting reached me safely, and which I prize very highly, and last but not least, for your wonderful patience and tolerance in this matter. I am writing Mr. Tupper, the artist, congratulating him on this excellent piece of work.

I will be in New York for a few months, working over at the Triangle Fort Lee studio, and hope I will have the pleasure of seeing you before I return West.

With my most sincere wishes for a very successful and Happy New Year for yourself and the foremost picture magazine of today, the Motion Picture Magazine.

Sincerely, Mabel Normand

* from Film Fun, March 1916

 Elizabeth Sears, from an interview with Roscoe Arbuckle in his screening room, watching He Did and He Didn’t)

...We watched the picture silently, until Mr. Arbuckle began to chuckle over a scene.

“We had an awful scrap over that,” he said. “You see, sometimes some of us disagree on an essential point of the production, and we stop the picture and thrash it out right there. Miss Normand is a very charming little lady, but she has a mind of her own, all the same, and we had some argument over that. My idea was to mystify the audience right there -- not let ‘em have an inkling of why Mabel gets her visitor into her room there, until they see the burglar hauled out from under the bed.”

...”Miss Normand has a longing to play drama on the stage,” he said, as he bade us good-by; “but I don’t believe there is any finer mission on earth than just to make people laugh, do you?”
* from Variety, March 10, 1916

Mabel Normand Quits

Mabel Normand is reported to have quit the Keystone employ last Saturday. This in spite of an announcement from the Triangle offices that she had signed a new contract with the Keystone company. Miss Normand has confided to some of her friends that she will “never again” appear with the Keystone folks.

Although Miss Mabel Normand has been away from her friends and associates of many years making comedies in the snow and ice in the east, her Keystone friends at the Edendale studio receive an almost daily letter from the popular leading woman. Miss Normand writes the east is wonderful. She says she has been fascinated by Broadway, but in between the lines the letters all sound as if the young woman would not be sorry when the director general, Mack Sennett, issued orders for Miss Normand to bring her company back to California.

Roscoe Arbuckle is directing Miss Normand while she is in the east, but is due to leave for the west with his company in about a month. On the way home they will stop and make comedies at nearly every important city.
* from Variety, March 17, 1916

Mabel Normand with Mutual

It was stated that Mabel Normand had signed a contract with the Mutual Film Corporation on Tuesday afternoon of this week.

Miss Normand was closeted with President Freuler for almost an hour late that afternoon, and is said to have affixed her signature to a contract. There is a possibility that she will work in the Chaplin releases.
* from Variety, March 24, 1916