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Mabel normand


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Scandal

“The mass ownership of a celebrity makes of a star a queen bee. Obeisances are offered her; she is accorded royal rank, but is, withal, a prisoner in a hive. She has no privacy, and if she insists upon a life of her own, she is despised and rejected. When she chooses to remain in seclusion, she must suffer innuendo, which, if cast upon a woman in everyday life, would bring shotguns to the shoulders of the pious.



“The mad desire of human beings to maul their idols has been described in all its pathological manifestations by crowd psychologists in terms of religious frenzy. Case histories abound in the cinema.”29
In late September 1921, about a month before Molly O’s intended release, Mabel’s friend and former co-star Roscoe Arbuckle went on trial to face charges of rape and manslaughter in the death of actress Virginia Rappe, who had expired from internal injury following a party Arbuckle had held in the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Though he was afterward, and unanimously, acquitted of all charges in the last of his court trials (in March 1922), the scandal that ensued wiped out his successful career over night. Shock waves from the event reverberated throughout the industry; such that in his autobiography Buster Keaton, in his autobiography speaks of the event as “the day the laughter stopped.” Almost from its beginning, a debate existed between film makers versus church and welfare groups in determining who should have final say about what was or wasn’t morally permissible in films and the culture movie stars inhabited and communicated from. In some respects this concern was well founded given the number of movie people whose lives did end in tragedy, and the effect these deaths might have on the public at large, particularly with regard to the values and behaviors of young people. On the other hand, the ones on whom the blame was laid were not always the ones who were guilty; and sometimes it was the most guilty who, from a position of feigned propriety and calculated self-interest, engineered blame of others who were actually innocent, or at least mostly innocent. The Arbuckle scandal then could be said to have been the fomenting into one horrific convulsion of these various forces, both the sincere, the crooked, and various shades in between (on both sides), which had already been vying with each other for creative control for some time. It has been said further that an animosity toward Hollywood had grown over time, and this out of a hitherto simmering resentment of the new class of super rich that the movies had created.
Sennett withheld Molly O’ till the storm had some time to subside. Somewhat surprisingly, when the film was released near the end of October, it was a smashing box-office hit. The public welcomed back Mabel with enthusiastic and open arms. In response, Sennett promptly began work on a big budget production for her; a comedy and costume romance set in “Old California” (circa 1840’s or 1850’s) titled Suzanna.
On the night of February 1, 1922, during time off from filming Suzanna, Mabel went to visit Paramount director, William Desmond Taylor. Taylor, an ex-antique’s dealer, ex-soldier, erudite scholar, and adventurer, was of Irish parentage, while possessed of a very English upbringing and education, and was one of the more learned and academically informed among the Hollywood community. They became good friends, and Taylor tutored her in, among other things, literature, psychology and philosophy (particularly aesthetics.) For her part, Mabel welcomed the sense of higher culture and refining influence he reflected while the reserved, much older Taylor found solace in her levity and sense of independence. Whether there was more to their relationship seems is not entirely clear; though there is some evidence to suggest something more personal than this did take place between them, based on a taped interview Mary Miles Minter gave to author Charles Higham in the 70’s. But beyond Minter’s report there is much about what was going on between them that we simply do not know with much, if any, certainty.
Mabel then that early evening in February was at his bungalow being entertained and shown some new books he had recently acquired. The visit passed uneventfully and lasted less than an hour. After she arose to leave, Taylor walked her to her car at the street curbside, and blowing him a kiss from inside her vehicle saw him alive for the last time. The following day, she received a call relaying the frightening news that he had been murdered in his home, shot from behind with a .38 caliber revolver by an unknown assailant. When the city detectives came to search the house, they found evidence linking Taylor to both Mabel and actress Mary Miles Minter, and with no little irony, a small framed picture of Mabel was found on display in the room where the director lay dead on the floor.
The Taylor murder is a strangely baffling and intricate case, replete with all manner of seeming red-herrings and possible scenarios to explain its taking place, and to this day remains a favorite puzzle for arm-chair detectives. Although the constraints of this introductory biography do not permit an in-depth examination,30 two things ought to be pointed out, insofar as the affair affected Mabel.
The first is that though it’s conceivable someone shot Taylor out of jealousy over her, Mabel herself never was, nor ever has been, very seriously considered a suspect in the shooting -- though this is not to say there haven’t been some who tried to make her one.31 The second point to be made is that her character was unfairly, if understandably, besmirched by her association with Taylor. To many it seemed that even if she was not guilty herself of the murder, her reputation was, nevertheless, irreparably tarnished by being so seemingly and closely connected with it. When compromising articles like a negligee and love letters were found in Taylor’s abode, it at first wasn’t clear whom they belonged to or what their significance was. As a result, Mabel was confusedly linked in the public mind with Mary Miles Minter, a Paramount actress, who did not conceal that she herself was deeply in love with Taylor. To make matters worse, hearsay and newspaper hype distorted or exaggerated the facts beyond recognition, such that, to this day, published accounts of the case are not infrequently at odds with each other in their conclusions. On a personal level, some of the press mercilessly ravaged her character, intentionally or no, by playing upon what might have been her role in the affair. In consequence of this publicly splashed whirlwind of both facts and misinformation, Mabel’s standing with the public, like Arbuckle‘s, dropped so low that a number of cities went so far as to actually ban her films.
That the bannings and incessant attacks and accusations in the press seriously injured Mabel’s well-being, even to the point of almost driving her mad, is perhaps not to be wondered. Like Arbuckle, she ostensibly became a scapegoat to shadowy, behind-the-scenes Hollywood power brokers seeking to reshape the existing order. After repeatedly giving her story of what she knew about the Taylor case and being interrogated time and again by both police and reporters, she sought to flee the pressure of the spotlight by traveling to Europe in the summer of 1922. The trip apparently did help to ease things for her, and in Europe she was personally introduced to a number of Europe’s royalty and a few eminent notables, including George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells. In addition, it was during a stay in Paris that an heir to the Egyptian throne, Prince Ibrahim, offered his hand in marriage to her (which, though very flattered by the gesture, she graciously declined.)
Just as he had with Molly O’, Sennett found it necessary to withhold the release of Suzanna, until the scandal had some time to dissipate. Finally, almost a year after the Taylor murder, the film did come out, and despite, or perhaps even because of her bad press, it did well at the box-office. Viewing Mabel in Suzanna, although her pale and puffy, sometimes distraught, mien reveals the beleaguered state she was in at that time (both after and before Taylor’s death), she puts a positive and optimistic face on things that remains an encouragement and inspiration even today.
Bolstered by Suzanna’s success, Sennett’s next slated vehicle for her was The Extra Girl. The story was one, later made somewhat popular by Colleen Moore and Marion Davies, about a small town girl who goes to Hollywood and doesn’t make good. It gives a semi-candid, behind-the-scenes glimpse at the day to day life and workings of a movie studio, and which Sennett thought was something needed to help alleviate public worries and concerns about the industry and its people. Directed, once again, by the usually reliable F. Richard Jones, the film is most remembered for a both droll and exciting scene in which Mabel leads a real lion by a rope around some movie sets, thinking it’s only Teddy the dog dressed up.
The Extra Girl as a whole works very well, and, at least in a few moments early on, Mabel’s miming is genuinely exquisite. Yet for the most part her energy is lacking, and the effects of the anguish and trauma she’d been suffering are again all too evident. There is at times a discernible air of dolor and sadness about her that gives the film a somewhat tragic quality that would otherwise is not warranted at all by the script. In this paradoxical way, the film is as unexpectedly moving as it is also casually entertaining.
Things went well upon The Extra Girl‘s release on November 9, 1923; and it was promisingly successful with theater-goers, garnering success in the Christmas season. Then, however, on New Years Day 1924, calamity struck even yet once more. Mabel, it would seem, was visiting with Chaplin‘s former leading lady, Edna Purviance and Edna’s then romantic interest, millionaire oil tycoon, Courtland S. Dines at Dines’ Los Angeles apartment. Though the Dines affair is not as perplexing a mystery as the Taylor case, exactly what happened is far from certain either. As related by Adela Rogers St. Johns, when Mabel first arrived, Dines, in an attempt at humor, said something insulting to her. Her young chauffeur, Kelly, whose real named turned out to be Greer, told him to take it back. Dines refused, and Mabel then went inside with him. Whether to merely take her home and or to “square things” with Dines, a short while later, Greer returned to the apartment with a revolver concealed in his pocket. An altercation arose between the two, and somehow Greer ended up shooting Dines, with Greer claiming self-defense. In the succeeding police inquiry, it was brought to light that the chauffeur, who had been hired by her secretary, was, unbeknownst to Mabel, an ex-convict. The psychiatrist officially assigned to examine Greer enunciated the clinical conclusion that the young man “had a deep, spiritual love for Miss Normand,” and was motivated by a delusion that he needed to protect her. Dines survived the incident, dropped charges, and the chauffeur after being tried was subsequently acquitted.
Despite being formally exonerated, Mabel’s association with this second shooting stirred up yet another hue and cry. A not so successful move arose to have her films banned throughout the nation. Ohio attorney general C. C. Crabbe expressed the sentiments of the most fervid of these when he declared, “This film star has been entirely too closely connected with disgraceful shooting affairs and her name brought into such disrepute as to warrant this suggestion,” i.e. the ban.32 Soon many theaters in major U.S. cities did bar Mabel’s films from exhibition and on the grounds that they would “have a disastrous effect upon the youth of the community.”
To counter this, Mabel, in the April of 1924 went on a nation-wide movie theater circuit promoting The Extra Girl -- and to clear her name. The tour did manage to gain her sympathy, and the formal bans of her films were overtime ultimately lifted, with The Extra Girl actually ending up doing excellent business. The problem was, the costs in publicity to Sennett to help exonerate her were immensely expensive, and mitigated little by the film’s profits. For this and other reasons, he afterwards scrapped Mary Anne, a film that was intended to have been her next project. Thus summarily ended Mabel’s long working relationship with her one time sweetheart and the film industry’s then comic titan.
September 1924 found her named in the divorce dispute of the very wealthy Norman and Georgia Church. Mrs. Church, in the complaint against her husband, claimed Church had imparted to her that Mabel had amorous meetings with him while he was in the hospital. Although it was true that in August 1923 (after The Extra Girl had been finished), Mabel was a patient in the same hospital recuperating from a collarbone injury she had suffered in consequence of a horse riding accident, she denied the charges. And even though Mrs. Church’s complaint was lodged against her husband and not her, Mabel wanted to take the opportunity to publicly vindicate herself; and so sought to intervene in the proceedings. While Norman Church later retracted what he had told his wife, and Mrs. Church for her part apologized, Mabel, after several months, lost her action in the suit on the grounds that, although her name was brought up, she did not have direct interest in the matter, and her guilt or innocence ultimately was not pertinent to the main issue.
During about this same period, Mabel attended classes on sketching and piano at the University of Southern California, and, in general, temporarily took time off, for a try at some low-profile, quiet living, including keeping a diary and writing poetry. Yet settling down permanently this way did not seem to suit her. Of course, by this juncture, it looked as though Mabel’s career was over for good. And for purposes of reestablishing her once extensive box-office popularity, it indeed was. As a result, she thought she would find her career revived by going on stage, appearing in some northeastern theaters in The Little Mouse in September 1925. The script, however, did not have that much to recommend it, her stage voice was faint, and as this perhaps was simply not a good time for her to be taking up such a markedly different endeavor and discipline as theater, the play flopped.

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