Mack Sennett
Encyclopedia
Mack Sennett was a Canadian
-born American
director and was known as the innovator of slapstick
comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of Comedy". His short "Wrestling Swordfish
" was awarded the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film
in 1932 and he earned an Academy Honorary Award
in 1937.
, Canada, the son of Irish Catholic
immigrant farmers. His father was a blacksmith in the small Eastern Townships
village. When he was 17 years old his family moved to Connecticut
.
The family lived for a time in Northampton, Massachusetts
, where, according to his autobiography, Sennett first got the idea to go on stage after seeing a vaudeville
show. He claimed that the most respected lawyer in town, Northampton mayor (and future President of the United States
) Calvin Coolidge
, as well as Sennett's own mother, tried to talk him out of his theatrical ambitions.
In New York City
, Sennett became an actor
, singer, dancer, clown
, set designer and director
for Biograph
. A major distinction in his acting career, often overlooked, is the fact that Sennett played Sherlock Holmes
11 times, albeit as a parody, between 1911 and 1913.
With financial backing from Adam Kessel and Charles O. Bauman of the New York Motion Picture Company, in 1912 Sennett founded Keystone Studios
in Edendale, California
, (which is now a part of Echo Park). The original main building, the first totally enclosed film stage and studio in history, is still there. Many important actors started their careers with Sennett, including Mabel Normand
, Charlie Chaplin
, Raymond Griffith
, Gloria Swanson
, Ford Sterling
, Andy Clyde
, The Keystone Kops, Bing Crosby
, and W. C. Fields
.
Sennett's slapstick
comedies were noted for their wild car chases and custard pie
warfare. His first comedienne was Mabel Normand
, who became a major star (and with whom he embarked on a tumultuous personal relationship). Sennett developed the Kid Comedies, a forerunner of the Our Gang
films, and in a short time his name became synonymous with screen comedy. In 1915 Keystone Studios became an autonomous production unit of the ambitious Triangle Film Corporation
, as Sennett joined forces with movie bigwigs D. W. Griffith
and Thomas Ince
.
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Also beginning in 1915, Sennett assembled a bevy of girls known as the Sennett Bathing Beauties to appear in provocative bathing costumes in comedy short subjects, in promotional material, and in promotional events like Venice Beach beauty contests.
Two of those often named as Bathing Beauties do not qualify. Mabel Normand
was a featured player, and her 1912 8-minute film The Water Nymph
may have been the direct inspiration for the Bathing Beauties. And although Gloria Swanson
worked for Sennett in 1916 and was photographed in a bathing suit, she was also a star and "vehemently denied" being one of the bathing beauties.
Not individually featured or named, many of these young women ascended to significant careers of their own. They included Juanita Hansen
, Claire Anderson
, Marie Prevost
, Phyllis Haver
, and Carole Lombard
. In the 1920s Sennett's Bathing Beauties remained popular enough to provoke imitators like the Christie Studios' Bathing Beauties (counting Raquel Torres
and Laura La Plante
as alumni) and Fox Film Corporation's "Sunshine Girls".
The Sennett Bathing Beauties would continue to appear through 1928.
During the 1920s his short subjects were in much demand, with stars like Billy Bevan
, Andy Clyde
, Harry Gribbon, Vernon Dent
, Alice Day
, Ralph Graves, Charlie Murray, and Harry Langdon
. He produced several features with his brightest stars, such as Ben Turpin
and Mabel Normand.
Many of Sennett's films of the early 1920s were inherited by Warner Brothers when Warners merged with the original distributor, First National. Warner added music and commentary to several of these shorts, but eventually destroyed the original elements for storage space. As a result, many Sennett films, especially those from his most productive and creative period, no longer exist.
distribution. Pathé had a huge market share, but made bad corporate decisions, such as attempting to sell too many comedies at once (including those of Sennett's main competitor, Hal Roach
). In 1927 Paramount
and MGM, Hollywood's two top studios, noting the profits being made by companies like Pathé
and Educational
, both re-entered the production and distribution of short subjects after several years. Roach signed with MGM, but Sennett found himself and Pathé in hard times because the hundreds of exhibitors who had previously rented their shorts had switched to the new MGM or Paramount products.
. Sennett occasionally experimented with color and was the first to get a talkie short subject on the market, in 1928. In 1932 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film
in the comedy division for producing The Loud Mouth (with Matt McHugh, in the sports-heckler role later taken in Columbia Pictures
remakes by Charley Chase
and Shemp Howard), and he won in the novelty division for his film Wrestling Swordfish.
Sennett often clung to outmoded techniques, making his early-1930s films seem dated and quaint. This doomed his attempt to re-enter the feature film market with Hypnotized (starring blackface
comedians Moran and Mack, "The Two Black Crows"). However, Sennett enjoyed great success with short comedies starring Bing Crosby
; these films were probably instrumental in Sennett's product being picked up by a major studio, Paramount Pictures
. W. C. Fields
conceived and starred in four famous Sennett-Paramount comedies. Fields himself recalled that he "made seven comedies for the Irishman" (his original deal called for one film and an option for six more), but ultimately only four were made.
Sennett's studio did not survive the Great Depression
; the Sennett-Paramount partnership lasted only one year, and Sennett was forced into bankruptcy in November 1933. His last work, in 1935, was as a producer-director for Educational Pictures
; he directed Buster Keaton
in The Timid Young Man
and Joan Davis
in Way Up Thar
. (The 1935 Vitaphone
short subject Keystone Hotel
is not a Sennett production; it featured several alumni from the Sennett studio, but Sennett himself had no connection with the film.)
Mack Sennett went into semi-retirement at the age of 55, having produced more than 1,000 silent films and several dozen talkies during a 25-year career. His studio property was purchased by Mascot Pictures (later part of Republic Pictures
), and many of his former staffers found work at Columbia Pictures
.
In March 1938, Sennett was presented with an honorary Academy Award.
of Laurel and Hardy
), 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 (1939), itself a thinly disguised version of the Mack Sennett-Mabel Normand
romance. In 1949 he provided film footage for, and appeared in, the first full-length comedy compilation, Down Memory Lane (1949), which was written and narrated by Steve Allen
. Sennett was profiled in the television series This is Your Life
in 1956, and made a cameo appearance (for $1,000) in Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops
(1955). He contributed to the radio program Biography in Sound, broadcast February 28, 1956.
in Culver City, California
.
at 6712 Hollywood Blvd. Also in 2004, he was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.
-style hats had become so indelibly associated with slapstick comedy.
A line in a Henry Kuttner
science fiction short story, Piggy Bank, reads "Within seconds the scene resembled a Mack Sennett pie-throwing comedy."
Henry Mancini
's score for the 1963 film, The Pink Panther
, the original entry in the series, contains a segment called "Shades of Sennett". It is played on a silent film era style "honky tonk
" piano, and accompanies a climactic scene in which the incompetent police detective Inspector Clouseau
is involved in a multi-vehicle chase with the antagonists.
In 1974, Michael Stewart
and Jerry Herman
wrote the musical Mack & Mabel
, chronicling the romance between Sennett and Mabel Normand. Sennett also was a leading character in The Biograph Girl
, a 1980 musical about the silent film era.
Peter Lovesey
's 1983 novel Keystone is a whodunnit set in the Keystone Studios and involving (among others), Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Roscoe Arbuckle and the Keystone Cops.
Dan Aykroyd
portrays Mack Sennett in the 1992 movie Chaplin. Marisa Tomei
plays Mabel Normand.
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
-born American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
director and was known as the innovator of slapstick
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...
comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of Comedy". His short "Wrestling Swordfish
Wrestling Swordfish
Wrestling Swordfish is a 1931 American short adventure film produced by Mack Sennett. It won an Academy Award in 1932 for Best Short Subject ....
" was awarded the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film
Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film
This name for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film was introduced in 1974. For the three preceding years it was known as "Short Subjects, Live Action Films." The term "Short Subjects, Live Action Subjects" was used from 1957 until 1970. From 1936 until 1956 there were two separate...
in 1932 and he earned an Academy Honorary Award
Academy Honorary Award
The Academy Honorary Award, instituted in 1948 for the 21st Academy Awards , is given by the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to celebrate motion picture achievements that are not covered by existing Academy Awards, although prior winners of...
in 1937.
Early life
Born as Mikall (or Michael) Sinnott in Danville, QuebecDanville, Quebec
Danville is a town in the administrative region of Estrie, in the Canadian province of Quebec. As of the 2006 Canadian Census, the population was 4,041....
, Canada, the son of Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic is a term used to describe people who are both Roman Catholic and Irish .Note: the term is not used to describe a variant of Catholicism. More particularly, it is not a separate creed or sect in the sense that "Anglo-Catholic", "Old Catholic", "Eastern Orthodox Catholic" might be...
immigrant farmers. His father was a blacksmith in the small Eastern Townships
Eastern Townships
The Eastern Townships is a tourist region and a former administrative region in south-eastern Quebec, lying between the former seigneuries south of the Saint Lawrence River and the United States border. Its northern boundary roughly followed Logan's Line, the geologic boundary between the flat,...
village. When he was 17 years old his family moved to Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
.
The family lived for a time in Northampton, Massachusetts
Northampton, Massachusetts
The city of Northampton is the county seat of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population of Northampton's central neighborhoods, was 28,549...
, where, according to his autobiography, Sennett first got the idea to go on stage after seeing a vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
show. He claimed that the most respected lawyer in town, Northampton mayor (and future President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
) Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge
John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. was the 30th President of the United States . A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state...
, as well as Sennett's own mother, tried to talk him out of his theatrical ambitions.
In New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Sennett became an actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
, singer, dancer, clown
Clown
Clowns are comic performers stereotypically characterized by the grotesque image of the circus clown's colored wigs, stylistic makeup, outlandish costumes, unusually large footwear, and red nose, which evolved to project their actions to large audiences. Other less grotesque styles have also...
, set designer and director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
for Biograph
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1928. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, and for two decades was one of the most prolific, releasing over three thousand short...
. A major distinction in his acting career, often overlooked, is the fact that Sennett played Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
11 times, albeit as a parody, between 1911 and 1913.
Keystone Studios
Keystone Studios
Keystone Studios was an early movie studio founded in Edendale, California in 1912 as the Keystone Pictures Studio by Mack Sennett with backing from Adam Kessel and Charles O. Bauman, owners of the New York Motion Picture Company...
in Edendale, California
Edendale, Los Angeles, California
Edendale is a historical name for a district in Los Angeles, California, northwest of Downtown Los Angeles, in what is known today as Echo Park, Los Feliz and Silver Lake....
, (which is now a part of Echo Park). The original main building, the first totally enclosed film stage and studio in history, is still there. Many important actors started their careers with Sennett, including Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand 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...
, Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, Raymond Griffith
Raymond Griffith
Raymond Griffith was one of the great silent movie comedians.Griffith was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He lost his voice at an early age, causing him to speak for the rest of his life in a hoarse whisper...
, Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson was an American actress, singer and producer. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the...
, Ford Sterling
Ford Sterling
Ford Sterling was an American comedian and actor best known for his work with Keystone Studios. One of the 'Big 4' he was the original chief of the Keystone Cops.-Biography:...
, Andy Clyde
Andy Clyde
Andy Clyde was a Scottish movie and TV actor whose career spanned more than four decades. He broke into silent films in 1925 as a Mack Sennett comic...
, The Keystone Kops, Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
, and W. C. Fields
W. C. Fields
William Claude Dukenfield , better known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer...
.
Sennett's slapstick
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...
comedies were noted for their wild car chases and custard pie
Custard pie
A custard pie is any type of uncooked custard mixture added to an uncooked or partially cooked crust and baked together. In North America, custard pie commonly refers to a plain mixture of milk, eggs, sugar, salt, vanilla extract and sometimes nutmeg combined with a pie crust...
warfare. His first comedienne was Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand 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...
, who became a major star (and with whom he embarked on a tumultuous personal relationship). Sennett developed the Kid Comedies, a forerunner of the Our Gang
Our Gang
Our Gang, also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's Rascals, was a series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and the adventures they had together. Created by comedy producer Hal Roach, the series is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively...
films, and in a short time his name became synonymous with screen comedy. In 1915 Keystone Studios became an autonomous production unit of the ambitious Triangle Film Corporation
Triangle Film Corporation
Triangle Film Corporation was a major American motion-picture studio, founded in the summer of 1915 in Culver City, California, and envisioned as a prestige studio based on the producing abilities of filmmakers D. W. Griffith, Thomas Ince and Mack Sennett...
, as Sennett joined forces with movie bigwigs D. W. Griffith
D. W. Griffith
David Llewelyn Wark Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the controversial and groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance .Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera...
and Thomas Ince
Thomas H. Ince
Thomas Harper Ince was an American silent film actor, director, screenwriter and producer of more than 100 films and pioneering studio mogul. Known as the "Father of the Western", he invented many mechanisms of professional movie production, introducing early Hollywood to the "assembly line"...
.
Sennett Bathing Beauties
Two of those often named as Bathing Beauties do not qualify. Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand 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...
was a featured player, and her 1912 8-minute film The Water Nymph
The Water Nymph
The Water Nymph is a 1912 comedy "split reel" short starring Mabel Normand and directed by Mack Sennett. Lithely athletic Normand performed her own diving stunts for the film, which was the first Keystone comedy....
may have been the direct inspiration for the Bathing Beauties. And although Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson was an American actress, singer and producer. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the...
worked for Sennett in 1916 and was photographed in a bathing suit, she was also a star and "vehemently denied" being one of the bathing beauties.
Not individually featured or named, many of these young women ascended to significant careers of their own. They included Juanita Hansen
Juanita Hansen
Juanita C. Hansen was an American silent film actress. Beginning as one of the Sennett Bathing Beauties, she appeared in a variety of serials through the late 1910s. She was well known for her troubled personal life and struggle with addiction to cocaine and morphine. In 1934 she became clean and...
, Claire Anderson
Claire Anderson
Claire Mathis Anderson was a silent film actress who worked with stars such as Constance Talmadge, Harry Carey and Thurston Hall. She was described as one of the original Sennett Bathing Beauties. Ms...
, Marie Prevost
Marie Prevost
Marie Prevost was a Canadian-born actress of the early days of cinema. During her twenty year career, she made 121 silent and talking pictures.-Early life:...
, Phyllis Haver
Phyllis Haver
Phyllis Haver was an American actress of the silent film era.-Early life:She was born Phyllis Haver in Douglass, Kansas. When she was young, her family moved to Los Angeles, California, then a city of less than half a million people. Haver attended Los Angeles Polytechnic High...
, and Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard was an American actress. She was particularly noted for her comedic roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s...
. In the 1920s Sennett's Bathing Beauties remained popular enough to provoke imitators like the Christie Studios' Bathing Beauties (counting Raquel Torres
Raquel Torres
Raquel Torres was a Mexican-born American film actress. Her sister was actress Renee Torres....
and Laura La Plante
Laura La Plante
Laura La Plante was an American actress, best-known for her roles in silent films.-Early acting career:...
as alumni) and Fox Film Corporation's "Sunshine Girls".
The Sennett Bathing Beauties would continue to appear through 1928.
Independent Production
In 1917 Sennett gave up the Keystone trademark and organized his own company, Mack Sennett Comedies Corporation. (Sennett's corporate bosses retained the Keystone trademark and produced a cheap series of comedy shorts that were "Keystones" in name only: they were unsuccessful, and Sennett had no connection with them.) Sennett went on to produce more ambitious comedy short films and a few feature-length films.During the 1920s his short subjects were in much demand, with stars like Billy Bevan
Billy Bevan
Billy Bevan was an Australian film actor. He appeared in 254 American films between 1916 and 1950....
, Andy Clyde
Andy Clyde
Andy Clyde was a Scottish movie and TV actor whose career spanned more than four decades. He broke into silent films in 1925 as a Mack Sennett comic...
, Harry Gribbon, Vernon Dent
Vernon Dent
Vernon Bruce Dent was a comic actor who appeared in over 400 films in his career. He co-starred in many short films for Columbia Pictures, frequently as the foil to the Three Stooges.-Early career:...
, Alice Day
Alice Day
Alice Day was a film actor who began her career as of the Sennett Bathing Beauties....
, Ralph Graves, Charlie Murray, and Harry Langdon
Harry Langdon
Harry Philmore Langdon was an American comedian who appeared in vaudeville, silent films , and talkies. He was briefly partnered with Oliver Hardy.-Life and career:...
. He produced several features with his brightest stars, such as Ben Turpin
Ben Turpin
Ben Turpin was a cross-eyed American comedian and actor, best remembered for his work in silent films.-Personal life:...
and Mabel Normand.
Many of Sennett's films of the early 1920s were inherited by Warner Brothers when Warners merged with the original distributor, First National. Warner added music and commentary to several of these shorts, but eventually destroyed the original elements for storage space. As a result, many Sennett films, especially those from his most productive and creative period, no longer exist.
Move to Pathé
In the mid-1920s Sennett moved over to PathéPathé
Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of various French businesses founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France.-History:...
distribution. Pathé had a huge market share, but made bad corporate decisions, such as attempting to sell too many comedies at once (including those of Sennett's main competitor, Hal Roach
Hal Roach
Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach, Sr. was an American film and television producer and director, and from the 1910s to the 1990s.- Early life and career :Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York...
). In 1927 Paramount
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
and MGM, Hollywood's two top studios, noting the profits being made by companies like Pathé
Pathé
Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of various French businesses founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France.-History:...
and Educational
Educational Pictures
Educational Pictures was a film distribution company founded in 1919 by Earle Hammons . Educational primarily distributed short subjects, and today is probably best known for its series of 1930s comedies starring Buster Keaton, as well as for a series of one-reel comedies featuring Shirley...
, both re-entered the production and distribution of short subjects after several years. Roach signed with MGM, but Sennett found himself and Pathé in hard times because the hundreds of exhibitors who had previously rented their shorts had switched to the new MGM or Paramount products.
Experiments, awards, and bankruptcy
Sennett made a reasonably smooth transition to sound films, releasing them through Earle Hammons's Educational PicturesEducational Pictures
Educational Pictures was a film distribution company founded in 1919 by Earle Hammons . Educational primarily distributed short subjects, and today is probably best known for its series of 1930s comedies starring Buster Keaton, as well as for a series of one-reel comedies featuring Shirley...
. Sennett occasionally experimented with color and was the first to get a talkie short subject on the market, in 1928. In 1932 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film
Academy Award for Live Action Short Film
This name for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film was introduced in 1974. For the three preceding years it was known as "Short Subjects, Live Action Films." The term "Short Subjects, Live Action Subjects" was used from 1957 until 1970. From 1936 until 1956 there were two separate...
in the comedy division for producing The Loud Mouth (with Matt McHugh, in the sports-heckler role later taken in Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
remakes by Charley Chase
Charley Chase
Charley Chase was an American comedian, actor, screenwriter and film director, best known for his work in Hal Roach short film comedies...
and Shemp Howard), and he won in the novelty division for his film Wrestling Swordfish.
Sennett often clung to outmoded techniques, making his early-1930s films seem dated and quaint. This doomed his attempt to re-enter the feature film market with Hypnotized (starring blackface
Blackface
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...
comedians Moran and Mack, "The Two Black Crows"). However, Sennett enjoyed great success with short comedies starring Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
; these films were probably instrumental in Sennett's product being picked up by a major studio, Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
. W. C. Fields
W. C. Fields
William Claude Dukenfield , better known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer...
conceived and starred in four famous Sennett-Paramount comedies. Fields himself recalled that he "made seven comedies for the Irishman" (his original deal called for one film and an option for six more), but ultimately only four were made.
Sennett's studio did not survive the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
; the Sennett-Paramount partnership lasted only one year, and Sennett was forced into bankruptcy in November 1933. His last work, in 1935, was as a producer-director for Educational Pictures
Educational Pictures
Educational Pictures was a film distribution company founded in 1919 by Earle Hammons . Educational primarily distributed short subjects, and today is probably best known for its series of 1930s comedies starring Buster Keaton, as well as for a series of one-reel comedies featuring Shirley...
; he directed Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
in The Timid Young Man
The Timid Young Man
The Timid Young Man is a 1935 short comedy film featuring Buster Keaton.-Cast:* Buster Keaton - Milton* Lona Andre - Helen* Tiny Sandford - Mortimer * Kitty McHugh - Milton's fiancée* Harry Bowen - Milton's Valet...
and Joan Davis
Joan Davis
Joan Davis was an American comedic actress whose career spanned vaudeville, film, radio and television. Remembered best for the 1950s television comedy, I Married Joan, Davis had a successful earlier career as a B-movie actress and a leading star of 1940s radio comedy.Born as Madonna Josephine...
in Way Up Thar
Way Up Thar
Way Up Thar is a 1935 American short western comedy musical film directed by Mack Sennett.-Cast:*Joan Davis ... Jennie Kirk*Myra Keaton ... Maw Kirk*John W. Jackson ... Jim Higgins*June Gittelson ... Sophie Cramer*Al Lydell ... Sam Higgins...
. (The 1935 Vitaphone
Vitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...
short subject Keystone Hotel
Keystone Hotel (film)
Keystone Hotel is a 1935 2-reel comedy short subject, directed by Ralph Staub.The story follows the arrival of the cross-eyed Count Drewa Blank at a downtown hotel, to judge a beauty contest. While downstairs various parties try to sway the Count's decision, the house detective investigates...
is not a Sennett production; it featured several alumni from the Sennett studio, but Sennett himself had no connection with the film.)
Mack Sennett went into semi-retirement at the age of 55, having produced more than 1,000 silent films and several dozen talkies during a 25-year career. His studio property was purchased by Mascot Pictures (later part of Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures was an independent film production-distribution corporation with studio facilities, operating from 1934 through 1959, and was best known for specializing in westerns, movie serials and B films emphasizing mystery and action....
), and many of his former staffers found work at Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
.
In March 1938, Sennett was presented with an honorary Academy Award.
Later projects
Rumors abounded that Sennett would be returning to film production (a 1938 publicity release indicated that he would be working with Stan LaurelStan Laurel
Arthur Stanley "Stan" Jefferson , better known as Stan Laurel, was an English comic actor, writer and film director, famous as the first half of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy. His film acting career stretched between 1917 and 1951 and included a starring role in the Academy Award winning film...
of Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema...
), but apart from Sennett reissuing a couple of his Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
two-reelers to theaters, nothing happened. Sennett did appear in front of the camera, however, in Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), itself a thinly disguised version of the Mack Sennett-Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand 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...
romance. In 1949 he provided film footage for, and appeared in, the first full-length comedy compilation, Down Memory Lane (1949), which was written and narrated by Steve Allen
Steve Allen
Steve Allen may refer to:*Steve Allen , American musician, comedian, and writer*Steve Allen , presenter on the London-based talk radio station LBC 97.3...
. Sennett was profiled in the television series This is Your Life
This Is Your Life
This Is Your Life is an American television documentary series broadcast on NBC, originally hosted by its producer, Ralph Edwards from 1952 to 1961. In the show, the host surprises a guest, and proceeds to take them through their life in front of an audience including friends and family.Edwards...
in 1956, and made a cameo appearance (for $1,000) in Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops
Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops
Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops is a 1955 film starring the comedy team of Abbott and Costello.After the film was completed, Universal wanted to rename it Abbott and Costello in the Stunt Men, because they did not consider the "Keystone Kops" to be relevant anymore...
(1955). He contributed to the radio program Biography in Sound, broadcast February 28, 1956.
Death
He died on November 5, 1960 in Woodland Hills, California, aged 80, and was interred in the Holy Cross CemeteryHoly Cross Cemetery, Culver City
Holy Cross Cemetery is a Roman Catholic cemetery at 5835 West Slauson Avenue in Culver City, California, operated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles....
in Culver City, California
Culver City, California
Culver City is a city in western Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 38,883, up from 38,816 at the 2000 census. It is mostly surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, but also shares a border with unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. Culver...
.
Tributes
For his contribution to the motion picture industry Sennett was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of FameHollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
at 6712 Hollywood Blvd. Also in 2004, he was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.
The Keystone legacy
Some historians credit Sennett's films with having been responsible for municipal police forces across North America altering their uniforms to include military style officers' caps since by the 1920s tall, BritishUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
-style hats had become so indelibly associated with slapstick comedy.
A line in a Henry Kuttner
Henry Kuttner
Henry Kuttner was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and horror.-Early life:Henry Kuttner was born in Los Angeles, California in 1915...
science fiction short story, Piggy Bank, reads "Within seconds the scene resembled a Mack Sennett pie-throwing comedy."
Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini was an American composer, conductor and arranger, best remembered for his film and television scores. He won a record number of Grammy Awards , plus a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1995...
's score for the 1963 film, The Pink Panther
The Pink Panther (1963 film)
The Pink Panther is a 1963 American comedy film directed by Blake Edwards and co-written by Edwards and Maurice Richlin, starring David Niven, Peter Sellers, Robert Wagner, Capucine, and Claudia Cardinale...
, the original entry in the series, contains a segment called "Shades of Sennett". It is played on a silent film era style "honky tonk
Honky tonk
A honky-tonk is a type of bar that provides musical entertainment to its patrons...
" piano, and accompanies a climactic scene in which the incompetent police detective Inspector Clouseau
Inspector Clouseau
Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau is a fictional character in Blake Edwards' The Pink Panther series. In most of the films, he was played by Peter Sellers, with one film in which he was played by Alan Arkin and one in which he was played by an uncredited Roger Moore...
is involved in a multi-vehicle chase with the antagonists.
In 1974, Michael Stewart
Michael Stewart (playwright)
Michael Stewart was an American playwright and librettist.Born Michael Stuart Rubin in Manhattan, Stewart attended Queens College, and is a graduate of Yale School of Drama with a Master of Fine Arts from 1953. Michael Stewart (August 1, 1924 – September 20, 1987) was an American playwright...
and Jerry Herman
Jerry Herman
Jerry Herman is an American composer and lyricist, known for his work in Broadway musical theater. He composed the scores for the hit Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles. He has been nominated for the Tony Award five times, and won twice, for Hello, Dolly! and La Cage...
wrote the musical Mack & Mabel
Mack & Mabel
Mack & Mabel is a musical with a book by Michael Stewart and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. The plot involves the tumultuous romantic relationship between Hollywood director Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand , who became one of his biggest stars...
, chronicling the romance between Sennett and Mabel Normand. Sennett also was a leading character in The Biograph Girl
The Biograph Girl
The Biograph Girl is a musical with a book by Warner Brown, lyrics by Brown and David Heneker, and music by Heneker. Its plot focuses on the silent film era and five pioneers of American cinema - actresses Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, directors D.W...
, a 1980 musical about the silent film era.
Peter Lovesey
Peter Lovesey
Peter Lovesey is a British writer of historical and contemporary crime novels and short stories. His best-known series characters are Sergeant Cribb, a Victorian-era police detective based in London, and Peter Diamond, a modern-day police detective in Bath...
's 1983 novel Keystone is a whodunnit set in the Keystone Studios and involving (among others), Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Roscoe Arbuckle and the Keystone Cops.
Dan Aykroyd
Dan Aykroyd
Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, CM is a Canadian comedian, actor, screenwriter, musician, winemaker and ufologist. He was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, an originator of The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter.-Early...
portrays Mack Sennett in the 1992 movie Chaplin. Marisa Tomei
Marisa Tomei
Marisa Tomei is an American stage, film and television actress. Following her work on As The World Turns, Tomei came to prominence as a supporting cast member on The Cosby Show spinoff A Different World in 1987...
plays Mabel Normand.