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Taylorology Issue 42
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* T A Y L O R O L O G Y *
* A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor *
* *
* Issue 42 -- June 1996 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
"Mabel Normand's Own Life Story!"
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What is TAYLOROLOGY?
TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond
Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to
death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major
scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life;
(b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor
murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood
silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given
toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it
for accuracy.
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The following 1924 series was undoubtedly written to improve Mabel Normand's
popularity, which had been severely damaged by the Taylor case and the Dines
incident. So she makes no mention of her personal relationship with Sennett
or her screen work with Arbuckle. Despite a few minor errors, this is
probably the most substantial account of Mabel's life published prior to her
death in 1930, and it provides additional insight into her friendship with
William Desmond Taylor.
February 17, 1924
Mabel Normand
as told to Chandler Sprague
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Mabel Normand's Own Life Story! -- Chapter 1
Filmland's Greatest Comedienne Writes of Her Striking Career
Writing the story of one's life is a perfectly awful thing.
I don't like that way of phrasing it, anyhow. It sounds like I was
Methuselah's daughter or some one who had been around this little old world
so long that I was about to give the universe the benefit of my vast span of
years.
And I've just begun to live.
So let's call it "a few chapters from my life," and if it will be of
interest, I shall be glad. Doubtless there are lessons and morals to be
drawn from the lives of all of us. If there is one in mine, I hope it will
be of service, not only to you but to me. But I guess we all find it a whole
lot easier to point a moral from the errors of some one else, than to profit
by our own mistakes.
The Examiner has asked me, before I begin my own story to answer two
questions. And they are:
1--Would I advise a young girl to seek a career in motion pictures?
2--And to one who is seeking a career, what is the best road to success?
There it is again, the advice from grandma! Like most professional
persons who have passed 18 years (actual), I am a perfect clam about my age.
If you have any idea that I am going to step right out here, in print, with a
chatty discussion about the year I was born, you may as well turn the page.
I prefer to leave such uninteresting details to my girl friends.
But I'm going to try to answer the questions. And to the first one, my
answer is "Yes." I respectfully decline to make the stereotyped reply that
this question often elicits from actors and actresses. "No, no, my deah, you
mustn't think of such a thing. The hardships we professional people have to
undergo, the tremendous amount of talent necessary for success, you've no
ideah." And all this with unutterable lifting of the eyebrows and an air of
boredom and disillusionment with all things theatrical.
I think it's a wonderful life. It's hard work, of course, just as it
requires hard work to succeed in any other career we may choose. And perhaps
it's overcrowded, as they say. But there's always room at the top, according
to a good old axiom of the stage.
And if you have confidence in yourself, if you think you have talent for
motion picture work, then I certainly would not be one to discourage you.
You must be prepared for many disappointments and for progress that seems
tremendously slow. Perhaps you won't succeed at all. In fact, you probably
won't. But you'll have tried. And that's something. I'd rather have a try
at what I feel I can do and what I want to do, even if I fail, than to drudge
along at something that doesn't interest me, simply because I'm doubtful if I
have the courage to stand adversity.
If you think you have talent for the work, go to it, my child (grandma
speaking again). You'll find a lot of people to give you a helping hand over
the rough spots. Some of the very finest men and women I've ever met are
motion picture actors and actresses. I'd like to stack up their lives, with
the good deeds I happen to know they have done, against the lives of some
others who are inclined, perhaps, to gaze down upon them from a self-erected
eminence.
And to the second question, "What is the road to success?" there is only
one answer--work. Work and study, until you have learned the technique of
the screen. Contrary to popular opinion, it can't be acquired in a day. And
it can't be acquired by running for the dressing room the minute your "bit"
is finished. Those whom I have seen climb from mediocrity to stardom have
made it a practice to watch their fellow workers, to pick up a mannerism here
and a little trick there, to think about them at home and to figure out what
made them impressive. That's the way to learn. And to learn is to be
successful.
There is no other way in my opinion. You have heard a great deal of
talk doubtless, about favoritism and luck being big factors in screen
success. Miss Soandso, they tell you, is a star because she happened to be
in a picture that was an unexpected hit or because the producer favors her
more than other actresses. Don't you believe it. It's the public that makes
the stars, in motion pictures. And if the dear old public doesn't like them,
they don't become stars, permanently. There may be an element of luck, or of
favoritism, in getting a chance to show what one can do. But you must be
ready for your chance. You must be prepared, by hard work, to accept the
opportunity and ride it to success. Luck or favoritism may be able to make a
star, but they can't keep her one. It's the public that does that.
I hope I have answered the questions. I've done the best I know how.
And, after all, answers to questions like those are matters of personal
opinion. So, with those few words, I will plunge into my own story, the
telling of which will be much easier than trying to hand forth a lot of
"highbrow" advice.
Up to the time I left school there was nothing eventful or particularly
interesting in my life. My mother lived on Staten Island and I attended
school, the last few years, at North Westport, Mass., near Martha's Vineyard.
Once a month I went home, in charge of a stewardess on the Fall River Line,
but I stayed at school, during the summer, studying hard and trying to skip a
class and get ahead faster. I was tremendously ambitious in those days. We
had very little money and even my occasional trips home were a great expense.
I wanted to finish as soon as I could, so I could learn more about the
things that particularly interested me. I was crazy about music and drawing.
I wanted to be a big musician. And I've never really lost that desire. Even
up to last year I used to practice six or seven hours a day at the piano,
when I could possibly get the time to do so.
But I didn't get ahead as fast as either my mother or myself hoped I
would. Lack of money for proper instruction handicapped me, and when a
friend of ours, who was also a friend of Hamilton King, the artist, suggested
that I could earn money posing for him, mother finally agreed. I stopped
school at Martha's Vineyard, came home to Staten Island and went to work for
Mr. King, continuing my studies in drawing and music at night. This was when
I was 14 years old.
I became a member of the Art Students' League, where it is possible to
get competent instruction at night at a nominal cost, and I spent all day
posing, at first for Mr. King and then for other artists and illustrators.
Most of the work I did was to pose for heads for magazine covers. And I
didn't like it. I hated to stand still. I hated to be simply a means by
which someone else was creating something. I wanted to do it myself, but I
couldn't I had only the longing, without the ability.
I received $1.50 in the morning and the same amount in the afternoon for
posing. Thirty cents of that went for carfare and ferry fare and I had to
spend a little money for lunch. Sometimes, however, I didn't get any lunch.
I used my lunch hour instead to pose for a commercial photographer. Wearing
a hat or a dress that he wanted to photograph, we models would stand around
in front of the camera during the noon hour and he would sell the pictures to
trade journals.
It was there that I met Alice Joyce and Anna Q. Nilsson, who were taking
the same means of earning a little extra money. Neither of them, at that
time, had been in motion pictures. And so I kept on with the artists and
they said I was a good model, easy to draw and adaptable to the costumes in
which they portrayed their magazine-cover heroines. Among the artists and
illustrators for whom I posed during the next few months, in addition to Mr.
King, were James Montgomery Flagg, Charles Dana Gibson, C. Coles Phillips,
Henry Hutt, Orson Lowell, J. C. and F. X. Lydendecker, Alonzo Kimball,
Haskell Coffin and Penrhyn Stanlaws.
Gradually I acquired a vogue among artists as being a type that lent
itself readily to diversified costuming. I found myself more in demand and
finally was engaged, permanently, by two of the most prominent, Gibson and
Flagg. I posed for Mr. Gibson every morning at his studio in Carnegie Hall
and for Mr. Flagg in the afternoon at his Sixty-seventh street studio. The
arrangement was more satisfactory because I knew exactly what I had to do
every day, but it didn't increase my wages. I was still getting $3.00 per
day, $1.50 from each artist.
I thought it was a lot, however. And it helped. I was able to pay more
for my music lessons and thus get better teachers. And I was happy in the
opportunities that were afforded me to watch these masters as they worked.
When I became tired they permitted me, sometimes, to stand behind them and
watch their brush as they retouched and filled in face and figure. It was
something I couldn't have bought and I realized its value.
There were periods of unhappiness, however. As I look back at them now
I believe they came from the ambitions that always were tormenting me. Mr.
Gibson had a number of evening gowns that he used as costumes for his models.
They had been given to him by society women of his acquaintance for that
purpose and every time I put on one of them it took the place, for me, of
Aladdin's lamp. They were very smart, these gowns, made in Paris, most of
them, and I used to imagine myself the original owner, trailing these
wonderful creations through gorgeous reception rooms and across the floors of
littering ballrooms.
I wondered what it would be like to have a wardrobe that would permit
giving away clothes like those I was wearing and I used to visualize the
parties at which they had been worn, giving myself all the airs and graces
that I felt I would have put on and smiling condescendingly at multitudes of
suitors in evening clothes with ribbons across their shirt fronts. Very
distinguished were all the men of my dream parties, with iron gray hair and
manners that included bowing from the waist and much courtly kissing of the
hand.
Those days and those dreams left an ineffaceable impression on me. Of
late years, since fortune has been more kind, I have been able, occasionally,
to give away a dress or a hat. And every time I do it, I get a thrill. The
image of me as I was at 14 pops up before my eyes and I realize that no Paris
gown, no wonderful hat can ever mean as much to me as did those cast-off
things in which I used to flaunt myself before the mirror at Mr. Gibson's
studio. Some day someone is going to portray, on paper or on the stage or
screen, the nebulous dreams and longings that come to an adolescent girl,
poised with diffident foot on the threshold of a broader life. If it is ever
done truly it will be a wonderful masterpiece. But it will require, in the
doing, a very great artist.
All this happened before I ever thought of motion pictures. I used to
go to see them, with mother, and I was an ardent "fan," even then. I had my
favorites on the screen and D. W. Griffith was my favorite director. In the
next installment of this story I want to tell about my first venture in
pictures as an extra girl, with the Kalem Company, and of how I first met Mr.
Griffith, whose pupil I became and for whose ability and artistry I shall
always hold a very great reverence.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 24, 1924
Mabel Normand
as told to Chandler Sprague
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Mabel Normand's Own Life Story -- Chapter 2
"Thrice I Turned my Back on Film Career," Says Star
You never know your luck!
This isn't a very original statement. Something seems to tell me it has
been said before, but it illustrates, almost exactly, how I tried to turn my
back on what was waiting for me. Three times I tried my foolish best to walk
away from motion pictures, and all three times chance intervened and set my
feet back on the path illuminated by the Klieg lights. It happened like
this:
Last week I wrote of the days when I was posing at the studios of Mr.
Gibson and Mr. Flagg, and augmenting my slender wages by parading during the
noon hour before a fashion camera. It was there that I met Alice Joyce, and
it was to her that I owed my first chance in motion pictures.
I met her on the street one day, and mentioned that she had not been at
the commercial photographer's for some time.
"No, I'm in moving pictures now," she said. "I'm leading lady for the
Kalem Company. We're working tonight. Why don't you come up and see how
motion pictures are made? It's very interesting."
I was on my way to Mr. Flagg's studio, but I went with Alice to a drug
store and phoned my mother, telling her of Alice's invitation. Mother always
has adored Alice Joyce, and she told me to go ahead. So after I finished
posing I went to the address Alice had given me, and the first surprise I got
was to find that the studio was in an office building. I've forgotten
exactly where the Kalem Company was located then, but I think it was either
Thirty-third or Forty-second street, and I remember it was in a great, big
office building.
They were taking a scene when I went in. I asked for Miss Joyce, but
she was acting before the camera. George Melford, who is now with Lasky, was
directing, and I was intensely interested in all I saw as I stood there
waiting for Alice to finish. I didn't stay very long because I wanted to get
to the Staten Island ferry before it got too late, but while I was talking to
Alice the assistant director was issuing a call for "extras" to work the next
day on location. Seeing me talking to Miss Joyce he came over and asked me
if I would like to work. It happened that I was to have a few days' vacation
from posing, and I told him I would like to try it. I was directed to be
there at 8 o'clock the next morning to start for Fort Lee, New Jersey.
I worked three days in that picture, and I never shall forget it. It was a
Puritan picture, and was taken in the dead of winter. They gave us little
thin gray dresses to wear and I almost froze to death. The Puritans must
have had a terrible time. I gathered that their entire existence was spent
in running away from Indians. We ran downhill, and then they would turn us
around and have us run uphill. And all the time with a gang of large,
whooping Indians in close pursuit.
"Run," yelled the director, and we ran. "Stop," and we stopped.
At first it was all very interesting, and I was filled with shivering
enthusiasm. But after a while all the enthusiasm froze up and I concluded
that motion pictures would be a wonderful career for an Eskimo lady, but
wasn't quite suited for me. I stuck it out for three days, but finally had
to admit defeat at the hands of the thermometer. I was supposed to go back
to work, anyhow, at that time with Mr. Gibson and Mr. Flagg, so I dropped the
motion pictures and I didn't care if I never saw an Indian again. Every time
I passed a cigar store I shivered.
And there it might have ended; my "cuh-ree-hr," as the press agents call
it. I might have come to naught, alackaday, but for chance or Fate, or
whatever it is that intervenes and shapes our destinies. While I was
scuffling around in the snow and trying to keep one jump ahead of Mr. Pontiac
and all his relatives I had met Frank Lanning, a very famous actor of Indian
characters. We had stood around between pursuits and talked of motion
pictures and posing, and how different they were, to which I agreed with
chattering teeth. And the next time I met Mr. Lanning it was at what might
be called a psychological moment.
I had gone back to posing. I hadn't seen Alice Joyce for four months,
and I had no idea of ever again attempting to work in motion pictures. But
one morning Mr. Gibson told me he would be busy for some time in litigation
that had arisen over a contract. He said he would pay me during the time I
was loafing, but suggested that I try to get work with some other artist
while I was waiting for him to be free to draw again.
It was just after this conversation and while I was debating what artist
to ask for work that I met Frank Lanning on the street. He said he had
noticed several things Mr. Gibson had drawn and had recognized me as the
model. There was one head in particular that he seemed to admire and he told
me that when he saw it on a magazine cover he had made up his mind to hunt me
up some time and advise me to make another try at motion pictures.
"I am working for D. W. Griffith," he said, "and I'm on my way there
now. Why don't you come along and let me introduce you to the casting
director?"
If Mr. Gibson had not suspended work that day, I probably would have
told Mr. Lanning that it was very nice of him to suggest it, but that I
thought I'd better stick to posing. You see, I still had ambition to become
an artist some day. But I went. He took me to the old Biograph studio, on
Fourteenth street--the studio that made screen history. When we entered they
were taking a scene and Mr. Lanning found he had only a few minutes to make
up. So he hurried away, leaving me standing there.
The first thing I noticed was how green every one looked. In
complexion, I mean. They must have had different lights at the Kalem company
because I hadn't noticed it when I watched Alice, that night. I didn't think
of the lights. I guess I thought it was part make-up and part natural
complexion. And the next thing that caught my eye was a gorgeous creature
who was working before the camera. It was Florence Lawrence. She had on a
wonderful gown and her golden hair was almost sweeping the floor. With the
peculiar tint cast on her face by the lights she was very beautiful.
I didn't know anything about wigs, then, and I thought it was her own hair.
I stood there watching her, and I shrank back in a corner, with an awed,
"Gosh."
She looked like all seven of the Sutherland sisters, and I said to
myself, as I watched her: "You don't belong here, Mabel. You haven't hair
like that. Your eyes are only about half as big as hers are and your lips
aren't as full and red as hers. You won't have a chance of making good
alongside anyone like that. You'd better stick to posing."
So I began to edge toward the door. I watched Miss Lawrence and Henry
Walthall for a few minutes longer. I saw a man directing then whom I
presumed to be Mr. Griffith. I noticed that Mr. Lanning was busy. And I
"ducked." For the second time I was running away from fame and fortune, as
the story books call it.
But I didn't get far. I was half-way down the stairs when a voice
hailed me from the top. "Just a minute, please," it said. And the owner of
the voice descended. It was Wilfred Lucas, famous Broadway star, who was Mr.
Griffith's right hand man. I had heard of him, but I had never seen him
before.
"Would you mind waiting a moment," he said. "Mr. Griffith noticed you
standing there and he would like to speak to you. Can you come back for a
minute?"
So I climbed the stairs again, Mr. Lucas leading the way. And I have
thought of those stairs often as epitomizing my life. I was going to D. W.
Griffith. I was climbing. And I've tried, ever since, to keep on climbing.
But the unkind knocks that Fate has dealt me have so depressed me mentally,
at times, that I feel again as if I were, in spirit, descending those stairs,
going away from Griffith, going away from everything that I prize in life,
and waiting for the helping hand, the friendly encouragement that would buoy
me up, turn me around and start me climbing again.
When we reached the studio Mr. Griffith was still busy, so we stood
there and I told Mr. Lucas why I had become discouraged and started away.
I pointed out Miss Lawrence's hair and eyes and told him I was afraid I
didn't have the right complexion. "My hair doesn't come down to my feet,"
I said, and he chuckled. But he didn't undeceive me. He left me to find out
all those things for myself. I knew I had pulled a faux pas of some kind,
however, and I was extremely uncomfortable. Mr. Lucas had the carriage of
the successful actor. It awed me and while he was very kind he couldn't put
me at my ease. Many time since then we have laughed at our first meeting.
Whenever we see each other nowadays I call him "The Great Lucas," and he
grins reminiscently.
For twenty-five minutes we stood there until Mr. Griffith finished and
went to his desk in a corner of the studio. Then Mr. Lucas led me over.
I shall never forget Mr. Griffith. Already he was one of the most important
men in motion pictures, but he was as kind and simple in his talk with me as
a man could possibly be. His voice charmed me, particularly. It had a
timbre and a gentleness that encouraged me.
He asked me my name and if I had had any experience in motion picture
work.
"No, sir," I answered.
"Then how did you happen to come here today?" he said.
So I told him that I had been posing for Mr. Gibson and Mr. Flagg, that
I had met Alice Joyce and had fled from great gobs of Indians during three
days with the Kalem company. That was where I had met Mr. Lanning, I told
him, and that was how I happened to come to the Biograph studio.
He asked me if I would like to work with his company. I had noticed as
I watched them all before the camera, how like a happy family they seemed.
Every one was friendly with every one else, they all seemed to admire and
respect Mr. Griffith, and I thought it would be nice to be with them. And,
besides, Mr. Griffith could make any one ambitious. He was so kind-hearted
that I believe if he were talking with someone who was absolutely impossible
as an actress, he would make her feel that if she worked real hard, she would
make good.
So I told him I would like to try it. I don't believe they took "tests
in those days. Or maybe they didn't want to waste any film on an "extra."
Anyhow they didn't turn the camera on me but just told me to go downstairs
and get dressed and made-up. This was early in the afternoon and I phoned
Mr. Flagg that I couldn't come to pose for him that day and I started right
in to work under Mr. Griffith.
And the first thing I discovered was that my dress would consist of
doublet and tights. It was a costume picture and I was to be one of six
pages, in a court scene. Mrs. Ada Ebling, the wardrobe woman, helped me into
the costume. It was the first time I had ever worn tights and I was scared
stiff and embarrassed almost to the point of tears. I guess she took pity on
me because she gave me a long cloak, before she sent me upstairs. She told
me to keep the cloak around me until it came time for me to go before the
camera.
But I'm afraid this installment is getting to long. I guess this is a
good place to stop. Next week I'll tell you how I got through my first real
picture and how for the third time I abandoned the work, went back to posing
and tried to run away from what life was holding out to me.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
March 2, 1924
Mabel Normand
as told to Chandler Sprague
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Mabel Normand's Own Life Story -- Chapter 3
Film Star Tells How She Started as Tragedienne!
"Please stand out there and stop hiding."
This was the first individual direction I received in motion pictures.
It was hurled at me by an assistant director for D. W. Griffith and it was
the final touch necessary to complete one of the most thorough cases of
camera fright in my experience.
As I told you last week, I had been engaged by Mr. Griffith as an extra
in a costume picture. I was supposed to be a page and the costume consisted
of doublet and tights. Wrapped in a cloak that had been lent me by the kind-
hearted wardrobe woman, I had waited for some time the call for the pages to
take their places. Then I dropped the cloak and stepped out to spend a very
miserable hour.
There were six of us pages. We were to make a frame for the entrance of
the leading actors, and then follow them out. I was supposed to stand near a
post. But I stood behind it. Anything to get behind something. I thought
everyone was looking at me. As a matter of fact, no one was paying the
slightest attention to me, but I felt certain I was the focus of all eyes.
Instead of feeling like one page, I felt like a whole book, with every leaf
fluttering.
And it was because I persisted in trying to slip behind this post and in
standing on one foot like a bashful pelican that the exasperated assistant
director felt constrained to utter harsh words.
But I got used to it after a while and when we were told that we were to
work that night and receive a "double check" I was glad. It meant $10
instead of the usual five-dollar bill. I didn't think about my mother
worrying.
But when I got home to Staten Island at 2 o'clock in the morning I
thought about it, with emphasis. I got a scolding that made me realize how I
had worried her. And it put an end to motion picture work, for me, for a
considerable time. Without bothering to telephone the Biograph studio that I
was not coming back, I just quit, and went back to posing for Mr. Flagg,
Mr. Gibson and several other artists.
I never expected to face a movie camera again. But Fate must have
decided otherwise. It was three months later that I met, in the Forty-second
street subway station, Henry Walthall, Mack Sennett and Del Henderson. They
had been working for Mr. Griffith the day I had page-fright, and I had been
introduced to them.
All three of them, when they encountered me in the subway station, put
their hands on their hips and just stood still and looked at me.
Finally Mr. Sennett said:
"Where in the world do you live, young lady? We telephoned all over
Brooklyn and Staten Island trying to locate you. Didn't you know that those
pages were supposed to be in three or four scenes, that they came close to
the camera and that because you didn't come back we had to re-take all that
day's work that showed you in the page's costume?"
"I hope Mr. Griffith wasn't annoyed," I said.
"I fear he was annoyed, just a trifle annoyed," said Mr. Sennett,
grinning at the others. "But why didn't you come back?"
And so I told them about how late I got home and how mother didn't like
the hours and concluded I had better stick to posing. We stood there quite a
while talking. And they bought me a malted milk shake, with an egg in it.
I remember that because I had been contemplating such a purchase myself, but
I couldn't afford the egg. Anyhow, the upshot of the conversation was that
they enthused me all over again with motion picture work. They said they
would explain it to Mr. Griffith and told me to ask my mother if I couldn't
come back to the studio.
I did and she consented finally. I went back to see Mr. Griffith and he
didn't even mention the late unpleasantness, but gave me a job working as an
extra girl at $25 per week. Mother had made up her mind, I guess, that I was
slated for motion picture work. This was the third time I had tried to turn
away from it and each time I had been brought back through an accident. So
she gave in and accepted the inevitable.
And thus began my happiest days in pictures. Those old Biograph days!
Will they ever be equaled, I wonder, for their effect on the industry and for
the atmosphere that surrounded that little group? I doubt it.
Every once in a while, nowadays, I meet a member of the old company.
And we talk about something that happened then. And we sigh.
"The old days," we say, in unison. "What wonderful times we had. What
a lot we learned and how happy we were while we were learning. If those days
could only come back!"
To one who was not a member of that company, it is difficult to portray
just what made it great and just what gave those days their thrill. In a
sense, we were pioneers and for that reason perhaps many of the unpleasant
things one meets in studios nowadays were lacking. We were all friends and
equals. There was no "up-stage" demeanor. No one ever thought of himself as
out-ranking someone else in the company. We didn't realize we were making
movie history and that we were destined to be the stars of today. Yet almost
every member of that Biograph Company, the "White Company" of the industry,
has a name with which to conjure today.
And the reason, I believe, lies in the invaluable training we received
at the hands of Mr. Griffith. With the exception of Mary Pickford, we were
shifted around, from lead to extra, and back again to lead, so that we became
capable of meeting any situation, playing any part. Mary was the star. At
that time she was called the "Biograph Blonde." Perhaps you remember that
title. And she was wonderful to all of us. I have never seen in any studio
a person so universally beloved as was Mary.
But she was the only star. All the rest of us girls, and most of the
men, climbed the heights one week and played a leading part, only to be cast
for a very tenuous bit of atmosphere, the next week. It was wonderful
training. It prevented us from getting "swelled heads." And Griffith, in
his wisdom, played upon it, in the kindliest way. The projection room was on
the top floor and when a picture was being run in which one of us had played
a leading role, Griffith would come to the head of the stairs and shout,
"Come up and look at a great artist." And up we would troop.
Perhaps it was I that was the artist. Perhaps it was Blanche Sweet or
Priscilla Dean or Florence LaBadie or Jeanie MacPherson. But we'd all go up
anyway, and watch the picture. And Mr. Griffith would comment on it, showing
where it was good and where the technique of the "great artist" was a bit
faulty. And if we were inclined to get a bit chesty, someone would say,
"Watch the old cranium and don't let it enlarge, my dear. Remember I was a
great artist two weeks ago."
It was that training that has enabled that little company to hold its
own, ever since, with the stars that have risen and set in the movie
firmament. Great artists of the spoken stage have come in, new personalities
have been discovered, but no one ever has been able to down the old Biograph
company. They wouldn't stay down. They knew too much about the technique of
motion picture acting. They knew what to do with their hands and feet, how
to stand and sit and walk. They were, and they are, actors, trained in a
school that began with the A, B, Cs, and extended into the higher reaches of
technique, with frequent trips back to the primer class.
Consider for a moment the people that worked with Mr. Griffith during
the two years I was his pupil. I believe I can remember most of them. Some
of them are no longer living but the majority, if not retired, are still
among the vivid personalities of the screen.
Among the women were Mary Pickford; Dorothy and Lillian Gish; Jeanie
MacPherson, who is a famous scenarist; the late Florence LaBadie, a beautiful
and talented actress who would have gone far but for the unfortunate accident
that cut short her career; Blanche Sweet; Lottie Pickford; Bess Meredyth,
another famous scenarist; Florence Lawrence; Claire MacDowell, Linda Griffith
and Grace Henderson.
Among the men is an even greater percentage of famous names, such as:
Bobbie Harron, Wilfred Lucas, Edwin August, Henry Walthall, Mack Sennett,
Edward and Jack Dillon, Del Henderson, Pathe Lehrman, the late Joseph
Grabell, James Kirkwood, Owen Moore, Frank Evans, Alfred Paget, Charles West,
Frank Powell, Harry Hyde, Jack Pickford, Harry Carey, Christy Cabanne,
Charles Mayo and George Nichols. John Waldron, who is now studio manager for
Mack Sennett, was studio business manager for Griffith and the payroll, in
"them stirring days" was somewhat different from now. Imagine what it would
cost to maintain a company, nowadays, composed of the people I have just
mentioned!
My first parts were all in tragedies. Mr. Griffith never could see me
as a comedienne. I was always playing dying mothers or something.
I certainly did get sick of dying and my fondest wish was that I might play a
role in which I went on to the end of the picture without becoming a
casualty. During most of my first two years I never had a chance at comedy.
But it was great training and I learned, from the heavier parts, many things
that have been of inestimable value in comedy roles.
And so we continued, one day up and the next down again to extra, with
no one but Mary Pickford sure of having a good part. It taught us never to
lose our heads, to be kind to those less fortunate than ourselves. And our
association with Mr. Griffith showed us what loyalty meant. When the big
money began to be apparent in pictures and the influx of stage stars began,
Griffith stuck with us. We were his pupils, his children, his "gang," and he
always believed in us and in our destinies.
I remember one picture in which I played shortly after I joined the
company. The name of it has vanished from my recollection, but it was heavy,
oh, very heavy, and I played a vampire part, with Bobby Harron and Grace
Henderson. They dressed me all up for a "vamp" and they gave me a huge black
velvet hat. Oh, how I loved that hat. It was a great, big one. It seemed
to me it was yards wide. I never expected to have one like it, of my own,
and I used to almost cry when I had to take that lovely hat off at night.
My chance in comedy really came as an accident. There was nothing for
me to do, one week, and Mr. Griffith sent me down to Huntington, L. I., where
the Biograph comedy unit was making a funny picture. Frank Powell was
directing it. But when I got there I found there was nothing much for me to
do in the comedy, either, so I went swimming, off the pier. In those days,
you know, comedies were born, not made. By that I mean that there was no
script. They made them up as they went along.
And as I was diving and swimming around, it occurred to Mr. Powell that
it would make a good scene for the comedy if one of the characters watched me
through a pair of binoculars. So they "shot" him as he peered through the
glasses and then they came down to the pier and turned the camera on me for a
dive or two. And that, I believe, was the origin of the bathing girl idea in
comedies. It happened to be my one and only appearance as a bathing girl but
it was the genesis of many miles of film, born of the idea that occurred to
Mr. Powell that afternoon. Doubtless it would have come eventually, anyhow,
but that picture was the forerunner of them all, as nearly as I can remember.
I had been told to do a few comedy stunts while the camera was focused
on me and they appeared to like me in the role. So they asked Mr. Griffith,
in the next picture, if they could borrow me again. At first he demurred.
In his opinion, I was a total loss as a comedienne, and besides, he had a
part for me in another picture. I've forgotten what it was now, but I
suppose I would have been completely extinct, as usual, before the end of the
last reel. I wasn't so crazy about comedy, either. I had an ambition to
become a g-r-r-reat tragedienne. I suppose I thought I was destined to
become a second Duse. But Griffith finally yielded. I was loaned to the
comedy company for a second picture and I've been an alleged comedienne ever
since.
What I didn't know about comedy then would have filled the Congressional
Library. Tears had been my role. I could cry like a 40,000 barrel gusher,
and at a minute's notice. But I couldn't smile. I had been a patient and
beautiful corpse too often. So when they told me to smile I would grin,
momentarily, and then let my face slip back into my very best funereal
expression. It was awful. They told me to hold the smile and I would assume
a "smile or bust" expression that had about as much mirth in it as Lucrezia
Borgia's company manners. My idea of smiling was to let the smile freeze,
with the result that I resembled a Cheshire cat during many hundred feet of
film.
I was furious. I thought it was terrible of Mr. Griffith to farm me out
to the comedy company. Gone were all my dreams of tragedy, of stalking
across the set, with the spectators sighing and shuddering at my art. But
again I didn't know my luck. Opportunity was knocking and I was totally deaf
to her insistence.
Next week I want to tell you how I became a determined and unrepentant
comedienne, how I left the Biograph and went to work for another company at a
salary that I thought was affluence itself. The break-up of the Biograph had
commenced, and we were scattered, gradually, all over filmdom, leaving the
home nest with much regret and taking with us memories that never have been
effaced.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
March 9, 1924
Mabel Normand
as told to Chandler Sprague
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Mabel Normand's Own Life Story -- Chapter 4
First Salary as Star was $125 a Week!
I suppose every woman can remember the times in her life when she was
speechless. It happens so seldom. And if that temporary paralysis meant as
much to any one as it did to me, on one occasion, it is certain she would
never forget it. It was there and then that I learned the value of a closed
mouth and a quiet smile and although I haven't always profited by the lesson,
it made an ineffaceable impression.
It began at Luchow's, a famous little place where the members of the
Biograph Company used to go for luncheon. I was still with the Biograph,
getting $35 per week. But several members of the company had received offers
from the New York Motion Picture Company, which was just starting.
Mr. Sennett was going to direct comedies for them and he told me, at
Luchow's that he thought I might be able to get a position with them. He
thought they might give me as much as $50 per week and he suggested that I go
with him to their offices and find out what they would offer. So I went.
The company had elaborate offices in a big building at Union Square and after
we waited a few minutes Mr. Sennett introduced me to Mr. Bauman and Mr.
Kessel, the heads of the enterprise. They were very nice, said they had seen
me on the screen and liked my work and asked me if I would sign with them
providing they gave me feature parts and capitalized my name.
At that time, as you will remember, the names of motion picture players
were virtually unknown. It was the company that was featured. Mary Pickford
was known as the "Biograph Blonde"--can you imagine it? If any one ever
spoke of me it was as "the dark-haired girl of the Biograph" or something
like that. The company considered it bad policy to play up the names of the
actors. But Bauman and Kessel were going to depart from that policy. And
they offered me $60 per week!
Right there is where the silence occurred. I thought it was wonderful,
but I didn't say anything for a minute and Mr. Bauman raised the offer to $75
per week. And while I sat there trying to find words to thank them and
exercising my fingers so they would be ready to grab a pen, they excused
themselves and went into the next room for a conference. "Oh, oh," I said to
myself, "they're going to have an argument. He offered me too much and the
rest of them won't pay it." And I sat there ready to weep at having this
chance to make real money snatched away from me. But when they came back,
before I could tell them that I would take $60, Mr. Bauman announced that
they had decided to offer me $100 provided I would sign a contract before I
left the office.
This time I got my mouth open, all right, but nothing came out of it.
Absolutely nothing. Not even a gurgle. I thought if I could make $100 a
week for one year I would have all the money I would need for the rest of my
life. I just couldn't talk, so I finally closed my lips to wait until my
tongue felt less than a foot think. And the next thing I heard was Mr.
Bauman saying:
"I don't think Miss Normand is satisfied. I guess we had better make it
$125 per week."
This time I managed to make motions for them to bring on the contract.
I was afraid the building would burn down before I could sign it. Or they
might have offered me $150 and then they would have had to phone for an
ambulance. Anyhow I signed for it, somehow. And I started to work.
The company had no studio. All our pictures were exteriors and were
made at Fort Lee, N. J. They consisted almost entirely of "chases." Of
course, there were a few other scenes but the pictures, invariably, were
built around some one getting pursued by everyone else in the company. Ford
Sterling was playing with me. Sometimes I would chase him and sometimes he
would chase me. And then just to vary it a bit we would join forces and all
the rest of the gang would chase us.
The lack of equipment and of a studio worried us a great deal and most
of the members of the company were very discouraged over the first few
pictures. But they proved a great hit and made a considerable amount of
money, for those days. That summer was terribly hot and we had been working
so hard that the company decided to sent us all to California for the winter
and let us make pictures out there. So we started in at a studio in
Edendale, on the site of the present Sennett studio. At that time it
consisted of a small house, one stage and a row of four or five dressing
rooms. It was at this time that Mr. Sennett originated the idea of the
"comedy cops" and the Keystone Comedies, as the pictures were called, became
famous for these policemen and their decrepit patrol wagon.
A good bit of our stuff we used to "steal." Thomas H. Ince, for
instance, was making war pictures at that time. I think he was filming
"Civilization" and several others that called for a lot of gunpowder and
dynamite. And we used it all, never fear.
Whenever we heard there was to be an explosion of some sort at
"Inceville," down we would go, cops and all, and we would be somewhere
around, out of range of Mr. Ince's cameras when the "shot" went off. We were
plenty close, too. Rocks and cinders dropped all around us, but Ford
Sterling and I kept right on working. We really didn't feel natural if we
weren't dodging boulders or running down a hill with the top of the hill
slipping after us. And the cops became so agile I believe they could have
dodged all the raindrops in a cloudburst.
But we enjoyed it. It was great fun. "Stealing" our stuff was lots
more exciting than just "shooting" it on our own. Mr. Sterling and I became
quite adept at it. I remember a baby show that was held on the roof of a big
department store. We wanted to work this into a picture, but some other
company had bought the rights to have their cameras on the roof. So we just
butted in, as usual. We were escorted off that roof thirteen separate and
distinct times, but we weren't a bit discouraged. Being thrown out didn't
mean a thing. Back we would come and the camera man would get a lot of
people around him to conceal the camera until the right minute, then they
would step aside and I would leap off the platform where the babies were
being judged and rush madly toward the camera with Ford in close pursuit.
The other company would make a fuss and some real "cops" would lead us gently
but firmly to the stairway.
We had more fun than a circus that afternoon. We substituted a child of
slightly darker hue for one that a fond mother had left in a perambulator and
the baby show almost broke up in a riot when she came back a little too soon.
Meanwhile Mr. Sennett was looking for an additional comedian and the New
York office of Keystone wired him that they had seen an English comedian at
the old Hammerstein Theater with whom they were very much impressed. They
thought it might be a good idea for Sennett to talk to him and find out how
he would photograph. His name, they said, was Chaplin, first name Charles.
But reaching Chaplin proved difficult. He was on tour and Sennett wired
him at several different places with no result. Charlie didn't realize what
was being shaken in his face and it wasn't until he came to the old Pantages
Theater in Los Angeles that Sennett managed to talk with him.
I remember the night we all went down to see Chaplin. We liked his
performance and Mr. Sennett went back-stage to talk with him. He brought him
out and my first meeting with Charlie was on the sidewalk in front of
Pantages. I can see him now. He had on a checked suit, a black bow tie and
a derby hat, and, at that time, he had a very pronounced English accent. At
first he didn't seem to care much about talking business with Mr. Sennett.
He had an idea of going back to England and he didn't want to leave his act
until he was ready to depart. But after a visit to the studio he finally
agreed to take the job as soon as he could arrange to have some one fill his
place in his act. He signed for a year with Keystone at a salary of $100 per
week.
For a while Charlie and I played together but he soon became so popular
that he was featured in separate pictures. We worked hard and fast in those
days. We used to make a picture and have it ready to send to New York in two
weeks. And when Charlie's year was up he was perfectly willing to sign with
Keystone again, at an advance in salary. He wanted $200 a week, if I
remember rightly, and Mr. Sennett wanted to give him $175. They negotiated
for some time over this difference. We were all at San Francisco, I
remember, attending Mayor Rolph's ball and Chaplin came up there to talk with
Sennett. While they were still disputing over terms (Mr. Sennett had to
count the pennies because he was allowed a very small sum to make his
pictures), Charlie met Broncho Billy Anderson, who was making pictures for
Essanay at Niles, Calif. Mr. Anderson realized Chaplin's tremendous talent
and offered him $500 per week to sign with Essanay.
Charlie told me about it at the time and we were both thrilled. But he
didn't want to go to Chicago, where the head office of Essanay was located,
and he didn't give Mr. Anderson a definite answer. The next day I met
Charlie on the street and he told me that Essanay had offered him $1000 per
week.
Well! Neither of us said a word. We just put our hands on our hips and
stood and looked at each other. Again I was speechless. And so was Charlie.
"Do you think they mean it?" he asked me. "Do you really believe they
can be serious? Is there that much money?"
It was so amazing that he should jump, overnight, from $100 to $1000 per
week that we couldn't believe it. We thought Essanay were just talking for
exercise. But it was all true and Charlie signed the contract and went to
Chicago at the first really big salary in the history of motion pictures.
It was shortly after this that Mr. Griffith, Mr. Ince and Mr. Sennett
united in forming the Triangle Motion Picture Company and that was where I
got my first real chance. I was still making two-reelers almost exclusively
but it was decided to let me graduate. I had made, I believe, only two five-
reelers up to that time. One was "Tillie's Punctured Romance," with Chaplin
and Marie Dressler, and the other was a picture with Owen Moore.
So they built a studio on Sunset boulevard, called it the Mabel Normand
studio and began to make "Mickey." F. Richard Jones was the director and the
picture proved to be the first real big comedy hit of the industry. By
virtue of having been the star of that picture I became a very valuable young
lady and I too began to get $1000 per week.
It was at about this time that I received a long distance phone call
from Samuel Goldwyn, in New York. He had told me, previously, that if ever I
expected to make a change to let him know and when he telephoned me it was to
say that he was leaving the Famous Players-Lasky Company, organizing Goldwyn
pictures, and would like to have me work for him at an increase in salary.
After a considerable amount of negotiations I accepted his offer and went to
New York to appear in Goldwyn pictures. My first release was called "Three
Million Dollars" and was directed by the late George Loane Tucker who
directed "The Miracle Man." I remained with Goldwyn all through the war and
had several directors who since have become national figures in the industry.
Next week I will tell you of my return to the Sennett company and of my
more recent days in pictures.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
March 16, 1924
Mabel Normand
as told to Chandler Sprague
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Mabel Normand's Own Life Story -- Chapter 5
Comedienne Says Taylor Slayer will be Captured
Lack of punctuality is said to be an indication of poor breeding. If
that is true, I must be the most ill-bred person in the world. I'm always
late, somehow or other, no matter how hard I try to be on time. And when I
was working for the Goldwyn Company I used to get a daily scolding either
from Mr. Goldwyn or from Abraham Lehr, his associated, for this very bad
fault. But I escaped once, thanks to a happy thought. I was reminded of it
yesterday by glancing over Mr. Goldwyn's book "On the Screen" in which he
relates the incident.
I was supposed to be on the set, made up, at 9 o'clock. But I wasn't
there, and as I was hurriedly donning the make-up in my dressing room I
cudgeled my brain for some excuse which would let me out of the scolding I
knew I deserved. I had just had some new photographs taken which were very
good, so I seized one of them, autographed it to Mr. Lehr and dashed out on
the set.
"Here's what made me late," I declared to Mr. Lehr, who was standing
there with a face like a thundercloud. "It took me a terribly long time to
make up my mind what to write on your picture."
Mr. Lehr took the photograph and read:
Roses are read
And violets blue.
When I'm late
I think of you.
That saved my life. The storm clouds lifted, and I went to work,
thankful for the inspiration.
But my pictures with the Goldwyn Company were not particularly good, in
my opinion. The stories were more suitable, in some instances, for the stage
than the screen, which made it very difficult for the director and the star
to turn out creditable work. I felt I was standing still, and I wanted to
progress. Three years I worked for Goldwyn, two of them at Fort Lee, N. J.,
and the last year at Culver City. And it was when I came to California that
John Waldron, general manager for Mack Sennett, brought me a story to read.
It was "Molly-O." He told me Mr. Sennett had suggested if I liked it and
thought I would like to do it, I might come back to the Sennett fold. I did
like it and talked the matter over with Mr. Goldwyn and Mr. Lehr, both of
whom I found most fair, as they had always been. While we were discussing
the matter I did "Head Over Heels" for the Goldwyn Company and after that
they released me from my contract and I signed with Mr. Sennett to do
"Molly-O."
This was followed by "Suzanna," and it was during the filming of that
picture that the death of William Taylor occurred. Mentioning this matter is
very unpleasant. I don't like it. Who would? Who would like to discuss,
publicly, the tragic death of a friend? Not only is it personally painful,
but, to my mind, it smacks of bad taste. However, Mr. Taylor's death and the
tremendous public interest it aroused brought all of us who knew him well so
much into the limelight that it seems silly to write my life story without
mentioning it.
I had known Bill Taylor casually for years. I believe I first met him
when he was directing Carlyle Blackwell across the street from the Sennett
studio, but I saw him very seldom, and it was not until about a year before
his death that I began to know him at all well. We were at a dinner party
one night and sat beside each other. The party wasn't particularly
interesting and we began to talk about various things, the screen, books,
life in general. I found him extremely well informed and I liked his
viewpoint of things. He was a brilliant man, a man of remarkable
intelligence. We got into an animated discussion on several books we had
read and the evening passed so pleasantly that we both remarked on it when
the party broke up.
I did not see him again for about two weeks, when he called me on the
phone and asked me to go to the opening of a picture at a downtown theater.
After that I saw him rather frequently until he went abroad. And when he
came back it happened that I was starting East on a vacation and our trains
passed each other. When I returned in October and started to make "Suzanna"
our friendship was revived. He had brought me some beautiful books from
Europe, and we went to concerts and to see pictures together. He would tell
me about new books he had read and would send them to me to see if my opinion
was the same as his. It wasn't, always, and we had many a friendly argument
about them.
During November I saw him seldom, as I was working very hard. We were
trying to finish "Suzanna" on time and I was too tired at night to go out.
I remember the studio gave me a birthday party on the tenth of November. It
was at Mr. Sennett's home and nearly every one connected with "Suzanna" was
there. I invited Mr. Taylor to go and I don't remember seeing him very much
after that until the middle of December. He passed my house in the morning
on the way to the studio and sometimes he would stop. Usually I was getting
ready to go to the studio and if I had not finished making up I would wave to
him from the window and he would go on. If I was ready he would come in for
a minute, leave a book and talk about what he was doing or discuss my
progress on "Suzanna."
On Christmas Day he called on me and gave me a beautiful set of Browning
for a Christmas gift. Please don't think I'm trying to picture myself as a
high-brow. I realize that a movie actress who reads Browning sounds like an
anomaly, but I've read him, just the same. I'm not prepared to say, however,
that I'm absolutely crazy about him.
Mr. Taylor asked me where I was dining Christmas night. When I told him
he said he had been invited there, too, but would come late. We had a long
talk that night and during the holidays I saw him more frequently. New
Year's Eve I dined with him and some of his friends at the Alexandria Hotel.
During January I saw him several times a week, if I remember rightly. He
would stop by my house and several times, on my way back from downtown I
would stop at his home to return a book, to borrow one or to talk over scenes
in "Suzanna" with him. I had great respect for his judgment and asked his
advice frequently.
On the afternoon of the night he was killed, I went downtown very late,
to have some silverware monogrammed. Some of it had been given me for
Christmas and some of it I had given other people and asked them to let me
have it monogrammed for them. I went to two different jewelry stores and had
difficulty getting in as it was the closing hour. But I finished my
business, finally, went to a safe deposit box and left some things there and
then telephoned to my house. I told my maid I thought I would stay downtown
for dinner and see a picture. But she said Mr. Taylor had phoned several
times and said he had a book for me that I had been trying to get. It had
been a cloudy day and no one was working on location or on "outside sets."
I think the book was something by Ethel M. Dell. My maid also told me I
had a call from the studio to report for work at 8 o'clock.
"Why don't you come home for dinner?" she said. "Stop at Mr. Taylor's
and get the book and come home and go to bed. You will need the rest if you
have to get up early."
So I said I would not stay down and I told my driver to go to Mr.
Taylor's. His butler answered my ring and said Mr. Taylor was talking over
the phone. I went in and I could hear him talking. But his answers
consisted of "yes" and "no," and in thinking of it afterward I got no clue to
the person on the other end of the wire.
"Oh, I know what you've come for," he said when he hung up the receiver.
"Mamie (my maid) told you I had that book for you."
He was having dinner and I sat at the table with him for a few minutes
and then told him I was going home as I had to rise early. He said he would
go to the car with me, and as we were walking he said he had a lot of work
to do, but might call me about 9 o'clock to see how I liked the book. But he
never called. The last I saw of Bill Taylor was when he waved "good-by" to
me as my car pulled away from the curb. I turned and waved to him through
the glass in the back. But I didn't think it was going to be such a long
good-by.
In the morning, while I was making up to go on location for "Suzanna,"
my telephone rang. It was a friend who lived in the same court with Taylor.
She told me that his butler was running up and down the court shrieking that
Bill was dead. "He died of heart failure," she said. I implored her to find
out if it was true and to call me back immediately. In a few minutes she
called again.
"Yes, it's true," she said.
"It was a terrible shock. I liked and admired him so much. And I had
talked with him only twelve hours before. I phoned the studio that I could
not work that day and took off that remnant of my make-up that had not
already been ruined by tears. As a matter of fact it was three weeks before
I returned to work. Those of you who followed the Taylor case, in all its
intensity, undoubtedly realize what I went through. I was the last person
known to have seen him alive. I was interviewed, questioned, had statements
taken by stenographers and was harassed by newspapermen until I was forced to
move into the country and was on the verge of nervous prostration.
Detectives and district attorneys swarmed around me and my name was flaunted
on the front page of every newspaper in the country for weeks. It was a
terrible experience. As I look back on it now, I don't blame them, so much.
They wanted to find out who had perpetrated this atrocious murder. And they
were leaving no stone unturned that might hide a clue. But at the time I did
blame them. I thought it was terribly unfair. I was doing everything I
could to help the authorities, but no one seemed to give me any credit for it
whatever.
And that is why I want to say right here that there is no person in the
world who will be as glad as Mabel Normand when the murderers of Bill Taylor
are brought to justice. Not only because he was my friend, but because I
have a peculiarly feminine desire to have a lot of people feel sorry for the
way they treated me during those hectic days. I believe implicitly that
Taylor's death will be solved. It is impossible for me to believe that the
person or persons who did that thing will escape forever from paying for
their crime. If I have my own convictions on the matter, I have not an iota
of proof and my own experience would make me the last person to point a
finger of suspicion unjustly.
The
re, that's done. If you knew how I've been dreading this part of my
story, how I hated to discuss this most poignant episode of my life, you
would realize how glad I am that its finished. But there's still a fly in
the ointment. Next week, in the last installment of my story, I suppose I've
got to discuss the Dines matter. It, too, aroused a lot of public comment
and I'm not going to dodge it. But it was very different from the Taylor
case. It was so unnecessary, so foolish, almost a burlesque tragedy, but it
came near being more serious, to me, than the death of Mr. Taylor.
I have brought my story now up to the point of "The Extra Girl," my most
recent picture. Next week I will finish and say "Good-by," or at least "Au
revoir."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
March 23, 1924
Mabel Normand
as told to Chandler Sprague
LOS ANGELES EXAMINER
Mabel Normand's Own Life Story -- Chapter 6
Tragic Dines Affair
There is one locality in which I have no desire to travel. It is the
interior of Africa. For the reason that I am not particularly crazy about
lions. I came to that decision during the filming of my most recent picture,
"The Extra Girl." During several scenes in that picture I was on
conversational terms with a lion, sitting almost between his paws and trying
to look playful and unconcerned. Despite the assurance of his trainer that
he was a really nice lion, as lions go, I doubt if my heart action was quite
normal.
I got through without mishap, despite the fact that I felt most of the
time like a jungle cafeteria. But ever since I have had a great respect for
Daniel.
It was after "The Extra Girl" was finished that Courtland Dines was shot
by my chauffeur, Horace Greer. And once again my name was headlined
throughout the country. What a futile, unnecessary mess it all was! It
makes me fairly writhe, even now, in impotent anger, to think about it or to
discuss it. It was so recent and the circumstances were blazoned so
completely all over the United States that I suppose it is useless to tell
the story over again.
And as a matter of fact, I am unable, anyhow, to tell you just what
occasioned the shooting. For I didn't see it. I supposed I was making a New
Year's call, which I had intended to be brief. But I would have been better
off if I had gone to the beach and spent a nice, quiet day in a shooting
gallery.
I had remained at home all that afternoon answering Christmas and New
Year cards, and it was after 5 o'clock when I stopped at Mr. Dines' house
after leaving word at home to call me and remind me of a fictitious
engagement, so that I would have an excuse for leaving early.
And when my driver came back for me, and Mr. Dines admitted him, I
stepped to the door of another room to talk for a minute with Edna Purviance,
who was standing before the mirror there.
It was then that the shooting occurred, and just what occasioned it I
still am at a loss to understand. Greer, who is a well-meaning boy, declares
Dines attempted to hit him, and claims he shot in self-defense. Perhaps that
is true. I don't know.
But whether it is nor not, this fact remains, after the smoke has
cleared away: Greer may have aimed at Dines, but he hit me, figuratively
speaking. Dines was dangerously wounded, and Miss Purviance and I were
escorted to the police station, where they took our statements while an
enthusiastic crowd of newspaper men wrote furiously. Out over the country
went the story and the censors began to sit up and sharpen their official
shears.
No waiting for an official inquiry. No calm sifting of the facts.
I had been mentioned in headlines in a sensational story. And it was my
second offense, since I had been "featured" also in the Taylor case. So off
must go my head. And for a time it looked like the head, filmically
speaking, would roll on the stones of the courtyard. One censor in a
Southern State wrote my studio and said, "As far as we are concerned, Miss
Normand is guilty until she proves herself innocent." Twentieth century
America!
But before the movement to ban my films gained any real headway the
common sense of the country began to assert itself. Anyone who doubts that
our nation still has many a champion of fair play should have read my mail
during the next few weeks. I used to sit and read those letters with tears
of gratitude in my eyes. Most of them were from women.
Anyone who ever tries to make me believe, after this, the old aphorism
about woman's unfairness to other women will have an impossible task.
I shall never forget the sense of justice that American women manifested
toward me. In those thousands of letters the sentiment was almost identical.
"We are not going to sit by and watch this happen. We women have
something to say about things, nowadays, and we're going to see that you get
a square deal."
It was this storm of protest from fair-minded persons that slowed-up the
censors and saved me from being thrown to the lions. As I write Greer's
preliminary hearing has been held and he is bound over to the Superior Court
to answer the charge of shooting Dines. It may be months before a decision
is reached, and meanwhile newspaper stories will appear from time to time
dealing with the "Normand Case," as some of them call it. Such are the
penalties of earning one's living by appearing before the public.
My pictures have been clean and wholesome always. I suppose even my
most bitter critic will admit that. And to carry out the analogy of the
censors if a prominent manufacturer of soups should be mentioned in a
sensational newspaper story, would it not be consistent to advise every one
immediately to refrain from partaking of his soup?
But I don't want to seem to argue the matter. The facts in the case
have been printed, voluminously. The public must judge for itself. After
all, they are the final arbiters.
But I've made a couple of resolutions. One is to always engage a
chauffeur after this who has no "chivalry complex" and who is so scared of
all kinds of "shooting-irons" that he will run a mile if any one shows him
one. The other is to depart quickly wherever I hear a loud noise.
Will Rogers says that if any one is shot in Los Angeles hereafter, and I
am known to be in the city, I am certain to be arrested on suspicion. And
from my one experience with police stations, I can think of a lot of places
in which I would rather be.
And now I have finished. This story has been brief, necessarily.
Newspapers have not the space to print a really detailed life story. Only
the high spots can be touched. But I've enjoyed telling it. And if it has
been of interest, I'm glad. If it has bored you, in spots, I'm sorry. And I
wonder, really, whether or not you have enjoyed it.
Nothing is so interesting, so worthy of study as the complex mind of the
public. Especially is it interesting to an actress. Not only because it
means dollars and cents to her, if the public happens to like her, but
because it is so variable, so dependent upon trifles and unconsidered
details. It's a marvelous thing, the public mind. Politicians and showmen
have been trying to anticipate it for a good many years. Most of them guess
wrong. But it's a lot of fun guessing, anyhow.
So now I make my exit from The Examiner columns. Or, perhaps it would
be better to say my exit as far as my autobiography is concerned. It would
be rather too much to expect a permanent vacation. Reportorial friends tell
me I have become what they call "good copy." Whatever that it, I don't like
it. But that doesn't seem to matter much. They make you like it.
So here's hoping the next time I occupy the front page it will be
something nice, something wholesome.
In conclusion, may I say a word, a serious word, not only for myself,
but for any other person in screen or stage circles who may by virtue of
unkind circumstances, attain a measure of unpleasant notoriety. Be fair to
them. Remember that since they are semi-public persons, an importance will
be lent to their every action that may be entirely out of proportion to its
true value.
"Judge not" is a good maxim for all of us. To criticize is easy. But
to view the errors of our fellow-beings with human tolerance and a kindly
heart is more difficult--and much more wonderful.
Au 'voir,
MABEL.
(The End)
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Published with the above series of articles were some interesting
photographs of Mabel Normand as a child, young girl, model, and film
actress, plus a drawing of her by Charles Dana Gibson and two paintings.
The co-author, Chandler Sprague, would later be nominated for an Academy
Award for the story "A Guy Named Joe."
If Mabel Normand's first film was indeed a Puritan and Indian film made
for Kalem, then perhaps the film was "Puritans and Indians" a Kalem film
released on January 28, 1911.
Mabel Normand's first Goldwyn release was "Dodging a Million," not
"Three Million Dollars."
Frank Lanning, the actor who led Mabel to Biograph, later appeared in
some films directed by William Desmond Taylor: "North of Fifty-Three" (1917),
"Huck and Tom" (1918), and "Huckleberry Finn" (1920). In "Huck and Tom"
Lanning played the role of Injun Joe; in "Huckleberry Finn" he played
Huck's father.
The best source for contemporary information about Mabel Normand is
"Mabel Normand: A Source Book to Her Life and Films" by William T. Sherman.
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For more information about Taylor, see
WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991)
Back issues of Taylorology are available via Gopher at
gopher.etext.org
in the directory Zines/Taylorology
or on the Web at
http://www.angelfire.com/free/Taylor.html
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