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Taylorology Issue 83
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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 83 -- November 1999 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
"Suzanna" on Home Video
Mack Sennett
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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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Well-known author Charles Higham is currently writing a book on the Taylor
case, and will be featured discussing the case on upcoming interviews on The
History Channel and A&E Cable.
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The lyrics to Stevie Nicks' song, "Mabel Normand," are on the web at
http://members.aol.com/KITENZ/lyrics.html#Mabel Normand
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A class at Georgia Tech on multimedia "Advanced Design and Production" has
their Fall 1999 semester class project on the Taylor case. For details see
http://pbl.cc.gatech.edu:8080/lcc6114.1
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"Suzanna" on Home Video
In the weeks before and months after the Taylor murder, Mabel Normand was
working on the silent film "Suzanna", a film which evidently does not survive
in complete form. "The Unseen Silents" is a video recently released by
Unknown Video (unkvid@earthlink.net), containing the four surviving reels of
"Suzanna", plus surviving footage from "Riddle Gawne", starring William S.
Hart with Lon Chaney, and a rare Harold Lloyd short. One of the supporting
actors in "Suzanna" is Carl Stockdale, who was Charlotte Shelby's alibi
witness in the Taylor case, and who was himself suspected of being Taylor's
killer (see TAYLOROLOGY 22). Production on the film was suspended for several
weeks after Taylor's murder, until Mabel Normand had recovered from the shock
of Taylor's death and filming could resume. So as a record of two people
involved in the case, filmed before and after the murder, "Suzanna" is the
closest thing to newsreel footage available. The film's cameraman, Homer
Scott, was also the cameraman for William Desmond Taylor from 1914 to 1917,
having filmed about 20 movies directed by Taylor. And Walter McGrail, the
leading man in "Suzanna," was also the leading man in "The Top of New York,"
Taylor's last-released film. "Suzanna" is not a slapstick film; the humor in
the film is centered effectively on Mabel Normand's appealing personality.
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Mack Sennett
Because of his romantic and professional relationship with Mabel
Normand, film producer Mack Sennett was drawn into the aftermath of the
Taylor murder. The following are a few interviews with Sennett made
throughout the silent film era.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
August 15, 1914
MOVING PICTURE WORLD
Mack Sennett Talks of His Work
For the first time in a couple of years Mack Sennett last week had a
good look at the skyline of New York City from the heights of Fort Lee. The
last time the Keystone producer had stood on the hill was in the days when he
was making the initial pictures of the brand that has made its trail around
and over the world and laughed itself into the hearts of practically all
picturegoers. Mr. Sennett had gone to Fort Lee as a member of the party of a
score of film men who were looking over the fine plant of the Willat Studios.
It just happened that in piling into autos in Times Square it fell to the
writer to be the partner of the soft-spoken comedian. Mr. Sennett said he
expected to be in New York about ten days. Together with Thomas H. Ince he
had made the trip to the Atlantic Coast for the purpose of taking up business
matters with the officers of the New York Motion Picture Company.
The chief bit of information divulged by Mr. Sennett, news of immediate
importance to picture followers, is that he brought east with him a six-reel
comedy--one on which he had, with all the members of the Keystone Company,
put in fourteen weeks. The comedian said the production contained all that
he had in himself. "I have put into it all that I have got," he said with
emphasis. "I want to show it before I return to the Coast, and I guess it
will be arranged. We have spared no necessary expense. As an illustration
of this, we wanted a real snow scene. A company was sent up into the
mountains, twelve or fourteen thousand feet above sea level. The party
camped out in the snow and was gone a week. Some fine stuff was obtained,
but we used just one hundred feet. That was what we wanted."
A week's trip for a hundred feet of film--a hundred seconds on the
screen--seems like a record for a dramatic production. Mr. Sennett would not
say that the six reels were all comedy--"there's a little of everything," he
said. Asked as to who had written the scenario, he intimated there was none.
"I framed the story as I went along," he said. "I find this method has
merits. It gives an elasticity to the plot; we are enabled to take advantage
of unforeseen situations and to make the most of them. You know, personally,
I never use a script. While I plan most of the pictures I produce myself,
I do not 'write' them. I do supervise the work of other Keystone directors.
Usually we assemble the company and rehearse the story. The entire action is
gone over, and to a stenographer I outline details--minor as well as major
ones. When we get through there is in hand a real script."
The conversation turned to the subject of engaging players, on which it
developed that Mr. Sennett had decided opinions. "I don't believe in luring
players from other manufacturers," said the comedian. "When I want an actor
I go as a rule to the stage. There's a vast number of stage people, a lot of
them good, anxious to get into picture work. I will not employ an actor that
is under engagement. If a picture player out of work comes to me looking for
employment, that is another question. He is tried out until we are satisfied
that he can bring to us the material for which we are searching. Not until
we are satisfied is he placed in stock."...
Mr. Sennett has been in the picture business about seven years. As will
be remembered, his first work was with the Biograph, and with that company he
remained five years. Before that he was for seven or eight years on the
stage. When the comedian was asked if he had in contemplation any changes in
the product of the Keystone, he admitted that he had.
"We intend to try steadily to improve our productions and also from time
to time to change the character of the work," he said. "We are nearing the
stage where we want to advance the scope of our subjects--not that the public
shows any indications of being tired of Keystone stuff, but we desire to
anticipate the wishes of the public, to keep ahead of the times. We are
considering entering a new field. It is, of course, in these days a
difficult thing to do, but we prefer to be progressive now rather than have
these steps forced upon us later.
"In spite of the fact that we spend a great deal of money on our
pictures, we intend to spend more. It is our view that to be stingy in
making pictures is to pursue a policy that is penny wise and pound foolish.
A poor way to make money is to try to save it out of the film. No, I do not
think the European war will materially affect the sales of Keystone.
In fact, it may increase rather than decrease them.
"You know our method of making pictures is different from that of many.
We have no stated time for making a production. If three weeks are necessary
to film a certain subject and we find on examining it that it will be
stronger as a single reel than a multiple, we cut it down to the thousand
feet. We believe the money well invested. We just say to ourselves that we
will give the exhibitor a treat this week at our expense. So it is that a
lot of our subjects run into high figures, but we feel by so doing we are
making more friends for Keystone.
"It is no easy matter to get a job with our company. A player knows,
though, that once he is in stock he is there to stay and I believe it
improves his efficiency all around. He knows he has been tried out, and he
feels secure."
The Keystone producer said he would be in New York probably until the
end of the week--August 8.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
May 1915
Harry C. Carr
PHOTOPLAY
Mack Sennett -- Laugh Tester
A big shaggy man with a splendid leonine head is sitting at a desk in an
office, surrounded by stenographers, desk telephones, filing cabinets and all
the rest of the junk that stands for business system. In rushes an agitated
moving picture director.
"Say," he demands, "Would it be funny if the policeman fell out of the
window onto a cactus plant?"
"It would not," answers the shaggy man with finality.
Exit the moving picture director.
The great white chief of the Keystone Company has spoken.
There are men who can bite a tea leaf and tell you whether it came from
a tea plant up on the far slopes of the Himalayas where the borders of the
British are guarded by the Gourkas, or whether it was sealed in Ceylon.
There are others who can taste whisky and tell when it ceased to be corn in
the ear. Other experts can detect a bogus bill by the feel as it touches
their fingers. Mack Sennett is the world's best laugh tester. He can bite
into a joke and tell whether it is really funny or just a sort of bogus funny
as accurately as the whisky taster can tell the year of distilling.
Sennett is one of the towering personalities of the moving picture
world. There are ten producing companies in the Keystone and a herd of
comedians. Sennett is literally all ten companies and most of the comedians.
Every comedy of the enormous output of the Keystone has been both written and
acted by Sennett before it leaves the factor.
His extraordinary methods can best be shown by chasing him through a
picture.
We will assume that the scenario has been written by one of the "kept"
scenario writers who work on salary for the company. Sennett says that about
fifty outside scenarios are received every day and fifty returned.
"It is the rarest thing in the world to find a real idea in the mail,"
says Sennett. "If we find even the germ of an idea in any scenario, we buy
it and ask the writer for more. But nearly all those sent to us are merely
silly strings of crazy incidents. It is not possible to be really funny
without being logical. You will notice in our wildest rough comedies that
the story has probability and sequence. Take even that trained snake that
pulled a man up a cliff in one of our comedies. If you had a trained snake,
it would be a most practical and excellent way of rescuing yourself from a
precipice.
"Good comedies are so rare that even our hired scenario writers seldom
turn out a perfect one.
"The way to write a good moving picture comedy is first to get your
idea; you will find that either in sex or crime. Those two fields are the
great feeding grounds of funny ideas.
"Having found your hub idea, you build out the spokes; those are the
natural developments that your imagination will suggest. Then introduce your
complications--that makes up the funny wheel.
"If I could find a writer who could do this with success--that is to say
one I could trust to turn out two comedies a week in such shape that I could
hand them out to the directors without going over them myself, he could name
his own salary. I mean that literally. He could prepare his own salary
vouchers. That is how rare good comedy writers are.
"We have tried famous humorists and I can say with feeling that their
stuff is about the worst we get. Every writer to whom we talk about
scenarios is very airy and off-hand about it. 'Oh yes,' he says, 'I get you.
What you want is just a lot of action.' Which is just what we don't want.
What we want is a real idea--a logical, compelling idea. We will add the
action."
Having found something that looks to him like a funny idea, Sennett goes
over to a corner of the big studio, where, chalked on the board floor are the
locales he intends to use. Lakes into which comedians are going to fall--
rooms--fire escapes, etc., all indicated on the floor. There, among the
chalk marks, he and the comedians work out every comedy situation. Not only
do they plan all the situations and the business, but Sennett acts out every
scene and shows how he thinks nearly every actor should do his part.
No one but a man with stage technique at his finger tips and a mind
sizzling with pep and ideas could do this. There are few picture directors
with the necessary physical strength.
Sennett has big heavy shoulders and a frame like a sailor. His shaggy
hair and quick strong gestures speak of enormous reserve power. He is so
full of pep that he acts out half a dozen comedies when he talks to you in
his club.
His equipment has been thorough. He bumped the bumps in burlesque
vaudeville, musical comedy, melodrama and all the rest of it.
"I never succeeded very well on the stage," he confesses. "I never
could agree with the directors. It always seemed to me that they made
mistakes in dragging in situations for the sake of getting a laugh.
I thought their comedy was too forced. They didn't let us act naturally.
I was glad to go into moving pictures for the sake of trying out my own
ideas. They seemed to have justified my complaints against the directors
under whom I worked. If you want to make people really laugh--laugh all over-
-you must convince them."
Well, we will return to the chalk marks on the stage.
Sennett is showing the actors how he thinks it ought to be done. He has
shown them to such good effect that some of them have become famous in the
process. One of the actors he is showing is a very pretty girl bubbling over
with the fun of the thing they are doing; that is Mabel Normand.
"When Miss Normand first came to my company," said Sennett in his club
the other night, "She got such a small salary that I can't think of any word
short enough to tell about it. Now she gets the second or third highest
salary paid in the picture business.
"Miss Normand is such a wonderful success even more on account of her
head than her good looks. She is quick as a flash and just naturally funny.
She is funny to talk to. She seems to think in sparks."
Sennett was asked if Miss Normand didn't have troubles like other people
learning to act. "Worse," he said. "The trouble with her was inducing her
to keep quiet. Like most girls with quick thoughts, she acted quickly. She
moved so quickly that the audience couldn't get it. Deliberation and poise
were the lessons she had to learn. It was a tough job getting her to slow
down. After that, she took up the problem of getting what I call 'man
comedy'--that is, the repressed stuff. Not just flying around but sitting
still and showing the changing thoughts on one's face.
"A somewhat similar development was that of Roscoe Arbuckle of our
company--our fat man. We got him in the beginning because he was the rare
combination of fat and perfect athlete. Arbuckle is a wonderful athlete in
spite of his weight. We got him on account of the falls he could make.
Every week he has been developing. I can see the difference in every picture
we turn out. He began as a rough 'faller' and he has become a finished
artist. And he is still going."
Miss Normand and Arbuckle and all the rest of them were trained over
there among the chalk marks on the floor. That chalked-off patch of flooring
may be said to be the post graduate college of moving picture comedy.
Sennett says that the great problem at this stage of the comedy is to
plan effects so they appear to have "just happened." Their highest efforts
are put upon the accidents. The stubbing of a toe, the tomato that hits the
wrong man, are planned with the utmost care. Some actors fail utterly
because they can't help showing that they expect the accident that is to get
the laugh. Every move of the Keystone policemen, who seem to dash around at
wild random, is planned down to the finest detail.
While they are working out the stuff on the chalk marks, there is one
busy citizen. This is Sennett's stenographer. He is the best acrobat in the
Keystone organization; has to be. While Sennett dashes hither and yon
around the chalk marks, the stenographer dashes around after him. Every word
of the "chief's" directions are taken down in short hand.
Finally they have worked it out, down to the last detail among the chalk
lakes and streets. The stenographer then transcribes his notes.
The next day, these notes and the necessary actors are turned over to a
sub-director who turns the chalk lakes into real ones. The sub-director
makes the stenographer's notes come true. He works out in film form the
business that has been planned on the chalked stage.
So much territory is used in one of the Keystone comedies that it takes
a week or so to work it out. By this singular method Sennett is able to
direct the whole thing in miniature in a few hours.
By this method he personally directs the scenarios of all his ten or
twelve companies. In a short time Keystone intends adding ten or twelve more
and Sennett will also direct these. His will be the mind behind every
scenario.
It is of course impossible to anticipate on the chalked floor all the
details that come up when the real work is done.
For this reason, as Sennett sits in his office, a constant stream of
moving picture directors are dashing in upon him.
He will be talking scenarios with a writer when a director dashes in and
"puts up to the chief" some intricate question of comedy effect. This the
ancient ceremony called "Passing the buck."
Right off the reel, Sennett will be called upon to accept or reject some
idea that will make or break an expensive production. These interruptions
would just about drive the average man crazy.
But like many men of excessive vitality and perception. Sennett has
trained the mind to switch on or off like a dynamo.
He says he has trained himself to switch from one thing to another
without the slightest feeling of irritation.
"The secret of it," he says, "is in the doctrine of non-resistance.
If you think to yourself 'I wish this fellow would not cut in on my work,'
you are hopelessly lost. The salvation of your nerves is to surrender
yourself to any one who wants your attention. The reason that people get on
the average man's nerves is that he gets on his own nerves. I don't get on
my own nerves. Impatience or irritability would kill all the pep in
sensitive, high-strung people such as I have to do with."
In due course of time, the actors come back with a few bumps and a
feeling of elation at work well done and the "makings" of a film. The next
job is the projection room.
Sennett cuts all the film sent out by the Keystone. He is a hard
cutter. Only about one-forth of the film made ever sees a public screen.
That is to say, for every four feet of film taken, one foot is used and three
feet thrown away.
This stage is, after all, the supreme test of the director. It is at
this point that he has to show an almost uncanny instinct for gauging the
public taste.
The "legitimate" stage director can correct his mistakes. The first
performance of every farce comedy is an experiment. He tries the play the
first night. Some of the funny situations "get over;" some don't. Those
that do not are cut out or changed. The moving picture comedy director has
no such safety valve. The only test he has for what will make the public
laugh is his own intuitive sense. He puts on what he thinks is funny and it
has to stand. He seldom has any very definite means of finding out just
which parts the public liked and which parts failed of appeal.
Sennett's years on the stage, hearing audiences laugh, stand him well
now.
Having seen Sennett the scenario maker, the actor and the film cutter,
we take a look at Sennett the business man.
"I feel sorry for the men who are trying to break into the picture
game," he said. "It is getting harder every year. To begin now at the
beginning and come in competition with the directors who have learned through
long and hard experience will be an ordeal to try any man's courage.
"The great difficulty of mastering the moving picture business is
keeping up with the constant changes. These come with incredible rapidity.
You can understand how rapid are these changes when I tell you that we
couldn't possibly put over today the comedies we were producing with success
six months ago. They made a big hit six months ago but are entirely out of
style now.
"Rough horse play has suddenly vanished from moving picture comedy.
"The moving picture comedy now demands subtle effects. Let me cite you
a typical scene.
"A man is sitting in a hotel parlor. At one end of the room is sitting
his affinity with her escort; at his side sits his wife. He is trying to
show devotion to his wife without letting the affinity know he is married and
to beam upon the affinity without letting his wife suspect. He just sits
there. The comedy consists of the changes on his face. That takes real art;
it also takes real scenarios; also takes real directing. This was the stuff
at which Charlie Chaplin excelled.
"There is a lot of money to be made in pictures--fortunes. But it takes
great judgment and a game spender. No one who stops to think about the cost
can ever succeed. The cost is simply not to be taken into consideration.
"For instance there are four people on the payroll of the Keystone
company who, just one year ago, were getting three dollars a day. Now they
are each under contract at a salary of $10,000 apiece. We consider them
cheap at the price.
"The moving picture business is the business for a man who is up on his
toes and thinking fast."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 21, 1922
CHICAGO HERALD-EXAMINER
Sennett Here, Defends Mabel
William Desmond Taylor, Los Angeles motion picture director, was killed
by "somebody with a grudge," Mack Sennett, producer and employer of Mabel
Normand, said yesterday as he passed through Chicago on his way to New York.
When he reached Chicago from Los Angeles he had a prepared statement to
issue but sought to evade being interviewed. Some throat trouble, he said,
had "gotten the best" of him. Later, however, he discussed the Taylor case
verbally.
"There are only two tenable theories," he said. Either Taylor was
killed by Sands, his former valet, or by somebody who held an ancient grudge
against him. Find Sands. He holds the key to the murder.
"Taylor was not killed by a woman, at least a woman in the movie
profession. I knew Taylor well and I knew who his intimates were. Mabel
Normand was not in love with him. Taylor was cultured, refined, genteel.
He was beloved by all the young women in the movie profession who knew him.
"But love--it's out of the question. Taylor was not killed because of a
love affair."
Mr. Sennett's formal statement follows.
"When I left Los Angeles the apprehension of the assassin of William
Desmond Taylor was no nearer than at the beginning of the case. The whole
industry is bent on clearing up the mystery. Personally, I volunteered
financially to aid in the capture of the guilty person and I hope they get
him and darn quick at that.
"I do not know of a single person in moving pictures in Los Angeles who
has not done all that could be done to capture the assassin. People working
in moving pictures respected Taylor and feel a personal and vengeful desire
to see the person who killed him brought to justice. That is the spirit I
have seen in Los Angeles.
"Mabel Normand's present depression is due to the normal and natural
reaction of losing a very excellent, charming man friend, a friend whom I as
her employer was delighted to have her make. Although I knew Taylor but
slightly, I was glad for her to know so fine a gentleman and I thought him
very fine society for her to keep.
"Miss Normand is known to all as a charming and sweet girl, whose chief
fault, if she has one, is that she is generous to a high degree. Her gifts
to charity, her loans and kindnesses are well known in Los Angeles. It is
unfortunate that she should have been the last person to see Mr. Taylor
alone.
"Yet she rushed into the work of trying to clear up the mystery with a
characteristic spirit and frankness. All along she has thought more of
apprehending the murderer than in shielding her own name from publicity.
"Her position is one that anyone friendly to Mr. Taylor might have had
thrust upon them--unfortunate coincidence that she and her chauffeur should
have been the last to see him.
"As her employer, I have a strong professional interest in her success
and in having the public know the truth about her. I have no theory as to
who the guilty party might be."
Traveling with Mr. Sennett to New York were Thomas Ince, movie producer,
and Mrs. Ince.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 20, 1922
CHICAGO AMERICAN
Find Sands, Says Producer
"Edward Sands, former valet of William D. Taylor, holds the solution of
the mystery which now surrounds the murder of his former employer," said Mack
Sennett, movie director and present employer of Mabel Normand, upon his
arrival in Chicago today.
"All the facts--and don't mistake that word 'facts,' not 'theories'--
point to the crime having been committed by a man. If Sands did not commit
the crime he knows who did.
"There was no love tangle or triangle. All these stories of a star's
revenge for unrequited love, dope parties, jealousy, etc., might make good
movie plots and interesting reading, but they are dangerous to the solution
of this crime, because they divert attention from the main path leading to
the murderer which is supported by facts.
"I would be no more surprised if this building collapsed on me than I
would be to learn that a woman did the deed. It is a ridiculous theory--one
entirely unsupported by facts."...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 22, 1922
NEW YORK AMERICAN
Sennett Not Here to Look for Sands
Mack Sennett, producer of the Mabel Normand moving pictures, arrived
here yesterday from Los Angeles. He is one of the prominent members of the
Hollywood colony who have been questioned by the investigators into the
murder on February 1 last of William Desmond Taylor, movie director.
Sennett made a vigorous defense of Miss Normand and of the morals of
Hollywood. He denied a report that he had come East to try to find Edward F.
Sands, former valet to Taylor, who is suspected by the Los Angeles police.
He made this statement in an interview:
"A great injustice has been done Miss Normand. It was an unfortunate
coincidence that she happened to be the last person, besides her chauffeur,
known to have seen Taylor alive.
"She went to the bungalow to get a book. That has been established by
the authorities. In the motion picture colony everybody is certain she knows
nothing about how Taylor met his death. She is a hard worker and a
conscientious artist.
"I know positively that at the present moment Miss Normand is doing
everything she can to help the authorities solve the mystery.
"If I knew who killed Taylor I would seek the $4,500 in rewards that
have been offered. I would give the information, for that matter, without
thought of the reward. All of us in Hollywood want to do all we can to solve
the case.
"The people in our movie colony, men and women, are very hard workers.
They work from early morning until late afternoon and often into the night.
They have to look after their health. They have to preserve their personal
appearances to be successful. Despite what has been printed to the contrary,
there are certain ideals that they live up to. The majority of them live
good lives, are domestic in their habits and are most charitable. Why single
out the few and blame all?
"I knew Taylor only slightly. I am told he was a high-class type of man
and was respected."
The producer, who arrived with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas H. Ince, is at the
Hotel Ambassador.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
November 10, 1924
Don Ryan
LOS ANGELES RECORD
Sennett Says It
On a visit to his studio the other day I asked Mack Sennett what
constitutes the art of the movies.
"Why," he replied, without any hesitation, "you've gotta slap 'em down
good."
Mr. Sennett is one who brings to contemplation of his art none of the
factitious ideals inspired in our serious critics by reading the essays of
Cecil DeMille's press agent in the daily journals. And slapstick comedy as
produced by Mr. Sennett is the only art worthy of the name that has emerged
from the movies to date.
Slapstick is real genre. The wistful irony of Chaplin's creation: a
small, oppressed individual, becoming more ridiculous as he tries to maintain
his dignity amidst overwhelming catastropher; and, under the same
circumstances, the cheeky Americanism of a Harold Lloyd, the immovable
gravity of a Buster Keaton, the childish absurdity of a Ben Turpin--these
qualities are art. Or at least they go to make up something that is an art,
because it is a perfect accomplishment in its own peculiar medium.
"These highbrow movies," Mr. Sennett told me, "are uncertain. But with
a comedy there's just one test. Did they laugh? If they did--it's art."
Thanks to the demiurge who presides over the future of art in America,
Mr. Sennett has abandoned the stupid melodramas which disgraced his only
incursion into the serious movies, and has gone back to the two-reel
slapstick comedies that made him famous. He has gone back--with
restrictions. The idea of romance still sticks in his head. His method now
is to contrast the idyllic with the grotesque; the pastoral with the violent;
the sentimental with a burlesque counterpart of itself.
Such perhaps is the natural arc of the ascending medium. Nothing stands
still, certainly not the movies. I suppose we cannot justly have expected
slapstick to fix itself sempiternally in that mold given form by the
delightful antics of the Keystone cops. The Keystone cops are no more.
As Mr. Sennett explained:
"Well, the real cops began to get pretty sore. Said why did we kid law
and order all the time. Somebody even accused us of being Bolsheviks. That
wouldn't do. Besides, we began to get new ideas. Other things came along--
new gags--new characters. The comedies keep changing like everything else,
but the principle remains the same. You've gotta slap 'em down good!"
If there is anything in the movies about which I could grow sentimental
it would be the old Sennett lot. The Sennett studio at 1712 Glendale
Boulevard--in what has become a half-residence, half-factory region--is the
oldest studio still operating in Los Angeles. Through the years it has been
built up by additions of rooms, sheds, stages, wings, ells, towers, stories
and super-structures, until it has become the modern counterpart of a
medieval castle.
The flavor of the Sennett studio is its charming vulgarity. Nobody
pretends to be anything except himself. The Sennett studio is the only one
in existence that maintains a tradition, the stronger because it is
unconscious. It is like the great workshop of some craftsmaster of the
renaissance, wherein his apprentices carry on--work, eat, dally, and enjoy
life--under the beneficent eye of the master. A Rabelaisian mood prevails--
cordial, gustful, warming the heart as with a flavor of good wine and mutton
roasting on spits before the open hearth.
In the upper story of the castle keep, overlooking the entrance, is the
master's quarters. The office reminds one of the interior of a private
Pullman: long, narrow, paneled in cheery wood in the manner of Pullman cars,
and equipped with bright brass cuspidors.
Here I was received by Mr. Sennett with a handclasp that made me dance.
A bulking, square figure, deep-chested, red-faced, dark hair beginning to
gray, strong jaws enjoying a chew of scrap tobacco. An Irish policeman--if
ever one stepped out of a uniform. But this genius who would have made an
excellent policeman, then an alderman, then a mayor, chose rather to be a
comedian, then a director, then a producer. Fame and fortune lay in either
course, but for the sake of art let us rejoice that Mr. Sennett stayed out of
politics.
I asked him about the early days of the comedies. He related how the
Biograph chiefs looked with fear and disfavor on his first efforts at
slapstick.
"Why," he chortled, "I was slated to be canned at the finish of every
picture. They used to say, 'Can't you be funny without being so rough?'
"'No,' I'd tell 'em, 'I can't. You've gotta get the laughs, haven't
you. Well, what do you want me to do, have the girl stick her toe in the
brook and make moon eyes at the boy across the way? Bah! It won't work.
You've gotta slap 'em down good!'
"When these comedies where shown in England they seemed to catch on.
Funny, it was the English audiences that saved my job. I'd have been fired
if the slapstick stuff hadn't started to make money across the pond right
away."
Mr. Sennett organized the Keystone Comedy company in New York. Then
came Chaplin.
"Fred Mace was going to quit me," said Mr. Sennett. "He'd been offered
more dough than I could pay. I tried to coax him to stick, but there was
nothing doing. Then I remembered a little Englishman I'd seen one night at
Morris' three-a-day on the American roof. I hired Chaplin.
"He didn't have that make-up he uses now. That was assembled in the
costume department on this lot. The same room you can see down there."
The Keystone company had moved to California seeking sunshine.
"Chaplin tried out several different make-ups. The first he used was a
drunk--man in evening clothes, about fifty years old, with a red nose. The
first make-ups didn't go very well. We kept on experimenting. In the early
days we comedians used to put on new make-ups and run around the stage to see
if we could get a laugh from the rest of the gang. We were just like a lot
of kids. Used to bring out mattresses and practice falls. Say, did you
every try to fall straight back and keep your hands at your sides? Pure
relaxation. That's the secret of the acting profession. It goes for tragedy
just the same as for comedy, too."
I recalled how all the funniest comedians practiced this maxim of their
preceptor; how, in the midst of the most exciting circumstances they always
wear that ridiculous air of relaxation, of complete detachment, and how much
funnier it makes them.
"There is more of a story in the comedy we make now," Mr. Sennett summed
up. "Instead of putting in gags just to get laughs, we let the gags grow out
of the plot. The situation suggests the business. But the principle remains
the same," he concluded genially. "It's what I told 'em in the beginning and
it's what I tell you now. You can talk about the art of the movies and all
that, but the one thing to remember, and believe me, it's mighty important,
and that is:
"You've gotta slap 'em down good!"
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
August 1928
Theodore Dreiser
PHOTOPLAY
The Best Motion Picture Interview Ever Written
The Great American Master of Tragedy Brilliantly Interviews
the Great American Master of Comedy
My admiration for Mack Sennett is temperamental and chronic. I think it
dates from that long ago when he played the moony, semi-conscious farm hand,
forsaken by the sweetly pretty little milkmaid for some burlesque city
slicker, with oiled hair and a bushy mustache. And it endures today when he
is a multi-millionaire, the owner of a moving picture studio with some twenty-
two or twenty-four stages, and an established reputation as the producer of
comedy of a burlesque type. For to me his is a real creative force in the
cinema world--a master at interpreting the crude primary impulses of the dub,
the numbskull, the weakling, failure, clown, boor, coward, bully. The
interpretive burlesque he achieves is no different from that of Shakespeare,
Voltaire, Shaw or Dickens, when they are out to achieve humorous effects by
burlesquing humanity. To be sure, these others move away from burlesque to
greater ends. It is merely an incident in a great canvas. With Sennett it
is quite the whole canvas. But within his range, what a master! He is
Rabelaisian, he is Voltairish. He has characteristics in common with Sterne,
Swift, Shaw, Dickens--where they seek to catch the very thing which he
catches. Positively, if any writer of this age had brought together in
literary form--and in readable English--instead of upon the screen as has
Sennett--the pie-throwers, soup-spillers, bomb-tossers, hot-stove-stealers,
and what not else of Mr. Sennett's grotesqueries--what a reputation! The
respect! The acclaim! As it is, there exists today among the most knowing
of those who seek a picture of life as it is--or might be were it not for
these inherent human buffooneries which Mr. Sennett so clearly recognizes and
captures--a happy and sane tendency to evaluate him properly.
And so, for the past fifteen or eighteen years--whenever and wherever I
have seen the name of Mack Sennett posted above a movie, I have been tempted
and all too frequently possibly have succumbed to an incurable desire to
witness his latest antic waggeries. The bridges, fences, floors, sidewalks,
walls, that give way under the most unbelievable and impossible
circumstances. The shirt-collars that, too tightly drawn, in attempts to
button them, take flight like birds--the shacks (like the one in Chaplin's
"Gold Rush") which spin before the wind, only to pause, with a form of comic
terror for all, at the edge of a precipice, there to teeter and torture all
within--trains or street cars or automobiles that collide with trucks and by
sheer impact transfer whole groups of passengers to new routes and new
directions! Positively, as I have often told myself at such times and
countless others, are not these nonsensicalities but variations of that age-
old formula that underlies all humor--the inordinate inflation of fancy to
heights where reason can only laughingly follow; the filliping of the normal
fancy with the abnormal? I think so. And Mr. Sennett has been for these
past twenty years or more--and still remains--the master of that.
Thus when the opportunity came to interview him I seized upon it with
avidity. And in the Ambassador Hotel in New York, after many cautious
preliminaries on the part of a representative, there he stood in perhaps his
workaday, official mood. It was arranged that I was to meet him for luncheon
and so he came--a somewhat stocky and yet well-knit, gray person, with a
touch of the careless in his appearance and an eye gray and soft, yet
suggesting a forceful, searching intellect behind it and one that might on
occasion have a granitic quality; yet with a sagging, half-lackadaisical
manner, which, none-the-less, as one might well know, could be a manner only.
And guarded by a business manager--shrewd, pleasant, friendly sort of person,
watchful of his employer's interests on this occasion, yet helpful to both of
us in a genial way. This is the individual, as I understood it afterward,
who writes most of those startling captions that help to edge the whirligig
humor of Sennett's productions.
"Just a canceled stamp in the post-office of life."
"--and as hungry as a sparrow at a Scotch picnic."
"--so stupid he thought pickled herring ought to be reported to the dry
squad."
"He believed that woman's place was in the home and not in the English
channel."
"Call for my laundry at my apartment--it's just a little step-in."
"--and so dumb she thought a meadow lark was a picnic."
"--and so stupid he thought an oyster bed was where fish slept."
Boldly and courageously I started the ball rolling by asking: "Just what
excuse have you to offer, Mr. Sennett, for one more of your comedies?"
And then, to my real amusement and astonishment, I saw a faint flush
steal over his face--the face of the, to me, greatest creator of joyful
burlesque the world has ever known. Instantly I was moved to abandon the
pose back of the question, but was forestalled by the Irish adequateness to
resist any blow, which is his to a terrifying degree.
"Well, now, that reminds me of a row I once saw in one of the streets up
here in Harlem. Two men were fighting. An Irish policeman came up to stop
it, but couldn't get the hang of it by watching. So finally he grabbed the
nearest one by the neck and shook him until he was dizzy. Then, as soon as
he let him go, he said: 'Now what's all this about?' And that's how I feel
now."
"But there's still the question," I persisted teasingly.
"Well, you can't tell," he said. "It may be that I think that stuff's
funny."
"Acquitted on the grounds of delusion," I said. "But there's still
something worse. You're here to give a complete reason for your being--the
artistic faith that is in you. You're to tell me what you think the
intrinsic nature of comedy is--why, for instance, you prefer it to drama or
melodrama--and--"
"We made a melodrama once," he interrupted, smiling, "or started to.
I don't know whether I ought to confess that, though," he added, a boyish and
naive smile playing over his face.
"And what happened to it?"
"Well, I don't know exactly," he went on, an infectious chuckle
emanating from his throat. "We kind of got lost. We had a plot, we thought,
but when we got it worked out, people laughed when we thought they ought to
cry or shiver."
"Yes, that might have been a little disconcerting," I agreed.
"It was," he said--and in that same, dry, dubious tone that
characterizes so much of his best manner. "We tried to fix it up, make it
more sad or something. But we had to turn in into a comedy."
"What a tragedy!" I ventured.
"Yes, sir, a comic tragedy--that's what came of it at last, I think.
I scarcely remember what happened to it."
But anyone taking Mack Sennett's genial, easy manner for anything but a
front or mask behind which lurks a terrifying wisdom and executive ability
would be most easily deceived. For, looking at him as he sat there--the bulk
and girth of him--I could see the constructive energy and will, the absolute
instinct and force, which has led and permitted him to do so ably all that he
has done. It was interesting just to feel the force and the intelligence of
him, his willingness and determination to give a satisfactory account of
himself--his mental, if not emotional, satisfaction with himself--his dry,
convincing sanity that assures him to this hour--and rightly so, I think--
that his view is as good as any other.
I had read an article by one writer who said, quoting Sennett: "You have
to put in some rough stuff if you want to make them laugh. Only exaggeration
up to the nth power gets the real shout." And another quoting this same
Sennett said: "You have to spill soup on dignity to get a real burlesque
laugh." And I agree, whether Sennett said these things or not. In the world
of the commonplace, only the extraordinary, the unbelievable almost, is truly
amusing or interesting.
But let that be as it will. Here was Mr. Sennett, and most agreeably,
seeking to interpret himself. So I said, after a time:
"When you first started out years ago--but exactly when was that, if you
don't mind?"
"Oh, back in 1908 with the Old Biograph."
"And how did you come to get into that work, if it isn't too much
trouble to you?"
"Well, I was a flop in musical comedy--used to sing pretty well, but I
never could get the fancy stepping of the chorus man. So I went to work in
the Biograph pictures. They didn't make comedies then, just sentimental
romances and very meller melodramas and tragedies--what tragedies! These
were awfully funny to me; I couldn't take them seriously. I often thought
how easy it would be, with the least bit more exaggeration--and they were
exaggerated plenty as it was--to turn those old dramas into pure farce.
"I couldn't get the comedy idea out of my head and finally persuaded two
other fellows to go into partnership with me on producing comedies. We
didn't have any money, but at the time this didn't impress us as being
important."
"And so, the Keystone Comedy Company came into being, didn't it?"
"Yes. We hired a camera man and started out. That camera man--he was
the most impressive-looking camera man in the world. He looked like a
Russian grand duke and had the lofty manners of an Oriental prince. We
didn't stop to inquire whether he knew anything about cameras; we hired him
on the strength of his grand ducal whiskers."
"And how about your first studio?"
"We didn't have any studio. We just carried the cameras and props on
our shoulders and started off somewhere on a street car. Usually we hung
around near Fort George."
"My God," I exclaimed sadly, "of all places."
"Yes," went on Sennett solemnly, "and we had so little money that we had
to make three comedies before we had the film of the first one developed; we
could get it done cheaper that way, you see. And I remember how proudly we
went into the projecting room to see our maiden effort; and how we came out
staggering with dismay. The grand ducal camera man hadn't turned the crank
fast enough, and consequently the picture didn't move--it leaped in wild and
fantastic kangaroo bounds!"
"Like some of your best comedians since?"
"Yes, like some of my best ones since. But to go on. There was nothing
to do but thrown the stuff away and start all over again. By this time we
were flat broke. We made a pool of all our watches and stickpins and got
together enough money to go to California. I brought two actors West with
me, the two business partners remained in New York.
"When we arrived in Los Angeles, I wandered out to an unfrequented part
of town where the families kept goats in their back yards. I rented a vacant
lot and had a little shanty put up. This was my first studio and the little
shack is still standing there in the middle of our twenty-two acres of
studios in Edendale. I guess I'll never tear that shanty down.
"It took a lot of physical endurance to get through the work I undertook
in those days," he went on reminiscently. "Every morning when the
bricklayers were going to work I went out to the 'studio' and got the props
ready for the day's work. We made new sets by pasting some wall paper over
the old ones.
"All day I acted in my pictures myself and directed, too. At night when
the other actors had gone home, I stuck around late cutting the film shot the
previous day. I was telephone operator, bookkeeper, actor, director,
publicity man and film cutter. It was a job.
"Finally I shipped the first comedy to my partners in the East. Their
verdict was prompt. 'Terrible,' they wired me. I took a cinch in my belt
and started another comedy, which was eventually shipped. The answer was
just as prompt: 'Worse.'
"I wonder now that I didn't lose heart entirely, especially with money
by this time being as scarce as hen's teeth. Then I got a 'break,' as we now
call it. It happened that the G. A. R. was holding a convention in Los
Angeles and there was a great parade. As a last desperate chance I
photographed this parade; took some comic scenes to fill in and made a war
comedy. This time the message that came back from New York was: 'Great.'
"It was easy from then on."
And it was pleasing to see him sit and cogitate in a pleasant April
manner in regard to his own past. And none of the hardened granite that one
suspects in his nature from time to time showing in his words or eyes.
Instead, nothing but Rabelaisian gaiety and vitality.
"But to return to my first question--your artistic excuse for being--the
animating faith that is in you?" I said, after he had finished all this.
He stared unblinkingly, the blue-grey of his Irish eyes fronting me like
two milky, unrevealing crystals.
"My artistic reason for being! The faith that is in me! I guess I
never thought of those things when I started out, but I can give a fair
answer now, I think. Everyone wants to laugh at something. Mostly at other
people's troubles, if they're not too rough."
"But you never thought of that when you started, you say?"
"Oh, I must have--as a comedy idea--but not as a philosophy," was his
prompt reply.
"And you still adhere to it?"
"Something uncomfortable happening to the other fellow, but not too
uncomfortable? Yes. Things must go wrong, but not too wrong. And to some
fellow that you feel reasonably sure can't be too much injured by it--just
enough to make you laugh--not enough to make you feel sad or cry. And always
in some kind of a story that could be told very differently if one wanted to
be serious, but that you don't want to be serious about, see?"
"I see. But years ago, when you started, the type of comedy you
produced was decidedly crude, wasn't it? I recall the hot stoves on which
people fell, the hot soup that steamed down their backs, the vats of plaster,
or tar, or soap, that they fell into; the furniture, walls, ceilings, even
houses, that fell on them; the horses, wagons, trains that ran over them.
Any change in that respect?"
"Well, no. I don't know that there is any actual change in the kind of
burlesque that makes people laugh, although there is some, I guess, in the
way it's presented. For instance, ten or fifteen or twenty years ago, a man
might sit on a hot stove longer than he would today and without the audience
stopping laughing. Or, maybe, trains could hit him and all in the same
picture. Fifteen years ago the settings could be cruder than they are today,
and a waiter in shirt sleeves and no collar could spill soup down the shirt
front of a laborer and get a laugh, and that in some ordinary one-armed place
not very nice to look at today. Today an American comedy audience seems to
want better surroundings or settings. And if the waiter is of the Ritz or
Ambassador type, the customer a gentleman in evening clothes--or a lord--so
much the better! But the spilling of the soup remains the same. It has to
be sort of rough trouble for the other fellow in burlesque, or no laugh."
And here Mr. Sennett interpolated a bit of reminiscence out of his old
Biograph days. It appears that when he first began to make comedies in
opposition to the melodramas of the hour, the Biograph chiefs looked on them
with doubt and disfavor. "'They're too rough,' they said. 'Too many people
fall downstairs or out of windows, or get shot or run over. Can't you be
funny without being so rough?' 'No,' I told them, 'I can't. You've got to
get the laughs, haven't you?' And then I'd show them that you couldn't reach
the crowd by refined comedy. If you wanted the big crowds and the big
laughs, you had to have the stuff a little rough. And, as I say, except for
dressing the actors and the scenes a little better today, there isn't so much
change."
One of the things I was moved to ask at this point was, slapstick being
what it is, was there any limit to the forms or manifestations of this humor?
And to my surprise, yes, there was an is.
"No joke about a mother ever gets a laugh," he insisted most
dogmatically. "We've tried that, and we know. You can't joke about a mother
in even the lightest, mildest way. If you do, the audience sits there cold,
and you get no hand. It may not be angry--we wouldn't put in stuff about a
mother that an audience could take offense at--but, on the other hand, it is
not moved to laugh--doesn't want to--and no laughs, no money. So mothers in
that sense are out. You have to use them for sentiment or atmosphere in
burlesque."
"In other words, hats off to the American mother," I said, thinking of
that sterling epitome of America--"Processional." "But not so with fathers,"
I added, after a time.
"Oh, fathers," he said dryly. "No. You can do anything you want to
with them. Father's one of the best butts we have. You can do anything but
kill him on the stage."
"And as for the dear mother-in-law," I interjected.
"Better yet. Best of all, unless it is an old maid."
"No quarter for old maids, eh?"
"Not a cent. A free field and no favors where they're concerned. You
can do anything this side of torture and get a laugh."
In silence I began to brood over the human or inhuman psychology of
that, but got nowhere for want of time. After all, Mr. Sennett was being
interviewed, and I had to go on.
"Tell me one thing," I asked. "You used to act most amusingly. Do you
ever act nowadays in your comedies?"
"No."
"Any reason?"
"Well, acting isn't my business any more. You can't direct the
activities of a big motion picture studio and wear grease paint at the same
time. Oh, once in a while I got out on stage and show someone how to work
out a bit of business, but never anything more than that. Most of my time is
spent on the stories and gags."
At this point Mr. Sennett's manager contributed the information that the
rest of his employer's time was spent supervising the direction, editing and
titling of the comedies that bear his name.
"But years ago, as I understand it, you wrote nearly all your own
slapstick. Is that right?"
"Well, pretty nearly, at first."
"But not any more?"
"Not so much. Oh, once in a while I get an idea or so--the same as
anyone else--and, when I do, I call a stenographer and dictate it roughly.
We have a lot of stages out there to keep going. But I don't know that I can
say that anybody writes 'em. We have a board of scenario writers now--twelve
or fifteen all the time--and they all work together more or less.
"Whenever anyone has a real idea in the rough, it goes before that
board, and they thrash it out among themselves. Of course, everyone sits in
one that--myself and everyone else who wants to. Everyone is absolutely free
to say what he thinks is wrong and without prejudice on anybody's part.
In fact, everybody is encouraged to do that. But once in a while, even when
one of us gets a plot we think is all right to start with, we can't make it
work. No one can, at times. We have had plots on which we all worked, for a
week or ten days, without being able to solve some problem which, if we
didn't solve it, ruined the whole thing. And then, finally, we had to give
it up because it just couldn't be solved.
"Some of these things are more difficult than you think, and sometimes
we even get superstitious about them and change the spot on which we are
trying to work so as to change our luck. In fact, it's come to this--that we
have spots, or rooms, or places, which we consider lucky or unlucky. I
remember one time, we had one of these tough problems and we had moved around
from one place to another on the lot for days, trying to work it out. And
finally I bundled the whole crowd in a car and took 'em away from the lot
entirely and out to a new place on a hill, or rather a mountain top, in
Griffith Park. We had our lunch and our cigars, but we no sooner got out and
settled than one fellow jumped up, smacked his hands together and said: 'It's
a letter.' What he meant was that the problem could be solved with a letter.
For weeks after that we went out on that hill in the hope of getting results
in other cases, but we finally gave it up because it was kind of far and the
results didn't always warrant trips."
And now I recalled that Mr. Sennett has always been very much interested
in personality--that fascinating something which makes celebrities out of
unknowns. The list of the subsequently-to-be-famous stars from Chaplin to
Langdon, who, unheralded and unknown, were first fostered and trained by him,
is long. And so I said:
"You have detected and trained a number of film geniuses. How do you
define that 'something' that sets a certain-to-be-star apart from those who
do not happen to possess it?"
"I wouldn't know how to define it exactly," he replied.
"Then there's no one characteristic that is common to all beginners who
finally reach a high place and great fame?"
"Well, maybe one, yes," he returned, after pausing and drumming on the
table, "though some people who don't become stars have that, too."
"And that is?"
"A tireless desire to work."
"Is that all?"
"No, not all. There's something else. An intense interest in their own
future or success. They all have that--if they get over."
"Anything else?"
"Well, I'll tell you. They have a phrase in pictures now which
everybody uses when they want to describe the thing you're talking about--the
something that makes a star, as opposed, say, to the absence of it in someone
who can never hope to be one. They say, 'He's got It,' or 'She's got It.'
And the way they emphasize the word "It" tells you what they mean. But if
you tried to make them say what they mean by It, they couldn't tell you. And
I couldn't either, because the style or expression of that It is so different
in different people. Take Douglas Fairbanks now. His It, as I see it, is a
wonderful athletic skill and that laughing, defiant smile he has, together
with the power to strike an effective and interesting pose. On the other
hand, Chaplin has a nervous, frightened look when he wants to use it and the
gift of making you feel that he is trying to get away with something that he
shouldn't and yet making you sympathize with him. Then Harry Langdon, who I
consider the greatest of them all."
"Greater than Chaplin?" I interpolated.
"Yes, greater than Chaplin," he replied. "Well, Langdon suggests a kind
of baby weakness that causes everybody to feel sorry for him and want to help
him out. He's terribly funny to me. On the other hand, Langdon knows less
about stories and motion picture technique than perhaps any other screen
star. If he isn't a big success on the screen, it will not be because he
isn't funny, but because he doesn't understand the many sides to picture
production. He wants to do a monologue all the time; he wants to be the
leading lady, cameraman, heavy and director all in one. So far in my
experience that attitude has never proved successful."
Our conversation here drifted toward the finding of the most celebrated
of these funny people. It is thought by some that Sennett could not have
helped Chaplin to fame and fortune. But to me, the reverse seems true.
He could, or should have been able to. He is the strong, wise, elemental
director and master, really. There is an impressive and, for some I am sure,
a terrifying force to him. I can easily see how he could manage fourteen
lots and a hundred comedy stages, if he chose. He has convictions and the
poise that is born of them. And convictions spring from innate perception.
But to return. As Mr. Sennett told it, he had in his Keystone Comedy
Company, in New York, at that time a comedian, Ford Sterling. This Sterling
was going to quit him because, as he expressed it, "he could get more money
that I could pay him."
"I tried to coax him to stay but there was nothing doing. Then I
remembered a little Englishman I'd seen one night a Morris' three-a-day on
the American roof. And I sent around and hired him."
"Charlie Chaplin, you mean?"
"Yes."
"And what about Chaplin? Was he anything like what he is today?"
"Not so different. Of course we've all had a lot of experience since
then. Chaplin didn't have that make-up he uses now. That costume was
assembled on my lot out there in Los Angeles." (By then the Keystone Company
had removed to Los Angeles.) "He tried out several different make-ups before
he found that one. The first he used was that of a drunk--a man in evening
clothes, with a red nose--the old stuff, you see. It didn't go very well, in
fact wasn't different enough to give it originality. Then he tried other
things--I forget just what. In those days we used to get on new make-
ups and
run around the stage to see if we could get a laugh from the rest of the
gang. One day Chaplin took a pair of Chester Conklin's baggy trousers, the
small derby that Roscoe Arbuckle always wore, and the big shoes which were a
part of Ford Sterling's old makeup. The cane was one of Chaplin's own
props--he always used a cane. Well, as soon as I saw the get-up, I knew that
was IT.
"I remember one thing about Chaplin. He was the most interested person
where he himself, his future, the kind of thing he was trying to do, was
concerned, that I ever knew. He wanted to work--and nearly all the time.
We went to work at eight o'clock and he was there at seven. We quit at five,
say, or later, but he'd still be around at six, and wanting to talk about his
work to me all the time. The average actor, as maybe you know, is just an
actor. When it's quitting time, he's through. His job is done. He's
thinking of something else--maybe even when he's working--and he wants to get
away so he can attend to it. But these personality people are different.
"Why, this fellow Chaplin used to fairly sweat if he thought he hadn't
done a thing as well as he should have. And he was always complaining of
this, that, and the other--the kind of director he had, the kind of actors
that worked with him, that his part wasn't big enough, that he ought to have
more stage room to do the thing the way he wanted to do it. And when the
time came that he could see the film of the day's work, he was always there,
whereas, most of the others in the picture would never come around. And if
anything in the run didn't please him, he'd click his tongue or snap his
fingers and twist and squirm. 'Now, why did I do that that way? What was
the matter with me, anyhow? So and so (the director) should have caught
that. Heavens, it's terrible. There's always something wrong.'
"Chaplin's one fellow who has to work alone, and alone he works.
"And," he went on, "Harry Langdon is another of the same sort. He came
to me four or five years ago and I picked him for a sure thing. About the
same case as Chaplin--same temperament--only I think him the greater artist."
"Why?"
"A wider range of emotions and so a wider appeal."
I took the matter under silent critical examination.
"And in Langdon the same restless energy and criticism of everything.
Why, nothing was ever right, because, like Chaplin, he had his own ideas,
exactly, of how everything should be done. And he didn't want to be
interfered with, although, of course, he was there under contract and had to
take direction from others."
"Are women stars more or less difficult than men to handle--artistically
or commercially?" I here interpolated.
"Less so, for me, I think. I can't speak for anyone else. They may be
more temperamental at times in regard to this point and that--things of no
great consequence artistically or practically--but they're not so eager to
run things all alone. They 'troop' better. Most often you can hold them by
showing them that you're trying to do the best you can under the
circumstances.
"Gloria Swanson had one of the most delightful personalities of any girl
on our lot when she played in our comedies. Besides being sincere and
conscientious and a hard worker, she had charm that attracted the admiration
of everyone who came in contact with her."
It must have been twenty minutes of, or after, for here we both paused
and rested. And then, after a time, we came back to the matter of humor in
connection with women--whether they had it to the same degree as men--whether
there were as many humorous or witty or waggish women as men. Decidedly not,
thought Mr. Sennett, and some difference in the sexes must account for it.
Yet now and then, as he explained, there appeared the real woman wag or wit,
and how excellent she was. Instantly he cited Mabel Normand, and after her
Louise Fazenda, and then Polly Moran. Distinctly they had humor. And in the
case of Mabel Normand, it was so elusive and yet so real that while you knew
it was there, yet you could scarcely say where it was. Why, that girl could
walk down the aisle of a church, in the midst of services, and without
offense to anybody, and without any outward sign of any kind that you could
definitely point to, could get a laugh, or at least a smile, and from
everybody.
"I don't know what it is," he interjected here. "For the life of me I
couldn't tell you how or why. But she can do it. And Louise Fazenda can
almost do it. As for all the other women I know, mostly you have to create
humor for them. It isn't inside. They can get it over if you drill them,
but unless you do they haven't so much to offer--and that goes for some who
are pretty fair in pictures." (He declined to say who.)
"I was just thinking of a nice woman we had out there at the studio."
He laughed at this point. "Good actress, too. Played crazy parts that we
created for her, but did it under protest sometimes because she didn't always
like it." (And all this in connection with what I was just saying.) "Well,
we got up a part in which she had to wear a big red wig and a cauliflower
ear." And here he went off into another low chuckle that would bring anyone
to laughing.
"What a shame!" I said, thinking of the hard-working, self-respecting
actress.
"I know," he replied. "It was sort of rough." And he laughed again.
"But we couldn't let her off." And into that line I read the very base and
cornerstone of that ribald Rabelaisian gusto and gaiety that has kept a
substantial part of America laughing with him all of these years. Slapstick
vigor--the burlesque counterpart of sentiment--the grotesquely comic mask set
over against the tragic.
Sennett is obviously the artist who takes delight in developing latent
possibilities in screen aspirants. For he now began to tell me of others in
this grotesque field in whose future he had the greatest faith. One of these
is a youth by the name of Eddie Quillan, now working for him, of whom he
said: "Now, there's a boy who would make good." (That unquenchable
enthusiasm for developing talent.)
"What makes you think so?" I said.
"Well, he has talent. He is enthusiastic, and he has a line of his own.
Just like every other fellow that gets over, he likes to work and he
criticizes himself. The more I see of his work, the more sure I am he is
going to be a success."
He then spoke of a girl, Madeline Hurlock, who gave no particular
promise of stardom at first.
"I tried her out," he said, "and most of us were puzzled at first
because we put her in one thing and another and she didn't seem to do
anything. Just stood around, as far as we could see. And we thought she was
a total loss, or I did. But after a while we began to hear from exhibitors.
They showed interest in her--liked her personality--asked who she was. Then
I began to understand that there was something about the way she did stand
around, perhaps, that was interesting to the public--her poise. So I began
to surround her with the kind of material that would bring her out. And she
herself, the more she becomes used to this work, is developing
characteristics and stunts which are certain to make her into a sure-fire
personality if she keeps on."
"Another star?" I said.
"I think so," he replied. "And then," he went on, that same light of
the creator as well as discoverer in his eye, "we have a kid--a baby girl--
whose mother brought her in to me--Mary Ann Jackson. Hundreds and hundreds
of babies are brought in to be tried out, but it's just like it is in
everything else--one stands out and another doesn't and we were lucky enough
in her case to find a baby we think is going to develop into a national
celebrity. I am not saying that because these people are connected with me,
because new personalities are coming up everywhere. I always notice that as
one personality passes into oblivion, there's always another comes along
somewhere."
"And you think you have three of 'em?" I asked.
"Well, yes, that's what I think," he replied.
But there still remained the Mack Sennett of the bathing beauty fame to
interpret and I wanted to talk of that, to say nothing of the beauty herself,
as a national and even international feature--the only successful rival, as I
see it, to Mr. Ziegfeld and his Follies Girls that has ever appeared in
America or elsewhere. And so I said: "And now what about your bathing
beauties, Mr. Sennett? What have you to say for that as an idea--artistic or
otherwise?"
"Well, what's wrong with it?" he countered. And one could see the
ancient "Irish" in him simmer.
"Nothing wrong with it," I replied. "Didn't I pay a special admission
price the time you sent your group around the country? But was it your idea
or someone else's--that of organizing and sending such a group around? And
was she a purely commercial proposition, likely to bring in hard cash, as
someone has charged, or an artistic idea to you?"
He paused to think and finally replied: "Nothing so definite as either.
Everyone likes to look at a beautiful girl. It sort of helps out the days,
doesn't it? Besides, in the kind of burlesque comedy I was doing, there had
to be a relief in the form of beauty of some sort. There's no chance for
sentiment in the kind of thing we do--or very little. You can't have a girl
stick her toe in a brook and make moon eyes at a boy across the way in
burlesque. Mostly--especially in the old days--it was sorta rough, and we
had to have something or someone as a contrast, so I thought of sticking in a
pretty girl or two--the prettier the better."
"And that's all there was to it?"
"Well, nearly all. Of course, then the business grew and we had a lot
of them around, somehow the idea of bathing pictures came up. I suppose we
did a lot of those comedies by the sea, with bathing girls in them, because
they made a pretty picture. And then I suppose someone on a newspaper first
called them 'Bathing Beauties.' But pretty soon, just the same, there she
was, labeled. And pretty soon after that, it became 'Mack Sennett's Bathing
Beauties' because I was almost the only comedy producer in the field who used
them. And I had the most of them. Well, when an idea like that catches on,
and you see that the general public is interested, you'd be dumb if you
didn't see what to do about it. I don't know now whether I or someone else
suggested getting the girls together and sending them around one season--I
think it was one of the first distributing agents here in New York that first
thought of it--but anyhow, it finally looked to be the thing to do and we did
it."
"You did it, you mean."
"Well, I agreed to let it be done."
"And created a more striking thing than the Follies."
"You think so?"
"I do."
"Thanks. Of course, there was criticism. There always is where a lot
of pretty girls are used in a public way like that. Besides, human beings
will be human beings and in the old days when the business was new there
wasn't as much restraint as there is now. Couldn't be. Things were too
disorganized--too many things to do and think of. And, of course, there was
talk whenever a girl cut up a little, or ran away and got married. And there
always will be undesirables show up in every line of work, even among girls.
But today we don't stand for them. We want nice girls--the kind of girls who
live at home. And what's more," and here he grew quite emphatic, "we give
them every chance of leading just the sort of life that the public respects.
And I guess the public knows it, for there's very little criticism of any
kind any more. Mostly we're looking for the girl of ambition and with
talent, especially where she's pretty--the one who wants to get somewhere--
and when you get that kind you find girls who can look out for themselves,
and want to--they don't need watching."
His manner indicated that he had said all he could think of in regard to
the bathing beauty and I could think of no further phase of her to discuss.
However, there was another thing that interested me--a comment he had made on
the everyday actor as such--the one without much talent or ambition, yet whom
he uses in numbers, and so I said: "What about the average actor--you who
love the potential star so much?"
"Oh, him," he said reminiscently. "Well, he's all right. I shouldn't
really say anything about him, for, after all, he is what he is, and he can't
help it, and what's more, he's useful--very. The only trouble with him as
far as his own future is concerned is that he's lazy--or if not that, then he
feels no call or inspiration to do anything more than just the thing he's
told to do or is shown how to do.
"I've employed a lot of them in my time, and there's no essential
difference in the temperament of any of them.
"Sometimes I have to laugh when I think of these people, and sometimes
I'm sorry for them, for here they are, with the same opportunities as
Chaplin, Langdon, Harold Lloyd, Fairbanks, Pickford, Swanson--anybody--and
they do just what they have to do and no more. They are easily satisfied.
They do not know the restlessness and discontent that is forever eating at
the heart of a real artist. Nor do they ever experience the bubbling
enthusiasm and burning ambition and unshakable optimism of the fellow who
gets there. The difference between the ordinary actor and the artist might
be compared to the difference between an adult and a child; the adult,
prosaic, practical, working from necessity, and rather disillusioned.
"The artist--the child--a gypsy, curious, impractical, enthusiastic, a
tireless worker at the work he loves, idealistic, never knowing quiet and
contentment.
"Well, I guess the average actor is just a tradesman, working at his
trade; he might as well punch a clock with the carpenters and mechanics.
"You say to one of them, 'Well, you have to be a fireman today. Here's
the part.' And they'll take it and get instructions as to about what's
wanted. Then they'll dress it and put in the usual funny stuff about a
fireman--the stuff they know or thought of years before. But anything new?
No! Or very little--so little that it doesn't make any real difference in
their standing from year to year. Yet you know always that whatever you give
them to do they'll do well enough, but that's all, Just so they get by. And
after that, well, they're thinking just like any clerk--or nearly so--of what
time it is. Maybe they have a wife and kids, as most of them have--and they
live in some neighborhood where they know everybody and go to parties or
dinner, or to church, or to lodge-meeting at night. Or maybe it's some real
estate deal they're interested in and thinking of at the very time they're
working, playing those crazy roles. Yet any one of them with a spark of fire
could step out of the ranks and begin to attract general attention. But they
haven't got it.
"And it isn't their fault. They can't get it. They weren't born with
that urge that makes the artist work his head off all day, then think and
talk and play his work the rest of the time."
And here he went off into one of those still, contemplative moods,
laying his chin in one of his interesting, forceful hands, and thinking, as
well he might.
And lastly there was the matter of Mr. Sennett himself--his present
"right now" mood in regard to himself and his work. For back of this gray,
somewhat carelessly dressed man, as I could feel, and even see by his manner,
was his fortune of at least fifteen millions. And world-wide fame for his
name. And his big studio in Los Angeles, with its many big stages; to say
nothing of companies. And on a mountain, which he is having cut off at the
very top in order to give himself sky space and field breadth, a great house.
And his old Irish-Canadian mother, as I understand, is to have a special
entrance in this grand house, so that she won't be compelled to come in
contact with the crowd he must ever meet.
A charming, sensitive touch, that. And so I said:
"And now, what of the future, Mr. Sennett? Any special developments?"
"No, none in particular that I see at the moment. Of course business
conditions are changing. We produce more and more films. The public taste
is changing.
"They want better dressed comedians--fewer axes and the like of that,
maybe. But apart from that--"
"Are you as much interested in comedy as ever?"
"Just as much--yes--maybe more so."
"Never get weary of it all?"
"Oh, I won't say that. For a few minutes, maybe, at times. Not so much
longer."
"Haven't ever a desire to get away for a long time and rest?"
"Well, sometimes I think I have. But I soon get over it. If anything,
the game gets more interesting to me. I can scarcely stay away from the
studio. Take this particular trip. I did think I'd like to come here and
stay three months or so for a rest or change somehow.
"But here I am--only here three or four weeks and anxious to get back.
Habit, maybe.
"You might call it a bad one--my ruling weakness or sin. Well, that's
the way it is." He smiled amusedly and I could see so clearly in his face
his love for his work. He will die making comedies.
But here I added by way of finis:
"You don't intend to try any more melodrama, I suppose?"
"Oh, I don't know. I may--" he laughed.
"Or dramas? Or tragedies?"
"No tragedies. That's your game. You can have it."
"And as for bathing beauties?"
"Well, when the public gets tired of looking at attractive women--"
He stirred, and I rose.
Together we strolled out into the lobby of the Ambassador.
Already a telegram or two for him--a boy with a letter.
"If you want to, and will, come out and stay around the lot for three
weeks or a month, and see for yourself. I'll throw everything open to you.
You can look round the stages and make friends with the actors and directors,
sit in on the comedy-building conferences, interview anybody you like--even
me--go out to the homes of those who work for me and see how they live.
"It's an interesting world, and it might make a book--"
"Or a Mack Sennett comedy," I replied.
"Or a Mack Sennett comedy," he repeated.
The interview was over.
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Full text searches of back issues can be done at http://www.etext.org/Zines/
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Taylor, see
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