Mabel Normand
1892 - 1930Mabel Normand (November 10, 1892– February 23, 1930) was an American silent film comedienne and actress, a popular star of Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios and noted as one of the film industry's first female screenwriters, producers and directors. Onscreen she appeared in a dozen commercially successful films with Charles Chaplin and seventeen with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, occasionally writing and directing movies featuring Chaplin as her leading man as well as sometimes co-writing and co-directing with Chaplin in films in which they played the lead roles. At the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Normand had her own movie studio and production company.
Throughout the 1920s her name was linked with widely publicized scandals including the 1922 murder of William Desmond Taylor and the 1924 shooting of Courtland S. Dines, who was shot by Normand's chauffeur with her pistol. She was not a suspect in either crime. Her film career declined, possibly due to both scandals and a recurrence of tuberculosis in 1923, which led to a decline in her health, retirement from films and her death in 1930 at age 37.
Mabel Normand has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to Motion Pictures, at 6821 Hollywood Boulevard.
Her film Mabel's Blunder (1914) was added to the National Film Registry in December 2009.
In June 2010, the New Zealand Film Archive reported the discovery of a print of Normand's film Won in a Closet (exhibited in New Zealand under its alternate title Won in a Cupboard), a short comedy previously believed lost. This film is a significant discovery, as Normand directed the movie and starred in the lead role, making it a showcase for her talents on both sides of the camera.
Heinze’s Resurrection
Mack Sennett
Ford Sterling, Fred Mace
Heinze is lazy, and his wife is disgusted with him. His friend, Pat, secretly admires Mrs. Heinze, and one day tells her to make Heinze help her with her work. Heinze refuses to assist her and is doused with a pail of water. Angered, he leaves the house and meets Pat, to whom he tells his troubles Pat advises him to play off dead, to see if his wife loves him.
Heinze’s Resurrection
A Victim of Circumstance
Mack Sennett
Fred Mace, Dell Henderson
It is hubby's birthday and the wife wishing to surprise him, surreptitiously interviews the jeweler's clerk to order a gold watch as a present. Her mysterious action arouses suspicion in the husband, who follows her at a distance and witnesses the meeting between her and the clerk. The hour arriving for the delivery of the watch, wifey goes to the door to meet it, and while standing outside, the door closes and locks on her skirt, holding her captive. Having no key, she induces the clerk to climb through the second story window and come down to unlock the door. All would have been well, but the clerk encounters the husband and it looked had for the clerk for a while.
A Victim of Circumstance
My Valet
Mack Sennett
Raymond Hitchcock, Mack Sennett
The parents of a wealthy young man arrange for him to marry a woman he has never seen. When he meets and falls for a young woman he convinces his valet to switch places. The idea is that the valet will make a bad impression on the fiance, the wedding will canceled and the hero can marry his true love. There is only one problem, his love and unseen fiance are the same woman.
My Valet
The Rube and the Baron
Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand
Mabel is in love with John, the country boy, but her father wants her to marry a Baron. She is locked up in a room, and her father watches her. John takes a bundle of cloth and makes a big firebrand which he throws into the window, at the same time yelling, "Fire." Dad runs for his life and Mabel jumps through the window into the arms of John, who hurries her to the minister's house. The ceremony is about to take place when Dad and the Baron rush in, and Mabel is led home again.
The Rube and the Baron
Brown’s Séance
Fred Mace
Fred Mace, Mabel Normand
Brown and his friends take an afternoon off, spending their time with some pretty chorus girls. Their wives persuade them to go to a spiritualist meeting and the medium makes the startling announcement that a man present is not true to his wife. The women demand the name of the man, and she refuses to answer questions in the meeting but promises to do so at a private séance next morning. At the appointed hour the wives arrive, and Brown and his friends try to hush up the medium, but she makes them pay dearly for her statement to their wives that their husbands are true to them.
Brown’s Séance
Sis Hopkins
Clarence G. Badger
Mabel Normand, John Bowers
Sis is an eccentric young girl in a small rural village. While most around Sis view her as a joke, she is loved by Ridy Scarboro, the clerk at the general store. One day Sis's dog knocks an oil can into the Hopkins well and when wealthy old Vibert tastes the water, he believes the Hopkins have an oil strike.....
Sis Hopkins
Italian Blood
D. W. Griffith
Charles West, Vivian Prescott
In the little Italian home the wife feels she is neglected and apparently it seems that her husband's love is growing cold, for he has become decidedly indifferent. She, therefore, plans with her cousin to arouse his love through jealousy. At an Italian picnic, after repeated vain efforts to draw her husband's attentions toward her, she starts off with her cousin, passing in view of her husband. His fiery nature is violently aroused with jealousy, and rushing home in a towering rage, would have wreaked disaster to the entire family, for his terrible suspicion poisons his mind even against his two little children. He learns the truth, however, and realizes now to what extreme the result of his neglect would have driven him.
Italian Blood
Mabel’s Latest Prank
Mack Sennett
Mabel Normand, Charles Bennett
Mabel meets a masher in the park while en route to get a position as maid. Later she finds the man was the husband of her new mistress. There is an exciting chase scene, and the picture winds up with everyone in the lake.
Mabel’s Latest Prank
When a Man’s Married His Trouble Begins
James Morrison, Mabel Normand
Jack Howard, through hard work, has at last placed himself in a comfortable position and finds himself with his dear little wife, Mabel, located in a little apartment with all the comforts of home. He is now ready to enjoy married life; the strain has been too great, however, and he is almost on the verge of nervous prostration, sick and irritable. Mabel tries to cheer and comfort him; she waits on him and is a truly good and faithful wife, very much concerned about her hubby. She insists he must take a vacation.
When a Man’s Married His Trouble Begins
Upstairs
Victor Schertzinger
Mabel Normand, Cullen Landis
While working as a dishwasher in a fashionable New York hotel, Elsie MacFarland often sneaks upstairs to enviously peek at the people dancing to jazz music. Seeing the attractive Elsie dressed in a boy's uniform, wealthy Lemuel Stallings wagers a friend that he can get Elsie onto the dance floor....
Upstairs
