Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett was a pioneering figure in the early American film industry, known for his innovative contributions to comedy and filmmaking. Born in 1880 to Irish Catholic immigrants in Quebec, Canada, Sennett pursued a career in the performing arts, initially aspiring to be an opera singer. He shifted his focus to film in the early 1900s, becoming a prominent actor and director at the Biograph Company, where he developed the iconic character archetype of the bumbling police officer, later known as the Keystone Kops.
In 1912, Sennett co-founded Keystone Pictures Studio, where he produced a series of influential comedic films characterized by their fast-paced slapstick humor. His work laid the groundwork for modern comedic film, introducing beloved concepts like the Bathing Beauties and the Kid Komedies. Throughout his career, Sennett directed and produced over a thousand films, contributing to the rise of major stars such as Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson. Despite facing challenges during the transition to sound films, he remained active in the industry until his later years.
Sennett's legacy is honored with an honorary Academy Award, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and recognition in Canada's cultural history. He is also remembered for his lasting impact on the genre of comedy and for his role in shaping the visual culture of early cinema.
Mack Sennett
Film Director
- Born: January 17, 1880
- Birthplace: Richmond, Quebec, Canada
- Died: November 5, 1960
- Place of death: Hollywood, California
Canadian filmmaker and actor
Sennett, one of the first outstanding pioneers of American silent films, invented a personal slapstick style, both vulgar and violent, which is said to have begun the golden age of American film comedy.
Areas of achievement Film, theater and entertainment
Early Life
Mack Sennett (SEHN-iht) was born to Irish Catholic immigrants who settled in Canada around 1875. His father established himself as a blacksmith in the Eastern Townships, south of Montreal, Quebec. Sennett was born in Richmond, Quebec. A lively character, he showed little interest in school, except for one year, in 1896, when he went to the University of Napierville. In 1897, at the age of seventeen, he moved with his family to East Berlin, Connecticut, and later, to Northampton, Massachusetts.
In 1902, Sennett was working as a common laborer but was dreaming of becoming an opera singer, a dream he shared with Marie Dressler, a major Canadian vaudeville star. Dressler gave him a letter of introduction to David Belasco, the most powerful personality on the New York City theater scene at the time. Sennett went to New York City to meet Belasco, but that meeting turned out to be unsuccessful. He stayed among artists to try for a career on the stage, to the great displeasure of his mother.
In 1906, at the age of twenty-six, Sennett was singing chorus parts, dancing, performing acrobatics, and playing low comedies on stage. He also appeared in the Edison Company’s first motion pictures. During those years, he developed the character of the police officer as a fool unable to do his job properly, a figure foreshadowing his Keystone Kops, who would give his future films a recognizable stamp of their own.
Life’s Work
Sennett’s nearly thirty-year career can be divided into six different periods. First, the Biograph Company period, in which he had been hired as a handyman and actor by Wallace McCutcheon, the head of Biograph. Sennett performed with a number of stars such as Mary Pickford in films directed by D. W. Griffith, who was to become his mentor of sorts. Sennett took every opportunity he had to learn the business. In 1909, he started writing scripts for Griffith, including The Curtain Pole (1909). By 1910, he began directing comedies under Griffith’s supervision, including A Lucky Toothache and The Masher. In 1911, Sennett took the place of the second unit’s director, Frank Powell, who was ill at the time, and directed his first comedy, Comrades. It was also in 1911 that the first film directed by Sennett, The Diving Girl, came out. Sennett and Mabel Normand, the film’s star, had a lasting love affair, but they never married.
Sennett’s second career phase began in 1912, his most prolific period. He left Biograph and cofounded the Keystone Pictures Studio in Edendale (now the Echo Park and Silver Lake area of Los Angeles), California, with Adam Kessel and Charles O. Bauman of the New York Motion Picture Company. Many of Biograph’s best actors moved to Hollywood and soon worked with Sennett. The essence of Keystone’s productions was movement, speed, chase, and custard pie “warfare.” It was at this time that Sennett also invented the Keystone Kops, a burlesque of attempts at social order; the Bathing Beauties, a burlesque of attempts at pornographic sexuality; and the Kid Komedies, a series of comedies starring children, which predated the better-known Our Gang series of Hal Roach by nearly ten years. Sennett’s Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914), the world’s first feature-length comedy (ninety minutes), was a six-reel comic film starring Dressler, Charlie Chaplin, Normand, Mack Swain, Chester Conklin, and the Keystone Kops.
Marking his third career phase, in 1915, Sennett joined with Griffith and Thomas Ince to create Triangle Pictures Corporation, which merged Keystone as an autonomous production unit. With such films as Mickey (1916-1918), comedy moved from improvisational slapstick to works that were scripted. Sennett was joined by stars like Bobby Vernon and by Gloria Swanson, who starred in The Danger Girl (1916). In 1917, Sennett founded Mack Sennett Comedies Corporation, his own company, and produced longer comedy short films distributed through Paramount and, later, First National.
In 1923, Sennett moved to Pathé, a film production and distribution company that owned a major share of the market, and began the fourth phase of his career. He worked mostly with Billy Bevan Lizzies of the Field (1924) and The Beach Club (1928) and launched the career of the great comedian Harry Langdon in a series of shorts Picking Peaches (1924), All Night Long (1924), and Boobs in the Wood (1925).
Sennett next began the sound-film phase of his career, which lasted from 1929 through 1935. His contributions to the early years of sound film were quite minor, however, as slapstick comedy could not make an easy transition to sound. In 1929, he was almost ruined financially by the Wall Street crash. In 1932, he returned to Paramount and produced shorts featuring W. C. Fields and musical films with Bing Crosby. That same year he won an award in the novelty division for his film Wrestling Swordfish (1931). In November, 1933, however, he filed a petition for voluntary bankruptcy. Two years later, in 1935, the old Paramount organization collapsed and Republic Pictures bought Sennett’s studio property.
Sennett’s last phase began when he was fifty-five years old. He had just directed Buster Keaton in The Timid Young Man (1935) and was too young to retire. In 1949, he participated in the making of Down Memory Lane, the first full-length comedy compilation. In 1952, he went to France and was named “king” at the Cannes Festival. In 1954, he wrote his autobiography, King of Comedy, with Cameron Shipp. Sennett remained active in Hollywood social circles and was often called upon by interviewers. In 1956, he contributed to the radio program Biography in Sound.
On November 5, 1960, Sennett died in Hollywood, a few months short of his eighty-first birthday. He was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California, which contains the graves and tombs of some of Hollywood’s biggest names.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Sennett received an honorary Academy Award in 1937 and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard). The Alexandria literary movement listed him as an honorary member, posthumously, and in 2004, Canada honored him with a maple leaf on Canada’s Walk of Fame along Theater Row in downtown Toronto.
Significance
A master of fun, Sennett wrote, directed, produced, or starred in more than one thousand films and invented the so-called gagman job. He also discovered an incredible number of stars, among them Normand, Chaplin, Langdon, Conklin, Swanson, Ford Sterling, Roscoe Arbuckle, Ben Turpin, and Harold Lloyd. Sennett and Normand’s relationship is the subject of Michael Stewart and Jerry Herman’s musical Mack and Mabel, with Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters, first performed on Broadway in 1974.
In addition to his filmmaking, Sennett headed the investment company behind the Hollywoodland housing development project, which built the most famous symbol of Hollywood the Hollywood sign in 1923 on Mt. Lee in Griffith Park, which forever ties him to the Hollywood film industry.
Bibliography
Lahue, Kalton C. Mack Sennett’s Keystone: The Man, The Myth, and the Comedies. Cranbury, N.J.: A. S. Barnes, 1971. A well-researched history of Mack Sennett and the rise of Keystone Studios. Good overview of the silent era, Sennett’s career, and the major comedians who rose to fame because of him.
Louvish, Simon. Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett. London: Faber & Faber, 2003. With a lively spirit, Louvish investigates early Hollywood comedies, Sennett’s work, and Sennett the man, and revisits his legendary relationship with Mabel Normand. Includes film synopses from Keystone archives, minibiographies of several of the Sennett “clowns,” and forty-seven black-and-white photographs.
Mast, Gerald. The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies. 1974. Rev. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. A survey of film comedy’s history and evolution, its traditions, and its philosophical visions. Skillfully blends information with interpretation, description with analysis.
Sennett, Mack, with Cameron Shipp. King of Comedy. 1954. Rev. ed. New York: Excel Press, 2000. The book starts with Sennett’s childhood, describes his entertainment experiences and creations as well as his relationship with Mabel Normand. Interviews provide an intriguing insight into how films were made.
Sherk, Warren M., ed. The Films of Mack Sennett. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1998. Documentation from the Mack Sennett Collection at the Margaret Herrick Library. The most complete cataloging of the collection of papers and photographs that Sennett donated to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1951.
Slide, Anthony. Early American Cinema. 1970. Rev. ed. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1994. Provides a concise history of the American motion picture industry before 1920. Slide examines the work of the early production companies, the filmmakers, and the performers.
Related Articles in Great Events from History: The Twentieth Century
1901-1940: August, 1912: Sennett Defines Slapstick Comedy; June 26, 1925: Chaplin Produces His Masterpiece The Gold Rush.