Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett

A biography of pioneer comedy mogul Mack Sennett and the tale of his Keystone studio and comedians.

Faber and Faber, London, November 2003
Faber and Faber/Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York, February 2004

The Financial Times, December 6 2003.
By Alex Games:

Between 1912 and 1933 Mack Sennett directed more than 1,150 films. This awesomely prolific film-maker was the genius behind the Keystone film studio, which gave us the Keystone Kops and, possibly, the first aerial custard pie in movie history. He also groomed many an artiste to silent-movie stardom, from Fatty Arbuckle to Charlie Chaplin, as well as having an on-screen relationship with Mabel Normand, Hollywood’s first female pin-up.

In Simon Louvish’s Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett (Faber £20) there is some speculation, arising from Sennett’s hands-off attitude to his own stars, the Bathing Beauties, as to whether his inability to hold down a relationship with a woman concealed a Benny Hill-like gay streak. But, faced with frustratingly scant evidence, Louvish can do little more than suggest, and then move on.

Nevertheless it is a fascinating biography of a giant in Hollywood history, up there with D. W. Griffith and Hal Roach. Louvish’s unravelling of the complex business side of early Hollywood is enlightening, and he has done well to gain access to a treasure trove of personal papers that has taken 40 years to archive.

There is pain in Sennett’s poignant demise, at a time when his films’ simple slapstick was upstaged by the verbal sparring of Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers: even Chaplin left the Little Tramp behind and learned to speak. And the brilliance of his glory days is richly and provocatively described.

 

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