Looking for Mabel Normand

Posted by:

Marilyn Slater, "Looking-for-Mabel"

on April 24, 2009

Sometimes, when I think of the outline of Mabel’s life, the “Roman numerals” seem to read,

1926, marries Lew Cody,

1927 retires from films,

1928 ill with TB,

1929 hospitalized,

1930 died.

But life is lived within the small lower cased letters of the outline of one’s life, so when I saw another piece of data it remained me that her life was being lived, even in 1928. Remember that I posted the article in REPRINTS, I found about Mabel and Ona Brown giving a birthday party for Doris Dean Arbuckle at the Hollywood Roosevelt in 1929?

And again a party at the hotel that is still right where it was, (I wish they would stop remolding it).

Hollywood Menu:signed: Charlie Chaplin,Buster Keaton,

Goldwyn ,Syd Grauman ,Earnst Lubitch ,D W Griffith

0 Bids

BUY IT NOW

$45,000.00

$50,000.00

No I do not think that $50,000 (eBay auction “buy now price”) is a reasonable price but I took a look at “Profile In History” actual website and they have the estimate, a more reasonable $400 (I am still not bidding on it). The signed Menu from a Testimonial Dinner for Al Lichtman given by Samuel Goldwyn was held May 15, 1928. At the sit-down dinner were at least the 24 people that signed the menu but they may have been others. As Norma, and Connie Talmadge both sign along with Buster Keaton, who was still married to Natalie, she may also have come and not signed, also perhaps a Mrs. Lichtman and other wives or husbands (not signing the menu) the people that did sign were:

1. Alvarado, Don

2. Banky, Vilma (Rod La Roque’s wife)

3. Byron, Walter

4. Carewe, Edwin, director

5. Chaplin, Charlie

6. Coleman, Ronald

7. Del Rio, Dolores

8. Goldwyn, Frances (wife of Samuel Goldwyn)

9. Goldwyn, Samuel

10. Grauman, Sid

11. Griffith, D W

12. Hornblow, Arthur

13. Keaton, Buster

14. King, Henry

15. La Roque, Rod

16. Lichtman, Al

17. Lubitsch, Ernst, German director

18. Normand, Mabel

19. Schenck, Joseph M

20. Talmadge, Constance

21. Talmadge, Norma (wife of Joseph Schenck)

22. Valez, Lupe

23. West, Roland, director

24. Wolheim, Louis

I think you are familiar with most of the names but just to remained you; Al Lichtman was a film producer and has his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The dinner was held in 1928 but back in 1912, he was a field manager for Famous Players, Alco Film was his own company in 1914 and had his own distribution company in the early 1920s. In 1923 he was president of Preferred Pictures and by 1927 was sales manager of United Artists. In a letter of understanding and agreement dated June 11, 1935 signed by Al Lichtman, Mary Pickford, Samuel Goldwyn, Charles Chaplin that Lichtman is to become president. He received $3000 per week paid each week, which in 2009 dollars would be $47066. So I guess we can say he was a major player. Sam Goldwyn may have given him a “Testimonial Dinner” in 1928, but by 1935 they had a fallout over the “Barbary Coast,” the Ben Hecht version, which was released October 13, 1935 and Al Lichtman resigned, so he was president of United Artists for just four months or perhaps less.

Lichtman became an executive producer for MGM, Goldwyn’s archenemy, later working for 20^th Century Fox, producing among other movies “The Young Lions” retiring in 1957.

I have included with a copy of the actual menu another historic document, the signed letter of agreement from 1935.