Looking for Mabel Normand
Madcap Mabel Normand
From Silents to Sound
From silents to sound–book details
tipping point in
By Thomas Gladysz
SF Silent Film Examiner
From Silents to Sound: A Biographical Encyclopedia of Performers Who Made the Transition to Talking Pictures,
by Roy Liebman, softcover from McFarland.
The arrival of sound in the late 1920s proved a kind of tipping point in the history of film, as many of the biggest stars of the day faced a difficult transition to what must have seemed (both to them and to their fans) an almost new medium.
That observation is at the heart of a new book, just published in soft cover, on this interesting and important period in film history.
Garbo balked, then talked. Chaplin refused. Clara Bow feared the microphone. Louise Brooks left for
Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Lillian Gish and many other fan favorites also saw their stardom slip away. The times were changing, and so were the movies and those who performed in them.
As author Roy Liebman notes in his considered introduction, “it is probably true that a majority of silent actors and actresses experienced varying degrees of career decline after sound came in. It is also true that some went on to even greater heights than they would have achieved had the cinema remained silent.”
Why did some careers come to an end? And why did some begin anew? Those questions are at the heart of each of the profiles included in Liebman’s book.
Certainly, the new technology took its toll. Actors who had poor speaking voices or regional or foreign accents were considered unsuited to the new medium. And certainly, the addition of dialogue demanded a somewhat different acting style. Some failed to adapt.
However, Liebman also suggests that the creative and economic turmoil created by the arrival of sound created a situation in which the studios took advantage. Of course, there was the inevitable desire for fresh faces. But as well, “The advent of sound gave the studios new leverage over their stables of stars. When contracts expired, studio heads seized the opportunity to cut the salaries of some of their high priced stars under the threat of dismissal. . . . Another ploy used by the studios was to cite problems of ‘temperament’.” In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, many performers were released from their contracts for these and similar reasons.
One actress – now more popular then at the height of her career in the Twenties, is Louise Brooks. Her story is typical of the many film personalities profiled in From Silents to Sound.
Brooks appeared in a handful of silent films, and was considered a rising star. In 1928, her contract was up for renewal.
Feeling snubbed, Brooks refused
Lupe Velez, one of the stars featured in this year’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival, also had an up-and-down career. Velez’s brief tenure in silent pictures began in 1927, and within a year, she made her feature debut second-billed to Douglas Fairbanks in The Gaucho. Her first sound film was D.W. Griffith’s 1929 part-talkie, Lady of the Pavements. Nicknamed the “Mexican Spitfire,” Velez's hectic and much-reported love life included affairs with the likes of Gary Cooper and Johnny Weissmuller (with whom she also had a stormy marriage).
During the sound era, Velez was often typecast. As Liebman notes, “Talkies revealed her considerable accent and she was more or less consigned to a range of exotic portrayals that included characters who were French-Canadian, Indian and even Chinese.” As her career faded, Velez made Spanish-language versions of
While the careers of many stars suffered with the coming of sound, some actors found new opportunities. Talkative comedian W.C. Fields, crusty character actor Alan Hale, and dashing romantic lead Ronald Colman each enjoyed success during the silent era. And each went on to even greater accomplishment and fame in the sound era.
Of interest to Bay Area readers are the handful of stars included in From Silents to Sound who hail from the Bay Area. San Francisco-born actors Alma Rubens, George O’Brien, Lawrence Gray, Aileen Pringle, and Ruth Roland – as well as Oakland-born Lloyd Hamilton and San Jose-born Edmund Lowe - are each given their due in Liebman’s wide-ranging book. [O’Brien and Hamilton are also the subjects of biographies due out later this year.]
Interesting, and somewhat telling, is an appendix, “Some Silent Stars Who Did Not Appear in Talkies.” There are some significant names on the list – Theda Bara, Mary Miles Minter, Nita Naldi, Mabel Normand, Constance Talmadge, Alice Terry, and
A second appendix lists actors and actresses whose sound career was exceptionally brief. Gilda Gray, Georgia Hale, and Florence Vidor, for example, are among the silent stars who appeared in only one talking or part-talking American feature, while Vilma Banky, Jetta Goudal, Norma Talmadge could only claim two talkies to their credit. With the arrival of sound, new faces and new voices stepped in to roles these one time fan favorites often played.
The arrival of sound – and the advent of talking pictures, was a turbulent period in film history. It is a period written about – but not so thoroughly detailed. Roy Liebman’s eminently readable book is a fascinating, fact-filled work; it is also the kind of book one can enjoyably dip into, find the answer to the proverbial “whatever happened to” question, and then put down. And then just as quickly pick up again to peruse willy-nilly or check the career of a just remembered favorite. From Silents to Sound: A Biographical Encyclopedia of Performers Who Made the Transition to Talking Pictures belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in early film.
Olive Thomas
Olive Thomas: The Life and Death of a Silent Film Beauty
Marilyn Slater
March 25, 2009
"Looking-for-Mabel"
Michelle Vogel has written a concise primer of the life and death of the 
beautiful Olive Thomas, she was a true silent film beauty.
That is not to say that there were not other silent film beauties nor was Olive Thomas’s beauty just limited to silent films. According to the book, Ollie was voted the “most beautiful girl in 
entered the Follies, she hadn’t even entered films, yet and this is just 4 pages into the book.
Her life was lived fast and sadly it was much, much, much too short. This little book is very much in the same vain, it moves quickly through the life of Olive Thomas, stopping only at the major points in her life and is shortly dealing with her inopportune death and its aftermath.
It is a book for the beginner, a place to find all the usual stories; it is not a book
for the obsessive fanatical hunter of new novel theories, who has read all the martial. It is a brilliant answer to the question, “Who was Olive Thomas”; it is a prefect gift to introduce her to a friend.
There are 10 chapters, a good discussion of the problems of nitrate film storage, a number of photos, a very complete chronology of her performances, a nice index and best of all - wonderful citations, for 
those of us who like that kind of thing.
Just one story about Ollie and her second husband, the prince of the royal family of Pickford, Jack; Once upon a time, they danced. It was 1916 and they were young and moved together as if created
from the same piece of warm amber. By their 3rd date, Jack gave her a small platinum case inscribed “To Olive Thomas, the only sweetheart I will ever have.” Now don’t you want to read the book?
As a number of you know, there was a rather close relationship between Olive Thomas and Mabel Normand. I created a posted awhile ago about Ollie’s gem auction which is mention in Michelle’ book... The inscription on the platinum case was described in my article as,
green gold cigarette case with a watch containing fifty-six brilliant diamonds with gold chain attached, which was sold to Mrs. Frederick F. Fish of
In the “Prologue” is the re-telling of the William Desnond Taylor murder and the Arbuckle mess, Mabel is included there but here are the two pages with her name listed in the index (one looks like a reprint from the newspaper archive).
The Fun Factory
Marilyn Slater
“Looking-for-Mabel”
I would like to recommend a book;
THE FUN FACTORY by Rob King
(the little fringe around the book’s edges are my post-it notes)
Rob King is an Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and History currently at the
The title of the book is “The Fun Factory;” it covers the period from 1912 when the Keystone Studio was established to around 1917 when the “Fun Factory” morphed into the Mack Sennett Studios. It is a cultural and social history rather than the more common film histories, which tend to be “Great Man” histories, the kind that tell the story of a particular era through the life of a dominate personality. Research is the strength of this book since almost a 3rd of “The Fun Factory” are the end-notes and, frankly, the notes alone are worth far more than the price of the book, which is extremely reasonable.
If you want to know about the products made at the Keystone Studio (The Fun Factory), this is the book for you: “The history of the changing social patterns that produced laughter.”
What you will find is a thoughtful and detailed discussion of “The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture” and the importance of slapstick films on the large American viewing public. He argues that the history of comedy reflects the general culture, which was portrayed on film (and the stage during this period) and the comedy expressed the values of the society.
If you are looking for a new discussion of “who threw the first pie,” “why Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand didn’t marry,” “who killed William Desmond Taylor,” “the love life of Charlie Chaplin,” “if Gloria Swanson was a bathing beauty,” or pictures of the early players or a filmography of Keystone films this is not a book where you will find that kind of stuff.
There are some illustrations but small, and for the most part, ones, which you are probably familiar, if you have done any research into Keystone; they are mostly from the Margaret Herrick Library Collection. The filmography in the back of the book only covers the films discussed within the text and is very abridged.
There are some thoughtful and well-researched monographs on class and popular culture inasmuch as they are reflective of the mass entertainments of the era. There is another composition on the ethnic-comedies with some wonderful insights into the on-screen character played by Ford Sterling. He wrote a terrific treatise on “Tillie’s Punctured Romance.” It is presented in a classic compare-and-contrast composition format It deals with the feature film and the stage play, Tillie’s Nightmare, The Triangle dream of Harry Aitken and his brother, Roy, is explored in a very understandable chapter.
Rob King takes-apart a number of the split-reels screen-by-screen (much like the work done by the French film scholar, Thierry Georges Mathieu, with his monumental work on “La Naissance de Charlot,” the journals of each of the Chaplin films from 1914 at Keystone
I agree with the author in that the timing of the shorts are reflective of the rhythms of the industrial factories with which the working-class audiences would have been familiar with but the whole use of the various “machines” in the Keystone production was something I had not thought of before but it is so much apart of the Fun Factory product! There is also a nice essay on the use of the Bathing Beauties as a part of the emerging new consumer culture.
What is of particular interest to me is the material on the “New Women” in a section called “A Slap From A Perfumed Hand: The Screen Comedy of Mabel Normand,” in which Rob King wrote “For the New Woman had defined herself, in large part, by reclaiming the right to her own embodiment against the morally and spiritually defined – hence quintessentially disembodied – ideal of true womanhood. Hence the growth of women’s sporting pursuits, hence the flamboyance and flirtations encouraged in the new world of commercial recreation…” I had not considered the development of the amusement parks as a place where women were allowed to participate without the restrictions of the social rules that where still very much a part of the Victorian primary social paradigm, and, of course, my interest is in the influence of Mabel Normand on the Keystone audiences and beyond.
All in all this is a scholarly little treasure but accessible to the general, educated public.
The amazon link is below:
http://www.amazon.com/Fun-Factory-Keystone-Company-Emergence/dp/0520255380/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229399451&sr=8-1
FORD STERLING The Life and Films
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Ford The Life and Films By Wendy Warwick White |
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Born into a wealthy middle class The main focus of the work is |
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About the Author
NOW AVAILABLE Email: drummersmoll@cox.net In addition to McFarland and Company, Inc. Ford can be found at the following places –
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