Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett

An Irish-Canadian of impeccably uncomic ancestry, Mack Sennett founded in Hollywood in 1912 the world’s first studio devoted to movie comedy alone. For the next 20 years he presided over cinema’s most famous and popular clowns – from Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin, to Ben Turpin, Chester Conklin, Mack Swain, Ford Sterling, Louise Fazenda, Harry Langdon and very many more.

Simon Louvish, acclaimed biographer of W. C. Fields, the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy, now delves into the dynamic start of Hollywood comedy, tracking the life and clowns of one of cinema’s foremost pioneers, and uncovering the mystery of one of the screen’s legendary relationships – that of Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand, the first great motion picture comedienne.

Be warned, though: the world of Mack Sennett and his Keystone Studio is not for those who want their entertainment refined, their comedy sweetened and their comedians properly house-trained. This is a tale of pratfalls and slapstick, of lecherous husbands and unfaithful wives, mad lovers, moustache-twirling villains, flirtatious floozies, venal vagabonds – and, of course, the perpetually inkompetent Keystone Kops…