Mabel Normand

Acting

1893-11-09 · New Brighton, Staten Island, New York, USA

Mabel Normand (November 10, 1892– February 23, 1930) was an American silent film comedienne and actress, a popular star of Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios and noted as one of the film industry's first female screenwriters, producers and directors. Onscreen she appeared in a dozen commercially successful films with Charles Chaplin and seventeen with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, occasionally writing and directing movies featuring Chaplin as her leading man as well as sometimes co-writing and co-directing with Chaplin in films in which they played the lead roles. At the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Normand had her own movie studio and production company. Throughout the 1920s her name was linked with widely publicized scandals including the 1922 murder of William Desmond Taylor and the 1924 shooting of Courtland S. Dines, who was shot by Normand's chauffeur with her pistol. She was not a suspect in either crime. Her film career declined, possibly due to both scandals and a recurrence of tuberculosis in 1923, which led to a decline in her health, retirement from films and her death in 1930 at age 37. Mabel Normand has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to Motion Pictures, at 6821 Hollywood Boulevard. Her film Mabel's Blunder (1914) was added to the National Film Registry in December 2009. In June 2010, the New Zealand Film Archive reported the discovery of a print of Normand's film Won in a Closet (exhibited in New Zealand under its alternate title Won in a Cupboard), a short comedy previously believed lost. This film is a significant discovery, as Normand directed the movie and starred in the lead role, making it a showcase for her talents on both sides of the camera.