Amazing to think after all of these reviews, I don’t believe I’ve ever done a Keystone era Sennett short. Never a Mabel Normand film. Never a Ford Sterling film. Well folks, that ends now, because this time around it’s 1913’s MABEL’S DRAMATIC CAREER. In simple terms, the plot is things don’t work out between Mack Sennett and Mabel. Mabel goes to Hollywood and after the girl Sennett dumps Mabel for rejects him, Mack goes to the movie and sees Mabel on screen. That’s the simple story, but it’s what they do with it that’s so fun.
Perhaps I’m devolving as I get older, but these past few years, I’ve developed a great appreciation for lack of subtlety, and these characters in the film lack it in spades. The emotional maturity of five year olds. Mabel gets yelled at and drops dishes as a reaction. She chases people around with weapons at rejection. Now Ms. Normand was a real woman in the realm of slapstick comedy….or, (clears throat), excuse me, farce comedy. Not one of these pretty faces who does nothing, she gets into the spirit of things and I love her for it. Of course she had an excessive life and left us way too soon, but in her youth, she was always fun to watch. Could be the sweet girl or the slapstick diva and in this short, she’s the latter. God bless Mabel.
Then there is Mack Sennett himself. Yes, that’s him as the leading man. While mostly known for being a producer, he was an actor in the very early Keystone shorts as well as at Biograph before this. Sennett’s comic character here is about as stereotypical country bumpkin as one can get. The slumped shoulders, the slacked jaw - you almost want to wipe the drool off his chin. If there were a caption bubble above his head, it would say, “Duh!?” He overreacts to things as well, my favorite being when he faces rejection, he throws and breaks a glass tea cup at the girl before putting her over his knee and spanking her. This ain’t real life, the the world of Keystone comedy, circa 1913. God bless Mack.
Then there’s Ford Sterling. Ford played a parody of the typical Victorian era villain. If Sennett had a “Duh!?” caption bubble above his head, Sterling’s would be “Curses!” The type who leers, points at the audience, pantomimes the action he is about to do, which is usually the equivalent of tying his lady to the railroad tracks. Here, he’s doing his act in the context of a film within a film - so SHERLOCK, JR. was not the first. Sennett is in the audience thinking the harm he’s doing to Mabel is real. Back to that five year old mentality again, Sennett just takes out a gun and randomly shoots in the air. One of those special guns that appears regularly in early Sennett films that have an unlimited supply of bullets. Oh, and yes folks, that is Roscoe Arbuckle in the audience as the annoyed spectator. God bless him, and Sterling too.
So this is a long overdue review into the world of Keystone Sennett. It’s not for everyone, Mr. Walter Kerr was not a fan, for example and since I read his book before seeing most of these Keystone shorts, he left me with a bad impression. To each their own, but I’ve grown a great appreciation for this level of chaos over the years. How about you?