Biography for
Mack Sennett More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

17 January 1880, Richmond, Québec, Canada

Date of Death

5 November 1960, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA

Birth Name

Michael Sinnott

Nickname

The King of Comedy

Height

6' 2" (1.88 m)

Mini Biography

His parents were Irish immigrants. At 17, his parents moved to East Berlin, Connecticut, and he became a laborer at American Iron Works, a job he continued when they moved to Northampton, Massachusetts. He happened to meet the actress Marie Dressler in 1902 and through her, went to New York to try for a career on the stage. He managed some burlesque and chorus-boy parts. In 1908, he began acting in Biograph films. His work there lasted until 1911; it included direction by D.W. Griffith and acting with Mary Pickford and Mabel Normand. By 1910, he was directing. In 1912, he and two bookies formed the Keystone production company. He brought Mabel Normand with him and soon added 'Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle' , Chester Conklin Al St. John, Slim Summerville, Minta Durfee, and Charles Chaplin (who was directed by Sennett in 35 comedies during 1914). He told Chaplin: "We have no scenario--we get an idea then follow the natural sequence of events until it leads up to a chase, which is the essence of our comedy." To the slapstick chase gags of the Keystone Kops were gradually added the Bathing Beauties and the Kid Komedies. In 1915, he and Griffith and Thomas H. Ince formed Triangle Films. Comedy moved from improvisational slapstick to scripted situations. Stars like Bobby Vernon and Gloria Swanson joined him. In 1917, he formed Mack Sennett Comedies, distributing through Paramount and later Pathe, launching another star, Harry Langdon. When he returned to Paramount in 1932, he produced shorts featuring W.C. Fields and musical ones with Bing Crosby. After directing his only Buster Keaton film, The Timid Young Man (1935) he returned to Canada a pauper. In 1937, he was awarded a special Oscar -- "to the master of fun, discoverer of stars ... for his lasting contribution to the comedy technique of the screen."

IMDb Mini Biography By: Ed Stephan < stephan@cc.wwu.edu>

Mini Biography

Director; founder in 1912 of Keystone Studios, which introduced to silent-film comedy (and to the world!) the likes of Fatty Arbuckle, Mack Swain The Keystone Kops and...Charles Chaplin.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Bill Takacs < kinephile@aol.com>

Trade Mark

Franticly wild comedies that had observed no physical reality while the characters descended into chaos in improvised storylines and situations. Many of the films had the appearance of a squad of incompetant policemen known as the Keystone Kops, who would arrive in overloaded cars which they would often leave destroyed while they contributed to the mess they were sent to stop. This group has come to be regarded as the trademark of Keystone Studios and one of the key images of silent comedy.

Trivia

Mack always consider himself a comedian and often appeared in his films. The actors of the company, on other hand, thought he was terrible on camera and always tried to dissuade him from appearing.

Sennett was an inveterate chewer of tobacco, resulting in stained teeth.

Off screen pseudonym: Walter Terry

Portrayed by Robert Preston in the Broadway musical "Mack and Mabel" (1974). Book by Michael Stewart, music and lyrics by Jerry Herman.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945." Pages 986-992. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Left Triangle and Keystone in 1917.

Formed Keystone in August 1912 with Adam Kessel and Charles Bauman. The company was originally a production subsidiary of the New York Motion Picture Company.

Oddly, Sennett and his key competitor, Hal Roach, were both distributed by the same company, Pathe. This arrangement worked to the detriment of both producers while it lined the pockets of the French firm, which was able to play the comedy short giants off each other for years. By the time Pathe's U.S. fortunes declined considerably in 1925, Sennett was in far worse shape than Roach, who had valuable re-issue rights to Harold Lloyd's library, and the wildly popular "Our Gang" series gained him a lucrative distribution deal with MGM (Lloyd, his former associate, jumped to Paramount). Sennett had far less to fall back on. Although he had a well-deserved reputation for discovering talent, being able to keep them under contract was another matter. His inability to hang on to major stars became the stuff of legend. Equally problematic, his comedy style was seriously outdated by the mid-1920s and his most promising recent star, Harry Langdon, quickly departed in an ego-driven rage. Sennett's studio would be sold off in a 1933 bankruptcy and morph into Herbert J. Yates' Republic Pictures (also see Nat Levine, W. Ray Johnston and Trem Carr). Sennett would essentially end his professional career as a producer for Paramount's shorts division, working on Bing Crosby's earliest efforts along with a handful of W.C. Fields' classic early talkie quickies. Today, Sennett's treasured studio property is the heart of CBS' Television City.

Won an Oscar in 1935 for his great influence on film comedy.

Was the first producer to hire stars Charles Chaplin, Fred Mace and Ford Sterling in the movies, and while both Mabel Normand and Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle had worked in front of cameras before Keystone was established - Mabel at D.W. Griffith 1910-1912 and Roscoe at Selig 1909-1910 - it was during their employment at Sennett that they rose to stardom. Sennett eventually lost every one of them, however, always because they couldn't get on terms about honorarium.

According to "The History of Sherlock Holmes" (E-GO Enterprises, c. 1975) Sennett played the part of Sherlock Holmes in 11 films from 1911 to 1913.

Personal Quotes

[in the 1950s] What happened to the laughter? It used to be so much of it.

Pioneers are seldom from the nobility. There were no Dukes on the Mayflower.

The joke of life is the fall of dignity.

We never make fun of religion, politics, race or mothers. A mother never gets hit with a custard pie. Mothers-in-law, yes. But mothers, never!

[on his comedy technique] It's got to move!

I called myself the king of comedy, but I was a harassed monarch. I worked most of the time. It was only in the evenings that I laughed.

Anyone who tells you he has invented something new is a fool or a liar or both.

[on Harry Langdon] He was a quaint artist who had no business in the business.

It is infinitely easier to do comedies with men than with women. The latter are inclined to giggle and generally destroy the value of what they are attempting to put over by being too obviously frivolous. Men, on the other hand, take their work seriously and give it the attention it really requires.

The public is steadily getting harder to please, particularly so far as comedies are concerned. The time is past and almost forgotten when you could be sure of a laugh by merely making one of your actors walk up behind another and suddenly push him down or trip him, or do any one of the scores of stunts the old slap-stick comedian was able to get away with.

The more Keystone comedies I make, the more convinced I become that comedy is an art, and a high one at that. If those who are inclined to scoff at me will try their hand at directing just one of those comedies they designate as anything but art, I am pretty certain they will concede me my point.

Salary

Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (1955)	US$1,000
The Lonely Villa (1909)	$25

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