Mabel's Busy Day

Mack Sennett and Keystone pioneered a type of Guerrilla Theater in the years 1911-1915. An event would be taking place, usually near Hollywood. Sennett would grab a bunch of actors and a camera and they would drive to the event. He would shoot the event and have the actors improvise a story around it. Here you have the Queen (Mabel Normand) and King (Charlie Chaplin) of comedy attending an auto race and both improvising slapstick. It is just amazing to watch and pure delight. You can see the crowds in the background rollicking with laughter as they see the future legends performing what would later be called street theater for them and the camera. You might also notice the genuine affection that Charlie and Mabel have for each other, especially in the last scene where they cry together.

This is bliss on film. In the online dictionary, when they give the definition of "happiness," they should show this film.

This is no ordinary Keystone slap-stick 1-reeler. It appears to be a situation comedy, but has pathos cleverly woven into it. Cleverly because, when Mabel starts crying the smartly-dressed Charlie starts crying too. However, just as the audience's eyes fill with tears, he runs off with a handful of Mabel's sausages…ha, ha, ha! Almost certainly the pair had a sketchy story-line. They did not plan a situation alone, which led to a chase, from which girl and boy emerge to live happily ever after. Yes, they do depart together, but unhappily, Mabel having lost her wares, and Chaplin an expensive- looking coat.

The choice of costumes in this film is interesting. Charlie has abandoned the tramp look, and gone upmarket. Mabel, however, has become a kind of tramp herself, a character American audiences were beginning to understand. This particular street-vending character would have been familiar to London boy Charlie, as an Irish tinker or a costermonger's girl, thousands of whom were still walking the streets of London in Edwardian times. . Mabel told in a 1922 article, how she made a point of closely observing the ragged street-vendors of Manhatten's East Side. She mentions one girl in particular who was ragged, but made a ludicrous and pathetic attempt at being stylish. Mabel had a fascination with slums and slum-dwellers, and rather foolishly 'sleep-walked' into the still dangerous London East End in 1922.

There's one thing everyone should learn about Irish tinkers and costermonger's girls, and that is 'do not mess with them'! Being a colleen herself, Mabel has no problem falling into this part, and floors any man that mistreats her. Some of the faces she effects when confronting Charlie are enough to scare the 'bejeebers' out of anyone. Mary Pickford always thought Mabel possessed 'murderer's eyes' (admittedly, Mabel did pluck her murderer's eyebrows). Quite how Mabel completed this film at such a frantic pace is a mystery, but she is clearly drained at the end. Was she cocaine-fuelled? Who knows, but she'd completed Mabel's Married life within the next few days. It was some years later that Mabel admitted to arriving home from Keystone, falling into bed and crying herself to sleep, such was the pain that permeated her body.

Like Chaplin's derby, Mabel's hat has an air of the middle-class about it. Her bodice is rather pompous, but outdated, and like Charlie's tight tramp jacket, barely contains the buxom lass. Mabel's gingham skirt is the female version of Charlie's baggy trousers, and is an absolute scream. The bystanders find the various rents, rucks, and dangling hem, highly amusing. Finally, the shoes; no self-respecting tramp would wear the proper size, and the normally petite Mabel sports a pair large enough to swamp old 'clown's feet' Ford Sterling! Note that Mabel is not pigeon-toed as normally described, if she was so endowed she would soon have bashed her face in, romping about in those big clumpers. Minta Durfee said she always shed tears when the beautiful Mabel dressed in rags at the behest of Sennett. There can be little doubt that this 'ragged Rose' was a result of collaboration between Mabel and Charlie, the latter going on to cast somewhat similar characters (notably the 'flower girl') while the nearest Mabel came later to portraying a street-vending tramp was as a tattered domestic drudge.

Just like Charlie, the tramp-lady has some disgusting habits, and the usually lovable Mabel continually licks her fingers and cuffs her runny nose while serving the food. Note that she does not seem to shout 'Hot Dogs' but simply 'Sausages' – obviously the former term wasn't widely used at that time.

It is difficult to determine the meaning of the film's ending, but if Mabel was truly a costermonger's girl, then she would not have dared return home, where her parents (or 'man') would have administered a savage beating to her for losing the stock. Charlie, then, was already developing the humane character of his later films, by leading her away (to his home?) rather than kicking her in the derriere. Oh, how Alice Davenport must have cried at these tragic scenes; she always wept uncontrollably when Chaplin was acting on the lot.

Mabel is partially returning to her Biograph role as a tragedienne, a role for which Mary Pickford said she was eminently suited (the great Griffith thought differently and sent her to Sennett – the 'genius' later said she was no comedienne either). The relationship between Charlie and Mabel is one of the great mysteries of silent films, considering that the future of film comedy was decided, not in Sennett's watchtower office, but in Mabel's bungalow, where the talented (but very strange) pair spent long hours in discussion. Oh, to have been a fly on that wall.

In this comedy the usual strenuous work of the Keystone artists, headed by Mabel Normand and Charles Chaplin, almost makes the screen on which it is thrown visibly, wobble. The scenes are located in the enclosure of a race course and Mabel is peddling hot-dog sandwiches. Chaplin is a butter-in and mixes things up generally; hot dog is his favorite fruit and he bankrupts Mabel's business. An exciting auto race lends to the picture; it is worth seeing. - The Moving Picture World, June 27, 1914

Whenever you have both Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin in the cast, you can be fairly sure that there will be something worthwhile in the movie. While most of the material in "Mabel's Busy Day" isn't very imaginative, the two stars give it enough energy and personality to make it worth watching.

There really isn't much to the story, which has Mabel working as a hot dog vendor at a race track, and with lesser performers it probably would have worn thin pretty quickly. There's plenty of action, but not all of it makes sense, and sometimes the pace is a little too frantic for some of the gags to come off well. But it's not bad for its era, and to fans of the old silent comedies, this kind of silly but innocuous feature always has a certain charm.

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors.

He did do better than 'The Knockout', still made very early on in his career where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for. Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'Mabel's Busy Day' is a long way from a career high, but has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the better efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch and one of Chaplin and Mabel Normand's collaborations.

'Mabel's Busy Day' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and some other shorts in the same period. The story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious. Occasionally, things feel a little scrappy and confused.

For someone who was still relatively new to the film industry and had literally just moved on from their stage background, 'Mabel's Busy Day' is not bad at all.

While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable for so early on and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. Mabel Normand is charming and has good comic timing, working well with Chaplin.

Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'Mabel's Busy Day' is humorous, sweet and easy to like, though the emotion is not quite there. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short.

Overall, far from one of Chaplin's best but pretty good and perhaps one of his better efforts from the early Keystone period. 7/10 Bethany Cox