Mabel's Dramatic Career

Mabel's Dramatic Career is pure Keystone: the players emote like kids in a school play, the humor is broad (i.e. Mabel falls down a lot) and the characters' emotions are as big as their gestures. Look elsewhere for Chekhovian nuance; in the Keystone universe, people laugh, cry, sneer, scream, and throw stuff at each other at a moment's notice. Relationships end suddenly, and new ones form moments later. Motivation is basic, and everything is operatic.

The plot of this film is rudimentary. Mack Sennett plays a vulgar country rube who is in love with pretty maid Mabel Normand, although his mother opposes the match. But when a sophisticated city woman shows up, Mack quickly becomes interested in her, and breaks off his engagement with Mabel. His mother seizes the opportunity to send her away. Plucky Mabel gets a job as a movie actress while, unbeknownst to her, the city woman has rejected Mack. Time passes. Mack comes to the big city, goes to the movies, and sees Mabel on screen threatened by a villain. (A funny scene!) But he's appalled to learn that she is actually married to the Bad Guy actor; who, as it happens, appears to be a nice enough guy, off-screen. Mack winds up alone, a pathetic chump who ruined his chance for happiness.

In outline it's not a funny plot, in fact the story told here is a sad one. And once you learn a few details about the actors and actresses who starred in the Keystone comedies, so many of whom met with tragedy in later life, the undercurrents we sense as we watch them perform can be genuinely moving, even in a breezy short comedy like this one. Something not unlike the basic plot of Mabel's Dramatic Career played out in real life: according to his autobiography, Mack Sennett was in love with Mabel Normand, and engaged to her, but when she caught him with another actress she broke off the engagement. Although it was intended as pure slapstick, Mabel's Dramatic Career is strangely touching, over and above what actually occurs during its brief running time.

Real-life sadness aside, there's an amusing moment during the sequence in the movie theater when Mack watches Mabel on screen. She's being threatened by the hilariously hammy Ford Sterling, who holds a bomb with a lighted fuse; Mack, horrified, attempts to blow it out. We're reminded of those stories of early cinema audiences frightened by the sight of oncoming trains, a reminder of the newness of cinema in 1913 that gives the film historical bonus points.

Mabel appears as her usual domestic 'slavey' and Mack as his usual awkward country boy in a dirty shirt. For a girl who was addicted to Parisian fashions, it's remarkable how Mabel is so often cast in rags by Sennett. However, in this film she appears to be wearing a kind of uniform.

There is some realism here, in the fact that the screen Mack is much enamored with Mabel and puts an engagement ring on her finger. In around 1912, the real Mack did in fact give the, then, Biograph Girl a two-dollar engagement ring, promising to replace it later with a 'proper' one. True to form, our country hick puts the ring on the wrong hand, and has to be shown by Mabel where to place it. Mack's mother (Mabel's employer), however, blows into the scene and is not amused. She banishes Mabel to the kitchen and berates Mack for his foolishness.

When a girl from the city arrives, Mack suddenly transfers his affections from Mabel the drudge, to the sophisticated, chauffeur-driven city girl (who is she, is she a movie star?). Mabel remonstrates with turn-coat Mack, pointing to the ring. When Mack and city girl retire to the garden, Mabel pursues them brandishing a handy stick. The glaring daggers of Mabel's Irish eyes (murderer's eyes according to Mary Pickford) are a sight to behold.

After lashing out at Mack and girl, Mabel pursues them into the house, where she whacks ma' and tries to strangle the city girl. Ma' orders Mabel out, and Mabel is next seen outside with a suitcase in her hand and what D W Griffith called 'one of those awful hats' on her head (it appears to have a garden planted atop). Enter Mack, who tears the ring from slavey's finger, and orders her away. Mabel demonstrates some good Biograph-inspired tragic crying then punches Mack in the mouth, Keystone style. Mabel trudges to the big city, where she stumbles upon Keystone studios (not the real 'poverty row' one, but a suave Wilshire Boulevard version). Mabel joyfully enters, thinking she can make it as an actress. She's in luck, Ford Sterling is totally smitten with the ex-slavey, and engages her, despite her hilarious but clumsy actions around the set.

The fun and games occur when Mack goes into a picture-house to see a Keystone film. He vaguely recognises the girl on the poster outside, but cannot believe his eyes when Mabel appears on the screen with a lover. More disturbing is the fact that the villain on the screen is Ford Sterling, who for some reason recognizes Mack, and taunts him, indicating that he'll have Mabel for his own. Ford abducts Mabel and ties her to a barrel of gunpowder, whereupon Mack gets agitated, telling her to blow the fuse out. When the villain realizes the fuse is out he pulls a gun on Mabel, whereupon Mack also pulls a gun and starts to shoot at the screen. Pandemonium breaks out in the picture-house and even the projectionist almost gets his head blown off.

Mack runs outside declaring 'That villain must die'. Amusingly, he only goes a few steps before he spies the aforesaid villain, with plug hat, entering his house (the usual one on the Keystone lot). Mack goes to the window, and seeing the nasty guy with two children, prepares to fire. However, before he can shoot, who should enter the room, but Mabel with yet another child. Mack counts the kids on his fingers and makes it four, then prepares to blast them all, but fails due to a bucket of water tipped from on high.

There are several intriguing points about this film. Firstly, it is simply amazing how Mabel slips easily from Biograph tragedienne to Keystone comedienne and back again. What the film demonstrates is that someone was combining pathos and comedy in movies, long before Chaplin blew onto the scene. It makes you wonder, then, where the latter got his particular brand of comedy from.

Secondly, this movie makes W.D. Taylor's murder (in 1922) look like déjà vu. Mack Sennett knew Taylor personally, and was a prime suspect in the case, so it does seem a coincidence that the Mack in this film would attempt to kill his ex-girlfriend, and the tin-type who lured her away. Mack once told his literary agent that he had shot Taylor, and cleared the house of any letters between Mabel the director (the missing 'Blessed Baby' letters). If this is true, then the murder was not for love, but because he believed Taylor was going to lure his cash-cow away to Paramount – damn them, they had plenty enough stars of their own! Chaplin was lucky he did not himself lure Mabel to his new studio. Perhaps he had the premonition of a gun barrel coming through the window one dark night. The film could, in fact, have been a warning to the young and virile Chaplin, who had signed to Keystone at about this time. Mabel had only a cameo role in the second part of the film, which suggests she had no idea of the shock ending.

The city girl is played by Virginia Kirtley, often a leading lady, but never a star. She remained an actress until the advent of talkies. Alice Davenport is Mabel's adversary in this film, as in many others, although on numerous occasions she had played Mabel's mother.

Good humor and extreme vulgarity are closely intermingled in this. Much of the latter can be cut out. It is difficult to see why a company with such splendid opportunities for appealing to all houses should appeal only to the less particular ones. - The Moving Picture World, September 27, 1913

Crude comedy from Mack Sennett's early days as a producer and director. He also stars as a country rube who comes to regret throwing over his kitchen maid girlfriend (Mabel Normand) for a glamorous city girl (Virginia Kirtley) who quickly gives him the elbow. Sennett provides ample evidence of why he made a better producer than an actor, and the comedy really isn't very funny, but the referential scenes in a movie theatre are interesting (even if they do go on far too long). A pre-stardom Roscoe Arbuckle makes an appearance as a cinemagoer irritated by Sennett's over-the-top reactions to what's taking place on-screen.

The humor of "Mabel's Dramatic Career", as typical of Mack Sennett's Keystone, is crude, very unsubtle and outdated knockabout slapstick, but it's nonetheless interesting to see the origins of screen comedy. This Keystone short in particular is worth viewing for its self-referential farce; it's the beginnings of a trend that continues to this day of movies where the jokes are based in making fun of movies, including itself.

The story has Mabel Normand becoming a movie star after leaving home and her former boyfriend, played by Mack Sennett. Sometime later, Sennett watches a Keystone film, titled simply "Keystone-Film", where he reacts rustically to Mabel's presence on screen, as though he doesn't realize it's just a movie. Making fun of a film's own viewers dates back to "The Countryman and the Cinematograph" (1901) and its American copy "Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show" (1902). It's worked out much better here. There's a lot going on in this scene of a film-within-a film, thus requiring active viewing. It's an ingeniously created scene, which Sennett also worked out in other films such as "Tillie's Punctured Romance" (1914) and "A Movie Star", (1916) and of which the basic mise-en-scène can be traced back to "Those Awful Hats" (1909), which starred Sennett and was made by D.W. Griffith, whom Sennett began his film-making career under and whose films Sennett would parody, such as in "The Bangville Police" and "Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life" (both 1913), thus further initiating self-referential screen comedy.

The scene-within-a scene in "Mabel's Dramatic Career" also involves "Fatty" Arbuckle trying to calm down (or, rather, telling him to shut up) the overreacting Sennett, who does seem to be almost provoked by Ford Sterling's villain--the sort he typically did play, such as in "Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life"--upon the screen. Sterling is taunting in his breaking down of the fourth wall within the film-within-the film, while Normand similarly describes her thoughts, including on a movie set where a scene is being filmed, in the outer film.

Arbuckle made similar guest appearances in other self-referential Keystone shorts that starred Charlie Chaplin ("A Film Johnnie" and "The Masquerader"), who would later direct his own, more refined, backstage parodies ("His New Job" and "Behind the Screen"). Additionally, Arbuckle would break down the fourth wall more effectively and comically in his own film "Moonshine" (1918), which costarred Buster Keaton, who would in turn make the early masterpiece of reflexive comedy, "Sherlock, Jr." (1924).

The history of screen comedy about itself, other movies and the business of movies, and, in fact, the entire history of screen comedy begins here--with Mack Sennett.