Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

Simon Louvish (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2004

From the author of Stan and Ollie--a funny, fresh, and compelling look at Hollywood's Original King of Comedy

From his early aspirations to sing opera, to his time under the tutelage of D. W. Griffith, to the fortune and notoriety that his uncanny eye for talent deservedly brought him, Mack Sennett stood behind his belief in individuality and originality. Now, more than eighty years after Sennett rose to heights that epitomized the American dream, the acclaimed biographer of Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, and W. C. Fields offers a compelling account of comedy's transformation at the hands of a true master.

Regarded as the father of American slapstick, Sennett--iron-worker, boilermaker, actor, director, producer, writer, and creator of the infamous Keystone Kops--held audiences in thrall to a world where chaos was order and banana peels, car crashes, and leaps from tall buildings were a matter of course. As the cameras rolled and vaudeville gags morphed into celluloid wonders, the rising stars of Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand, and Gloria Swanson were born. Behind it all was the "King of Comedy," governing from his office bathtub.

In this irresistible journey into early Hollywood at its peak, Simon Louvish crafts a fascinating portrait of the enigmatic entrepreneur. Through film scripts, telegrams, even liquor bills, Sennett's world is skillfully re-created, offering a rare and humorous glance into the infancy and innocence of moving pictures.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Film historian Louvish, having previously focused on comedy legends of the early sound era (Stan and Ollie, etc.), turns his attention to Sennett, the silent film mogul responsible for the iconic Keystone Kops. Though his childhood wish was to sing opera, Sennett (1880-1960) eventually wound up in vaudeville, then shifted to film, landing a job at D.W. Griffith's studio, acting in and later directing short comedies. He struck out on his own when he launched Keystone in 1912. "Start with Sennett, get rich somewhere else" became a Hollywood standard, and the names that passed through the studio include Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Ben Turpin and Gloria Swanson. There was also Mabel Normand, supposedly the great love of Sennett's life, though Louvish concludes their romance was invented, possibly to cover up Sennett's homosexuality. There's barely enough about Sennett's life to fill a book, though, so readers learn just as much about the other Keystone members, revisiting classic Hollywood scandals like Arbuckle's fall from grace and the unsolved murder of William Desmond Taylor. Although Louvish regards all his sources, from celebrity memoirs to fawning magazine articles, with healthy skepticism, he appears to have been seduced by their florid style. "Murky shadows gathered in the sunny glades where the movie people had frolicked in their make-believe innocence in never-never land" is a typical example, undercutting Louvish's potent historical research. Film synopses from Keystone archives increase the page count and, like the biography itself, may be of interest only to avid silent film fans. 47 b&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Silent movie impresario, Mack Sennett, brought to the screen many celebrated clowns, from Chaplin and Arbuckle to Keaton, Ben Turpin, Harry Langdon, W.C. Fields, and the troubled, madcap Mabel Normand. In Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett, Simon Louvish blends wit, scholarship and insight in a delectable narrative that ends with a sigh, but remains utterly true to the pratfall-loving spirit of the 'master of fun.'" --Emily W. Leider, author of Becoming Mae West and Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino

"No one investigates the roots of American film comedy with a livelier spirit than Simon Louvish. Keystone, a close examination of that sad and funny genius of the silent movies, Mack Sennett, is his latest, and, to my mind, his most delightful." --Stefan Kanfer, author of Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball

"At last Mack Sennett--a seminal figure in American and world film history--has been rescued from the historical limbo that has been his since about 1933. It's always the pioneers who lay the groundwork for those who follow, and fans of every Laugh Factory from Looney Tunes to Saturday Night Live owe Sennett an enormous debt, for which Simon Louvish has generously provided the down payment." --Joe Adamson, author of Bugs Bunny: Fifty Years and Only One Grey Hare

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 376 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber; 1st edition (February 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 057121276X
• ISBN-13: 978-0571212767
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,626,894 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing Book on a Fascinating Subject, April 2, 2004

By 

Tom Moran (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett (Hardcover)

I'm a big fan of not only silent films in general but silent comedy in particular, so you would think that I'd be the natural audience for Simon Louvish's new book on Mack Sennett, D.W. Griffith's protégé and the man behind the Keystone Studio, which produced (or at least discovered) such comic geniuses as Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe Arbuckle. Well, you'd be right: I am the natural audience for "Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett." So why was I so disappointed?

It has some new information on the life of the Canadian-born producer and his life and times, but the book is so vilely written that I found it a chore to read. It almost feels like Louvish, who wrote a far better book on the Marx Brothers and other books on famous comedians that I have not read, fell under the stylistic influence of Gene Fowler, a previous Sennett biographer and the maudlin biographer of John Barrymore, whose prose style is replete with every sappy literary cliché known to man (memorably described by Edmund Wilson: "...the style couldn't be more journalistic in a flowery, old-fashioned way... [it] has no structure and no harmonics. It is something that is exhaled like breath or exuded like perspiration."). If you doubt my word and decide to read the book anyway, try and count the number of times Louvish uses the archaic word "quoth" in a sentence.

So I'm torn about this book. There simply aren't enough good books about this period, and there is some new information to be gleaned from Louvish's pages (although I found myself disagreeing with some, but not all, of his conclusions). But its wretched prose style, if you have any feeling at all for the English language, will set your teeth on edge. You might not care if you're a real fan of early silent comedy, and if that's the case go ahead and read it. But don't say I didn't warn you.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Much better than reported., July 16, 2005

By 

Nancy Beiman "Northernexpress" (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett (Hardcover)

This book is a lot better than the previous reviewers would have me believe. Louvish had access to the Mack Sennett Papers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, something that previous writers like Walter Kerr and Kalton Lahue did not.
Of course, Sennett did not include his private papers in the collection so little is known of his private life--which he apparently kept private. Louvish posts hypotheses based on fact and states that these are Not Proven; he does NOT claim that Sennett was gay. Of course he is putting a modern gloss on the behaviour of people from nearly a century ago. People really did behave, and talk, differently then.
Some of his material, particularly new material about Mabel Normand, is saddening and worthy of note.
This is also the only book to tell the very moving story of Ben Turpin and his terminally ill wife, whom he supported until her death.
There are some erroneous statements in the book that could have been better edited; Chaplin toured the USA in a production called MUMMING BIRDS, not EARLY BIRDS; Buster Keaton was drafted in WWI, not enlisted; and Roscoe Arbuckle's THAT MINSTREL MAN was made for Keystone, not 'just as he was about to join Keystone.'
I do recommend that you consider this book. There is a lot of good material in it that is of interest to the silent historian.
And I've not read the word 'quoth' once.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For those interested in comedy film history, April 15, 2004

By 

James L. Neibaur - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett (Hardcover)

As comedy is central to the development of cinema, a book on Mack Sennett is essential. Sennett was a movie pioneer who produced some of the earliest slapstick comedies. The films spawned such important comedians as Charlie Chaplin, Roscoe Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, and Harry Langdon. They were also an early, albeit comparatively brief, training ground for the likes of Harold Lloyd and Charley Chase. Director Frank Capra enjoyed some of his early success writing and co-writing Sennett productions. Louvish examines Sennett the man and tells the story of Mack's work from his early days with D.W. Griffith to his own productions beginning in the early teens and lasting into the 1930s and the talking picture revolution. Even for comedy film buffs who have read a great deal about this genre, Louvish offers a lot of interesting information that does not appear in other sources. There have been few truly good books on Mack Sennett and his work. This one is quite good. Recommended.