Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett (born Michael Sinnott; January 17, 1880 – November 5, 1960) was a Canadian-American producer, director, actor, and studio head who was known as the "King of Comedy" during his career.[1]
Mack Sennett
November 5, 1960 (aged 80)
- Producer
- actor
- director
- studio head
1902–1949
Born in Danville, Quebec,[2][3][4][a] in 1880, he started in films in the Biograph Company of New York City, and later opened Keystone Studios in Edendale, California in 1912. Keystone possessed the first fully enclosed film stage, and Sennett became famous as the originator of slapstick routines such as pie-throwing and car-chases, as seen in the Keystone Cops films.[5] He also produced short features that displayed his Bathing Beauties, many of whom went on to develop successful acting careers.[6][7]
After struggling with bankruptcy and the dominance of sound films in the early 1930s, Sennett was presented with an honorary Academy Award in 1938 for his contributions to the film industry, with the Academy describing him as a "master of fun, discoverer of stars, sympathetic, kindly, understanding comedy genius".[8]
Early life[edit]
Born Michael Sinnott in Danville, Quebec,[2] he was the son of Irish Catholic John Sinnott and Catherine Foy. His parents married in 1879 in Tingwick, Quebec and moved the same year to Richmond, Quebec where Sinnott was hired as a laborer.[9] By 1883, when Sennett's brother George was born, Sinnott was working as an innkeeper, a position he held for many years. Sennett's parents had all their children and raised their family in Richmond, then a small Eastern Townships village. At that time, Sennett's grandparents were living in Danville, Quebec. Sennett moved to Connecticut when he was 17 years old.[9]
He lived for a while in Northampton, Massachusetts, where, according to his autobiography, he first got the idea to become an opera singer after seeing a vaudeville show. He said that the most respected lawyer in town, Northampton mayor (and future President of the United States) Calvin Coolidge, as well as Sennett's mother, tried to talk him out of his musical ambitions.[10]
In New York City, he took on the stage name Mack Sennett and became an actor, singer, dancer, clown, set designer, and director for the Biograph Company. A distinction in his acting career, often overlooked, is that he played Sherlock Holmes 11 times, albeit as a parody, between 1911 and 1913.[11]
Move to Pathé Exchange[edit]
In the mid-1920s, Sennett moved to Pathé Exchange distribution.[10] In 1927, Hollywood's two most successful studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount Pictures, took note of the profits being made by smaller companies such as Pathé Exchange and Earle Hammons's Educational Pictures.[10] MGM took over the Hal Roach comedy shorts from Pathé, and Paramount reactivated its short subjects. Hundreds of other independent exhibitors and moviehouses switched from Pathé to the new MGM or Paramount shorts, but Sennett remained loyal to Pathé[10] and fulfilled his contract to deliver silent comedies through 1929.
Sound films[edit]
In 1928 Sennett canceled all of his talent contracts and retooled his studio for the new talking-picture technology. His leading star at the time, Ben Turpin, was suddenly unemployed and moved to the Weiss Brothers studio. Sennett's enthusiasm for talking pictures was such that he was the first to get a talkie short subject on the market, in 1928.[10]
Sennett made a reasonably smooth transition to sound films, releasing them through Educational.[10] Sennett occasionally experimented with color as well.[10] In 1932, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film in the comedy division for producing The Loud Mouth (with Matt McHugh, in the sports-heckler role later taken in Columbia Pictures remakes by Charley Chase and Shemp Howard).[21] Sennett also won an Academy Award in the novelty division for his film Wrestling Swordfish, also in 1932.[21]
Mack Sennett often clung to outmoded techniques, making his early-1930s films seem dated and quaint: he dressed some of his actors in eccentric makeups and loud costumes, which were amusing in the cartoonish silent films but ludicrous in the new, realistic atmosphere of talking pictures. Sennett was also having financial problems during the Great Depression. One of his biggest stars, Andy Clyde, left the studio after Sennett, wanting to economize, tried to cut Clyde's salary.
In 1932 Sennett attempted to re-enter the feature-film market on a grand scale with Hypnotized. Remembering the successful campaign for his very first feature-length comedy Tillie's Punctured Romance, which in 1914 was the longest comedy film ever produced, Sennett planned Hypnotized along similar lines as an epic production that would be shown first-run in select roadshow engagements. Sennett announced that Hypnotized would run 15 reels, or two-and-a-half hours, more than twice the length of a typical comedy feature of the day.[22] Sennett wanted W. C. Fields to star as a carnival hypnotist, but Fields declined and the role went to Ernest Torrence, sharing the spotlight with blackface comedians Moran and Mack, "The Two Black Crows". Production was completed in August 1932, but fell far short of Sennett's grandiose predictions. The finished film ran an ordinary 70 minutes and was released through ordinary channels by World Wide Pictures (Educational's feature-film outlet) in December 1932.
Sennett was also having differences with his distributor, Earle Hammons of Educational. Jack White, Educational's leading producer, explained, "We put Mack Sennett out of business. Theaters had [our] comedies booked solid. Sennett was very temperamental and wanted the exhibitor to do certain things, but they wouldn't stand for it. Sennett wouldn't stand for Hammons not telling him how much [money] he was cutting out of the grosses for himself. Sennett told him to go to hell."[23] Sennett left Educational and signed with Paramount Pictures.[24]
Sennett signed both Bing Crosby and W. C. Fields for two-reel comedies. Fields wrote and starred in four famous Sennett-Paramount comedies. Two other Sennett shorts were made with Fields scripts: The Singing Boxer (1933) with Donald Novis and Too Many Highballs (1933) with Lloyd Hamilton.[10] Despite Paramount's wide distribution of the Crosby and Fields shorts, Sennett's studio did not survive the Depression.[10] Sennett's partnership with Paramount lasted only one year and he was forced into bankruptcy in November 1933.[10]
On January 12, 1934, Sennett was injured in an automobile accident that killed blackface performer Charles Mack in Mesa, Arizona.[25]
His last work, in 1935, was as a producer-director for Educational, in which he directed Buster Keaton in The Timid Young Man and Joan Davis in Way Up Thar.[10]
The 1935 Vitaphone short subject Keystone Hotel featured several alumni from the Mack Sennett studios: Ben Turpin, Ford Sterling, Hank Mann, and Chester Conklin. Actually, Sennett was not involved in the making of this film; it was directed by Ralph Staub.
Sennett made one last attempt to continue working in the comedy field. By this time he had been supplanted as the major producer of two-reel comedies by Jules White at Columbia Pictures. White's brother, Jack White, recalled: "When Jules and I were at Columbia in the 1930s, Sennett tried to come to Columbia but they wouldn't have him. He was finished, and the studio was happy with Jules."[26] Sennett did sell some scripts and stories to Jules White, receiving screen credit as "Michael Emmes" (the "Emmes" being formed by Sennett's initials). Columbia really didn't need Sennett's services; the studio already had four producers and six directors on its short-subject payroll.[27]
Mack Sennett went into semi-retirement at the age of 55, having produced more than 1,000 silent films and several dozen talkies during a 25-year career.[10] His studio property was purchased by Mascot Pictures (later part of Republic Pictures), and many of his former staffers found work at Columbia.[10]
In March 1938, Sennett was presented with an honorary Academy Award: "for his lasting contribution to the comedy technique of the screen, the basic principles of which are as important today as when they were first put into practice, the Academy presents a Special Award to that master of fun, discoverer of stars, sympathetic, kindly, understanding comedy genius – Mack Sennett."[8][28]
Later projects[edit]
Rumors abounded that Sennett would be returning to film production (a September 1938 publicity release indicated that he would be working with Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy), but apart from Sennett reissuing a couple of his Bing Crosby two-reelers to theaters, nothing happened.[29]
Sennett did appear in front of the camera, however, in Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), itself a thinly disguised version of the Mack Sennett-Mabel Normand romance.[10]
In 1949, he provided film footage for and also appeared in the first full-length comedy compilation called Down Memory Lane (1949), which was written and narrated by Steve Allen.[30]
Sennett was profiled in the television series This Is Your Life in 1954,[31][32] and made a cameo appearance (for $1,000) in Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (1955).[33]
His last contribution worth noting was to the NBC radio program Biography in Sound relating memories of working with W.C. Fields, which was broadcast February 28, 1956.
Tributes[edit]
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Sennett was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard.[34] He was also inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2014.[38]
The building of Sennett's original studio in Echo Park was deemed a historical landmark by The City of Los Angeles in 1982.[12][39]
Further reading