As a child she was a tiny tomboy who could out run, out swim, out spit and out smart all the boys in her Staten Island neighborhood, but at fifteen Mabel Normand blossomed into the very model of modern femininity as one of Charles Dana Gibson’s renowned Gibson Girls -- her first professional role playing job. Just a few years later she was making movies under the direction of D.W. Griffith and flirting madly with Mack Sennett. She soon hitched her wagon to Mack’s star and set out for
In 1914 she filmed the first feature-length comedy, Tillie’s Punctured Romance, co-starring with Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressler. A grandly gifted little clown whose genius would light the way for the illustrious comediennes who came later, her career flourished throughout the teens as she flitted from one film to the next, not infrequently directing as well as starring in the bits of frantic fluff that were so popular with her era’s movie goers. Somewhat less fluffy, her masterwork, Mickey, made by Mabel’s own film production company was released in 1918, after being held hostage for a couple of years to Mack Sennett’s power struggle with his Triangle-Keystone partners. By the mid-1920s her career sputtered. Changing times ushered in changing tastes. Anyway, Mabel was getting a bit old to be playing slapstick Cinderellas. Plenty bored with it too. Offers of something better were notable chiefly for their nonexistence. By then she was a physical mess too.
On
During Mabel’s time postcards were as common and convenient for communication as the cell phone and text messaging are today. They were colorful, cheap and mail pick-up as often as three times a day -- in some locations -- fostered quick, spontaneous notes such as, “Osgood’s much better today so I shall be able to join you and Sylvia for luncheon tomorrow,” or “Received your good letter, will write back soon.” A few of Mabel’s narratives here were inspired by the mini-missives on the backs of my old postcards. The evolutionary spawn of the 2-1/2 by 4-inch lithographic and photographic souvenir pictures of tourist attractions and special events that were sold as early as the mid-1800s, postcards made bewitching vehicles for braggadocious boosterism -- by civic sorts as well as by tourists -- and they played a vital role in the marketing of Southern California’s magic.
This website is a love letter to a place, Southern California as Mabel found it, reclining by the sea at the left edge of the continent -- part Oz, part Alice’s Wonderland -- basking in golden sunlight. This was the ultimate destination of the movement west, undertaken by hundreds of thousands: for adventure, for a better life, for a new identity. This is the landscape as full of fancy and drama as the movies made against it. This is the land of dreams and dreamers. The site pretends to be Mabel’s own memory book of postcards and jottings from her sojourn there between 1912 and 1930, a little conceit that allowed me to celebrate Mabel too.
Thank you for visiting. Please take an extra moment to sign the guest
For a full-blown wallow in all things Mabel Normand visit Marilyn Slater's sublime website:
http://www.looking-for-mabel.webs.com
