My name is Mabel Normand.  Once upon a time, along with my lover Mack Sennett, I created an art form: silent screen comedy.  You might have seen me cavorting with Charlie Chaplin, the Keystone Kops or Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle.  I was pretty then, talented and lively and generous; happy and adored.  My cup, however, was not filled with gin blossoms alone.  The passage of years brought heartbreak, cocaine addiction and tuberculosis.  My lover simply betrayed me.  Many others whom I trusted abandoned me for my unfortunate proximity to some of the infamous scandals of the day.  I lost everything when my dearest friend, the acclaimed director William Desmond Taylor, was murdered.  Everything, that is, but my grief.  But this is not about those things.  This album is about Southern California, a mythical land of staggering beauty.  It is my rhapsody on the place I came to know intimately and in knowing it found an abiding love.  Here my words attempt to caress the images captured and held forever on the softly tinted postcards in my collection.  May you find them as delicious as I do.

                                                                  With love & blessings,

                                                         Mabel

 

 

 

We came in 1912 – Mack, the movies and me – to this place as magical and golden as its name: California, the most beautiful place in the world.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

Residents who have already claimed California are not universally charmed by the arrival of movie people into their personal paradise.  Some greet us with signs that say “No Dogs or Actors Allowed;” but the sweet mingled scents of jasmine and roses and orange blossoms welcome us, making us feel giddy just to be here.