Why do we love Mabel?

America's original Queen of Comedy was a pretty, sprightly girl who got her start at 14 as an illustrator's model for such famous artists as Charles Dana Gibson (creator of the "Gibson Girl") and James Montgomery Flagg (best known for his "I Want You" recruiting posters). She burned with the desire to create and was far more fascinated by what the artists were doing on their pads than by what she was doing standing in front of them. She studied music every night and dreamed of some future sparkling with creative, successful, elegant people. The entrée to that future came innocuously enough in the form of the new motion pictures. Through a fellow model who had moved on to making movies, Mabel got her first job as an extra. That soon led to other parts in other small productions, finally meeting D.W. Griffith, who would go down in history as one of the first great filmmakers, at the Biograph studio (the first major film studio). There she met Mack Sennett, who would become not only her romantic partner, but who would help boost her career to the dizzying heights it achieved.

After a couple of years of success with Biograph in New York, the whole company moved to Los Angeles to facilitate year-round filming, and Mabel's journey stardom began in earnest. Sennett founded the Keystone Studios and put Mabel to work, creating her madcap, accessible, yet alluring, comedic characters. Among Mabel's greatest achievements was to convince Sennett to keep on a British music-hall comedian he'd hired, but who hadn't done very well in his first film. That comedian was Charles Chaplin. In the nascent film business, there was very little prejudice as to what jobs women could or couldn't do, and Mabel began writing and directing her own films. She even did all her own stunts, and would her entire career. Mabel and Charlie worked together in many Keystone comedies, her persona "Mabel" becoming as beloved as Charlie's "Little Tramp." Charlie himself wrote that he harbored an adoration of Mabel that he wished might have come to more. Together, the two biggest stars of American movie comedy appeared in the first feature-length film comedy, Tillie's Punctured Romance.

Mabel's career continued to soar. She starred in a highly successful series of comedies with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, another of the biggest stars of the day. Sadly, in her personal life, things were not so rosy. She had been engaged to Mack Sennett, but broke off the engagement when she found him having an affair with one of her best friends. Several mishaps and accidents wore down her health. She began using cocaine to a detrimental degree. Still she worked, moving on to work for Samuel Goldwyn's new studio. Her pictures continued to do well, and she continued to work tirelessly. Unfortunately, her involvement in one of the worst Hollywood scandals—the murder of producer William Desmond Taylor—would cast a pall over her film career from which she'd never fully recover. Mabel's health deteriorated and she died of tuberculosis at the age of 35. However, her legacy as filmdom's first great comedienne would live on. She remains a trailblazer who achieved success modern women in Hollywood are still trying to reach.

Biography:

Born - November 16, 1894
Staten Island, New York
Died - February 23, 1930
Monrovia, California

Achievements:

• Appeared in over 200 short and feature films from 1910 to 1927
• Directed 11 films, wrote five, and produced one