MABEL NORMAND

Mabel Normand was an actress/comedienne from the 1910s to the 1920s. She was a giant of early cinema, and the first great female movie comedienne, and she even pre-dated Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. She started with just a few movies in 1910, and she was mostly unbilled or low-billed in 1911, but in 1912 she became a leading star! Some of her shorts were named after her character and in 1912 she made "Mabel's Lovers", where her character had her own name, showing just how popular she had become. In 1914 she started directing her own movies. She made several movies with Charlie Chaplin and surely helped him start his career, and after he left Keystone she made movies with Fatty Arbuckle. She had a turbulent private life, and was engaged to studio head Mack Sennett, who she worked for. She got tuberculosis and started drinking heavily, which greatly curtailed her career in the 1920s. Some of her other movies include: Tillie's Punctured Romance, Mickey, The Extra Girl, A Film Johnnie, and Caught in a Cabaret. She passed away in 1930 at the age of 37 from tuberculosis.