Mabel Normand

The whole world knows him. Burlesque comedy genius, popular actor, author, director, producer, composer, choreographer, Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) used his talent to serve an ideal of justice and freedom. But his best scenario was his own destiny, a story written into the political and artistic history of the 20th century.

The first talkie was directed by Alice Guy, the first color film was produced by Lois Weber, who directed more than 300 films over 10 years. Frances Marion wrote screenplays for the Hollywood Star Mary Pickford and won two Oscars, Dorothy Arzner was the most powerful film director in Hollywood. And what do all of them have in common? They are all women and they have all been forgotten. Incredibly, it also took until 2010 for the first woman, Kathryn Bigelow, to win the Oscar for Best Director. Even if underrepresented women have always played a big part in Hollywood and it is this part of the film history left untold that this documentary sets out to uncover.

A documentary on the life and career of silent film star Mabel Normand.

Before the G, PG and R ratings system there was the Production Code, and before that there was, well, nothing. This eye-opening documentary examines the rampant sexuality of early Hollywood through movie clips and reminiscences by stars of the era. Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, Marlene Dietrich and others relate tales of the artistic freedom that led to the draconian Production Code, which governed content from 1934 to 1968. Diane Lane narrates.

One way or another, the Hollywood police have been kept busy with murders on their ground. There are numerous theories about the killings of Thelma Todd, Jack Healy (Three Stooges), Elizabeth Short, alias The Black Dahlia, Bugsy Siegal and Johnny Stompano. The files of William Desmond Taylor, Raymond Navarro and Sal Mineo are also re-opened. Femmes fatales are often deadly for the man's wallet or reputation -- these ladies killed for real. From Calamity Jane, gang boss Ma Baker and New York madame Polly Adler to axe-murderess Winnie Ruth Judd and others, we look at the Black Widow Spider syndrome. Rare archival footage and many hitherto unseen interviews, film, video clip tapes, and photographs are included in this hour-long program.

Famous Hollywood Scandals and Tragedies

An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.

A compilation featuring comedic stars of the silent era including Fatty Arbuckle, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Charley Chase, and Laurel and Hardy.

Bob Monkhouse introduces the golden age of slapstick comedy.

This film is a compilation, with narration by Steve Allen, of comedies from the old Mack Sennett silent studio. Sennett, himself, appears in a cameo at the end of the film.

The edition of Screen Snapshots celebrates 25 years of production. It looks at the content of edition #1, then a tribute to movie people who have died in those 25 years. Finally there are tributes to the Screen Snapshots series by Cecil De Mille, Walt Disney, Louella Parsons and Rosalind Russell.

A newly-married woman disguises herself as a doughboy in order to stay close to her husband.

Sue Graham is a small town girl who wants to be a motion picture star. She wins a contract when a picture of a very pretty girl is sent to a studio instead of her picture. When she arrives in Hollywood, the mistake is discovered and she starts working in the props department of the studio instead. Her parents then come out to California and invest some money with a very shifty individual.

A fortune teller tells a store clerk with a romantic disposition that she was a Spanish noblewoman in an earlier life. The girl begins to live the part of the Spanish noblewoman and romance and comedy ensue.

A womanizing city man meets Tillie in the country. When he sees that her father has a very large bankroll for his workers, he persuades her to elope with him.

Charlie plays an actor who bungles several scenes and is kicked out. He returns convincingly dressed as a lady and charms the director, but Charlie never makes it into the film.

Daughter of an Eastern lumber king, Stephanie Trent travels in the guise of a schoolteacher to the logging village of Trentsville to search for "a real man." There she meets Jimmy Raymond, a young novelist posing as a local while writing his story. When Stephanie comes to Jimmy's cabin to report a supposed plot against him, he acts as though he intends to assault her. She nearly throws herself out the window but is stopped by Jimmy, who explains that he is working on a novel and merely wanted to determine a young girl's reactions. In retaliation, she orders that he be kidnapped and held in a nearby cabin, but remorsefully nurses him back to health when he is shot trying to escape.

A tramp gets drunk in a hotel lobby and, upstairs, causes some misunderstandings between Mabel, two hotel guests across the hall from her room, and Mabel's visiting sweetheart.

Charlie is a clumsy waiter in a cheap cabaret, suffering the strict orders from his boss. He meets a pretty girl in the park and tries to impress her by pretending to be an ambassador. Unfortunately she has a jealous fiancé.

A Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle & Mabel Normand comedy short. The film is considered lost.

Mabel tries to sell hot dogs at a car race, but isn't doing a very good job at it. She sets down the box of hot dogs and leaves them for a moment. Charlie finds them and gives them away to the hungry spectators at the track as Mabel frantically tries to find her lost box of hot dogs. Mabel finds out that Charlie has stolen them and sends the police after him. Chaos ensues.

A frustrated, protective father tries to stop his secretaries from falling in love with his charming daughter, Betty. He hires two secretaries— only for them to be in on the practical jokes Betty plays on her father.

Three men compete for the attentions of a pretty girl. One of them, a little tramp, plays dirty.

The manager of a small town hotel installs a cabaret in an attempt to achieve the standard set by restaurants in the large cities. His effort is ludicrous because of the fact that his talent is all recruited from the help in the hotel. Roscoe, the cook, is forced to appear in a dress suit and when Al St. John appears from the bar there is a lively rivalry between the two for the applause of the crowd. Mabel, the waitress, vies with a professional dancer from the city. Into this setting comes William Jefferson, a polished sharper, who takes the innocent Mabel by storm.

Mabel is pursued by her boss, despite being engaged to his son, in this gender-bending comedy of errors and mistaken identities.

A villain, competing with his rival's race car, kidnaps the rival before the race. Mabel decides to take the wheel in his place.

A young man falls in love with his mother's kitchen maid, Mabel. But his mother objects strongly, and arranges for him to meet another young woman whom she considers more suitable. Mabel confronts the young woman, and is dismissed from her position. Later, when the young man learns about the new career that Mabel has found, he begins to act in an agitated and unpredictable manner.

The Kaiser is playing cards with King Albert of Italy, who loses, but is rescued by Miss Liberty Loan.

Fatty's Wine Party is a 1914 American short comedy film directed by and starring Fatty Arbuckle.

Mabel and her beau go to an auto race and are joined by Charlie and his friend. As Charlie's friend is attempting to enter the raceway through a hole, the friend gets stuck and a policeman shows up.

Mabel goes home after being humiliated by a masher whom her husband won't fight. The husband goes off to a bar and gets drunk.

Hello, Mabel (also known as On a Busy Wire) is a 1914 American short silent comedy film directed by Mack Sennett.

On his way to a restaurant, Ambrose, a happily married man, obliges to mail a letter for a woman in the apartment lobby. Unbeknownst to him, the letter is about a rendezvous with her own lover at their "trysting place". Elsewhere, after some domestic frustration, Charlie runs an errand to buy a baby bottle before stopping at the same restaurant. After a confrontation there, they both inadvertently leave with each other's coats. Later, their wives independently discover what appears to be incriminating evidence of extramarital affairs from the pockets of the swapped garments. It all comes to a head when all four of them find themselves at the "trysting place" in the park.

Minnie Penelope Peck, the village scamp of Yaptank, accompanies her father to the bank to demand the nine dollars owed him for his work as a night watchman. When the bank president refuses to pay Peck, Minnie posts a sign which states that the bank is insolvent, whereupon all of the depositors immediately demand their money. The fire department is called in to quell the mob, but things get worse when Minnie accidentally turns on the fire hose.....

A happy young couple become engaged, and soon afterwards they are married. But after their marriage, the husband begins to stay out carousing with his friends, leaving his wife at home with her mother. Then, when the three of them go to the opera together, the husband spots one of his friends in another box. Soon the domestic difficulties reach their peak.

Mabel seems to be working ironing dresses in a dress shop when something catches her attention in a newspaper. Apparently, it is an ad on becoming a detective. Mabel goes rushing off to a Detective school run by Fred Ward.

Over the Kingdom of Romanda there reigned a King who was greatly influenced by his favorite, whom he devotedly loved. He presents her with a necklace of fabulous worth and enjoins that she never part with it, which command she swears by the stars to keep. About this time an impecunious cousin of the King calls to beg the loan of money, which is refused. The favorite promises to intercede for him. The cardinal and the favorite are bitter enemies because of her thwarting many of his pet schemes, and he plans a revenge by inciting jealousy in the King. The scheme he devises is to have the necklace missing and found in the cousin's pocket. The plan succeeds so well that the King condemns the seemingly guilty pair to an air-tight chamber, where they would have suffocated to death had not the lady-in-waiting, who helped in the plot, become horror-stricken and confessed.

A comedy made by Keystone Studios starring Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand, both of whom co-directed the movie. This is Chaplin's only lost film as no copy is known to exist.

A short silent comedy starring Mabel Normand and Ford Sterling.

A henpecked husband's innocent friendship with a married woman leads to chaos.

Mabel meets a masher in the park while en route to get a position as maid. Later she finds the man was the husband of her new mistress. There is an exciting chase scene, and the picture winds up with everyone in the lake.

A doctor, very much in love with his beautiful wife, comes to suspect that her visiting childhood friend Jack is more than just a friend. Jack's intentions are honorable, but everything he does tends to show his actions in a suspicious light, especially when burglars invade the house and Jack and the wife are caught together in their nightclothes.

Moving Picture World categorized the film as “a nonsense number”, but Normand's Won in a Closet, her second as director, displays her burgeoning talent. Mabel’s father, the country constable, is smitten with the mother of the boy Mabel imagines “her ideal”. The young couple’s romance is disrupted first by two rival “cut-ups” and then by misapprehension that a tramp is hiding in a closet at the mother’s home. In reality, the mother herself takes refuge in the closet to escape the constable’s attentions.

Donald Gray, living with his mother in Scotland, through the friendship of the family physician, is offered an opportunity to go to America to study medicine. He leaves with his mother's blessings. Five years later, Donald is a physician with a successful practice in New York City. One of his patients has grown very fond of him; at the same time the young physician has grown fond of this gentleman's daughter, and is engaged to be married to her. His mother resolves to pay him an unexpected visit.

An early film version of the Charles Dickens classic about the French Revolution and its subsequent Reign of Terror.

When Mabel romantically rejects a villain, he ties her to the railroad tracks, leaving her bashful suitor to appeal to famous racecar driver Barney Oldfield for help.

A presumably lost film starring Mabel Normand and Roscoe Arbuckle.

Mabel and Roscoe love each other, but her father likes another boy. A rather sissified young man. Roscoe and Mabel stages an accident.

A young woman who works mending fishermen's nets is engaged to be married. But her fiancé has an old love who refuses to let him go. Further, his former girlfriend has a brother who is willing to use violence to protect his sister's honor.

Although Mabel’s parents disapprove of Roscoe and Mabel’s relationship, the two still secretly court. When a rivaling suitor named Reddy appears, the men fight for Mabel’s hand. Although successful, Roscoe witnesses Reddy fall into a well and instantly calls for help. As the police fish Reddy out of the well, the young lovers see their chance at freedom and run off to elope.

Fatty is a farm hand at Mabel's father's place. He and Mabel love each other, but dad wants to marry Mabel off to the landowner's son in exchange for tearing up the mortgage. When Mabel and Fatty find out dad's plan, they elope, pursued by dad, the hopeful suitor, and the local constables.

This ill-tempered gentleman accompanies his wife to the seashore, but being so insanely jealous of her makes the stay there rather unpleasant. First of all, he refuses to go bathing in the surf with her, and she, despite his command not to, goes in alone. Towering with rage at his wile's defiance, he gets himself into several embarrassing positions. In fact he makes a fool of himself generally.

A young lady designs a wonderfully received bathing suit and saves her employer from financial disaster. In the course of this, she falls in love with her employer's son, who is in danger of ruin from a romantic scandal.

The minister is appointed head of a purity league designed to keep a risque dancer from performing her act; however, the deacon becomes infatuated with the girl at an amusement park and has his picture taken with her, which causes much scandal and blackmail.

Sis is an eccentric young girl in a small rural village. While most around Sis view her as a joke, she is loved by Ridy Scarboro, the clerk at the general store. One day Sis's dog knocks an oil can into the Hopkins well and when wealthy old Vibert tastes the water, he believes the Hopkins have an oil strike.....

Percy and Harold are rivals and both take the object of their affections for an outing.

A husband who has spent a convivial night is sleeping off the effects in bed while his devoted wife ministers for him.

Mabel has just gotten engaged during a housewarming party of which her mother is the hostess. When an annoying party guest persuades Mabel to dance with him, Mabel hurries through the dance and then goes to look for her fiancé, only to discover him caressing another woman. Her fiancé finds not only Mabel, but also her mother, very displeased, and not inclined to believe his explanation.

Fatty rescues Mabel twice: first, from the unwelcome attentions of a masher, then from a runaway observation balloon.

Charlie and his wife are in the park when he encounters Ambrose and his wife. Each man is attracted to and shows unwanted attention to the other man's wife. A policeman becomes involved.