A Cup of Coffee

Mack and Mabel

I have been advancing my read on the fascinating book my fellow the movie critic lent me. It is a very compreehensive history of the movie industry. He describes the first efforts of the French pioneers like Lumiere and Melies. I have seen a little of these, but not much, and sometimes it is tough for me to imagine how those early movies were. Then the book moves to America and I find myself absolutely enchanted by Mack Sennet, his crazy cops, bathing beauties, and his favorite stars like Ben Turpin, who supposedly managed to kill a man from laughing so hard in one of his movies, Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand. Sennett was Canadia and tried to be a singer, a clown and many other things, before he became a movie director in 1912. Then he started on the business folks like Charles Chaplin and Harold Lloyd.

I became so intrigued by this guy, that I started researching to see if he had left an autobiography. I found it on Amazon, it is called "King of Comedy". I read the few pages that are available there and I am enchanted. Yes, his rather ruthless sense of humour is apparent in the excerpt. And the chick flickish creature that resides in me is also very happy to see that he deals in the book with his ill fated love affair with Mabel Normand, a lady who was much younger than him. It is a story that involves betrayal, murder, heartbreak.Mack was in no sense a gentleman. It seems that in one point of the story, Mack called Mabel with two proposals in mind. He asked her if she would like to go to his new founded studio in California. The other one, he never made. In his book, he wonders what would have happened if he had made it. After a scandal over the death of the guy she was having an affair with, Mabel's career went down the hill. She died of tuberculosis at 37. Mack lived till 1960.

I want this book, bc I am sure it would give me insights on the early industry. Oh, but I want Griffith's autobiography too, and many other books. And what about DVDs? Browsing on Amazon yesterday, I found so much interesting stuff. Even those hard to get Lumiere movies, a collection of Griffith short early movies, his long ones, and of course, comedies. I am hungry for all of that. Maybe I should have chosen a more boring topic to study. ;-) Well, I am going to the US in June and book/DVD shopping is on the top of my priority lists. I hope to make some wise choices. Life is short, and unfortunately, my wallet is even more limited.

posted by Livia de Almeida @ 7:44 AM