Mabel Normand

Amabel Ethelreid Normand (November 9, 1893 – February 23, 1930), better known as Mabel Normand, was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, director, producer, and comedian. She was a popular star and collaborator of Mack Sennett in their Keystone Studios films, and at the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s had her own film studio and production company, the Mabel Normand Feature Film Company. On screen, she appeared in twelve successful films with Charlie Chaplin and seventeen with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, sometimes writing and directing (or co-writing and directing) films featuring Chaplin as her leading man. In the 1920s Normand's name was linked with scandal, including the 1922 murder of her friend, the director, William Desmond Taylor and later the 1924 shooting of Courtland S. Dines: Dines had been shot by Normand's chauffeur, Kelly using her pistol after a drunken Dines had allegedly said derogatory things to Normand. After police interrogation, she was ruled out as a suspect in the murder. Normand suffered a recurrence of tuberculosis in 1923, which led to a decline in her health, an early retirement from films in 1926, and her death in 1930 at age 36. Early life and career Amabel Ethelreid Normand was born in New Brighton, Staten Island, New York (before it was incorporated into New York City) on November 9, 1893. She took her name from her father's only sibling, who had died before her birth in 1892. Her mother, Mary "Minnie" Drury, of Providence, Rhode Island, was of Irish heritage; while her father, Clodman "Claude" George Normand, was French Canadian, with his ancestral lineage dating back to Normandy in France and their surname originally being LeNormand or Le Normand. For a short time at the start of her career, Normand worked for Vitagraph Studios in New York City for $25 per week, but Vitagraph founder Albert E. Smith admitted she was one of several actresses about whom he made a mistake in estimating their "potential for future stardom." Her intensely beguiling lead performance in the 1911 dramatic short film Her Awakening, directed by D. W. Griffith, drew Normand attention and led to her meeting director Mack Sennett while at Griffith's Biograph Company. She subsequently embarked on a chaotic relationship with him. Sennett later brought Normand to California when he founded Keystone Studios in 1912.