Profile
Mack Sennett
Producer + Actor + Director + Screenwriter + Presenter + Composer + Cinematographer
Male
Born
Jan 17, 1880
Hometown
Danville, Quebec
Died
Nov 5, 1960
Death Place
Woodland Hills, C...
Mack Sennett was a Canadian-born American director and actor and was known as the innovator of slapstick comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of Comedy". His short "Wrestling Swordfish" was awarded the Academy Award for… Read More
Romance
Check out the latest love interests for Mack Sennett.
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Marjorie BeebeDated 1928
News + Updates
Browse recent news and stories about Mack Sennett.
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Review: Grim And Fischer B Channel NewsGoogle News - Aug 31, 2011
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Visionary Jabberwocky Founder Helen Lamb Heeded Few Rules Martha's Vineyard GazetteGoogle News - Aug 30, 2011
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Theatre Review: Mack & Mabel @ Greenwich Theatre LondonistGoogle News - Aug 27, 2011
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Outtakes From My 1982 Rolling Stone Talk With Spielberg, As The Charles Shows 'Et' Baltimore Sun (Blog)Google News - Aug 19, 2011
Timeline
Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Mack Sennett.
CHILDHOOD
1880
Birth
Born on January 17, 1880.
THIRTIES
1911
31 Years Old
A major distinction in his acting career, often overlooked, is the fact that Sennett played Sherlock Holmes 11 times, albeit as a parody, between 1911 and 1913.
1912
32 Years Old
With financial backing from Adam Kessel and Charles O. Bauman of the New York Motion Picture Company, in 1912 Sennett founded Keystone Studios in Edendale, California, (which is now a part of Echo Park).
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In 1915 Keystone Studios became an autonomous production unit of the ambitious Triangle Film Corporation, as Sennett joined forces with movie bigwigs D. W. Griffith and Thomas Ince.
1916
36 Years Old
And although Gloria Swanson worked for Sennett in 1916 and was photographed in a bathing suit, she was also a star and "vehemently denied" being one of the bathing beauties.
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1917
37 Years Old
In 1917 Sennett gave up the Keystone trademark and organized his own company, Mack Sennett Comedies Corporation. (Sennett's corporate bosses retained the Keystone trademark and produced a cheap series of comedy shorts that were "Keystones" in name only: they were unsuccessful, and Sennett had no connection with them.) Sennett went on to produce more ambitious comedy short films and a few feature-length films.
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FORTIES
1928
48 Years Old
Sennett made a reasonably smooth transition to sound films, releasing them through Earle Hammons's Educational Pictures. Sennett occasionally experimented with color and was the first to get a talkie short subject on the market, in 1928.
FIFTIES
1932
52 Years Old
In 1932 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film in the comedy division for producing The Loud Mouth (with Matt McHugh, in the sports-heckler role later taken in Columbia Pictures remakes by Charley Chase and Shemp Howard), and he won in the novelty division for his film Wrestling Swordfish.
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1933
53 Years Old
Sennett's studio did not survive the Great Depression; the Sennett-Paramount partnership lasted only one year, and Sennett was forced into bankruptcy in November 1933.
1935
55 Years Old
His last work, in 1935, was as a producer-director for Educational Pictures; he directed Buster Keaton in The Timid Young Man and Joan Davis in Way Up Thar. (The 1935 Vitaphone short subject Keystone Hotel is not a Sennett production; it featured several alumni from the Sennett studio, but Sennett himself had no connection with the film.)
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1938
58 Years Old
In March 1938, Sennett was presented with an honorary Academy Award: "for his lasting contribution to the comedy technique of the screen, the basic principles of which are as important today as when they were first put into practice, the Academy presents a Special Award to that master of fun, discoverer of stars, sympathetic, kindly, understanding comedy genius - Mack Sennett."
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LATE ADULTHOOD
1949
69 Years Old
In 1949 he provided film footage for, and appeared in, the first full-length comedy compilation, Down Memory Lane (1949), which was written and narrated by Steve Allen.
1954
74 Years Old
Sennett was profiled in the television series This is Your Life in 1954, and made a cameo appearance (for $1,000) in Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (1955).
1956
76 Years Old
He contributed to the radio program Biography in Sound, broadcast February 28, 1956.
1960
81 Years Old
He died on November 5, 1960 in Woodland Hills, California, aged 80, and was interred in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.
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Original Authors of this text are noted on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mack_Sennett.
Text is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Text is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.