Producer and director Mack Sennett presided over a motley crew of comedic talent that included Harry Langdon, Ben Turpin, Billy Bevan, Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand and the Keystone Kops, who slid, slipped and slapped their way across American movie screens. He was known as the innovator of slapstick comedy and film and was once dubbed “The King of Comedy.” Sennett’s brand of crude slapstick humor proved to be highly popular with audiences and helped him become one of the most powerful men of early Hollywood. Sennett set up his famed Keystone Studios in 1912 and began cranking out one- and two-reel shorts by the hundreds. Among the pratfalls, chases, character stereotypes and pantomime, Sennett set the tone in Hollywood’s early days and created the ground rules for American screen comedy that were to follow.
This exhibit features information about Mack Sennett’s work as well as stills from his movies taken from the John K. McLaughlin Collection of Popular Culture. The exhibit is located just outside of Special Collections in the North Reading Room (second floor) of the Glenn Bartle Library.