Mack Sennett / Keystone Studios

Between 1912 and 1917, comedy was synonymous with Keystone. There, Mack Sennett was the first important producer and director of screen farce, where speed, irreverence, exaggeration, sight gags, and bam-bam-bam delivery defined comedy. "You had to understand comic motion," Sennett once told an interviewer, whereupon he pushed the interviewer into a swimming pool. "That is comic motion." Sennett was famous for his Keystone Kops, who bumbled all around Echo Park, and his "bathing beauties" (who included Gloria Swanson and Carole Lombard). Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle made many of his famous movies at Keystone, and Charlie Chaplin was discovered there. His great female lead was Mabel Normand, his sometime girlfriend, who inspired the character of Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson in the 1955 movie "Sunset Boulevard".

"Life in Edendale was truly exciting. Mack Sennett needed to produce a two-reel comedy every week which was 12 to 15 minutes long. These were the original slapstick, belly-laugh-a-minute flickers. They made the world laugh as the dignified were made to look ridiculous. The best-dressed folks got hit in the face with the biggest pies. Fat ladies sat down on break-away chairs or fell on the funniest, littlest guy on the set.

"We kids watched them shoot the first fast-moving chases with horses and wagons, automobiles, fire engines, bicycles and baby buggies running wild all over Edendale and into Echo Park Lake. The Keystone Cops rode in their little police patrol wagon skidding on the soaped streets. Dressed in ill-fitting New York policemen's uniforms, they hit fruit stands, popcorn wagons, telephone poles and chicken coops. They took pratfalls and lifted their knees high as they ran and took corners on one foot, waving their billy clubs over their heads. They were always called to restore law and order to some impossible, funny scene hurriedly created by the quick wit of Hollywood's first comedy gagmen. The director had the story line in mind, but the gags came from everywhere as the shooting progressed. When the crew learned the themes of the story, each one was encouraged to come up with a funny thought or idea that might suggest an additional gag to help the picture get yet another laugh. Each idea gave birth to another one. Those early comedy idea men set the formula for the way movies, radio and television comedy would be written for years to come. Edendale became one great big background set for comedy. Folks there watched how it was done right in their own backyards. Early film makers didn't build street sets. To save money, they just used the actual stores, shop buildings and neighborhood homes."
            --from The Keystone Kid by Coy Watson, Jr.

car skidding around a soap-sudded corner

 

The Discovery of Charlie Chaplin

According to Chaplin cohort Ford Sterling, one rainy day the Keystone actors were hiding out in the dressing room. Silent movies in those early days were shot outdoors under muslin fabric used to diffuse the harsh sunlight. When it rained the sets became a dripping mess. Studio policy was that on rainy days the actors were to build sets in the large concrete stage building. 

Instead the actors were hiding out in the men's dressing room playing pinochle. Chaplin, too cheap to gamble, was instead putting on the other actors clothing – Fatty Arbuckle's oversized pants and another's undersized vest. He began to noodle around in the outfit doing an old English Variety bit – the nasty drunk. Soon the whole studio had found their way to the dressing room and was watching. Chaplin had everyone in stitches. No one even noticed that Sennett was also present.  When Chaplin noticed Sennett he stopped. Sennett simply told Chaplin, the same bit tomorrow in the same costume when we shoot, and left.  Within a year Chaplin was the most recognizable face in movies. 

Fatty Arbuckle and Charlie Chaplin in a sinking boat in Echo Park lake.

From a 1917 article in The Moving Picture World:

When the Keystone once got going its rise was rapid. Today [1917] the open air stages of the Keystone Film Company cover five acres. In addition to this are buildings of wood, brick and concrete, housing all the industries to be found in the average city of several thousand population, including a five-story planing mill and restaurant.

Another feature of the Mack Sennett Keystone studios is the big open air plunge, which is electrically heated. When not in use for pictures it is at the disposal of the actors, who may bathe in it whenever they desire. A modern cafeteria is conducted by the company. Here everybody employed at the plant may obtain the best of food at prices considerably lower than are demanded downtown.

In the planing mill is made everything from patrol wagons to the various sections of Swiss-chalet bungalows and skyscrapers. The painters supply the realistic touches, which are given finish by wall paper and designers' department. All kinds of mechanical devices are made in the machine shops, and in the big garage the scores of autos used in the Keystone's activities are housed and kept in repair. Many touches of humor are added to the comedies by the sign painters' staff. The plumbing department is kept busy providing water and sewerage connections wherever necessary.

Separate buildings are maintained for the general offices, scenario and publicity departments and for other activities allied with the manufacture of motion pictures.

The studios compose quite a city within a city, thriving with industry and giving employment to more than a thousand people, in one capacity or another.

 

CREDITS

Description of life in Edendale circa 1918: excerpt from The Keystone Kid: Tales of Early Hollywood by Coy Watson, Jr. (Santa Monica Press: 2001). (Source: http://www.santamonicapress.com/catalog/keystone/index.html)

Discovery of Charlie Chaplin: from Echo Park Historical Society newsletter, vol 5, no 2, April 1998 (http://www.echopark.net/org/epian52_1.htm). Similar story is told in Gifford, Denis, Chaplin (Doubleday & Co, 1974).

Description of Sennett Studios from an article written by G. P. von Harleman, originally appeared in the March 10, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World. (Source: http://employees.oxy.edu/jerry/mpstud02.htm)