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Mabel Normand (November 9, 1892〔 – February 23, 1930) was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, director and producer. She was a popular star and collaborator of Mack Sennett's in his Keystone Studios films and at the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s had her own movie studio and production company. Onscreen she appeared in a dozen successful films with Charles Chaplin and seventeen with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, sometimes writing and directing (or co-writing/directing) movies featuring Chaplin as her leading man. Throughout the 1920s her name was linked with widely publicized scandals including the 1922 murder of William Desmond Taylor and the 1924 shooting of Courtland S. Dines, who was shot by Normand's chauffeur using her pistol. She was not a suspect in either crime. Her film career declined, possibly due to both scandals and a recurrence of tuberculosis in 1923, which led to a decline in her health, retirement from films and her death in 1930 at age 37.〔cite magazine article Films in Review September 1974 Mabel Normand A grand Nephew's Memoir Normand, Stephen〕 == Early life and career height== Born Mabel Ethelreid Normand in New Brighton, Staten Island, New York, she grew up in a working-class family. Normand's mother was of Irish heritage, while her father was French Canadian. Her father, Claude Normand, was employed as a cabinet maker and stage carpenter at Sailors' Snug Harbor home for elderly seamen. Before she entered films at age 16 in 1909, Normand worked as an artist's model, which included posing for postcards illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the Gibson Girl image, as well as for Butterick's clothing pattern manufacturers in lower Manhattan. For a short time, she worked for Vitagraph Studios in New York City for twenty-five dollars a 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."〔Smith, Albert E. in collaboration with Phil A. Koury, "Two Reels And A Crank", Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1952.〕 Her quietly effervescent lead performance while directed by D. W. Griffith in the dramatic 1911 short film ''Her Awakening'' drew attention and she met director Mack Sennett while at Griffith's Biograph Company, embarking upon a topsy-turvy relationship with him; he later brought her across to California when he founded Keystone Studios in 1912. Her earlier Keystone films portrayed her as a bathing beauty but Normand quickly demonstrated a flair for comedy and became a major star of Sennett's short films. Normand appeared with Charles Chaplin and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in many short films as well as men who would later become icons such as Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, and Boris Karloff. She played a key role in starting Chaplin's film career and acted as his leading lady and mentor in a string of films in 1914, sometimes co-writing and directing or co-directing films with him. Chaplin had considerable initial difficulty adjusting to the demands of film acting and his performance suffered for it. After his first film appearance in ''Making a Living'', Sennett felt he had made a costly mistake.〔 Most historians agree it was Normand who persuaded him to give Chaplin another chance and she and Chaplin appeared together in a dozen subsequent films, almost always as a couple in the lead roles. In 1914 she starred with Marie Dressler and Chaplin in ''Tillie's Punctured Romance'', the first feature-length comedy. Earlier that same year, in January/February, Chaplin first played his Tramp character in ''Mabel's Strange Predicament'', although it wound up being the second Tramp film released; Chaplin offers an account of his experience on the film in his autobiography. In 1918, as her relationship with Sennett came to an end, Normand signed a $3,500 a week contract with Samuel Goldwyn and opened a film studio in Culver City. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mabel Normand」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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