Mack Sennett's Fun Factory: A History and Filmography of His Studio and His Keystone and Mack Sennett Comedies, with Biographies of Players and Personnel

Brent E. Walker, Mack Sennett's Fun Factory: A History and Filmography of His Studio and His Keystone and Mack Sennett Comedies, with Biographies of Players and Personnel (Jefferson, NC, McFarland & Company: 2010).

Mack Sennett's name is synonymous with American silent comedy. After a four-year apprenticeship from 1908 to 1912 at the Biograph Company, Sennett produced more than one thousand films for the Keystone Film CompanyandMackSennettComedies over atwentyone year period. He brought Charles Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Harry Langdon, Charley Chase, Edgar Kennedy, Ben Turpin, Mack Swain, Billy Bevan, W. C. Fields and others to the screen. The size of Sennett's accomplishment and his self-mythologizing overwhelmed any comprehensive documentation of his achievement until publication of thisamazing book, the fruit of more than twenty years of research.

Mack Sennett's Fun Factory is the size of an encyclopedia volume; it is many things in one.

The first 235 pages are an historical overview of Sennett and the movies: a chronological discussion of his career at Biograph (1908-1912), Keystone and Triangle (1912-1917), Paramount (1917-1921), First National (1921-1922), Pathé (1923-1929), Educational (1929-1932) and Paramount-Publix (1932-1933). The next 232 pages are a chronological filmography, beginning with Sennett's appearances as an actor for Biograph and extending through to theatrical and television compilations using footage from Mack Sennett comedies. This is followed by 116 pages of biographies of Keystone and Mack Sennett studio personnel, separated into sections: performers, creative and technical people, and "other notable personnel" who had either minor association with Sennett or for whom little information was available. There is a stunningly comprehensive index: sixty-two pages of very small type, four columns per page. In addition, the book contains approximately 280 rare, really rare, photographs, all nicely reproduced, large enough to be studied, and scrupulously captioned....