Books: Custard Pie King

FATHER GOOSE—Gene Fowler—Covici-Friede ($3).

Michael Sinnott was a good boilermaker but he wanted to sing in opera. So he left East Berlin, Conn., changed his name to Mack Sennett, went to Manhattan to seek his fortune. That was in 1906. How he struggled and prospered, and how a little mouse got him in the end is the theme of Gene Fowler’s Father Goose. For once biographer and subject are an almost perfect match. Readers who never saw a Keystone comedy will have a hard time restraining their whoops as Gene Fowler unreels this fantastic slapstick-story of Hollywood success.

Mack Sennett had a big voice, but he found it easier to get a job in a choir than on the stage of the Metropolitan. Once when he was singing in John D. Rockefeller Sr.’s Baptist Church his thunderous diapason is said to have made the old tycoon whisper to a retainer: “Did you bring an umbrella?” From choir-singing Sennett drifted into burlesque, then heard there were jobs to be had in the infant cinema industry. He was a member of David Wark Griffith’s Biograph troupe when it went to Los Angeles in 1910. In those days his cinema-going mother always knew the state of her son’s finances by noting whether he appeared on the screen wearing a much-prized diamond ring.

When Mack Sennett became a director his comedies were soon pushing Griffith’s pictures for popularity. He started his own company, called it Keystone Comedy Co. Thanks to a totally inefficient Russian cameraman, his first three pictures were not fit to be seen. But when he began to go ahead he went fast. During his first year as an independent producer Sennett made 104 successful comedies. Soon Mack Sennett was a tycoon and had his heart’s desire—a huge bathtub in his office. This tub was a favored spot for conferences; it was a mark of favor to be invited to share it. Keystone Comedies gave the U. S. three standard favorites: the chase (most Sennett pictures ended in one), the custard pie, the bathing beauty.

Sennett herself proved to be an almost infallible barometer of public taste. Biographer Fowler denies his sense of humor but says ”perhaps he had the greatest sense of the ridiculous of any man in modern times.” When he laughed at a gag, audiences were sure to howl over it. The roster of his employes reads like a Hollywood Hall of Fame: Marie Dressier, Wallace Beery, Gloria Swanson, “Fatty” Arbuckle, W. C. Fields, Ben Turpin, Harold Lloyd, Weber & Fields, Lew Cody, Louise Fazenda, Bebe Daniels, Buster Keaton, Hal Roach, many another. It was Mack Sennett who imported Charlie Chaplin, overcame his disastrous first appearance by changing his make-up and costume. With a boilermaker’s education, habits and vocabulary. Sennett distrusted such academic impedimenta as written scripts, insisted on his authors telling him their stories verbally. The post-War years 1924-26 were golden harvests for Mack Sennett. Then came the talkies and Sennett slapstick began to fade from public favor. The finishing touch was given by Walt Disney’s ubiquitous Mickey Mouse.