The American silent-screen producer and director Mack Sennett (1884-1960) is frequently considered the originator of film comedy. He perfected the art of silent-screen slapstick in his "Keystone" series. Mack Sennett was born Michael Sinnott on Jan....

In February of 1914, Mack Sennett's Keystone company released a comedy called Kid Auto Races at Venice, in which a young English vaudevillian who had recently joined Sennett's company of comedians appeared briefly in a battered suit of...

Mack Sennett (January 17, 1880 – November 5, 1960) was an innovator of slapstick comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of...

Simon Louvish. Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett. Faber and Faber, 2003. 352 pages; $25.00. Canadian-born Michael Sinnott A pleasant read, with photocopies or excerpts of partial scripts, studio synopses, contemporary print cartoons, etc., randomly scattered about. If you are...

Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett, by Simon Louvish (Faber & Faber, $25). At the height of his powers, in the late teens and early Twenties of the last century, Mack Sennett presided over the largest studio in Hollywood, churning out...

Posterity, and many high-end critics, seem to have simultaneously arrived at the general proposition that the greatest male star of the golden age was Cary Grant. He was, after all, both sexy and a superb comedian—the rarest combination in movies. And he contrived to almost...

Posterity, and many high-end critics, seem to have simultaneously arrived at the general proposition that the greatest male star of the golden age was Cary Grant. He was, after all, both sexy and a superb comedian—the rarest combination in movies. And he contrived to almost...