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 morning clothes and top hat. His name was Charlie Chaplin and the cameo gave birth to the most famous comedic creation in cinema history, "The Tramp." The very name Mack Sennett resonates with images of early pioneering Hollywood, when rickety, makeshift "studios" sprang up in dusty streets and directors in plus-fours and caps cranked out one and two-reel silent movies with primitive equipment. It was an era both rough and romantic, the earliest days of the Dream Factory when maids and chauffeurs, waitresses, shopgirls, and street sweepers flocked to find fortune, and when fame too often fell victim to scandal in the hothouse atmosphere of the closed...