Mabel Normand

Born in New Brighton, New York, Mabel Normand was a silent-film actress who also worked as a comedienne, director, and screenwriter. She worked at Vitagraph Studios in New York City before drawing notice in D. W. Griffith's 1911 short Her Awakening and meeting Mack Sennett at Biograph. Sennett brought her to California for his Keystone Studios. Normand became a popular star and his collaborator, appearing in many shorts with Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe Arbuckle. In A Noise from the Deep (1913), she was credited as the first movie star to take a pie in the face. She helped launch Chaplin's career, acted as his leading lady, and directed him and herself in Mabel's Strange Predicament; they later made Tillie's Punctured Romance with Marie Dressler, the first feature-length comedy. In 1916 she opened her own company with Sennett but lost it in 1918. Her Mabel's Blunder (1914) entered the National Film Registry in 2009.