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Wednesday, October 27, 2010 – Silent Walls

If these walls could talk… well, they wouldn't talk. Mack Sennett built these walls, in the days of silent films. In 1912 Sennett founded Keystone Studios in Edendale – now the part of City of Los Angeles called Silverlake, between Hollywood and Echo Park. And this is the original main building, the first totally enclosed film stage and studio in history – home of the Keystone Cops and all the rest. Mabel Normand, Charlie Chaplin and W. C. Fields got their start here, and this was built for Mabel Normand, Sennett's girlfriend. It was her studio. And then in 1915 Keystone Studios became an autonomous production unit of Triangle Pictures Corporation – the other two legs of the triangle were D. W. Griffith and Thomas Ince. And then Mabel Normand jumped ship. She left Sennett and went to work for the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation. But everything was fluid back then. Sennett later gave up this studio and moved on to Pathé and much later there was a Sennett-Paramount partnership that lasted one year, and Sennett was forced into bankruptcy in 1933. It was over.

But this place is still in operation – The Mack Sennett Stage – 1215 Bates Avenue, at Effie Street - Hollywood's oldest continually operating movie studio, now used for music videos and commercials and by the major studios now and then, when they need the space. But Mabel Normand wasn't around this day. Or maybe she was.

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All text and photos unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 - Alan M. Pavlik 

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