Mable Normand was a REAL person
 

I just read in a magazine a little bit about Mable Normand. She was the lover of one of the first bi-sexual silent films stars. She was a silent film star herself. She was the last one to see this guy (can't remember his name) alive. His body was found like 2 years later - they didn't really go into detail about her or her life, but I thought it was interesting because up to yesterday I always thought Stevie made up this name and story but it gives the song/demo a whole new meaning to me! Anyone else got info on Mable Normand?

J

It was...Ramon Navarro? Rudolph Valentino? hold on, i'll check. Which demo?
oops, William Desmond Taylor...I was thinking of another silent lady.

Taylor's murder was a big scandal in old Hollywood. A young starlet, Mary Miles Minter, was involved with Taylor at the time, & the public stopped seeing her pictures. My former boss lives in the elegant bungalow in Laguna Hills where Mary Miles Minter once lived.

Mabel Normand made a bunch of good silent two-reelers for Mack Sennett. When she left Sennett, she started partying pretty hard & doing cocaine (hence the attraction for Stevie?) & was another suspect in the William Desmond Taylor killing (she fell in love with him after leaving Sennett). She was 37 when she died in a sanitorium.

One of Normand's movies, "The Extra Girl," is on DVD in a cheapo public-domain issue.

Go to this webpage--it has great pictures of Mabel Normand and her life story. http://www.angelfire.com/mn/hp/

She was the lover of Mack Sennet (she was the love of his life but she left him after she caught him in bed with one of her best friends). She co-starred with both Charlie Chaplin andFatty Arbuckle.

I had read previously, although it's not mentioned in this webpage, that she had a cocaine addiction at one point too.

I got that one from Target for a buck.

ha, i've been reading that this afternoon. About all the weird stuff surrounding the murder.

There's a book about the murder--I cannot recall the correct title right now, but I think it was something like "A Cast of Characters" or something. It was really interesting.

On Edit--I used my half-assed internet skills to find the following books regarding the murder:

Giroux, Robert. A Deed of Death: The Story Behind the Unsolved Murder of Hollywood Director William Desmond Taylor. New York: Knopf, 1990.

Kirkpatrick, Sidney. A Cast of Killers. New York: Dutton, 1986.


The last book is the one I read--I'd like to read the first one though. I love books about Old Hollywood.

That's mostly what i read during highschool - but mainly actress biographies. But, of course, in those, many others were written about,because of association.

Me too Amber. I think I cleared out the Biography section in my local library during my teens and twenties. I still buy biographies more than any other genre of non-fiction, well, with the possible exception of political books. I'm just really fascinated by that period of time--the "glory" days of Hollywood-from the silent era on through the 40's. I just finished the new Cary Grant biography by Marc Elliott. And I just ordered a book on the fashions of that era.

Not me. Sara...Rhiannon...Lily...Mabel. hmmm, no. :laugh:

Thanks for sharing this.

how are you finding these threads? :shrug:

I have my ways. ;)

obviously. ;)

http://zamolxismd.org/m/web.tiscali....face_small.png

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