Ford Sterling and Mack Sennett?

[misspickford9]

I was wondering what books you guys would recommend on these two great men? I know there are a handful of books on Mack, but which ones are any good/accurate? I ordered the interviews book but Im wondering if theres anything better out there on him and Keystone.

Also I was wondering where would be a good place to get info on Ford Sterling? I know theres a book titled "Ford Sterling - His Life and Films" but is it worth the price? Any good sites? Seems poor Ford has been forgotten but I do believe he was quite important back in his own day. According to Miriam Cooper his wife was a tad crazy though (LOL of course whether that was her view or the right view is up for grabs). Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

[silentfilm]

Dot Farley and Sterling in So Big (1924)

Wendy Warwick White's Ford Sterling: The Life and Films is outstanding. She really disproves the rumor that he was difficult to work with. She also really spotlights his later career after Sennett.

Brent Walker has a book on Mack Sennett coming out later this year, but it is on the studio, not a biography. Simon Louvich's Keystone biography of Sennett is OK, but he just seems to pontificate too much for me. And Gene Fowler's Father Goose is a very fun read, but it has to be mostly fiction.

[boblipton]

Avoid Simon Louvish's KEYSTONE, which I read and found rather empty.

Bob

[Brent Walker]

Yes, definitely seek out Wendy's Ford Sterling book! It is a very worthy addition to anyone's library. And unlike Chaplin, Hitchcock, etc., it's likely the only book on Ford Sterling that will ever be issued--fortunately for us, it's a quality one!

Regarding my Mack Sennett book, first of all Bruce I don't know when it will be released, and definitely can't verify your statement of later this year--that will be the publisher's (McFarland) decision. All I know is that I finally sent off my manuscript, so I'm no longer my own roadblock.

And the book will indeed have a great deal of biographical information about Mack Sennett, it just won't be a "biography" per se. It will be a history of the life and career of Mack Sennett and his studio, with a really detailed filmography and several 100 biographies of Sennett/Keystone before-and-behind the scenes players (a number of whom not only have never had any kind of biography written about them before, and even a few who were--until the book comes out--completely unknown to all except their family and friends).

Encompassed in all that is a lot about what Sennett was like as a man, a creative person and studio head, what kind of businessman he was, what his personal life was like during the time he ran his studio and afterward. More crucially, however, its about the inner-workings of the studio itself, how Sennett and the many key people who worked for him created comedies.

And I will discuss the true details behind a lot of the myths Sennett created, which appear in Gene Fowler's Father Goose and Sennett's own King of Comedy. Sennett did a really great job of completely obscuring his personal life, while creating myths about his professional life that have lived on. Both of these books are very worth reading, and have a great deal of what I've found is likely the truth (of the stories I've been able to corroborate) but with details changed or enhanced to make a better story (a common occurrence among the film pioneers--but they were storytellers, not documentarians).

Brent Walker

[Harlett O'Dowd]

Avoid Simon Louvish's KEYSTONE, which I read and found rather empty.

Bob

I picked up KEYSTONE during last year's Cinecon and found it a perfectly acceptable overview. Nothing great, but a decent primer.

[Bruce Long]

I've felt I should pass on this information somewhere, and this thread is as good as any. In Keystone, Louvish writes "In scholarly terms, we have no verifiable information about the entire period Mack Sennett spent on the stage."

A decade or so ago, I was browsing through the Special Collections at ASU, which included a bunch of miscellaneous theater programs and playbills. I think it was in the Gene Blakely collection. There was one item, as I recall it was for a Chicago theater around 1906, which included Sennett way down in the cast list. I can't recall whether he was listed as Sennett or as Michael Sinnott, but the name jumped out at me when I saw it.

[Harlett O'Dowd]

I've felt I should pass on this information somewhere, and this thread is as good as any. In Keystone, Louvish writes "In scholarly terms, we have no verifiable information about the entire period Mack Sennett spent on the stage."

A decade or so ago, I was browsing through the Special Collections at ASU, which included a bunch of miscellaneous theater programs and playbills. I think it was in the Gene Blakely collection. There was one item, as I recall it was for a Chicago theater around 1906, which included Sennett way down in the cast list. I can't recall whether he was listed as Sennett or as Michael Sinnott, but the name jumped out at me when I saw it.

Oh, the information is out there for those who want to do the digging - but I am telling you from experience it is a TON of work that would require accessing multiple archives in multiple cities.

I briefly flirted with the idea of doing a before-they-were-stars book detailing the stage careers of Keaton, Fairbanks, Chaney, etc. before they made the jump to silent film but quickly dimissed it as a harder sell with a nicher niche audience than just about anything anyone here is currently working on.

[boblipton]

Harrlett, I don't find Louvish's book empty of information. There's plenty of it there of the "And then he made" variety. It's insight that's lacking and the concluding section strikes me as specious and stretching to shock.

It's not just Louvish. A lot of authors writing about popular culture of a bygone era ignore the dictum that "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."

Bob