Mabel's Dramatic Career
About Mabel's Dramatic Career
A young man, played by Mack Sennett, falls for his mother’s kitchen maid, Mabel, played by Mabel Normand. His mother objects and introduces a woman she prefers. Mabel confronts that woman and is fired. She turns up later as a movie actress. The picture uses a film inside the film, with multiple exposure to show a movie projected in a theater, and Sennett’s character becomes agitated when he sees what she is doing on screen. Roscoe Arbuckle has a cameo. Sennett directed.
Cast & crew
More about Mabel's Dramatic Career
Sennett also produced. Keystone released it on 8 September 1913. Wikidata times it at 14 minutes. Ford Sterling, Charles Avery, Alice Davenport, Virginia Kirtley, Bert Hunn, and Billy Jacobs are billed. An Internet Archive identifier is silent-mabels-dramatic-career.
Themes
Making
Sennett directs himself as the man who loses the maid and then finds her on a screen. The theater shot is the trick: the movie Mabel is acting in is printed into the frame.
Technique
Multiple exposure puts the film Mabel is acting in onto the screen inside the theater.
Preservation
The short survives. A copy is on the Internet Archive.
Notes
- The kitchen job and the movie job are both Mabel’s. Normand plays both stretches.
- Arbuckle’s appearance is a cameo, not the lead.
- The projected film is a multiple exposure, not a cut to a second camera’s story told as real.
- Alice Davenport is billed. The outline does not give her a separate scene.
Scenes
- Sennett’s character courts the kitchen maid and his mother stops it.
- Mabel is fired after she faces the other woman.
- He sits in a theater and sees her in the picture on the screen.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-mabels-dramatic-career)
