Looking for Mabel Normand

 a Looking-for-Mabel reprint

MABEL’S REVENGE

  The late volatile Mabel Normand was one of Hollywood’s most capricious and unpredictable characters.  Practical joking came naturally to her.

At the height of her stardom, she quarreled with her director, Nick Cogley.  There was such a clash of temperaments that, for a stretch, production of her new picture was held up.

One day a peculiar gleam entered Mabel’s big dark eyes.  Smiling at Mr. Cogley with the abruptness of sunshine after rain, she seated herself upon his lap.

 The director, completely thawed, told Mabel she was right; he was glad to hear they were going to be friends.

 Whereupon she patted him generously on the forehead and cheeks – deftly applying daubs of red, green, blue and yellow greasepaint concealed in her hands.

Director Cogley didn’t know for an hour why people were laughing at him on the streets.

 1935 January, 1 Albuquerque Journal, Tragedy and Comedy in Hollywood’s Prankish “Practical Jokes”