Looking for Mabel Normand

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 31, 1920 the New York Morning Telegraph stated the Mabel Normand was beginning work on Head Over Heels.  It was a successful little musical comedy which had played at the Mason Theater staring Mizi Hajos in Los Angeles, which was adapted from Nalbro Bartley’s Shadows by the Goldwyn Studios for Mabel.  Mabel co-star was Hugh Thompson.

 

 

In the Los Angeles Times dated June 13 a story ran that Mabel was off work on HOH because of an accident at the studio when the glass in a thermos broke.  May Markson of the Los Angeles Record interviewed Mabel at the Sam Goldwyn on July 3, 1920 as she was shooting HOH.  In it Markson describe Mabel’s custom…”On Mabel's head rested a little flat black sailor. Her hair hung in two thick pigtails down her back. She wore a green short skirt with white stripes, and black and white striped stockings with heavy brown cowhide shoes. There was no make-up on her face, except that her eyelashes were beaded. She looked like a ludicrous little character that might have stepped out of an east side tenement in New York.

 

            When she finishes a picture she makes a bee-line for New York, even though she can be there only two or three days, in order to be with her mother and sister.

           

 

What Happened to Rosa was ready to be distributed by the end of July 1920 so Head Over Heels was in fact the last film Mabel made at Goldwyn rather then What Happened to Rosa which often listed as her last film. By December Mabel is back in Los Angeles at the studio to see the HOH run off and WHTR is in theaters across the country. 

 

           

 Mabel didn’t think much of her pictures with the Goldwyn Company.  Her opinion was that they were not particularly good. The stories were more suitable, in some instances, for the stage than the screen, which made it very difficult for the director and the star to turn out creditable work.  Mabel felt she was standing still, and she wanted to progress.  She worked three years for Goldwyn, two of them at Fort Lee, N. J., and the last year at Culver City. 

 

                     

 

Mabel talked with Sennett regarding coming back his studio she made "Head Over Heels" for the Goldwyn Company and after that they released her from her contract and she signed with Mr. Sennett to do "Molly-O."

 

            In an interview with Abraham Lehr, the vice president and production supervisor of the Goldwyn Company, he stated that “Head Over Heels was released in April 1921,” said Mr. Lehr. “Mabel had been with us four years and had a year to go. But she was dissatisfied, saying we weren't giving her good pictures, and complaining about conditions around the studio. So Mr. Goldwyn released her from contract.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However the copyright on this 5 reels film is listed as April 20, 1922 (two months after the death of William Desmond Taylor and after the release of Molly O.) The film was finished at the end of 1920.

 

 

 

At Cinecon42 we will able to see Head Over Heels, it will be just grand.... 

to link to Cinecon 42 information (click here)

 

 

The general information is:

HEAD OVER HEELS

Mabel as an acrobat in Naples is an ugly duckling who is transformed by a beauty parlor in the United States, She must choose between love and a movie career, She chooses love.

Goldwyn

5 reels, April, 1922

dir. Victor L. Schertzinger and Paul Bern, auth. Lillian Josephson and Gerald C. Duffy, from a book and  musical comedy by Edgar Allen Woolf, suggested by a story by Nalbro Isadorah Bart­ley, photography. George Webber and Maximilian Fabian, film editor. Robert Bishop and Herbert S. Walde, Art. Dir. Cedric A. Gibbons

cast: cast: Mabel Normand (Tina), Hugh Thompson (Lawson), Russ Powell (Uncle Bambinetti), Raymond Hatton (Pepper), Lionel Belmore (Wilkins), Adolph Menjou (Sterling), Lillyan

Tashman (Babe Lorimer)

Location: Goldwyn studios, Culver City, CA

copyright:  Apr. 20, 1922

 

 

THERE ARE A LOT OF PHOTOS JUST PRESS THE GLASS SLIDE

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and then there is an album of

Head Over Heels photos

a Slideshow

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