Looking for Mabel Normand

Once upon a time, there was a lovely princess, who became a queen but that isn’t the story, I want to tell you about; I want to tell you the day, the pretty little damsel, who was trying to get to 100 but only hit 97.  I have a friend, who had a friend named, May McAvoy. My friend’s name is William Drew, the biographer of Pearl White but before he went on his deep drives into the ocean of researching the great Pearl, he wrote a couple of books on the women of the early films.  What a clever man he is; in his book ‘Speaking of Silents’, he chronicled the lives of the first ladies of the screen by actually talking to them and asking them about their lives.  Of course, he didn’t have Mabel in it, as without a medium, she would have been hard to reach. Back to May McAvoy’s story as told to William M. Drew. 

The little beauty, modeled, worked in small parts in films, then big parts in movies, and then became a star of the cinema. However, that too isn’t the story; I am trying to get around to telling you.  Ok, just one more side-trip, May McAvoy was the movie princess that became the Queen of the 1923, Pasadena Rose Parade, and you thought that Pasadena, didn’t like the girls of Hollywood, but royalty will always find its way, she was the only star to ever have the honor of being named Queen of the Tournament of Roses, and that is a pretty grand thing. Yes, of course you have seen May, that is if you every saw the 1925 Ben-Hur, she drives a chariot in that one, still can’t place her…well, have you seen a little film she co-stared in called the Jazz Singer?  See, I told you, she was cinema star.

So, May was rather special and yes, charming, here is the story I wanted you to know.  She had become a star at Paramount and the driver once of ‘the most beautiful car in America’ a Paige (that is what their advertising stated). Dallas Fitzgerald, the director, got a  “soaped up” car from by the Paige Company and one day after getting the approval of her Studio, the Paige Company, and arranging for the Automobile Club of America to take photos; May took the Paige to the Beverly Hills Speedway. 

Paige was one of the hottest cars in the country on the stock car racing circuit. Paige set a record in 1922, when Ralph Mulford covered 25 miles averaging a speed of 96.9 mph

May told William, that the track was indeed made of wooden boards with embanked curves and straight-aways. The day she was there trying out the car, repairs were being made for a big up coming race.  May let the car go full out and found that she was going nearly 100 miles an hour around the track and after almost 70 years, she said, “I wouldn’t mind doing it now because I still love driving cars”. She got up to 97 mph on a track that was being repaired and she told my friend that she would like to do it again. What a charming woman and isn’t that a swell story!