Mack Sennett was born on 17 January 1880.

He was the “King of Comedy.” That is a moniker he richly deserved! Because he didn’t just produce a ridiculous number of comedy films. (IMDb lists over 1,100 films he produced.) He gave a start to pretty much every film comedian you’ve ever heard of. Just some of the people who began with him: Marie Dressler, Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Harold Lloyd, Carole Lombard, and WC Fields.

He founded Keystone Studios in 1912. That’s where we get the name of the Keystone Cops. Even more than Chaplin, they define silent era comedy. (Chaplin made his most famous silent films during the sound era.) Surprisingly, there were only about a dozen films that focus on them. Much more commonly, Mack Sennett just put the idiots in blue into other films — usually at the climax, which is where we see their best-known bits.

Sennett approached the sound era with gusto. But he didn’t have a lot of success. He produced a number of films — over 100. But they are almost all shorts. He attempted to break into feature films with Hypnotized (1932). But it was a commercial failure and effectively the end of his career.

I don’t think you can hold this against him. Few of us are ever successful at even one thing. And Mack Sennett pretty much invented the modern comedy film. And those old films are still pretty funny!

With this in mind, I present Tillie’s Punctured Romance starring Marie Dressler and Charlie Chaplin. It is generally considered the first feature-length comedy. The first comedy was an 1895 45-second bit involving a boy pranking an old man with a garden hose called L’Arroseur Arrosé. And comedy didn’t progress much for the next two decades. Sure, they got longer and more complex. But not to this point.

Here is the UCLA-produced restored version of the film. It’s quite good. But it is silent. Not even any music here!

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Mack Sennett via History. It is in the public domain.