Mack Sennett On Lost Art Of Laughing

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28890, 9 May 1959, Page 10

Mack Sennett On Lost Art Of Laughing

(By

LEA FITZGERALD.

>, in New York]

Mack Sennett, who set the world laughing with custard pies and Keystone Cops nearly half a century ago, thinks Hollywood today does not know what real comedy is.

“Hollywood’s idea of humour has gone to pot,” says Sennett, now one of the grand old men of films. “These modern producers ; —” he snorted, “they got their mind more on big productions, on spectacles, on murder, on seduction. “Now, sex is all right in its place, don’t mistake me. Sex can make fine comedy. What the heck do you think my bathing beauties were?” Mr Sennett shoved his widebrimmed hat forward over one eye and fingered a polka-dot tie. His eyes became eager under heavy white eybrows and his chunky body bulged in a brown suit as he leaned forward. “You hear people talking about slapstick as though it were the easiest thing in the world. “Well, let me tell you, pal, slapstick is the toughest thing in the world. “You have a sense of timing and you have to establish your motivation.

“Slapstick is in decline today because they don’t know how to do it out here any more. They don’t understand about motivation, my friend.”

He pointed a Stubby finger for emphasis. “We never threw a pie unless it was a last resort, unless it was the only weapon you had left to defend yourself.” Mr Sennett lifted his hat politely as an elderly lady passed in front of the apartment hotel where he lives.

“It’s all well and good to try for gag lines. But you have to know when not to talk. Now, Bill (W. C.) Fields, when he worked for me, he knew about that.

“Our writers would work out a situation. Bill would do the lines and then when he came to the topper he would go into pantomime and hit them right in the belly. Bill was a man who knew that chuckles have to build up to a belly laugh. “We don’t have the belly laughs any more. And people can get tired of nothing but polite chuckles. Damn tired.”

The famous producer of about 1000 films paused to let a noisy truck go down the street.

“Next thing,” he resumed, “is sympathy. Now Charlie Chaplin. Everyone thinks of him for his pantomime. And he is great. But he had an instinct for sympathy.

“I knew it the first time I saw him doing vaudeville in New York at a place on Forty-Second Street and Eighth. Got him to work for me for 125 dollars a week, and a year later he left for 10,000 dollars a week.

“I remember him saying in those days that when he made 100,000 dollars he’d quit and take it easy. But getting back to sympathy. Chaplin was ‘the little man.* He had your sympathy all the time. “I remember one day we were working on a movie and Ben Turpin came over to me and said: ‘l’m supposed to be the hero, but at the end of the movie this other . guy gets the girl. What do I get?’

“ ‘You get sympathy,’ I told him. ‘That’s what you get’. “Next on the programme is relaxation. Movie comedians today are too tense. No sense mentioning any names, but they are. “Now writing. That’s darn important in comedy.” said Mr Sennett. “Nowadays they sit down a couple of writers and expect them to turn out a good comedy scene in a couple of days. “Why, we used to have a stable of writers and we gave them plenty of time. “And we didn’t care where they went to school. Had a guy I paid 1000 dol-

Mack Sennett, who luxuriated in mansions with gold bathtubs, lives today in a small apartment overlooking a petrol station on bustling Hollywood Boulevarde — in near poverty. Cheery and hopeful at 78, Sennett sat in the lobby of the apartment building and explaineds "I’d invite you up to my suite, but the afternoon sun gets terrible warm on the balcony” There is no balcony.

lars a week. Couldn’t spell ‘cat.’ But he could come up with wonderful ideas. “One day this fellow comes in and tells us a gag. We all laugh like the dickens. All except this man from Yale. He says, ‘You should straighten out the grammar’.” Mr Sennett shook his head sadly. “Maybe people are paying too much attention to grammar today. I don’t think there’s too many belly-laughs in grammar.” (Associated Newspapers Feature Service).