Mabel Normand

Amabel Ethelreid Normand (November 9, 1893 — February 23, 1930), better known as Mabel Normand, was an American silent film actress, comedienne, director and screenwriter. She was a popular star and collaborator of Mack Sennett in their Keystone Studios films, and at the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s had her own film studio and production company, the Mabel Normand Feature Film Company. On screen, she appeared in twelve successful films with Charlie Chaplin and seventeen with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, sometimes writing and directing (or co-writing and directing) films featuring Chaplin as her leading man. Normand's name was repeatedly linked with gun violence, including the 1922 murder of her friend, director William Desmond Taylor, and the non-fatal 1924 shooting of Courtland S. Dines by Normand's chauffeur, Joe Kelly. After police interrogation, she was ruled out as a suspect in Taylor's murder. Normand was a heavy smoker who may have suffered lung cancer, and/or a recurrence of tuberculosis in 1923, which led to a decline in her health, an early retirement from films in 1926 and her death in 1930 at age 36.