Tomboy Bessie (1912)
1912 · Silent film · 8 min · dir. Mack Sennett
- Comedy
Synopsis
In this one, Mabel Normand plays the title role, a wild child who keeps tormenting people and getting into scrapes. Mack is courting Kate Toncray, who plays Mabel's aunt and William Butler plays Mabel's father and Kate's brother, who tells Mack he may marry his sister if he amuses his daughter. This consists of letting her torment him and of setting a local chicken farmer on them all.
Synopsis from TMDb
Details
- Director
- Mack Sennett
- Writer
- William E. Wing
- Studio
- Biograph-Film
- Released
- 1912-06-02
- Running time
- 8 minutes
Cast & crew
Mack Sennett Director
Mabel Normand- Mack Sennett
Reviews on the Internet Archive
★★★★ · More cute than funny · The_Emperor_Of_Television · 2013-04-10
Mabel Normand spends much of the film playing tricks on the other characters. Condition of the film is decent, but there is too much digital compression (which is a bigger problem with silent films than it is with sound films or TV episodes, due to early 1910s silent film relying much on facial and body expression). Still, this is quite watchable.
★★★ · A Wonderful Precursor To Keystone · filmscholar · 2012-11-02
This early situation comedy by Mack Sennett for Biograph is a delightful prelude to his soon to be realized Keystone Films. By the time of the making of this film Sennett had learned his basic techniques from Biograph's premier director D.W. Griffith and was ready to begin his own niche of boisterous and irreverent comedy with his own group of performers, the incredible Mabel Normand, along with Fred Mace and Ford Sterling.
