Mae Busch ends Mack Sennett’s romance with Mabel Normand back in 1918, although there are some – Jimmy Finlayson among them – who claim that Mae Busch does Mack Sennett a favor in this way, because Jimmy Finlayson says Mabel Normand is crazy and a cocaine fiend, and people around her have a habit of getting shot.
He does not know if Mabel Normand is actually a cocaine fiend – he saw no evidence of it when they worked together on Raggedy Rose – but the part about the shooting is certainly true, or else William Desmond Taylor, who was found on February 2nd, 1922 with a locket in his possession containing a photograph of Mabel Normand, and a bullet hole in his back, would still be directing pictures instead of rotting in the ground. He does know that Mabel Normand was close to Chaplin: fought for Chaplin, encouraged Chaplin, shared Chaplin’s bed. Mabel Normand spoke with him of Chaplin between takes on Raggedy Rose, while she sipped gin from a silver flask.
Like him, she had seen many sides of Chaplin.
Like him, she still adored Chaplin.
He thought Mabel Normand was appealing on screen, but she looked unhealthy up close. Her pallor made her eyes appear too large. Mabel Normand once wrote and directed pictures. Mabel Normand was a star. Mabel Normand learned to fly a plane. All in the past. By Raggedy Rose, Mabel Normand was sinking, and she knew it.
Mabel Normand was married to Lew Cody, but they did not live together.
Mabel Normand told him that she married Lew Cody for a gag.
Mack Sennett is said to be pining for Mabel Normand still, although if Mack Sennett loves her that much then Mack Sennett should not have fucked Mae Busch in their apartment, in their bed, only to be caught in the act by Mabel Normand. Worse, Mae Busch was Mabel Normand’s friend, or Mabel Normand thought so until Mae Busch started fucking Mack Sennett.
So Hal Roach puts Babe and him together with Mae Busch and Jimmy Finlayson for a picture entitled Love ’Em and Weep. The day before shooting commences, Jimmy Finlayson reads extracts aloud over lunch from The Sins of Hollywood: An Exposé of Movie Vice!, which costs Jimmy Finlayson fifty cents and has repaid him many times over in entertainment value. All of the stories in The Sins of Hollywood are pseudonymous, but Jimmy Finlayson takes great pleasure in restoring the true names to each.
One day – Jimmy Finlayson reads – there came on the lot an attractive brunette. Straightaway the girl – shall we call her Mae? – and Mabel became friends, then pals. It was Mae who proposed that they be good friends. At first Mabel demurred, then she agreed. It was a diplomatic move. There was a good deal of talk going on around the lot. She wanted to stop that talk. So she frolicked with Mae. Mack was true to her – this the girl knew. Of course, there were a large number of new faces around the studios these days – they were necessary in the sort of pictures Mack was making. But Mabel worried none about them. Her Mack was hers – always.
At this, Jimmy Finlayson sighs in the manner of a softhearted man watching a kitten playing with a ball of yarn.
And so – Jimmy Finlayson resumes – blissfully working her way along toward stardom, Mabel drove to the lot with a song in her heart each morning, and with a happy smile on her face in the evening. Wasn’t she kept by the great maker of pictures, himself? Was she not soon to become a star? Was she not earning a wonderfully big salary?
But Mack began to get young ideas. True, in his way Mack loved Mabel; Mack does yet. But Temptation tossed her curls and beckoned him to come and play along the Highways of Immorality. Temptation, guised as a shapely maid with alluring lips and firm, rounded bosom, called to him and Mack began to take heed.
Jimmy Finlayson pauses dramatically.
– Temptation’s other name was Mae.
According to The Sins of Hollywood, or Jimmy Finlayson’s version thereof, Mae Busch and Mabel Normand fought over the love-stained sheets for the honor of sharing Mack Sennett’s bed, while Mack Sennett himself did the smart thing and took to the hills. The fight ended when Mae Busch banged Mabel Normand’s head repeatedly against a window frame, reducing her to a state of semi-consciousness.
By now, Jimmy Finlayson is acting out the roles while reading, and has drawn quite the crowd. When Jimmy Finlayson concludes, there is a round of applause.
Later, he feels guilty for laughing along. He likes Mabel Normand, and it makes him disinclined to like Mae Busch, even if the two women are said to have patched up their differences.
The next day, with the four of them gathered on the set of Love ’Em And Weep, Mae Busch asks Jimmy Finlayson if Jimmy Finlayson also gives private recitals, and he decides that he should give Mae Busch a chance.
65
Hal Roach is a hands-on mogul, yet views all at one remove. Hal Roach surveys the screen, and upon the screen Hal Roach projects his stars, or his perception of them. For Hal Roach, Babe is the eternal bully. No matter that, away from the set, away from the screen, Babe is a strange mix of gentleness and uncertainty, of frustrated artistry and unfeigned insouciance. Babe has spent years caked in villainy, and so Babe must play the villain.
Slipping Wives: bully.
Sailors, Beware!: bully.
But he watches Duck Soup again, beside him not Hal Roach but Leo McCarey, and he notices how well he and Babe work together when not in opposition. Leo McCarey sees it. Babe has seen it, too. Even Hal Roach’s publicity merchants have seen it.
But not Hal Roach.
Not yet.
66
SEPTEMBER 8, 1927
FROM: WILLIAM DOANE
TO: HAL ROACH
L&H PICTURE PREVIEWED LAST NIGHT NEAR RIOT STOP ONE OF BEST LAUGH PICTURES FOR LONG TIME STOP BECAUSE PICTURE IS VERY GOOD WE FEEL JUSTIFIED WORKING DAY OR TWO LONGER TO MAKE IT STILL BETTER …
SEPTEMBER 14, 1927
FROM: WILLIAM DOANE
TO: HAL ROACH
LAST L&H PICTURE EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD BY REASON OF GREATLY IMPROVED PERFORMANCE BY PRINCIPALS STOP CURRENT PICTURE HAS GOOD CHANCE TO BEING AS GOOD OR BETTER STOP MCCAREY WALKER MYSELF WISH YOUR OPINION OF A LITTLE LATER ON SUGGESTING TO METRO FURNISHING TO THEM PICTURES WITH THIS COMEDY TEAM IN PLACE …
67
At the Oceana Apartments, in a closet, he keeps cheap derby hats to give to particularly deserving visitors. It is something he has always done. Vera, his third wife, would laugh at him for it, but Vera laughed at him for many reasons, none of them good.
The hat supply needs to be replenished.
He has not thought of Vera in a year or more.
He tries not to think of Vera, but she comes back to him at unanticipated moments. He sees her face, and hears her voice.
You’re nothing, Vera goads him. You stole everything you have from Chaplin. You even took his hat.
He does not bother to tell her that he did not steal Chaplin’s hat. If he stole anyone’s hat, he stole George Robey’s, just as Chaplin did, although Chaplin also appropriated George Robey’s frock coat and malacca cane, and Dan Leno’s too-small jacket, and Little Tich’s boots. But it does not matter. They are all part of the same continuum, clowns bequeathed greasepaint from dead clowns, comics built from the bones of forgotten men.