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Re: What Actually Happened between Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, and Mae Busch

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2021 8:44 am
by Thomas Reeder
Fascinating stuff, Richard. I can't wait to listen to those recorded interviews once they become available online...during my lifetime, I hope!

Re: What Actually Happened between Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, and Mae Busch

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2021 12:22 pm
by Elliot L. Hearst
Richard M Roberts wrote:You know, it does kinda put to bed the "Mack Sennett was gay" rumor nonsense as well.


RICHARD M ROBERTS


Well, he might still have been bi.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: What Actually Happened between Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, and Mae Busch

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2021 3:49 pm
by Richard M Roberts
Not on the evidence coming down the pike. The only one who even may have implied that Sennett was at all gay was Ralph Graves, who said he and Sennett had an "unholy alliance" in a wildly silly, sloshed and inaccurate interview he gave to Tony Slide (where he also claimed to be Irving Thalberg's "right hand man" at MGM in the mid-1930's. No one who was making THE BLACK COIN for the Weiss Brothers in 1936 was an MGM executive). The only other time I have heard the term "unholy alliance" used from people in that period, it indicated that people were hard-drinking and carousing companions, so Slide, who seems to like to think a lot of folk were gay in the silent era, may be just misinterpreting what Graves said anyway.

Graves told tall tales in more than one late-life interview, he gave an equally outlandish one to Miles Krueger around the same time.
Meanwhile, other Sennett employees recall Sennett having affairs with Marie Prevost and Phyllis Haver while they were in his employ, and he certainly had an affair with Marjorie Beebe in the early 1930's, which didn't even seem to be a secret to the press.

So until more concrete evidence turns up, Mack Sennett has other things to deal with in his life and memory than being "bi".

RICHARD M ROBERTS