Mabel and Me — Jon Boorstin

It's 1912 in Hollywood, the birth of the Movies, and Mabel Normand, the talented prototype of the contemporary comedienne, is shocking the world. Mabel Normand -- the visionary who turned Charlie Chaplin into a movie star, enchanted Mack Sennett, and became the first actress to have her name emblazoned in the title of a motion picture -- is the funniest woman on earth. And she is undoubtedly the most beguiling.Mabel and Me takes us deep inside the earliest days of motion pictures, and together with the Queen of Comedy, we become obsessed with motion pictures, caught in the web of their mesmerizing power. We meet Jack, a young man coming of age with the Movies. And with Mabel. As Jack evolves in a formative Hollywood, he shares his relentless, destructive, and ultimately liberating love for Mabel and the Movies. It's an equilateral triangle whose points teach us not just about the realities and the fiction of film, but about the complex meaning of passion.Author Jon Boorstin captures the most exciting period of film history -- the silent era. Sharply observant and historically accurate, Boorstin brings us to another world, and we are able to see why film developed as it did. We may never look at the Movies the same way ever again.