WAS A SILENT-FILM SUPERSTAR WHO BROKE BOX-OFFICE RECORDS, MENTORED CHARLIE CHAPLIN AND... DISAPPEARED. WE INVESTIGATE THE THRILLING RISE AND DRAMATIC FALL OF A LOST HOLLYWOOD ICON

WORDS TOM ELLEN

Normand doing a bit of light lion-taming for 1923’s The Extra Girl.

Exactly three months before the Armistice of Compiègne would bring an end to the First World War, police were called to the small town of Bayside, Queens, near Long Island.

It was 11 August 1918. The disturbance had nothing to do with the war, nor with the deadly ‘Spanish flu’ virus that was already creeping through the US. In fact, it was caused by a movie. The silent comedy Mickey had opened that afternoon in Bayside, and excited fans were soon jostling for position in a queue that snaked back three blocks. The cinema played the film on repeat until midnight, but the punters kept coming. Terrified of missing out, the crowd began pushing and shoving, and the cops were summoned to keep order.

It was a good indication of things to come. In an era when even the biggest films lasted no more than a year in theatres, Mickey eventually closed in 1922, having shifted 40.9 million tickets: a box-office record that would not be broken for nearly two decades. Cinema owners nicknamed it ‘the mortgage-lifter’. More incredibly, these unprecedented takings were collected during an international health scare. By the early 1920s, Spanish flu had claimed over half a million American lives, and fear of infection left restaurants, music halls and even churches empty. But still people flocked to see Mickey. A century before Spider-Man: No Way Home, here was proof that a deadly pandemic is no match for an unmissable movie.

The film’s enduring appeal was inarguably down to its star: 25-year-old actor, director, stuntwoman and studio head Mabel Normand. Playing the titular orphan character, Normand flipped gender norms, rejecting the damsel-in-distress leading-lady trope to embody a mischievous, goofy tomboy. Audiences lapped it up: Mickey hats, dresses and lantern slides sold by the truckload, and the film’s theme song shifted 500,000 copies in four days. A new adjective, ‘Mabelescent’, was coined to mean, “bubbly, vivacious, sparkling, in the manner of Mabel Normand”.

Critics were as bewitched as the public. “No creation in drama, fiction, screen, or song has caught the public fancy and been taken to the public heart as Mickey has,” gushed The Tattler. “She will go down in popular history!”