Mabel Normand In Unknown
Before there was the "It" girl, there was the "I don't care girl." Mabel Normand was that extremely rare creature, a strikingly beautiful woman with a gift for physical comedy. She was one of the early queens of the silent screen, a star of Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops comedies, doing all the flips, pratfalls and general mugging that her male cohorts did. Unfortunately, in real life the "I don't care" girl's life was dogged by scandal. She was a gal who enjoyed partying (original meaning here -- to whoop it up and have a good time, often while drinking alcohol) and one of her favorite party-mates was Fatty Arbuckle. She was at the party where Virginia Rappe died, and so got dragged into that mess. She was the last person to see William Desmond Taylor alive before his mysterious murder, and so got dragged into THAT mess. Years later, her chauffeur was found standing over the body of a recently shot business bigwig holding a smoking gun -- hers.
Here she's been restrained in ropes against some steel columns, in happier days before the overwhelming scandals did in her career. That's the way we'd like to remember Normand, with this Loosie Award for totally unconvincing ropework. They may not have had color or sound in those days, but they knew how to tie a knot. Too bad they didn't put any of that knowledge to use in this publicity photo for one of her films.
Here's your Loosie, anonymous photographer...