Make This: The Beginning of Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin's Friendship

In 1913, film came to Charlie Chaplin. First, he was invited to join the New York Motion Picture Company then a representative from the Keystone Studios in California thought he could replace star Fred Mace. Mack Sennett, the head of Keystone, was just allowing his girlfriend comedian superstar "Madcap Mabel" Normand to direct some of the films. Normand was already a veteran of over 100 films as an actress well as a writer. But Chaplin with now so much freedom was a little anxious in a medium he was not very familiar with. "This nettled me, for, charming as Mabel was, I doubted her competence as a director; so the first day there came the inevitable blow-up." (Chaplin, Charlie. My Autobiography. 2012)

Jamie Bell as Charlie Chaplin

Merritt Wever as Mabel Normand

Joshua Jackson as Mack Sennett