Sennett, Mack

Canadian-born US film director and producer. He is best known for creating the Keystone Kops, a group of hilariously incompetant policemen, for silent film. As a director, Sennett made hundreds of short slapstick comedies, cast Charles Chaplin in his first feature film (Tillie's Punctured Romance in 1914), and started the career of US actor Gloria Swanson. Before his career ended, with the advent of sound films, he had directed most of Hollywood's major silent-film stars. His studio closed in 1933.

Born in Richmond, Québec, Sennett moved to New York in 1904, where he began to perform in vaudeville. After working as an actor in Biograph Studio films under D W Griffith from 1908 to 1911, he founded his own film production company, the Keystone Company, in 1911. In the following years, Sennett developed the slapstick style of comedy, featuring the first flying custard pie and his Keystone Kops. Other films include The Shriek of Araby (1923), and The Barber Shop (with sound, 1933).