Ultra-rare and eminently display-worthy vintage 8.5 x 11.6-inch matte-finish sepia-tone portrait by Mishkin Studios, boldly signed and inscribed to the bottom border in black fountain pen in the 1920s. Lovable, sad-eyed Mabel Normand made her film debut in 1911, displaying irresistible charm and impeccable timing in scores of silent shorts at Biograph and Vitagraph in New York City. In 1912, she was lured to Hollywood by Mack Sennett, who cast her in a whopping 50 hit films at his newly-formed Keystone Studios, launching her to stardom. Beginning in 1915, Normand appeared in a string of enormously popular features opposite Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and her 1918 film Mickey is said to have single-handedly salvaged Sennett's studio from financial ruin. Almost certainly a manic-depressive, the comedienne's private penchants for merrymaking, cocaine-snorting and impulsive spending gradually eroded her career and, after the public learned of her connection to the William Desmond Taylor murder case, her proverbial goose was cooked. In 1930, she died, following a three-year battle with tuberculosis, aged only 35. Her autograph is highly sought and virtually nonexistent in any format. This is the only oversize example we have ever encountered.

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