Chester Cooper Conklin was an early American film comedian who started at Keystone Studios as one of Mack Sennett’s Keystone Cops, often paired with Mack Swain. He appeared in a series of films with Mabel Normand and worked closely with Charlie Chaplin, both in silent and sound films.
Conklin in 1919
Conklin in 1919
Keystone Studios was an early film studio founded in Edendale, California on July 4, 1912 as the Keystone Pictures Studio by Mack Sennett with backing from actor-writer Adam Kessel (1866–1946) and Charles O. Baumann (1874–1931), owners of the New York Motion Picture Company. The company, referred to at its office as The Keystone Film Company, filmed in and around Glendale and Silver Lake, Los Angeles for several years, and its films were distributed by the Mutual Film Corporation between 1912 and 1915. The Keystone film brand declined rapidly after Sennett went independent in 1917.
Keystone Studios, 1915
The "Sennett Bathing Beauties"
Scene in Mabel's Dramatic Career (1913) with two moviegoers ("Fatty" Arbuckle and Sennett) arguing while watching Mabel Normand on screen
Mabel Normand, Mack Sennett and Charles Chaplin in The Fatal Mallet (1914)