The studio is especially remembered for its
silent film era under
Mack Sennett, the Canadian-American film actor, director, and producer, who became known as the 'King of Comedy'. With financial backing from Adam Kessel and Charles O. Bauman of the
New York Motion Picture Company, Sennett founded Keystone Studios in
Edendale, California – now a part of
Echo Park – in 1912. The original main building which was the first totally enclosed film stage and studio ever constructed, is still there today. Known as Sennett's
Fun Factory, it was here that he created the
slapstick antics of the
Keystone Cops (from 1912) and the
Sennett Bathing Beauties (beginning in 1915). Keystone comedies were noted for their hair-raising car chases and
custard pie warfare, especially in the
Keystone Cops series.
Charlie Chaplin got his start in films at Keystone when Sennett hired him in 1914, fresh from his
vaudeville career, to make
silent films, in which he rapidly became a star performer and
film director, participating in thirty-five films within the single year he worked there. Other actors who worked at Keystone toward the beginning of their film careers include
Marie Dressler,
Harold Lloyd,
Mabel Normand,
Roscoe Arbuckle,
Gloria Swanson,
Louise Fazenda,
Raymond Griffith,
Ford Sterling,
Ben Turpin,
Harry Langdon,
Al St. John and
Chester Conklin. In 1915, Keystone Studios became an autonomous production unit of the
Triangle Film Corporation with
D. W. Griffith and
Thomas Ince. Sennett left in 1917 to produce his own independent films (eventually distributed through
Paramount), after which Keystone's business declined. Keystone Studios eventually closed after bankruptcy in 1935. '' (1913) with two moviegoers (
"Fatty" Arbuckle and Sennett) arguing while watching
Mabel Normand on screen
A Little Hero released in 1913 in
Netherlands with
Dutch intertitles; running time: 00:04:31. ==Legacy==