Mack Sennett (born Michael Sinnott; January 17, 1880 – November 5, 1960) was a Canadian-American producer, director, actor, and studio head who was known as the "King of Comedy" during his career.

[1] Born in Danville, Quebec,[2][3][4][a] in 1908, he started acting in films in the Biograph Company of New York City, and later opened Keystone Studios in Edendale, California in 1912.

He said that the most respected lawyer in town, Northampton mayor (and future President of the United States) Calvin Coolidge, as well as Sennett's mother, tried to talk him out of his musical ambitions.

[10] In New York City, he took on the stage name Mack Sennett and became an actor, singer, dancer, clown, set designer, and director for the Biograph Company.

[11] 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.

[12] Many successful actors began their film careers with Sennett, including Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand, Charlie Chaplin, Harry Langdon, Roscoe Arbuckle, Harold Lloyd, Raymond Griffith, Gloria Swanson, Charley Chase, Ford Sterling, Andy Clyde, Chester Conklin, Polly Moran, Slim Summerville, Louise Fazenda, The Keystone Cops, Carole Lombard, Bing Crosby, and W. C.

[13][14] "In its pre-1920s heyday [Sennett's Fun Factory] created a vigorous new style of motion picture comedy founded on speed, insolence and destruction, which won them the undying affection of the French Dadaists…" —Film historian Richard Koszarski[15]

Dubbed the King of Hollywood's Fun Factory,[16] Sennett's studios produced slapstick comedies that were noted for their hair-raising car chases and custard pie warfare, especially in the Keystone Cops series.

The comic formulas, however well executed, were based on humorous situations rather than the personal traits of the comedians; the various social types, often grotesquely portrayed by members of Sennett's troupe, were adequate to render the largely "interchangeable routines: "Having a funny moustache, or crossed-eyes, or an extra two-hundred pounds was as much individualization as was required.

"— Max Sennett, from The Psychology of Film Comedy, November 1918[18] Film historian Richard Koszarski qualifies "fun factory" influence on comedic film acting: "While Mack Sennett has a secure and valued place in the history of screen comedy, it is surely not as a developer of individual talents... Chaplin, Langdon, and Lloyd were all on the lot at one point or another, but developed their styles only in spite of Sennett, and grew to their artistic peaks only away from his influence... screen comedy followed Chaplin's lead and began to focus more on personality than situation.

[10] Sennett's bosses retained the Keystone trademark and produced a cheap series of comedy shorts that proved unsuccessful.

[10] In 1932, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film in the comedy division for producing The Loud Mouth (with Matt McHugh, in the sports-heckler role later taken in Columbia Pictures remakes by Charley Chase and Shemp Howard).

Sennett announced that Hypnotized would run 15 reels, or two-and-a-half hours, more than twice the length of a typical comedy feature of the day.

[25] His last work, in 1935, was as a producer-director for Educational, in which he directed Buster Keaton in The Timid Young Man and Joan Davis in Way Up Thar.

[10] The 1935 Vitaphone short subject Keystone Hotel featured several alumni from the Mack Sennett studios: Ben Turpin, Ford Sterling, Hank Mann, and Chester Conklin.

[10] In March 1938, Sennett was presented with an honorary Academy Award: "for his lasting contribution to the comedy technique of the screen, the basic principles of which are as important today as when they were first put into practice, the Academy presents a Special Award to that master of fun, discoverer of stars, sympathetic, kindly, understanding comedy genius – Mack Sennett.

[29] Sennett did appear in front of the camera, however, in Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), itself a thinly disguised version of the Mack Sennett-Mabel Normand romance.

The book was published in 1954, prompting TV producer Ralph Edwards to mount a tribute to Sennett for the television series This Is Your Life.

[32] Sennett's last appearance in the national media was in the NBC radio program Biography in Sound, relating memories of working with W.C. Fields.

[34] According to the Los Angeles Times, Sennett reportedly lived a "madcap, extravagant life", often throwing "lavish parties", and at the peak of his career he owned three homes.