Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914)

By late 1914, Hollywood was abuzz with the news that D.W. Griffith was working on a ‘super-spectacle.’ When Mack Sennett, a former protégé of Griffith’s who now managed Keystone Studios, heard the news, he decided he could do for comedy what Griffith was proposing to do for drama. He put the idea of a feature-length comedy to his bosses, Adam Kessel and Charles Baumann, owners of the New York Motion Picture Company, saying it would cost around $50,000. They argued Keystone didn’t have a star big enough to recover the cost of making a long movie. Sennett countered by requesting a green light if he could persuade the famous stage comedienne Marie Dressler, a stocky woman of broad girth and weathered features, to star in the picture. Although still doubtful of such a venture turning a profit, Kessel and Baumann reluctantly agreed.

Sennett duly contacted Dressler, although each recalled different versions of the meeting in their autobiographies – neither of which is particularly reliable. Dressler recalled noticing two men lurking in the lobby of her Los Angeles hotel, one of whom she assumed was a down on his luck Broadway actor steeling himself to approach her for his fare home. He turned out to be Baumann, and his “wild-eyed” companion was Sennett. However, Sennett claimed to have first met Dressler in her changing room in his hometown of Northampton, Connecticut, in 1897, where she was starring in the stage play The Lady Slavey. Sennett, keen to get a career in acting, had presented Dressler with a letter of introduction from local lawyer Calvin Coolidge, who would one day become President of the United States. Dressler gave the young Sennett a letter of introduction to theatrical producer David Belasco. Sennett didn’t go into detail about his approach to the actress, only revealing that they agreed a salary of $2,500 per week – news that was not well received by his girlfriend, the actress Mabel Normand who, together with Charlie Chaplin, was one of Keystone’s biggest stars, yet earning considerably less. To add insult to injury, Sennett moved Normand out of her dressing room to accommodate his newest star.

Again, accounts differ regarding the choice of material. Dressler claimed the idea to base the film on her 1910 Broadway hit Tillie’s Nightmare was hers; in her autobiography, she said she only agreed to the deal on condition she received a half interest in the film which they would lease to distributors, not sell. Sennett’s version is that a studio employee named Hutchinson came up with the idea. In a 1915 interview with Louella Parsons, Dressler said, “I loved Tillie… she was so human. She was my idea, and that is why I dragged her into the movies. Through the screen I am taking her to the human people, the people I could never reach, because they never had the price. There never was, in my estimation, a show worth $2… I wanted to come to the “movies” with a 10 cent to 50 cent performance, and I intend to remain with them, watch me.”

Dressler also claimed to have chosen her co-stars, selecting Chaplin over Roscoe Arbuckle because she and the roly-poly comic were too similar in size. In fact, she credits herself with giving Chaplin his first big break in movies, although by the time Tillie’s Punctured Romance began shooting, he had already released several successful shorts.

While Tillie’s Nightmare may have provided inspiration for Dressler’s screen debut, it contains few – if any – elements of the play’s plot. Dressler played the title character, a bovine, ungainly farm girl who falls for city slicker Chaplin. When the slicker discovers Tillie’s father (Mack Swain) is hoarding money in his farmhouse, he talks Tillie into eloping to the city with him and the money. There, aided by his fetching young accomplice, Mabel (Mabel Normand), he absconds with Tillie’s money. When he later discovers that Tillie has inherited a fortune, he hastily arranges a reunion and hustles her into marriage. However, his plans to help her spend her newfound wealth unravel during a party to introduce them into high society.

Sennett found Dressler impossible to direct. He recalled, “No matter that this was her first motion picture, she was a great star and this was her own story. In the midst of a comic scene I had planned carefully beforehand, Miss Dressler would say: ‘No Mack, that’s wrong. Now this is the way we’re going to do it.’ I was the head of the studio and I was supervising this particular picture, but neither of these things influenced Marie Dressler. My arguments didn’t influence her either. ‘Okay, Marie, you do it your way,’ I’d say. And I would leave the set. Usually, a sweating messenger would arrive within an hour. Miss Dressler, who didn’t know a camera angle from a hypotenuse, always threw the company into a swivel when she took over. ‘Mack, there’s just a little technicality here you can help me straighten out,’ she’d say. ‘Sure, sure, Marie, call on me any time.’ I’d say.”