Mack Sennett was a Canadian-born director and actor who established himself as an actor in New York during the early 1900s before moving to California where he founded keystone Studios. Regarded as the innovator of slapstick comedy in film, Sennett also helped develop the careers of many important actors of the 1910s and 1920s, including Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand, Charles Chaplin, Roscoe Arbuckle, Harold Lloyd, Raymond Griffith, Gloria Swanson, Ford Sterling, Andy Clyde, Chester Conklin, Polly Moran, Louise Fazenda, The Keystone Cops, Bing Crosby and W. C. Fields. His short Wrestling Swordfish was awarded the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 1932 and he earned an Academy Honorary Award in 1937.
