Keystone Kops

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Keystone Kops

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, comedy was the favorite genre of moviegoers, and no moviemaker was more adept at tickling the funnybones of audiences than Mack Sennett (1880–1960). One of the most famous and everlasting of all his contributions to screen comedy was the Keystone Kops, a fictional gang of well-meaning but hilariously inept policemen. The Keystone Kops have long been synonymous with onscreen slapstick and bungling, chases filled with horseplay, and overall comic chaos.

Sennett was mentor to some of the era's most famous screen comedians, including Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977; see entry under 1910s—Film and Theater in volume 1) and Mabel Normand (1894–1930). He also worked with dozens of other comic actors, including Ford Sterling (1883–1939), Chester Conklin (1888–1971), Hank Mann (1887–1971), Fred Mace (1878–1917), Edgar Kennedy (1890–1948), and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle (1887–1933), all of whom at one time or another were members of the Keystone Kops. The head of this band of comic lunatics was a character named police chief Teeheezel. He first was played by Mann, and then by Sterling.

The Kops were named for the Keystone studio, the film production company founded in 1912 by Sennett. They first appeared on screen in the Sennett-directed slapstick Hoffmeyer's Legacy (1912), but their popularity soared with the release of The Bangville Police (1913). Approximately five hundred short Keystone Kops comedies followed. The Kops also had a prominent role in Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), which starred Chaplin, Normand, and comedienne Marie Dressler (1869–1934). Tillie's Punctured Romance was the first-ever feature-length film comedy.

The Kops wore handlebar moustaches and ill-fitting suits. During the course of their films, they would be tossed out of moving cars, or fall under moving cars, or be thrown over cliffs. Visual humor prevailed, for after all, the films in which they appeared were silent.

The Keystone Kops' stardom began to fade as other screen comics—most notably Chaplin in 1914—began receiving the bulk of the attention at the Keystone studio. But they did keep appearing in Sennett slapsticks and were paid homage decades later in a sound-film farce featuring Abbott and Costello (see entry under 1940s—Film and Theater in volume 3). (Bud Abbott [1895–1974] and Lou Costello [1906–1959] were a popular comedy duo in the 1940s and 1950s.) The film was titled Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (1954). Furthermore, all sound-film comedy masters who rely on physical humor, from Abbott and Costello and the Three Stooges (see entry under 1930s—Film and Theater in volume 2) through Jerry Lewis (1926–) and Jim Carrey (1962–), owe a debt to Mack Sennett and his Keystone Kops.

—Audrey Kupferberg