​Mack Sennett the "King of Comedy" and founder of Keystone Studios, had the idea as a way to increase the "box office voltage" of his slapstick comedies. He realized that adding attractive women in then-daring swimwear would lure in male audiences and provide a colorful contrast to the frantic, messy antics of the Keystone Cops. Risqué swimwear represented a shift toward a more daring, liberated 1920s fashion and entertainment. 

Tillie’s Punctured Romance was Mack Sennett’s first venture into feature-length production, and perhaps the first feature-length comedy ever made. Despite the later reputation of Charles Chaplin, it was designed as a starring vehicle and film debut for Marie Dressler, then the much bigger star. It was adapted from her Broadway hit, Tillie’s Nightmare, and Dressler claimed that she persuaded Sennett to cast Chaplin as her leading man. Adding Sennett’s then-lover Mabel Normand, who also had a hand in developing Chaplin’s early career, created a wonderful dynamic, but the teaming was never repeated: Chaplin’s ambitions led him into writing and directing his own films; Normand and Sennett split in 1918, and her career suffered from her drug addiction and association with director William Desmond Taylor, whose murder in 1922 caused a scandal; Dressler was unable to establish a film career after the failure of two short films in which she also played Tillie, though she returned to the screen in 1927 after a nine-year absence and became a major star at MGM in the early years of sound. Dressler had a rare gift for over-the-top physical comedy, which was Sennett’s forte, and was one of the few comic actresses capable of upstaging Chaplin, as their scenes together demonstrate. For this anarchic comedy, Sennett marshaled all of his regular company, including Mack Swain and Chester Conklin, as well as the Keystone Kops, without ever eclipsing Dressler. Later in her career, Dressler would evoke pathos as well as laughs, but Sennett never lets Tillie be anything but a clown, except at the very ending, when she and Mabel share in their triumph over Chaplin’s con man.

MOTION PICTURE NEWS, March 27, 1926

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