Mack and Mabel

Book by Michael Stewart
Music and Lyrics by Jerry Herman
Revised by Francine Pascal
Based on an idea by Leonard Spigelgass

This is a saga of the silent film era "when movies were movies", the story of legendary director Mack Sennett and his greatest star, the adorable Mabel Normand. It is told in flashback by Mack himself as the protagonist narrator, a broken man, made obsolete by talkies, bankrupt and forced to sell his studio, he reminisces about the past, recalling his triumphs and his turbulent love affair with Mabel whom he had discovered and made a star. He loves her, but cannot tell her, sending her into the arms of a rival who feeds her drugs.