From its founding in 1912, the short-lived Keystone Film Company—home of the frantic, bumbling Kops and Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties—made an indelible mark on American popular culture with its high-energy comic shorts. Even as Keystone brought "lowbrow" comic traditions to the screen, the studio played a key role in reformulating those traditions for a new, cross-class audience. In The Fun Factory, Rob King explores the dimensions of that process, arguing for a new understanding of working-class cultural practices within early cinematic mass culture. He shows how Keystone fashioned a style of film comedy from the roughhouse humor of cheap theater, pioneering modes of representation that satirized film industry attempts at uplift. Interdisciplinary in its approach, The Fun Factory offers a unique studio history that views the changing politics of early film culture through the sociology of laughter.

This novel is set in the golden decade before the Great War, when the music halls were the people's entertainment, before radio, television or cinema and bigger than all of them. The biggest draw of the day was entrepreneur Fred Karno, whose colossal comedy companies toured the country bringing laughter, slapstick, excitement and, above all, spectacle to the music hall stage. Arthur Dandoe is a young comedian trying to make his way up the hierarchy of the Fred Karno company. Along the way he develops a bitter professional and romantic rivalry with another ruthlessly ambitious performer; a young man destined to become the most celebrated on the planet - Charlie Chaplin.

"From its founding in 1912, the short-lived Keystone Film Company - home of the frantic, bumbling Kops and Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties - made an indelible mark on American popular culture wit its high-energy comic-shorts."--Page 4 of cover.

This is a comprehensive career study and filmography of Mack Sennett, cofounder of Keystone Studios, home of the Keystone Kops and other vehicles that showcased his innovative slapstick comedy. The filmography covers the more than 1,000 films Sennett produced, directed, wrote or appeared in between 1908 and 1955, including casts, credits, synopses, production and release dates, locations, cross-references of remade stories and gags, footage excerpted in compilations, identification of prints existing in archives, and other information. The book, featuring 280 photographs, also contains biographies of several hundred performers and technical personnel connected with Sennett.

This 64-page guide is packed with options! (more projects than last year!) Choose from craft projects kids can make to remind them to practice the Word on the Street, or choose from service projects to help kids take the love of Jesus to their communities.

Rainy day imaginative play activities will never be the same, as kids learn to make their own toys and games from household materials and a few inexpensive art supplies. The dozens of projects have all been thoroughly tested to make sure that they match the skills, needs and interests of grade schoolers. Includes "eco-facts" that teach kids the importance of recycling and ways to help save the environment. Full color.