MABEL NORMAND DEAD

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 906, 25 February 1930, Page 9

MABEL NORMAND DEAD

LONG. VARIED CAREER IN PICTURES HUSBAND’S RECENT ILLNESS NEW YORK, Sunday. The death occurred early this morning in a sanatorium at Monrovia. California, of Miss Mabel Normand, a well-known film actress, in her 36th year.

Mr. Lew Cody, deceased’s husband, had just recovered from a nervous breakdown. He was not at her bedside when she died. Mabel Normand (Mrs. Lew Cody) has been suffering for a considerable time from phthsis and her demise was not unexpected. She was born at Boston, United States, on November 16, 1894. She made her screen debut in 1911 under the name of Mabel Fortescue, in the “Betty” series of pictures made by Vitagraph. Later she joined the old Biograpli Company, and then became one of the.leading players in the Keystone comedies, in many of which she played opposite to Charles Chaplin. Among her popular pictures were “Extra Girl,” “One Hour Married,” “Raggedy Rose,” and a host of others. Miss Normand experienced more than one sensation in her private life. She was a friend of Captain W. D. Taylor, an English film director, who was murdered in 1922, an hour after she had left him in his house at Los Angeles. In 1924, when she and Edna Purviance were dining at the flat of Courtland Dines, a wealthy stockbroker, he was shot by her chauffeur. Following these happenings she sank into comparative obscurity, but latterly attempted to “come back.” Her failing health, however, drove her into retirement.