About Mabel and Me: 

It’s 1912 in Hollywood, the birth of the Movies, and Mabel Normand, beautiful and funny, the model of the modern comedy star, was shocking the world. This intimate novel takes us inside the earliest days of motion pictures, and together with the Queen of Comedy—a flapper a decade before flappers, the first to have her name in the title of a picture—we become obsessed with motion pictures, in love with their mesmerizing power. As sharply observed as it is historically accurate, Mabel and Me is the tale of a young man’s coming of age with the Movies, and his passionate, destructive, and ultimately liberating love for the queen of slapstick—Mabel Normand. Their story is the birth of our media age.

Praise for Mabel and Me: 

“Mabel and Me may be a work of fiction but it is impressively detailed in its portrayal of early 20th century Los Angeles, along with the birth and development of moviemaking in Hollywood. The language is often crude, as I imagine it must have been among the uneducated, rough-and-tumble characters he describes. But like Mack Sennett, and an impressionable boy who read his memoirs years ago, he has an abiding love for Mabel Normand. That clinches the deal. Mabel and Me is a wonderful book.” — Leonard Maltin

“Mabel and Me is the raucous, rowdy, randy, ribald, rat-tat-tat prospect of early Hollywood as seen in the meeting of Mabel Normand, little miss marvelous and mysterious, and Jack Smith, who is a cross-section of the American id.” — David Thomson, Los Angeles Review of Books

“The golden age of silent film is Hollywood’s most exciting era and a personal favorite of mine. Jon Boorstin’s vivid Mabel and Me has brought it to life with conviction and passion." — Kenneth Turan, film critic, NPR, Los Angeles Times

"Boorstin captures with authenticity the language and color of the silent film era." — Kevin Brownlow, film historian and filmmaker

Click here to purchase Mabel and Me from Angel City Press.