RetroClips

The Extra Girl was Mabel Normand's final feature film and her last picture for producer Mack Sennett, a comedy about the movie industry itself that turns on Sue mistaking a real lion delivered to the studio for an actor in a costume. The joke very nearly stopped being funny during production: when the real lion later got loose on set, a trainer trying to wrangle it accidentally jabbed Normand with a pitchfork. It's a fitting send-off for a star whose career, like so many in silent Hollywood, was defined as much by industry chaos as by what made it onto the screen.