The Water Nymph

The Water Nymph, later reissued as The Beach Flirt, earned a place in film history books by being the first production of Mack Sennett's famous Keystone Studios, a premiere comedy factory of the silent-film era. Sennett himself plays George, a dapper young man headed for a day at the seaside with his girlfriend, played by Mabel Normand, already an experienced actress and rising star when this split-reel short appeared in 1912. George knows that his father is prone to misbehavior and will flirt with bathing beauties at the beach, so he enlists Mabel in a practical joke, having her "vamp" his dad, who doesn't know it's a put-on until his wife arrives and George makes introductions all around. Ford Sterling is amusingly dandyish as the father, and Normand gets to show off her figure in a bathing suit - the old-fashioned unrevealing kind, called a "straitjacket" in an intertitle - and she does some nifty diving, too. This picture is a harbinger of the Sennett Bathing Beauties who started gracing Keystone comedies in 1915. That earns The Water Nymph another footnote in the history books.

By David Sterritt

Director: Mack Sennett
Producer: Mack Sennett
With: Mabel Normand (Mabel), Mack Sennett (George), Ford Sterling (father), Gus Pixley (man), Mary Maxwell (nymph)
BW-8m.