General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Mickey (1918 film)

Mickey is a 1918 American silent comedy-drama starring Mabel Normand as a tomboy orphan from the California mining country, produced by Mack Sennett for the Mabel Normand Feature Film Co. and directed by F. Richard Jones and James Young.¹ It was the only film completed by Normand's own production company, and after a troubled two-year production and distribution fight it became a word-of-mouth hit; the American Film Institute's catalog spotlight calls it the highest-grossing feature film of 1918.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Format	Silent, black-and-white, seven reels; AFI lists 71 minutes, while Rotten Tomatoes lists 1h 33m and the Independent Cinema Office 93 minutes¹^•⁴^•⁵
Release	Copyrighted 25 February 1918 (Hyman Winick, LP12164); released 11 August 1918¹^•⁶
Production company	Mabel Normand Feature Film Co., the only film it completed; producer Mack Sennett¹^•³
Working title	Mountain Bred⁷
Commercial result	Highest-grossing feature film of 1918, per AFI²
Survival	Prints exist as 16mm reduction positives of both the original release and the FBO rerelease; public domain in the USA⁶

Spoilers

Story

Mickey, an orphan, is raised in the California mining country by her father's mining partner, Joe Meadows (George Nichols), and his housekeeper Minnie (Minnie Ha Ha, also known as Minnie Provost). A tomboy who gets into trouble, she endears herself to Herbert Thornhill (Wheeler Oakman), a New York millionaire out West on business. Her socially ambitious but penniless aunt, Mrs. Geoffrey Drake (Laura La Varnie), learns that Mickey owns a gold mine, the Tomboy Mine, and invites her to the family's Long Island estate; when Joe reveals the mine is worthless, Mrs. Drake forces Mickey to work as a servant. Herbert, believing Mickey has deserted him, becomes engaged to Mrs. Drake's daughter Elsie (Minta Durfee), while the brutish Reggie Drake (Lewis Cody) pursues Mickey. After Herbert learns he has lost his millions, Elsie breaks the engagement, Reggie's scheme to ruin Herbert and force Mickey into marriage fails, and the Eastern businessman and his Western tomboy marry.¹

Production

Rehearsals began on 15 May 1916. The production was shot at Beachwood Park in Beachwood Canyon, Hollywood, where the Mabel Normand Company erected a western mining town of about thirty buildings, from a miner's shack to a hotel, general stores, and a saloon-gambling resort-dance hall; filming there was to begin under director Dick Jones, according to the 18 November 1916 Motion Picture News. Several years later the site became Beachwood Village, the commercial hub of the 1923 Hollywoodland subdivision whose Mount Lee advertising sign became the Hollywood Sign.¹

Filming stopped in the fall of 1916 because of Normand's illness, and the film was completed and ready for distribution by the spring of 1917, but it was not released until 11 August 1918.¹ The Silent Era film list attributes the delay to Normand's illness of late 1916, with the production shot in the fall of 1916 and finished early in 1917.⁶ A fan-history account adds that Normand fell sick several times during shooting, mainly from lung problems worsened by energetic outdoor scenes and dives into freezing mountain lakes, and that at one point the negative was reportedly held over unpaid payments.⁷

The business arrangements were tangled. In 1916 the Triangle distribution company, acting through New York Motion Pictures, offered Sennett a 25 percent share in the new Mabel Normand Feature Film Company.⁷ A retrospective account in the Rotten Tomatoes reviews section argues that Sennett kept the film outside Keystone so it would not be owned by the New York Film Company, and that he valued the finished picture as a bargaining chip in setting up Triangle rather than shelving it.⁴ World rights were sold to the Western Import Company of London on 27 December 1917, and by July 1918 the Western Import Co. had arranged for W. H. Productions Co. to distribute the film to the state rights market.⁶^•¹

Credits and attribution

AFI credits F. Richard Jones and James Young as directors, Mack Sennett as producer, and Hugh C. McClung, Frank D. Williams, and Fred Jackman as cinematographers.¹ Some sources credit Sennett with direction and writing; Hampton Del Ruth, the Keystone Film Co.'s managing editor and assistant manager of production, was involved in pre-production according to a news item.¹ Modern sources attribute the scenario to J. G. Hawks and give roles to Edgar Kennedy (a bookie) and William Colvin (the butler), but contemporary sources do not confirm the involvement of Hawks, Kennedy, or Colvin.¹^•⁶ A song titled "Mickey," with lyrics by Harry Williams and music by Neil Moret, was published by Daniels & Wilson early in 1918 and used as the theme in the music score.¹

Release and reception

The film was copyrighted on 25 February 1918 but not released until 11 August 1918, after a public that had been following the publicity waited for the advertised feature.¹^•⁴ Rotten Tomatoes lists the original theatrical release date as August 30, 1918, a date that differs from the August 11 release recorded by AFI and Silent Era.⁴^•¹^•⁶ It was a word-of-mouth hit with contemporary audiences and was released many times afterward by different distributors.⁵^•⁴ A 1918 biography of Normand says that when the film reached the public in early December 1918 it became an almost immediate sensation, and that although many were made rich by the film, Normand herself, because of the complicated dealings around it, saw none of the millions in profits.⁸^•⁴

Contemporary critics quoted by Rotten Tomatoes praised the picture. Antony Anderson of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the last reels were more swift and exciting than any other Sennett production, and Walter K. Hill of Moving Picture World called it "motion pictures epitomized."⁴ The Independent Cinema Office describes it as the film that proved Normand could power a big-budget feature on charm and charisma alone.⁵

Reissue and survival

Mickey was reedited, expanded with additional footage, and rereleased in the 1920s by Film Booking Offices of America (FBO). In reissue titles Minta Durfee's name is misspelled "Minta Durffy" and Lewis Cody's "Louis Cody"; this reissue is the version viewed by the AFI Catalog, and it may differ from the original 1918 release.¹^•⁶ One extant print bears a 1917 copyright notice from the Keystone Company.⁶

The film's survival is unusual for its era. According to the Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Database, the film is extant, and Silent Era records 16mm reduction positives of both the original release version and the FBO rerelease, with the film now in the public domain in the USA.¹^•⁶ This stands out against the general record for 1910s American features, of which only about 10 percent survive in complete form according to the Library of Congress's 1993 film preservation study.⁹ A copy was screened at the Kansas Silent Film Festival in Topeka, Kansas, on 27 February 1999, and a 2004 DVD edition presents both the original and FBO rerelease versions.¹^•¹⁰

Place in Mabel Normand's career

Normand had learned to direct and write her own material at Sennett's Keystone Company, and Mickey was the one film she completed after going independent as the Mabel Normand Feature Film Company.³ A feminist film-historical study describes the company, established in 1916, as short-lived and financially troubled, likely as a result of Sennett, and notes that through it Normand produced the critically acclaimed box-office success Mickey, in which she also starred.¹¹ AFI's spotlight calls Mickey her personal showpiece and notes that Normand, one of the first actresses to run her own Hollywood production company and to direct herself, made roughly 170 shorts and 23 features in all.² The film's success followed her: a 1922 advertisement for her later picture Molly O' identified Normand's character as "Mickey's big beautiful sister," referring to her role in the 1918 film.¹²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026