Mack Sennett spent his formative years at Biograph, emerging from the ranks of the Griffith stock company to become a regular comic lead and, soon, the primary director of Biograph’s comedy unit. These short, “split-reel” comedies, all from Sennett’s first year as a director, find him developing the broad, frenetic slapstick style that he would bring to his own company, Keystone, in 1912.