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Charles Emmett Mack
Vaudeville Actor, Newhall Resident

Charles "Charlie" Mack was born Charles Sellers in White Cloud, Kansas, on Nov. 22, 1887. He was half of the "Two Black Crows" blackface vaudeville team with George Moran.

Many early Hollywood celebrities stayed in Newhall for a little reclusivity. Actors such as William S. Hart would frequently "hang out" in Newhall with the likes of Mack and Moran and other notables who got their start in vaudeville, such as Noah Beery.

Mack liked Newhall so much as a retreat that he built himself a unique gingerbread home on 8th Street, west of Market, around 1924, and added two smaller cottages up the street. After his untimely death in a car crash in Mesa, Ariz., on Jan. 11, 1934, his 8th Street home was occupied briefly by another vaudevillian-turned-screen actor — W.C. Fields. The home and cottages still stand.

"Our" Charles Mack should not be confused with 1920s actor Charles Emmett Mack, who died in a 1927 car crash.

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