for SCVTV.com • Local Television for Santa Clarita
to receive the Old Town Newhall Gazette • FREE!

Charles E. Mack & George Moran
Vaudeville Actors, Newhall Resident (Mack)

Paramount Pictures publicity photo (by Gene Robert Richee) of Charles Emmett Mack (left), George Moran and Evelyn Brent, from the 1929 comedy, "Why Bring That Up?" written and directed by George Abbott.

Visible are the original crop marks used by the San Francisco Examiner newspaper of Oct. 12, 1929. Under the headline, "A Study in Black and White," the Examiner wrote, "Charles Mack (left), George Moran and Evelyn Brent in 'Why Bring That Up?' the current screen comedy featuring the 'Two Black Crows,' and now scoring in its second week at the Paramount."

The film also featured Harry Green, Bert Swor, Freeman Wood, Lawrence Leslie, Helen Lynch, Selmer Jackson, Jack Luden, Monte Collins, George Thompson, Eddie Kane, Charlie Hall and Virginia Bruce.

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.

---

to return to the History In Pictures Index

---