Slapstick Divas, Universal Pictures - and The Stern Brothers

Silent Comedy Watch Party logo by Marlene Weisman


We're about to watch today's much-awaited edition of the Silent Comedy Watch Party - and, not surprisingly, thinking about the great comediennes of silent pictures



Enjoyed reading Matthew Ross' article, Wonderful Wanda Wiley, an abbreviated version of a piece he penned for The Lost Laugh magazine about the intrepid comedienne, as well as John Bengston's two terrific posts from his always informative Silent Locations blog about the Century Comedies star and where her films were shot in Hollywood. Indeed, WandaVision 1925 is a cool place.

One of the funniest extant Wanda comedies, A Thrilling Romance, was featured on episode 16 of The Silent Comedy Watch Party.

How Wanda did not attract the attention of Universal head Carl Laemmle and continue her career into talkies, we'll never know. Her 1925 Century Comedy The Queen Of Aces is a hoot!



This brings to mind the question of how many of the LOTS and LOTS of silent film comediennes starred for Universal and who produced these fast-paced, sight gag-filled 2-reelers.

The answer to the former includes the aforementioned Wanda Wiley, Alice Howell, Fay Tincher, Baby Peggy Montgomery and Edna Marion. The answer to the latter is the Stern Brothers, who produced over 900 comedy short subjects. The intrepid cinema detective, author and film historian Thomas Reeder has focused two books on the comedy that emerged from Universal in the teens and 1920's - and the second one, Time is Money! The Century, Rainbow, and Stern Brothers Comedies of Julius and Abe Stern, covers their lives and movie career in detail.

Preceding Baby Peggy and Wanda Wiley as Century Comedies headliner was Alice Howell, whose work with Sennett, Lehrman, Reelcraft and Universal demonstrates her formidable comedy mojo. The excellent writers Tony Slide and Lea Stans have covered Alice Howell at length.







We're big fans of Fay Tincher at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog.



Fay, a super-talented actress of stage and screen, passed at age 99 in Brooklyn, NY in 1983. It appears she successfully eluded any efforts to be interviewed about her career making movies and kept a low profile after her retirement from show business at the age of 46.




Fay had a 15 year movie career that spanned stints with The American Eclair Company, Komic Komedies, Triangle, Christie, and Universal.




After beginning in movies as a big time vamp in D.W. Griffith's feature The Battle Of The Sexes, Fay's screen popularity took off in 1914 with her scene-stealing antics as Ethel, the outrageous stenographer in Komic Komedies' Bill The Office Boy series.



Alas, Fay wanted more than anything to produce, direct and write and have creative control over her own films, preferably dramas. Although she did have her own production company in 1918 and made several Fay Tincher comedies for World Pictures, for the most part, that scenario was not to be, with the shift from the wild and wooly days of early motion pictures to the studio system already well underway when she began working for Al Christie in 1919.

A few entries from Fay's Christie Comedies series survive, and, as much as she wanted to be a dramatic actress, these films - very likely much to her chagrin - are hilarious. One film that has made it to DVD and is especially memorable stars the indefatigable Fay as as the badass "Christie cowgirl," the personification of a "pistol packin' mama."



Fay was on record as finding the Christie Comedies too slapstick-oriented for her taste. This may be due to various injuries suffered doing stunts as rugged, take-no-prisoners Rowdy Ann in the western comedies series, as well as an impression on Fay's part that she would get to star in 5-reel featurettes at Christie Comedies and pursue storylines more along the lines of the genteel and sophisticated farces exemplified by Mr. And Mrs. Sidney Drew.



For the remainder of the silent era, Fay starred in various Universal comedies, most notably as Min Gump in "The Gumps" series. Her last silver screen appearance (and only talkie) was a supporting part in a Universal Syd Saylor 2-reeler released theatrically in March 1930.



In addition to the Topeka-born actress' talents in front of and behind the camera, she was an athlete and accomplished craftswoman/seamstress, devoted to needlework and creating artwork using vitreous enamel.



For more on these sparkplugs of silent comedy, we highly recommend the Women Film Pioneers Project website.