That guy responsible for the first 20th century British Invasion and the international popularity of both going out to the movies and buying home movies (on 8mm, 9.5mm, 16mm, 28mm, etc.), Charles Spencer Chaplin, was born on April 16, 1889. Let's celebrate his 137th birthday belatedly by binge-watching a slew of Charlot clips and films, shall we!
The Chaplin Mutuals are still incredibly funny after all these decades.
And Chaplin's subsequent First National short subjects have their moments as well.
Even Chaplin's earliest films for Mack Sennett's Keystone, produced in 1913-1914, can be quite hilarious.
Some Chaplin Keystones co-star the great silent movie comedienne Mabel Normand.
One favorite Chaplin Keystone is The Rounders, in which Charlie's teamed with the rotund yet graceful and inspired slapstick funmaker (as well as the filmmaking mentor of Buster Keaton) Roscoe Arbuckle.
Now MUST watch Photoplay Productions' (Kevin Brownlow and David Gill) outstanding Unknown Chaplin documentary yet again.
The athletic and winsome Wanda Wiley was among several groundbreaking women in the rough and tumble world of slapstick comedy.
She headlined a series of fast-paced action comedies for Universal Pictures.
Starting her movie career doing stunt work in westerns, Wanda, the excellent "daredevil comedienne", stuntwoman and comic actress headlined her own series for Century Comedies and J.R. Bray Productions.
A rare blend of silver screen comedienne and action hero, Wanda made 50 films between 1924 and 1927.
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 after these 50 films and continue her career, we'll never know.
For a stretch in the teens and early 1920's, Fay Tincher, born on April 17, 1884, was one of the top comediennes in motion pictures.
She had a 15 year movie career that spanned stints with The American Eclair Company, Komic Komedies, Triangle, Christie, and Universal.
Fay's funny and outrageous performances as the over-the-top Ethel The Stenographer in the Bill The Office Boy series for Komic Komedies made Fay a major movie star in 1914.
Fay, a reluctant comedienne of stage and screen whose background was in musical theater, went on to co-star in a series of 5-reel dramas and comedies with DeWolf Hopper at Fine Arts Film Company.
After leaving Fine Arts, she formed The Fay Tincher Comedy Company.
Fay, with ambitions to work behind the camera, produced and starred in a series for World Film Corporation.
Unfortunately, none of the three Fay Tincher Comedy Company films (Main 1-2-3, Some Job and Oh, Susie, Behave) survive. All that exists from the 1918 productions are stills.
Since film comedy in the silent era was frequently regarded as undignified and unladylike, not acceptable as a stepping stone to prestigious dramatic roles in feature films (or, for that matter, producing and directing), Fay hated getting cast as a comedy headliner and was very disappointed to see her World Film Corporation series end after three films. She headlined Christie Comedies beginning in 1919.
ROWDY ANN (1919) remains her best known film.
Most of her starring vehicles do not survive, so this diehard film buff is thankful for the few that do.
A super talented actress and comedienne, Fay retired from movies in 1930 after playing Min Gump in Universal's The Gumps series. She left show business, dropped out of the public eye and successfully evaded all interviews for the last 50+ years of her life.
And then there's that most swashbuckling of movie headliners, Harold Lloyd, whose films are still unequaled in their blend of comedy and thrills with the action hero ethos exemplified by Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
Lloyd, the always indefatigable go-getter, regarded as one of silent comedy's Big Three, along with Chaplin and Keaton, was born on April 20, 1893.
Starting with Lonesome Luke and "glasses character" 2-reelers produced by Hal Roach's Rolin Co. in 1915-1917, Harold starred in numerous classic comedies.
In closing, here's Harold Lloyd's World Of Comedy - enjoy!
The diehard classic movie aficionados at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog salute silent comedy royalty big time! Laughs are our friend!
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
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.
Today's post begins with a fact unbeknownst to many: the movie biz, in the very early days, was, to a significant degree, BUILT BY WOMEN. Although the formidable actress-mogul Mary Pickford was acknowledged (then and now) as a powerhouse on many levels, this fact about the pre-World War I history of movies tends to be forgotten.
Dr. Jane Gaines, Professor Of Film at Columbia University and students from both Columbia University Libraries/Information Services' School Of The Arts and Barnard College have created the The Women Film Pioneers Project website to shine the klieg lights on this largely untold story.
As the website notes, the project spotlights "150 career profiles of female silent-era producers, directors, co-directors, theatre managers and company owners, scenario writers, scenario editors, studio accountants, title writers, editors, costume designers, exhibitors, animal trainers, and camera operators."
After 1920 and the rise of the studio system, at least until Ida Lupino started making hard-hitting noir thrillers in 1949, female directors and cinematographers proved few and far between in American films. There were screenwriters (Frances Marion, Anita Loos), but few women who helmed features besides Dorothy Arzner.
It was a different story in the early days of cinema.
There were also exceptionally creative women who specialized in the field of comedy. Among the all-time favorites at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog remains the multi-talented Mabel Normand.
The queen of the lot at Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios, before that a Gibson Girl, key player at Biograph and later a Goldwyn feature film star, "Madcap Mabel" could write, act and direct with imagination and distinction.
Mabel proved herself resourceful both in front of and behind the camera in numerous classic comedy short subjects, and at one point directed then fresh-off-the-boat former Fred Karno Troupe star and new Keystone addition Charlie Chaplin.
She also had prominent roles in two of the first American comedy feature films, Tillie's Punctured Romance (starring Marie Dressler, Charlie Chaplin and most of the Keystone roster) and the enormously popular hit Mickey (1918).
The latter, a starring vehicle for Mabel, pre-dated Chaplin's The Kid in theatrical release by two years and made a mint for Mack Sennett. Its unprecedented box office success prompted Samuel Goldwyn Productions to sign her to a feature film contract.
So, in the "good news - bad news" department, Mabel continued as a top box office feature film star, but did not work behind the camera again after the freewheeling days of Keystone.
Then, as now, one showbiz pattern doesn't change. When talented comedians and comediennes transition from short films to features and become "movie stars" - then as now - the spark and originality that made them great in the first place often gets substantially watered down in the "toning down for mass audience consumption" process.
It happened to Mabel at Goldwyn, as it would for her friend Roscoe Arbuckle at Paramount (and, for that matter, to John Candy and other more recent comedy kings and queens when cast in feature films).
Filmmaker Anthony Mercaldi and historian Marilyn Slater, author of the Looking For Mabel website (and source of these wonderful stills), have been working on a documentary about her life.
Hopefully, this will go some distance towards counteracting the avalanche of misinformation and gossip about Miss Normand over the decades.
All efforts to set the historical record straight regarding Mabel - well, as much as possible for a subject who passed away 84 years ago - are most welcome. After all, by the time the likes of Vsevolod "V.I." Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein were enthusiastically investigating the history of filmmaking, Mabel's time in movies was coming to an end.
Also prominent among the director-writer-comediennes was the versatile and ever-inventive Fay Tincher (1884-1983), subject of the posting right here on April 17.
Fay's funny and outrageous performances as Ethel The Stenographer in The Bill The Office Boy series for Komic made her a major movie star in 1914.
She went on to co-star in a series of 5-reel dramas and comedies with DeWolf Hopper at Fine Arts Film Company, distributed by Triangle.
After leaving Fine Arts, she formed The Fay Tincher Comedy Company to produce and star in comedies for World Film Corporation.
Unfortunately, none of the three films (Main 1-2-3, Some Job and Oh, Susie, Behave) survive. All that exists from the 1918 productions are stills.
Christie Comedies signed Fay to headline "2-reel specials" in 1919. In an alternate "wishful thinking" universe, one would have liked to see Fay write, direct and produce her own films for Christie. It didn't happen.
As it turned out, very likely as a response to the Mack Sennett Studio's popular western comedies starring Polly Moran as Sheriff Nell, the Christie studio cast Fay in a series of westerns as a take-no-prisoners pistol packin' mama.
While such starring vehicles as Rowdy Ann and Wild & Western, without a doubt, remain extremely funny and her originality and screen presence undeniable, these action comedies, no doubt, were not exactly what Fay had in mind when she signed with Christie in the first place.
Of course, latter-day silent movie buffs wish that Al Christie had said "Fay, here's your production unit, go ahead, write and direct the 5-reel features you want, pick your crew, just bring 'em in on time and on budget. Have fun." Based on Fay's incendiary and creative performances onscreen, one imagines she would have brought ingenuity, verve, independence and out-of-the-box thinking - yes, the very traits still not exactly prized by Hollywood - to such an assignment.
Other comediennes were known to have, as did many silent era headliners, produced, worked on scenarios and at least co-directed their own series. Yet another was the brilliant comedienne and character actress Gale Henry, who organized her own production company after starring in 1-reelers for the ridiculously prolific Universal Joker series in 1914-1917.
Much of the career of Gale Henry - and that's hundreds of comedy shorts made by Universal, Nestor, L-Ko and Bull's Eye/ Reelcraft during the WW1 era - has been lost due to vault fires and the Nitrate Won't Wait phenomenon. That includes an overwhelming majority of the short subjects she headlined (including the Lady Baffles & Detective Duck series), as well as hilarious character roles in a good many feature films.
Fortunately, her scene-stealing turn with Raymond Griffith in Open All Night, and howlingly funny supporting parts in the films of director/writer/comic Charley Chase survive - and demonstrate that Gale was one of the most talented comediennes to ever appear in films.
After she left the silver screen with a bang with a memorable appearance in the 1933 Charley Chase short Luncheon At Twelve, Gale, with her husband, Henry East, became prominent in a very successful second career supplying studios with top-notch canine talent - and that meant only the best barkers, including the immortal Asta from Metro Goldwyn Mayer's Thin Man movies!
The difficulties inherent in research on pre-1920 cinema are many and involve the following questions. How does one corroborate information, debunk misinformation and double-check stories when every one of the subjects, their friends and contemporaries have been deceased for many decades? And how does one confirm historical accuracy, given faulty memories and penchants for throwing former colleagues under the bus?
is a dilemma all historians must wrestle with - hopefully with the success of "Bull" Montana, Gorgeous George, Ravishing Ronald, Randy "Macho Man" Savage or Leila Ali. Noting the extent to which writers adore hyperbole, about the best one can do is, should a statement or note be based on conjecture - and, in all honesty, has never been adequately corroborated or confirmed - then admit it up front and not make any pretense that the statement is factual! And it gets really crazy when the topic of comedienne and comic actress Thelma Todd arises.
In the case of Mabel Normand, there have been so many totally uncorroborated allegations put forward as fact, both during her lifetime and well after her untimely death, than one simply doesn't know where to begin.
In the cases of comediennes Fay Tincher and Alice Howell, they dropped so thoroughly and completely out of sight after leaving show business that interviews from their days in movies are all we have to go on.
Many of the old Hollywood secrets died with these stars and the whole truth will never be known.
As more formerly lost films are discovered, however, there will be more added to the story.
So, today, we respectfully tip the Marlene Dietrich top hat to these great artists of silent movies - and all the researchers and research subjects in the The Women Film Pioneers Project.
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