No, at least in this case, the term animal magnetism does not refer to the minor-key song by headbanging German hard rockers The Scorpions - or does it?
Your somewhat intrepid correspondent, back from a great time in Northern California co-presenting the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival at Foothill College with Robert Emmett, Mr. Lobo, Sci Fi Bob Ekman and Scott Moon, is now enjoying nice hot coffee in beautiful New York City and thinking about very odd silent movies.
Since this blogger is indeed wearing an official Silent Comedy Watch Party T-shirt (thank you, Marlene Weisman), it's time to watch an excellent presentation titled ANIMAL MAGNETISM: THE SILENT COMEDY MENAGERIE that author, SCWP co-curator and silent comedy expert Steve Massa created for the Silent Laughter festival held in November 2023 at The Cinema Museum, London.
Topic du jour: furry friends who starred in silent movies, with cool film clips accompanied by excellent music by Ethan Uslan and Meg Morley. This highly entertaining presentation features generous excerpts from terrific silent comedies, notably NIP & TUCK (a 1923 Mack Sennett opus featuring Billy Bevan, Harry Gribbon and scene-stealing Cameo the Dog). Steve outlines the various trends, besides not paying human actors, that brought dogs, cats, mules, spider monkeys, chimpanzees, orangutans, lions, bears and even freakin' elephants to the silver screen.
One of our all-time favorite furry friends in movies is Pepper The Cat, here co-starring with the great comedienne "Madcap Mabel" Normand. A cat who took direction? WTF? Watch and see - our mackerel tabby mascot Raymond, whose response is "cats rock and can do everything, while always looking fabulous" heartily approves! Alas, a bunch of dogs, cute but a lot less interesting than Pepper, end up as "the cavalry," rescuing a soon-to-be-lunch bird from the feline antagonist in this 1913 opus from Mack Sennett's Keystone.
And, speaking of Mack Sennett's Keystone Comedies, the mention of Luke recalls Roscoe Arbuckle in Fatty's Plucky Pup (1915).
And then there's the one, the only Pete The Pup, star first of the Buster Brown series (as Tige) and then a mainstay of Hal Roach Studio's Our Gang.
Here, the first Pete co-stars with the very funny acrobatic comedian (and future grizzled sidekick in westerns) Al St. John in Dynamite Doggie, directed by Roscoe Arbuckle and co-starring the second Mrs. Arbuckle, Doris Deane.
Producer Hal Roach, no fool, recruited Pete for Our Gang after seeing him in such films as Dynamite Doggie and the Stern Brothers' Buster Brown series. The following, Dog Heaven (1927) is one of the strangest and darkest Our Gang comedies and more akin to the comic sensibility of Michael "Mr. Mike" O' Donaghue than to any of the Hal Roach Studio gagmeisters.
The second Pete would enliven the talkie Our Gang comedies in such Depression-era favorites as The Pooch and For Pete's Sake.
Having enjoyed viewing a lightweight but funny William Powell flick on the SFO-JFK flight (yes, TCM was available) all this correspondent can think of is the best canine comic not named Cameo, the extraordinary Asta!
Asta was trained by the frequently hilarious comedienne and sometimes writer/producer of silents and early talkies (and frequent co-star of director-writer-comic Charley Chase at the Hal Roach studio) Gale Henry and her husband Henry East.
While the diehard classic movie mavens here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog have not yet located any film footage - well, not yet - showing Gale appearing onscreen with one of the exceptionally talented canines she and Henry East trained, that said, it's as good an excuse as any to show more clips of the immortal Asta!
How funny was Gale Henry? Check out her dance in HIS WOODEN WEDDING (1925), which is just one of many memorable supporting roles she contributed to the classic Hal Roach comedies, both in silents and talkies, of comic genius Charley Chase. It's clear why Charley hired and re-hired Gale for comedy heavy lifting in his films; she was a scream!
Gale, the prolific comedienne and character actress who must have been among the key prototypes for the character of Olive Oyl in E.C. Segar's Thimble Theatre comic strip, remains one of the most unique talents in the history of movies.
We must respectfully tip our top hat (no doubt worn by some unfortunate mustached comic who got chased around by a lion in a Fox Sunshine comedy produced and directed by Henry "Suicide" Lehrman) to the super-talented Gale Henry, as well as all the many four-legged fur-bearing stars of the silver screen.
"While her performing style could be very broad, she also had a gift for small, insightful gestures that could bring a moment of pathos and feeling into the knockabout. She was equally adept at being demure or projecting a world-weary cynicism. " Steve Massa
"Like her contemporaries Alice Howell, Mabel Normand, Marie Dressler, and Louise Fazenda, Gale took many bumps and bruises in the name of laughter alongside her male comedian counterparts in an estimated two hundred fifty-eight shorts and features, some of the craziest of which she wrote. " The Women Film Pioneers' Project
“Treat a dog kindly and he’ll do anything in the world for you.” Gale Henry
Our contribution to the 2015 Silent Cinema Blogathon, hosted with panache by In The Good Old Days Of Classic Hollywood and Lauren Champkin, starts with an unanswerable question.
Just who was the funniest comedienne of silent movies? Of course, what specifically tickles one's funny bone is a matter of personal taste, and this is tantamount to pondering who was a better baseball player, Willie Mays or Roberto Clemente. The temptation is to open and close this question emphatically with Marie Dressler and Marion Davies, tied for that honor on the strength of the devastatingly funny MGM features The Patsy and Show People.
That said, there were many remarkable comediennes in the WW1 era and 1920's. Some died very young, way before the likes of author/documentary filmmaker Kevin Brownlow and Sam Gill of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences could interview them.
The wonderful "Madcap Mabel" Normand headlined features starting in 1917, but made her last film in 1926 and passed away in 1930.
Other top comediennes from silent movies simply retired from show business.
There were some amazingly funny comediennes from silents who, possibly due to frequent appearances as supporting players rather than headliners, get a bit of short shrift.
In the opinion of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, topping that list would be one of the funniest women ever to appear before a 35mm movie camera - and the only one to enjoy a highly successful career as a comedienne, character actress AND as a trainer of talented dogs for the movies: the fabulous Gale Henry (1893-1972).
Much of Gale's work - and that's hundreds of comedy shorts made by Universal, Nestor, L-Ko and Bull's Eye/Reelcraft from 1914-1919 - has been lost due to vault fires. Indeed, silent movie aficionados know all about it - the inevitable Nitrate Won't Wait reality.
That includes an overwhelming majority of the short subjects Gale headlined (including the Lady Baffles & Detective Duck series that spoofed cliffhanger serials), as well as her excellent character roles in a good many feature films.
At one point, she seemed to be making two films a week for the ridiculously prolific Universal Joker series, directed by Allen Curtis.
Your Correspondent reiterates: Gale Henry starred in HUNDREDS of comedy shorts, mostly for Universal, then for Nestor and L-Ko, throughout the WW1 era. Here are a couple of them. She imbues her roles with tremendous personality and chutzpah.
After the aforementioned gazillion appearances in Universal, Nestor and L-Ko comedy shorts, Gale organized her own production company and starred in her own series, writing them or co-writing the comedy short subjects with first husband (and director) Bruno J. Becker.
The following, The Detectress, both funny and emphatically politically incorrect even by the lax standards of 1919, can be seen on disk 4 of the Slapstick Encyclopedia DVD set.
Gale moved on to play numerous character parts as spinsters and most officious ladies, shining in such films as Open All Night and Merton Of The Movies.
At the same time, she continued appearing as a guest star in numerous comedy shorts.
These included Gale's roles as a semi-regular featured player in the comedy short field's "gold standard", the Hal Roach Studio's series starring Charley Chase, crafted with comic ingenuity and sophistication by its headliner-director-writer, in collaboration with director Leo McCarey. This writer considers His Wooden Wedding, featuring a quintessential Gale Henry performance, arguably the funniest comedy short ever made.
While Gale's memorable character roles in Charley Chase comedies would continue into talkies, gigs in front of the cameras in general began dwindling while her second career was as dog trainer supreme picked up steam. Gale and husband Henry East had started the kennel as a side business, soon to find that East Kennels would - please pardon the Fractured Fairy Tales style play on words - became top dog in the field. Later such talented trainers as Frank and Rudd Weatherwax (Lassie) were taught by the Easts.
The most famous of the winsome fur-bearing movie stars trained by East Kennels was none other than everybody's favorite screen canine - well, not named Pete or Cameo - the pooch seen in Thin Man movies and in Bringing Up Baby, the amazing Skippy, otherwise known as Asta.
As far as Gale's stellar work as a dog trainer goes, the splendid science writer Kate Kelly wrote a rather amazing piece for the America Comes Alive website about the beloved Asta and it does have some prime material on the Easts.
Not a heck of a lot has been written about Gale's 20-year movie career, but the late Kalton C. Lahue, the aforementioned Sam Gill and Steve Massa (from the Billy Rose Performing Arts Library) have certainly given it the old college try with their impeccably researched and breezily written studies of silent comedy history, Clown Princes & Court Jesters and Lame Brains And Lunatics: The Good, The Bad And The Forgotten Of Silent Comedy, respectively - musts for any classic film buff's bookshelf.
In closing, we who are Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog extend big time thanks to Jim Kerkhoff, the historian from whose collection the photos in this post came from, the Laurel & Hardy and Another Nice Mess websites - and especially Crystal and Lauren for hosting the Silent Cinema Blogathon.
"Actors - BE NATURAL!" Alice Guy Blaché "Later, I expect to do five reel comedy dramas, that is, if we kind find the right kind of stories, but believe me, it is some job." Fay Tincher "Alice Guy Blaché's His Double featured the first known version of the mirror routine to be recorded on film." Anthony Balducci
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.
When it comes to filmmaking, it was Solax Studios founder Alice Guy Blaché (1873-1968) who got there first. Along with Arzner and the prolific Universal Pictures director Lois Weber, Blaché, the cinema's first mogul, is arguably the best known of the female producer-directors who blazed trails in the beginning.
Blaché was hands-on with the new motion picture camera technology in Paris and making short films for Gaumont as early as 1896-1897.
She beat everyone else, including Edwin S. Porter, D.W. Griffith and Allan Dwan, to the punch, experimented with color technology, made sound films and also was a mentor to Lois Weber. By the time the first great screen comedians, Max Linder and Marcel Perez, had become movie headliners in 1906-1907, Alice Guy Blaché had made hundreds of films.
Comedy buffs will note that Alice Guy Blaché is tremendously important to the history of screen humor as both the first comedy filmmaker and the first to film the famous "mirror gag". It's in her 1912 Solax film His Double, which can be seen here, on historian Anthony Balducci's website.
The inventive Ms. Blaché also originated this classic comedy bit for her 1906 film The Drunken Mattress, before the rapid rise to stardom of Max Linder and Marcel Perez, before Ben Turpin in Mr. Flip, before Mack Sennett, before ANYONE.
Although long overdue recognition, respect and acclaim may not have come in her long lifetime, the comprehensive Alice Guy Blaché, Film Pioneer exhibition did hold forth (and wow 'em) at the
Whitney Museum Of American Art in November 2009 - January 2010. There is also the forthcoming documentary about her career by Pamela Green and Jarik van Sluijs (note: the Kickstarter fundraiser noted in the following trailer was successful).
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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