She Could Be Chaplin! The Comedic Brilliance of Alice Howell
2018; Penn State University Press; Volume: 4; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5325/studamerhumor.4.2.0322
ISSN2333-9934
Autores ResumoSome twenty years ago, I bought a VHS tape that contained a wonderful surprise. The film was Laurel and Hardy's Swiss Miss (1935). The surprise came after that film ended. It was another film: Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly (billed as the female “Laurel and Hardy”) in Hot Money (1935). I knew, of course, that there were two major and a few minor comediennes in the early days of film. Everyone who studied early comedy knew of Mabel Normand, and there was also Mae West, of course, beginning early in the sound era. But for the most part, Normand and West were seen as exceptions, two of the very, very few successful women to star in early Hollywood comedies. And so I began a wonderful and rewarding journey of discovering just how many more funny women helped shape Hollywood comedy in its earliest days. Several other historians, including Anthony Slide, had already undertaken a similar journey.What has been revealed over the years can be seen as pieces of a complex and beautiful puzzle. The subject of that puzzle is the role of comediennes and the scope and style of female comic performance in early Hollywood. Investigations of individual performers and films make up the pieces. And this puzzle has many, many pieces. Anthony Slide's She Could be Chaplin! fills in one substantial piece of this puzzle.The picture that is still emerging is far more complex than was thought even a decade ago. Recent historians have added hundreds of names to the canon of female comic performers who worked in the silent and early sound eras. Most of these comics make only minor contributions to our understanding of the scope and role of women in comedy. Yet female performers were instrumental in far more than making audiences laugh. As so-called New Women, and later, flappers, they helped redefine gender roles in the new century. Their physical, sometimes acrobatic, and even slapstick performances, often enacted in the public sphere, expanded the boundaries of what was considered acceptable behavior for women.In a relatively short film career, which lasted little more than a decade (1914–28), Alice Howell (1886–1961) appeared in approximately 150 film comedies. For a very brief time, she was one of the top comediennes in Hollywood. In She Could Be Chaplin! The Comedic Brilliance of Alice Howell, Anthony Slide makes a bold argument, writing in the book flap that Howell is “arguably the most important slapstick comedienne of the silent era.” He begins the book by laying out the terms of this assessment, drawing vaguely defined distinctions between “comediennes,” “female comedy players,” and actresses “adept at comedy.” This loose taxonomy allows him to discount the comic contributions of quite a few performers and thus enables him to posit that Howell is one of only a few true comediennes worthy of discussion. He then provides an historical overview of Howell's life and career.Howell, according to Slide, developed a unique, recognizable, and consistent style. She wore “grotesque, ill-fitting, and ill-suited” attire befitting a slavey or scrub lady, a character she often portrayed. Her hair was piled “into a mass (and a mess) of golden curls, and usually topped with the most unsuitable of hats” (16). Her face was more mature and wholesome than that of her contemporaries, whose appearance tended to be more gamin-like. Slide refers to her facial features as “Rubinesque [sic],” with “large, round, expressive eyes … often set in a vacant stare” (15–16). Her eyebrows were often overemphasized with makeup, and her lips were painted in the bee-stung style common in the 1910s. Much of her humor came from subtle changes in facial expression, which Slide sees as somehow unique to Howell. He then argues that this aspect of Howell's performance is what sets her above her contemporaries. Yet such expressiveness can easily be seen in performances by a number of other comediennes, including Gale Henry (whom he mentions briefly), Fay Tincher, Louise Fazenda, Mabel Normand, and quite a few others.Slide writes that Howell's performances relied on humor created by body language and movement in a physical, slapstick style more closely associated with men at the time. For example, she walked with her feet turned out in Chaplinesque fashion. Drawing on an argument that is often made regarding Chaplin's movements, Slide asserts that Howell's step conveys a “balletic quality” rather than clumsiness (17). Moreover, he claims that Howell was unafraid to engage in physical and even violent bits of slapstick. Finally, he suggests that she possessed impeccable comic timing.Howell's characterizations seldom changed. This consistency is evident in her work at different film studios. She began her film career in 1914 at Mack Sennett's Keystone studios, where she remained for only about a year. Her earliest film appearances were as “a spectator,” “rough café type,” “a neighbor,” or someone's wife. Her roles became more prominent when she signed with Henry “Pathe” Lehrman's L-Ko Komedy Kompany in 1915. At L-Ko her prominence increased, particularly after she was paired with director John G. “Jack” Blystone. She developed an appearance and movement that would become her signature. Howell was often cast as a scrub lady in what the press of the time routinely referred to as “low comedy” offerings—a staple at L-Ko. The company soon recognized her popularity and by mid-1916 began publicizing her as “the Most Fearless, Most Remarkable Woman on the Screen” (42). Within a year, her productions were billed simply as Alice Howell comedies. This recognition indicated the height of her popularity. Century Comedies was a brand developed at L-Ko to take advantage of Howell's popularity as a comedienne; however, by 1919, Alice Howell's Century Comedies were no longer being released, and Howell's star status was on the decline. Although Slide speculates briefly on reasons for the decline (producer dissatisfaction, changes in studio personnel), he leaves it as an essentially unanswered question, calling her decline “puzzling and confusing” (19).It is perhaps worthwhile to consider shifts in social tastes and cultural preferences as guiding factors in Howell's decline. In comic films of the postwar era, flappers replaced earlier female types. Athletic, adventurous, and raucous female performances common to the figure of the New Woman in the pre–World War I era were losing ground to character types built around values of pleasure and consumption. Other comediennes sensed this shift and attempted (some more successfully than others) to adapt to it. For example, negotiating that shift was Mabel Normand's goal in signing with Goldwyn Studios. However, as Slide argues in the book, Howell never changed or adapted her character (6).Although Howell continued making films over the next few years, first at Emerald/Reelcraft Productions in Chicago and then back in Hollywood, her career was in decline. There is a strong suggestion in Slide's assessment that comedy and acting were merely a means to an end for Howell. She made movies because it was a way to pay the bills. Once she had amassed sufficient resources, there was no more pull for her toward Hollywood fame. Instead, she got into the real estate business, where she remained for the rest of her life.Slide makes a compelling case for Howell's significance as a comedienne. The book is thin but makes the most out of the relative paucity of material that exists on his subject. It must also be read somewhat skeptically, as many of the conclusions he draws about Howell's actions are based on interviews with Howell's daughter, Yvonne Stevens, who obviously admired her mother. In the end, Slide's book provides a very narrow, chronological case study of one comedienne's work in early Hollywood, and as such, it provides us with a greater understanding of Alice Howell's life and career. It does not provide a greater understanding of Howell's role within the larger context of the American film industry or in the context of gender and comedy in the early twentieth century.Researching comediennes in early Hollywood is very much a “bottom-up” process—locating, investigating, and building a case for individual performers, writers, producers, and directors out of a scant number of surviving films and limited written material. This process is quite different from the “top-down,” long-accepted version of “comedy's greatest era” put forth some seventy years ago, whose silent comedians are brilliant and, generally, male. That assessment guided research into comedy and helped shape not only the writing on early comedy but also the preservation of films. Although we are able to watch scores of Chaplin's early efforts (or those of Keaton, Langdon, Laurel and Hardy, etc.), we are often able to assess the quality of comediennes of that era only when they happen to appear in the films of male “greats.” It is a regrettable situation.Yet new research continues to fill in the puzzle. Recent books such as Steve Massa's Slapstick Divas: The Women of Silent Comedy (2017), Mizejewski and Sturtevant's Hysterical! Women in American Comedy (2017), and Kristen Anderson Wagner's Comic Venus: Women and Comedy in American Silent Film (2018) are expanding our understanding of female performance in early film comedy. Compared to other screen comediennes—such as Gale Henry, Faye Tincher, Louise Fazenda, and so many others—the quality of Alice Howell's work pales. Thus Slide's assessment of Howell as being the greatest is, I believe, overstated. The criteria he uses to measure that greatness valorize only the characteristics that Howell possessed. And of course, from that perspective, other comediennes whose comic style, appearance, movement, and so forth are different from Howell's simply don't measure up. In addition, Howell's career did not have the longevity, range, and scope that characterized the careers of numerous other comediennes. Howell may have appeared in 150 films, and it is regrettable that so very few are still in existence. However, other comediennes starred in double or triple that number of films over much longer careers. Still, Alice Howell remains an important figure in the development of female comic style in early American film. It would have been enlightening to read more about Howell's impact on the development of film comedy. Whom, for example, did she inspire? Mabel Normand cited Flora Finch as an influence. Can aspects of Howell's comedy be seen in the performances of later comediennes?Finally, although the book's title, referring to Howell as a “female Chaplin,” provides an instant publicity hook, I much prefer Howell's own assessment of her career: “I don't want any borrowed glory. I am just as much a star in my own way as the well-known male fun-makers” (17). With the burgeoning of studies of comediennes, perhaps we will soon enter a period in which comediennes will be considered in their own right.
Referência(s)