Female Comediennes of the Silent Screen (Silent)

Alpha Video has compiled a brief collection of five short subjects featuring the talents of Mabel Normand, Louise Fazenda, and Gale Henry with a total running time of 66 minutes. With the wealth of public domain material available, one wonders why these collections continue to be so short.I would have given this collection the highest rating except that only one short subject out of the five presented has decent picture quality, and that one is Louise Fazenda's "Dizzy Daisy." The rest are watchable, but often have low contrast pictures, and a few have poorly framed scenes that sometimes cut off a letter or two from some of the title cards.Having said that, this collection is an acceptable, inexpensive introduction to some very funny women who worked hard to make audiences laugh. Many people with a passing knowledge of silent films are familiar with the name of screen legend Mabel Normand.Mabel not only had a gift for comedy, but she was also an accomplished producer and director back in the days when very few women worked behind a camera. Her two films in this collection are not some of her best work. "Gentlemen of Nerve" (1914) is basically a Charlie Chaplin comedy with Mabel playing a supporting role.The other Mabel short "The Water Nymph" (1912) is better, but it is mostly a tour-de-force for manic actor Ford Stirling who not only chews up the scenery, but everything else in his path. Mabel, however, manages to hang on for the ride causing this film to have some amusing moments.The other diamonds in this little treasure chest are Louise Fazenda and Gale Henry, both screen clowns who are now mostly forgotten. Hopefully, this collection will open the eyes of film buffs everywhere to the tremendous talents of these two remarkable women.First, Louise Fazenda stars in "Dizzy Daisy" (1924) as her signature screen character Daisy, a sweet, but not too bright, young lady with a corkscrew hairdo and a country bumpkin wardrobe.One day Daisy is out sunning on a Southern California beach trying to fit in. She offers a group of bathing beauties some of her candy and exclaims, "Here, have an all-day sucker... it'll last you all week!" They laugh at her and run away. Later, Daisy manages to foil a jewel robbery and ends up driving a motor boat while she flees from the would-be crooks in one of the wildest chase scenes ever filmed on water.Louise Fazenda had a film career that lasted from 1913 to 1939. She married legendary Warner Brothers producer Hal. B. Wallis, and eventually stopped appearing in films by her own choice. She had a heart of gold and devoted the rest of her life to helping others less fortunate. Louise often did volunteer work in the children's hospitals of Los Angeles, paying medical bills out of her own pocket, helping young people receive college educations, and many other acts of kindness.Second, the delightful Gale Henry stars in two shorts, "The Detectress" and "Her First Flame." In both, the tall, thin-as-a-rail Gale plays her signature screen character of "Lizzie" who looked a lot like Olive Oyl, or maybe I should say that Olive Oyl looked a lot like Lizzie.Supposedly, Popeye's creator/cartoonist E. C. Segar was so taken by "Lizzie" that he fashioned a girlfriend for Popeye in the image of Gale Henry's character. Olive Oyl debuted in the "Popeye/Thimble Theater" comic strip in 1919, the same year "The Detectress" played in theaters, and a year when Gale was at the height of her career.Shortly before, Gale and her producer/director husband had formed an independent film company and made a string of low-budget comedies that starred Gale. The company eventually failed due to distribution problems and Gale migrated to playing supporting roles in films well into the 1930's. She is seen in some hilarious roles in numerous Charley Chase comedies, both silent and sound, when he was still with Hal Roach Studios. By the mid-1920's, Gale had also become a renowned trainer of dogs for the movies. She trained numerous "star" canines, including the terriers that played "Asta" in "The Thin Man" series of movies."The Detectress" (1919) is one of the all-time great Gale Henry shorts. It is lightning-paced and packed full of surreal gags. One gag shows Gale walking down a dangerous alley in Chinatown where she stops by an open window of what turns out to be an opium den. Gale is then shown inhaling the smoke coming from the window and is obviously enjoying the effects. At any rate, high or not, Gale is determined to nab a band of Chinese sneak thieves who have stolen some bonds in this wacky comedy."Her First Flame" (1920) is a bizarre comedy that focuses on role reversals between men and women. The film begins in the "distant future of 1950" with a female motorcycle cop pulling over a man who has been speeding. He begins to wring his hands and cry until finally the lady cop smiles and says, "Oh, you're so cute!," tears up the ticket, and puts his head on her shoulder to console him. In another scene, a female bully walks up to a man wearing an apron and hanging laundry on a clothesline, threatens him, takes his sandwich, and eats it in front of him.And Gale Henry, in her Lizzie character, is campaigning to become the town's new fire chief. She yells at a group of men gathered at her impromptu rally, "If you don't vote for me, I'll make it hot for ya!" She also lets them know that she sells home insurance that, I suspect, includes fire coverage! I won't spoil the rest of the plot except to say that Lizzie proves to the town's male population that she's made out of some pretty strong stuff before the film ends."Female Comediennes" is a fairly good showcase for these three fine actors Mabel Normand, Louise Fazenda, and Gale Henry. And it's important to note that men were not the only silent clowns in American film history. Women worked extremely hard to make audiences laugh, too.

Silent movie cameras ran at a considerably lower frame rate than talkies. If you play a silent film at sound speeds, you will end up with a movie in fast-forward. This is a problem you will likely run into with most cheap budget editions of silent films - and, unfortunately, with this disc - but that's only one of the problems. The frames are so cropped, you'll lose the tops of many heads as well as chopping off the sides of a lot of the intertitles. Also, there are no appropriate scores for the films - just one song played after another with no relation to the action onscreen. I ended up listening to most of it with the sound off. It's only interesting from a historical standpoint because of having female leads and two of the films held up in spite of the speed, but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.