First ladies of funny

It wasn’t just the guys -- Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd -- who made the world laugh during the silent era. There were any number of funny ladies who weren’t afraid to take a pratfall or a cream pie in the face. But while the careers and legends of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd endured long after the silent era, their female counterparts haven’t been as lucky.

Many of their names and films are just flickering memories, known only to ardent film buffs. But a new festival presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, “Queens of Comedy,” shines the spotlight on these versatile actresses.

The festival, which begins Thursday and continues through July 26, highlights the careers of such great female clowns as Florence Vidor, Constance Talmadge, Beatrice Lillie and Mabel Normand. The retrospective also will include shorts featuring the likes of Normand, Louise Fazenda and Gertrude Astor. It kicks off with two great Marion Davies farces from 1928, “Show People” and “The Patsy,” both directed by King Vidor.

UCLA’s co-head of programming, Andrea Alsberg, says last year’s Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy, which presented more than 60 films starring these female farceurs, inspired “Queens of Comedy.”

“Not only did these women have the responsibility of being funny on their own -- they weren’t sidekicks to the men -- they were really holding these films up,” Alsberg says. “And they were really setting these standards for sort of a new woman of the post-World War I era.”

These women, full of spunk and sass, reflected the newfound freedoms of the Roaring ‘20s. Sure, they were looking for true love, but they also had careers. “Thousands of people were coming into the theaters to see what women were like, how to relate to your spouse,” says Alsberg.

Hollywood was to a surprising extent a woman’s world in the 1920s. Several of the top stars, like Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson, produced their own films. Pickford had co-founded United Artists with Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and her husband, Douglas Fairbanks. Normand directed several of her short comedies

“I don’t think these were considered women’s movies,” says Alsberg. “They happened to star women, but there was no ‘Let’s go see a woman’s movie, so let’s go see Colleen Moore.’ It was more like ‘Let’s go see a comedy and she happens to be in it.’ ”

Diverse backgrounds

Whereas most of the male silent clowns came out of the music hall, vaudeville or circus, these actresses either began their careers in the theater or, in the case of Normand, in the movies at a very young age. “One wants to generalize them because they are female comedians, but they all have different styles and they went into comedy for different reasons,” says Alsberg.

Glamour queen Swanson dressed down to play a waitress working in a cheap diner in 1925’s “Stage Struck” because, says Alsberg, “just like the stars of today, she wanted to try her hand at something else.”

As it turned out, Swanson hated the film and wanted to buy back the negative. Though it wasn’t critically acclaimed, the film did well, according to Alsberg

One of the most charming films in the festival is the 1926 comedy “Exit Smiling,” starring Canadian actress Lillie in her film debut. Lillie, who had appeared on the London and New York stage, has a Chaplin-like persona, easily moving between slapstick and pathos. She plays an aspiring actress working as a maid in a touring theatrical company who falls in love with a troubled bank clerk (Jack Pickford, Mary’s brother) who joins the company.

“This was a real vehicle for her,” says Alsberg. “After this, she didn’t make too many movies. She went back to the stage. I think she was so talented, they didn’t know what to do with her.”

The two Davies films prove she was a stylish and inventive clown. In “The Patsy,” for example, she performs uncanny impressions of the reigning stars of the day -- Mae Murray, Lillian Gish and Pola Negri. Unfortunately, Davies didn’t do that many comedies. Her boyfriend, newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, disapproved of her being funny and kept casting her in overblown melodramas and period pieces. “He had to be hauled off the sound stage when she got seltzer water in her eye,” recalls Alsberg. “He didn’t want to do that kind of comedy. He felt it was below her, and it was just a shame.”

Though producer Mack Sennett excelled in making physical, slapstick comedies, he was averse to anybody he considered truly beautiful in his films doing any pratfalls. “He didn’t think people liked that,” says Alsberg. “He preferred women who were homelier to do the pratfalls.”

Derailed by the times

Thank goodness Normand wasn’t considered traditionally beautiful or movies would have been deprived of one of the funniest and most charming comedians ever to appear on screen.

Unfortunately, she got caught up in the wild and crazy lifestyle of the Roaring ‘20s. Normand became romantically involved with director William Desmond Taylor and was one of the last people to see him before he was slain in 1922. Normand didn’t survive the scandal and made her last feature in 1923. She died in 1930 -- at 35 or 38, depending on the source -- of a combination of pneumonia and tuberculosis.

“I think people think of her tragically because she did come to such an early end,” says Alsberg. “But I think she is just amazing. She is so natural on screen and she is so comfortable with the medium. Everything that you see of hers, she is always [playing] with a wink and a nod.”

Most of Normand’s features are missing, but UCLA is screening two of her funniest: her first feature, 1918’s “Mickey,” and 1921’s “Molly O’,” which was restored by UCLA.

Preservationist Jere Guldin says until the mid-’90s, it was believed that only six minutes from the middle of “Molly,” preserved by UCLA, still existed. Then word came that the national film archive in Russia had a copy that was missing just one reel.

UCLA acquired a copy from the Russian archive but, says Guldin, “it wasn’t only a single reel of film that was missing -- there were bits and pieces throughout. They cut out most of the comedy as well.” Most notably missing was the opening reel, filled with knock-down, drag-out comedic moments. Thankfully, there was the Mack Sennett collection in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s Margaret Herrick Library to which to refer.

“There was a fair number of stills from the film [in the collection] which we utilized when we could if it was from one of the missing sequences,” he says. “There is no script or continuity, but they had a fairly detailed synopsis, plus they had a titles list of what was in the movie.”

The reconstruction and restoration were nearly complete when the first important reel of the film was found -- accidentally. Guldin had acquired what he thought was a second reel of the film that supposedly was an improvement upon the Russian print. Guldin realized the reel had been misidentified and was actually the pivotal opening eight minutes and title sequence.

So why did a lot of these silent queens disappear from the public eye and consciousness?

Alsberg believes sound was the chief culprit. Though Davies, Swanson and Moore made the transition from silents to talkies, the others weren’t so lucky. “Constance Talmadge didn’t even try” to make a talkie, says Alsberg. “Florence Vidor, I think, made one and it was a disaster. I think sound was incredibly intimidating.”

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‘Queens of Comedy’

Where: James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall, UCLA

When: Thursday, Saturday and July 18, 24, 26 at 7:30 p.m.

Price: $7, general; $5, students, seniors and Alumni Assn. members

Contact: (310) 206-FILM or www.cinema.ucla.edu

Schedule:

Thursday: “Show People,” “The Patsy”

Saturday: “The Grand Duchess and the Waiter,” “Her Sister From Paris”

July 18: “Exit Smiling,” “Orchids and Ermine”

July 24: “The Social Secretary,” “Stage Struck”

July 26: “Molly O’,” “Mickey”