Passage V

A Natural Comedian

[1] When silent comedy films, which debuted in the early 1900s, the public was delighted by slapstick’s over-the-top brawls, falls, and pantomimes.[2] Exaggerated gestures and expressions, long used by actors to hammer home the hilarity of their acts in vaudeville theaters, began to fall flat with filmgoers.[3] By 1910, however, audiences’ tastes were more refined.[4] Craving comedies, but they lamented the overacting, audiences began to call for funnier—and more natural—silent actors.(65)

An illustrator’s model, Mabel Normand, proved perfect for the part. Skilled at calling up realistic emotions for magazine art and ads, Normand was invited to take part in a film as an extra. After impressing them with her natural wit and nuanced expressions, directors at the Biograph film company offered her a costar’s contract. Within a year, she was accepting starring roles with major studios. (67)

Normand livened up their usual comedy fare, radiating charisma in case she was waltzing at a garden party or tumbling into a mud puddle. Audiences, starstruck, wrote in to newspapers asking who this new talent was. Actors, too, were inspired by Normand’s lively but subtle comedy style. One of her costars, the young Charlie Chaplin, later attributed part of his immense success to Normand’s mentoring.

Normand set an example not only for her costars, but also for women entering film. Early comedies cast women in only a handful of stereotypical parts, such as, the dutiful daughter or the damsel in distress. As Normand’s fame increased and she began to write and direct her own films, she created new heroines to better suit her daring spirit. (72) What’s more, they have the last laugh. After getting hit with a pie in the film The Ragtime Band, however, Normand’s character, outraged, wipes the pie off her face and flings it right back. Her initiative sets off a massive food fight, throughout which nobody laughs harder than Normand.