Alice Day — Following in Mabel’s Footsteps (1925) 🇺🇸

With the promotion of Alice Day, Mack Sennett is breaking his rule to star only men with pretty girls merely in support. Mabel Normand was the only feminine star he ever presented.

Has Alice the personality which made Mabel so inimitable a comedienne? What attraction has she that surpasses the parade of Sennett pulchritude? Sennett’s enthusiasm for Alice’s possibilities must be founded upon definite qualities.

Her first work, a small bit in Norma Talmadge’s Secrets, attracted his interest. He placed her in his stock company. Six months later — having played the usual comedy apprenticeship of character bits — she was cast as lead for Harry Langdon and Ralph Graves.

What she has is what, in greater degree, distinguishes Mary Philbin — a flash of inbred talent that knows not its own existence or the means of its expression, a quality not of conscious technique nor of brains, but simply of exquisitely natural spontaneity.

There is little to say of Alice, except that she is youth. Untutored, untrained, sparkling youth, sensitive and responsive. Much may be made of her — or nothing.

She is pretty, with brown curls and big, blue eyes, and hers is a lovable personality with a glint of humor in it. Through this girlish charm as through a crystal curtain vibrates the spark upon which Sennett is risking much money and time.

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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, May 1925