Fay Tincher — Filmanthropic Fay... (1917) 🇺🇸
When Fay Tincher hopped out of her little runabout, slipped oft’ her mackintosh and revealed a chic and abbreviated bathing-suit, designed in the famous stripes — stockings and all — the Venetian crowd on the beach grinned from ear to ear. They were California Venetians — from Venice, California, of course — and the occasion was the annual bathing-suit contest.
by Peter Wade
Fay walked off with the fifty-dollar prize, and, as that was nearly two years ago, she has, no doubt, “blown it in.”
On the stretch of broad beach, that sun-bathed afternoon, were thousands of critical spectators, five cool contest judges, and a hundred or more beautiful girls in stunning bathing-togs. “Yet Fay glided off with the prize just as easy as you please.
How did she do it? Ah, there you have the secret of her success on the stage, in the studio, and on the screen. Some funmakers are born, others achieve popularity, some have it thrust upon them. With Fay Tincher her humor bubbles up from an inexhaustible spring. It’s as infectious as the mumps. That’s why the Venetians were fooled into rewarding above the others.
Fay’s father was a printer — so she didn’t run to type. If there’s less comical than a he’s never been unearthed. Fay was humorous in spite of parental handicaps. Upon the death of her father, the contrariwise miss had a few thousand dollars in hand — and no stocks and bonds in the bank-vaults. Canny friends advised her to sit tight on her little nest-egg. But Fay was cursed, or blessed, with a sense of humor. She resolved to “do” Europe until Europe “did” her and the last of her little pile. So she disappeared for three years and studied all kinds and conditions of genus homo on the Continent — always thru fun-loving eyes, of course. Back to America came Fay, minus her nest-egg, but rich in experience. After a flying leap thru a college of music, she discovered that she had a voice — at least her teacher told her so.
Fay decided to put it to the test by trying it on the public. “For,” opined the wise miss, “every one has a voice in a parlor full of chums.” Savage’s “Shogun” was her first voice-tester, and from this light opera she essayed, in rapid succession, “The Dream City,” with Joe Weber, “The Magic Knight” and “Twiddle Twaddle.”
Between acts, by varying the monotony of road life, Fay mimicked the fat tenors and love-lorn sopranos to her heart’s content.
One day she felt a serious emotion take hold of her, and deserted musical-comedy in a hurry to have D. W. Griffith diagnose her case. The famous director looked her over and cast her as Cleo in “The Battle of the Sexes.”
Fay’s success was assured overnight, but she felt that emotional drama was not exactly her forte — there must be some imp of perverseness trying to throttle it.
One day, on a visit to an Indian encampment, Fay, in a spirit of fun, decided to shock the aborigines — “to give them something to grunt about” — so she designed and wore a most outlandish dress of screaming stripes. The Indians were more than impressed; they begged their agent to procure at once a bale of the dazzling goods from “The Great Father in Washington.”
Those stripes landed Fay Tincher in comedy film. Her career since then, as the gum-chewing stenog’ in the “Bill” series and as De Wolf Hopper’s co-star, is an open book.
But if the stripes put Fay on the screen, they did not keep her there. After wearing them vertically, horizontally, on the bias, and in convolutions, people got used to being blinded and didn’t shy any more. But you can’t stop infectious fun with a gloom antidote. Fay is infectious. Strip her of stripes and she’ll do just as well in checks or a Mother Hubbard.
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Marin Sais and her famous horse, “blue devil,” holding silent communion. The far-away look in their eves bespeaks the happy days in which they are co-stars
Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, November 1917