Flora Finch — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1914) 🇺🇸
Flora Finch was nowhere visible, but various odd-looking garments, distinctively Finch-like, were, so I knew I had found the right dressing-room. “Second to the left,” my guide had said, as he piloted me back of the left-tier boxes in the Vitagraph Theater, and left me amid gaping shadows in what I guessed were “the wings.” I was directly in front of the second door to the left, so I rapped.
by Mabel Condon
“Don’t rap,” came a voice from the first door to the left. The door opened and a fat man looked out. I looked in. Then I opened the second door to the left and entered the lighted tenant-less room that I knew to be that of Flora Finch, because of the red-striped, narrow dress that hung on the back of the door, and which the Vitagraph comedienne wears in the first act of the personal appearance sketch, “The New Stenographer,” which has been on at the Broadway Theater for several weeks.
A cerise hat, with purple flowers climbing up its crown, occupied one of the room’s two chairs. I took possession of the other and waited. The fat man from the next room put his head in and asked, “Waiting?”
“Waiting,” I replied. The head disappeared. I wondered what the long, fanciful jet ornaments hanging from the gas-jet could be.
“She’ll be here soon.” It was the reassuring voice and face of the fat man.
“Very well.” The jet ornaments were ear-rings, I decided. Nobody but Flora Finch could wear such earrings.
“Hello!” said a pleasant voice. A laugh, an extended hand and a stylishly gowned woman came through the doorway and I heard the fat man sigh pleasurably and close his door.
“I’m always later than usual on Friday nights because I take a singing lesson. And tonight I had my daughter meet me and she had to get some fudge after dinner — Veronica, where is the fudge?”
Veronica, a slender, pretty girl — fourteen years old, she told me — came forward with a smile and the fudge and we shook hands and sampled the home-made candy that she bought on Fifty-seventh street.
“No, dear; I won’t have any,” refused Miss Finch. as she reached a high nail with her hat and suit-coat, and with not the least effort in the reaching. “I’ll have to hurry and change, if you don’t mind?”
“It’s a pleasure,” I assured her, as she gathered the red stripes from behind the door and plucked a brilliant green garment like the lower part of a yamayama suit, from another nail.
“Well, I’m glad you don’t mind,” she went on, holding the green garment up to see which way it went on.
“You got it backwards,” corrected Veronica and, with a laugh that chimed with Veronica’s, Miss Finch said, “So I have,” and tried it the other way.
“It,” the green garment, was a trouserette, one that clung to each ankle with a red-edged ruffle and a red bow, and showed through the front-slit of the red-striped skimpy gown.
“Stripes make me look narrower and taller,” she said, sweeping the cerise hat from its resting place on the chair to one on the floor. She drew the chair up in front of the dressing-table, took off her back hair and proceeded to make what remained into a tight psyche knot that resembled a cruller.
“There — now my eye-brows and I’m almost through.” she took her eye-brow stick and traced high, rounding brows much above her own. “My ‘cosmos’ could never be all ‘ego,’ she purposefully misquoted and with a giggle and the expression that keels over her comedy suitors, asked, ‘Ain’t I the sweet thing?’”
“Stop laughing; you’re right off the stage,” the fat one’s voice came through the door. We stopped.
“And I imagined you might be a little ‘up-stage,’” I felt it my duty to confess.
“Never!” came the determined whisper of the typically Finch-like Miss Finch as she rounded off the high-arched brows.
“Do you mind if I ask you some things I think the public would like to know?” I whispered back.
“No, go ahead,” she answered, in a voice her singing teacher would never have recognized.
“Were you always thin?” I began.
“Yes, but with a good leg — a good leg!” She ceased making brows to assure me.
“Really?” My answering whisper was not one of conviction. Anyway, I conceded Miss Finch to be right.
“May I say you’re married?” I resumed, when she had again resumed work on the eye-brows.
“Was married — I’m a widow. Why not?”
“Thought you might be afraid it would hurt your popularity,” I explained in a voice that was almost natural, and with the hope that the fat one had gone around to the ticket office or had been seized with a thirst and had crossed the street to the Claridge.
“I don’t think it would, do you?” Miss Finch returned in a new falsetto.
“I know it wouldn’t,” I replied in C natural.
“A man asked me not long ago, ‘Doesn’t your womanly heart revolt at your comic appearance or — or —’”
“Or does your art carry you through?” Veronica finished for her.
“Yes — now wasn’t that silly?” Miss Finch passed a throaty giggle to each of us and we returned in kind.
“I replied that there are enough pretty women on the stage and on the screen and in the world. I’m giving the public a different variety of ‘looks.’ And when I make anybody laugh I’m rewarded. I think my mission is a worthy one — I aim to make people smile. I try to be funny in my appearance and my actions on the screen: funny but never repulsive. Always odd, but never repulsive.”
And she of the old-maid primness and the many other enjoyable characterizations with which the public links the thought of Flora Finch, put into a few words the expression of an object, the realization of which has made for much pleasantry in the world that sees motion pictures.
“What made you start making people laugh?” I asked, and from the corner where she had gone for her first act hat, she replied in a voice that betokened forgetfulness of the fat one’s existence.
“I used to make faces at my brothers and my sister, and they always laughed. When I went on the stage I made my start in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was not so long ago — and then there were other plays, but never such eccentric parts as I do now. This work I began with the Biograph, in the ‘What Happened to Tones’ series. I came to the Vitagraph company three years ago; they were ready for the up-and-down, thin-lady comedy work, while other companies still believe only in the comedy of fat women. And here I am.”
“Should I have to leave pictures — well, I take four singing lessons a week.”
“I take singing lessons, too,” Veronica offered with her hand over the key-hole.
“And been on the stage?” I asked, her finished talking voice hinting as much.
“Yes, several times. I was a boy with Neil Burgen’s company a year ago, and I was with Maude Adams in Chanticleer. I was a guinea-hen and a pigeon.”
“A cute little guinea-hen and the nicest little pigeon!” approved her mother, with another of the guaranteed-make-you-laugh giggles that threatened another coming of the fat man. She stopped breathing while she buttoned herself into the long brown coat that looked more like a sleeve.
“My ear-rings — I almost forgot!” and she reached for the jet ornaments on the gas-jet.
‘‘The only new thing about my work is the change of clothes I make for the different pictures. I’ve been pulling the same faces and going through the same gestures since I started,” she reflected, and added, “but if people will continue to smile, I’ll be satisfied. Now — how do I look?” We laughed. And the face and voice of the fat one appeared.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” to the fat man. “Sit in the lower box,” to Veronica and me. The fat one’s duty of “caller, or whatever it is, discharged, he retired through the first door to the left, Flora Finch “went on” and Veronica and I sat where we were bidden and enjoyed the Finch comedy with the rest of the house.
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Vitagraph Theater Changes Bill
On May 18 the popular Broadway house changed its bill, or rather part of it, the silent comedy, “The New Stenographer,” remaining.
The new program opens with a picture introduction of the women Vitagraph players in character pose, entitled “1,000 feet of smiles.” Then follows the two-part farce comedy, “Wife Wanted,” which gives an optimistic view of an almost serious mix-up, and shows Billy Quirk as a most discouraging and reckless butler.
The six-part drama, “Captain Alvarez,” offers a strong finish to the program. It is a sensational, romantic story and contains many genuine thrills, to furnish which William D. Taylor [William Desmond Taylor] tempts Providence more than once. The first thrill is his breaking of a wild, unridden horse; another time he rides at full speed across a narrow footbridge over a deep canyon. Mr. Taylor, as Robt. W. Wainwright, and later seen in the titular role, is deeply in love with Bonita (Edith Storey), the niece of the foreign minister of Argentina. To win her admiration he joins the revolutionists, becomes famous as a daring soldier, and, at the downfall of the tyrannical ruler, is rewarded by her promise of marriage.
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Hite Captures English Duke
The Duke of Manchester has gone into pictures. England’s titled son appeared in a scene of “The Million Dollar Mystery,” at the Thanhouser studio last week. It was the distinguished foreigner’s first view of motion picture making. He likes it. Charles J. Hite, president of the Thanhouser company, escorted him through the studio. When the party arrived in the east building, where some of the “Mystery” scenes are being taken, Mr. Hite called Director Howell Hansel to one side and told him to put the duke into a scene. It was no sooner said than done. Almost before the Englishman realized what was happening. Director Hansel was posing him. The duke enjoyed it and laughingly told Mr. Hite to “crank the camera.” The visitor proved such an adept that an actual scene was taken, showing him aiding Miss La Badie [Florence La Badie], the heroine of the forthcoming serial, to escape from the machinations of the Countess Olga, Miss Marguerite Snow, and her band of conspirators.
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C. J. Hite, president Thanhouser film Corporation, and the Duke of Manchester, who recently played in a scene in The Million Dollar Mystery.
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Remarkable “Beauty” Production
“The Dream Ship,” by Eugene Fields, is being produced by the American Film Manufacturing Company under direction of Harry Pollard. The sets are in the time of Louis XIV, to which the Gillespie and Graham estates in Montecito are admirably adapted. Costumes of the same period have been provided. The subject will be released on Tuesday, June 16.
Collection: Motography Magazine, June 1914