Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses

Alice Howell

ALICE HOWELL When I first met George Stevens Jr. at the American Film Institute. I was aware of his father's contribution to cinema as a major director. but I did not realize there was another. more unusual. family connection through George Junior's mother. Yvonne Stevens. who married George Senior in 1930. was the daughter of one of the most entertaining. unusual and underrated of silent screen comediennes. Alice Howell. A former vaudevillian. Alice Howell was born Alice Clark in New York on May 20. 1886. and took her stage name from a vaudeville act. Howell and Howell. that she and her husband. Dick Smith. replaced. The couple entered films in 1913 with MackSennett. appearing together as party guests in Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914); Alice can be seen in a number of Chaplin's Keystone shorts. most notably as the dentist's wife in Laughing Gas. released in July 1914. She became a comedy star with Henry "Pathe" Lehrman's Knock-Out Komedies. made by his L-Ko Motion Picture Company in 1915. At L-Ko. Alice Howell hid her natural beauty and developed a unique. eccentric style of dress with ill-fitting clothing. the hair piled into a mess of golden curls and topped with the most unsuitable of hats. The eyebrows were overemphasized. the eyes set in a vacant stare and the walk more like the shuffle of a penguin. Howell constantly uses her hands and body language for emphasis. Her feet are as eloquent as her expressive hands. She is no light or polite comedienne. no leading lady simpering beside the male comedy star. but a physical comic who can handle a pratfall better than any male. It is no exaggeration to describe Howell as the female counterpart of Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin had his tramp costume. Alice Howell had her scrub lady outfit. Chaplin developed his comedy for the feature-length motion picture. while Howell was stuck in short subjects for most of her career. moving from L-Ko to Reelcraft. to Universal in the early I920s. and. finally. to Fox for a couple of titles in 1926 and 1927. The few feature film appearances she made in the early I920s are little more than cameos and often uncredited. Unlike Chaplin. it seems that Alice Howell never really cared that much about her career. She made films in order to make money. and she invested her money in real estate . By the 1920s she had no need to work. "All she wanted to do was make money." explained Yvonne. "She didn't care about being an actress. All she cared about was real estate." Alice Howell died. a wealthy woman. in Los Angeles on April II. 1961. Her passing went unrecorded in both the trade and the popular press. There is not even a complete record of her films. and many went unnoticed in con- 186 Alice Howell temporary trade papers. There are well in excess of eighty, with intriguing titles such as Silk Hose and High Pressure (t 9t5), Lizzie's Lingering Love (t 9t6), Tillie's Terrible Tumbles (t 9t6), and Beauty and the Boob (t 9t9). She was not a creative comedienne in the sense that she wrote or fine-tuned her films-at L-Ko, she relied much on the talent of her director, John G. Blystone-but she knew how to get laughs, and, if someone would screen her films today, she would generate far more genuine laughter and applause than Mabel Normand. Bibliography "The Funniest Woman in Pictures." Pictures and the Picturegoer, June 16, 1917, p. II. "She's a Rough Gal." Photoplay, August 1917, p. 133. Slide, Anthony. 'Alice Howell" in Eccentrics of Comedy. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1998,pp. 75-79. ...