Charlotte Mineau: From Michigan to “Monkey Business”

Towering over Fin in an Early Comedy

Thanks, Matthew Coniam, of The Marx Brothers Council Podcast and The Annotated Marx Brothers, who made me aware of Charlotte Mineau (1886-1979). I’d noticed her in Monkey Business (1931) and remarked that she was a kind of Margaret Dumont substitute, as that as one of the few of the brothers’ films that lacks their customary female foil. Mineau appears during the big party scene at the climax. She is tall, statuesque, and posh-mannered like Dumont, though a good deal thinner (though not as thin as rival Edna May Oliver). Anyway, thanks Matthew for putting a name to the face.

It was delightful to realize that Mineau had played similar roles opposite top comedians for nearly two decades. I’d seen her in numerous movies, I’d just never picked up her name. Hailing from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, she’d worked a variety of ordinary jobs (phone operator, stenographer, department store salesgirl) before stepping before the cameras at Essanay’s Chicago studios in 1912. There she played supporting roles to two of the studio’s top comedians: Wallace Beery in his “Sweedie” character, and young Charlie Chaplin.

IMDB tells us Mineau studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. Her speaking voice makes it seem possible, but it’s hardly necessary, and it does have the air of publicity fluff designed to embellish her distinctly French name. But the same entry also says she was the daughter of a police officer who died when she was two months old. Working class orphans seldom find themselves at the Sorbonne, but I’ll keep an open mind. Michigan and Illinois are in the heart of what used to be French America and Canada is just across the lake. I think it’s just as likely she’s just a working class French American girl who’d never left the midwest.

Mineau appears to have gone west to Hollywood in 1915, for she continues to appear in many Chaplin comedies of the Mutual period. In the late teens and twenties she acted in shorts by Mack Sennett and Hal Roach and others, supporting Billie Ritchie, Charles Murray, Ford Sterling, James Finlayson, Harry Langdon, Ralph Graves, Andy Clyde, Glenn Tryon, Our Gang, and Laurel and Hardy, and features like Mabel Normand’s Extra Girl(1923). Sugar Daddies (1927) with Laurel and Hardy was her last silent picture.

Monkey Business was Mineau’s first talkie. There were only a few after that. Roscoe Arbuckle (whose birthday is also today) directed her in Beach Pajamas (1931) one of Louis John Bartels “Travelling Man” shorts. Bartels died a few months later of alcohol related causes. Mineau also supported Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts in Strictly Unreliable (1932) for Roach. Her last credit, according to IMDB, is the Paramount short Cold Turkey (late 1933) in which Mineau co-starred with Joseph Cawthorn, directed by Del Lord, later of Columbia.

In 1931, Mineau married bit player Christian Frank (1890-1967), who worked in films until the end of the 1940s.

For more on silent and slapstick comedy see Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube. And please keep your eye peeled for my new book The Marx Brothers Miscellany, dropping just in time for Marxfest 2024.