Love for Louise Fazenda

Today is the birthday of Louise Fazenda (1895-1962).

This adorable Indiana native moved to Los Angeles with her family halfway through her childhood and was spotted by scouts while performing in a high school show. She started out at Universal in 1913, and was in over 250 films before the sun set on our her career a quarter-century later. Mack Sennett hired her away in 1915 to play country girls mostly, feisty female rubes with an outsized sense of decency. After Mabel Normand left Keystone, Fazenda’s importance at the studio increased greatly. Some of that early stuff included (1915) with Roscoe Arbuckle, Her Screen Idol (1918) with Ford Sterling, and A Small Town Idol (1921) with Ben Turpin. 

with Slim Summerville

After leaving Sennett in the early twenties, Fazenda tried her hand at vaudeville for several months, then played dramatic as well as comic roles in features for most of the major studios. Some of these include the 1923 screen adaption of Sinclair Lewis’sMain Street, the 1923 version of The Spoilers, the original movie version of The Gold Diggers (also 1923), The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln (1924), the all-star comedy The Galloping Fish (1924), Hogan’s Alley (1925), the 1926 version of The Bat, The Red Mill (1927) with Marion Davies, and the 1928 remake of Tillie’s Punctured Romance with W.C. Fields and Chester Conklin. 

In 1927, she married famed Warner Brothers producer Hal B. Wallis, which no doubt eased her transition to sound more gently than was the lot of many another silent screen star. Some of her will known talkies include a turn in the all-star The Shows of Shows (1929), the 1930 version of No, No, Nanette,Rain or Shine (1930) with Joe Cook, the all-star 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland, Kaufman and Hart’s Once in a Lifetime (1933), and The Wonder Bar (1934) with Al Jolson. Her last film was The Old Maid (1939) with Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins. 

Fazenda was only 44 at the time of her retirement, astounding to contemplate when you realize the huge number of films she was in. Her social life remained full afterwards as the wife of a major Hollywood producer, and she was involved with several charitable causes.

To learn more aboutLouise Fazenda and silent and slapstick comedy, please check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube,  and for more about  the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.