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Photo by Fryer
Louise Fazenda inherits from her mother her fondness for home life, and the virtue of thrift.
B
orn
to C
ome
THE STORY OF FAZENDA
Tracing, from its humble beginning, the fascinating career of one of movies' outstanding figures.
By Elza Schallert
THE story of Louise Fazenda ostensibly begins during the romantic and historic period of 1916, in the atelier of the master of comedy, Mack Sennett.
Neither in flowing, white tunic, girdled with golden cord, nor yet with beflowered coronet on her brow, was Louise ushered into the arena of that grand, old amphitheater, which has been the training ground for some of the greatest talent the screen has known.
Her actual debut was made in a frayed straw hat, calico dress tightly hugging a figure of threatening proportions, white-cotton stockings and black-buttoned shoes. Her left arm clutched an oversized duck. Her right arm laboriously dragged ninety-pound Teddy — genus Great Dane — the Roman lion of his day.
The first chapters of screen comedy-history had just been written, when Louise entered the ranks of Sennett gladiators. Through deeds, of drollery, tumbling, pie-hurling, and through grotesque love-making, the early movie sagas were created.
Miss Fazenda's home is free from pretense
Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Ben Turpin, Chester Conklin, Charlie Murray, Ford Sterling, Mack Swain — these personalities had already inscribed clear outlines on the
celluloid Talmud of comedy.
The chronicles of the bathinggirl era were in embryo. The names of Gloria Swanson, Marie Prevost, and Phyllis Haver were yet to be made.
Wallace Beery and Raymond Griffith were on the side lines, helping the wheels of monkeyshines spin around. Their big turn had not yet arrived. Nor had' Harry Langdon's figure cast the dimmest shadow on the Sennett sky line. It was many years later before a close-up appeared of his hopeful, expectant eyes.
Ostensibly Louise's career begins to unfold in its casual, steady, predestined mode from this point. But, actually, it took form at a much earlier date.
It was already in the hands of fate when she was a youngster in awkward pigtails, sitting moodily on the stoop of her house right next to the old Southern Pacific station in Los Angeles.