Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

Born to Comedy — The Stoiy of Faxenda 17 A girl with strange, half-humorous, half-melancholy eyes, who once chose to enjoy a lonely ride in the box car of an outgoing train. A girl with a whimsical, fantastic streak, who walked miles to Rosedale Cemetery, and wept bitter tears over unknown tombstones, while she tenderly laid flowers on the graves, yet who, before the tears were dry, was seized by a fit of caprice and youthful deviltry that caused her to leave carrying mortuary vases under her arms, as souvenirs of the occasion. These, however, immediately became gifts to some of her friends in the Mexican section of town, whom she loved to visit — quaint, withered-looking shopkeepers, who reciprocated her favors with little, colored baskets, and such Spanish dainties as bunuelas and qiiesadillos — fritters and cheese cakes. Was this barter and trade ? Who can say ? If ever a career was patterned by that indefinable entity called fate, it is the career of Louise Fazenda. It would seem that i% was written .in the stars that she should become a comedian— not comedienne. There is a distinction, however subtle. And nowhere, so well as in the Bagdad of moviedom, could she have found so flourishing a mart for her picturesque wares. At various times during her life, she has tried to change the architecture of her career. But she has only succeeded in slightly altering its embellishments. There was a period when she positively yearned and willed that she should become a dramatic actress. But she still remained funny. It appears to be the instinct of the born comedian to play tragedy at least once in his, or her, life. For these all-too-rare types the laugh and the tear are composite. Chaplin longs to play Hamlet. Fannie Brice's act is never complete until she attempts to essay the court jester with a breaking heart. Jolson would impersonate Punchinello, to prove to the world that he can cry for more than "Mammy." Louise Fazenda wanted to be a tragedienne, and I am not so sure that she ever will be able to quell the urge. She has not only at various times emulated Bernhardt in thought and action, but every now and then she has circulated portraits of herself posed in raven robes and immersed in an aura of gloom, which identified her as the image of the "Divine Sarah" herself. Notwithstanding, Louise was, is, and always will be, a comedian. It is her temperament, her talent, her heritage. Were she to play Ophelia to Barrymore's dismal Dane, the poor, unhappy heroine would become much more daft than Shakespeare intended. Louise is the genuine wag among women screen players. Her type is scarce. She and Polly Moran hold the particular spotlight alone. They are the bassoons in Hollywood's symphony of sweet-tuned violins. The Constance Talmadge and Laura La Plante type of comedienne is a special genre. They become amusingthrough ludicruous situations built around them. Like This unusual photograph of Miss Fazenda, posed expressly for PICTURE PLAY, shows the depth and character which she conceals behind her grotesque characterizations. Mabel Normand of the early days, their appeal rests; in large part, on obvious femininity and charm, although Mabel possessed, in addition, a native, infectious humor somewhat similar to that of Fazenda and Polly Moran, which makes everything they do on the screen appear funny, whether it is fundamentally so or not. Louise, of course, unlike Mabel and Polly, has never been absent from the screen for any appreciable period, and she has been given such a wide variety of eccentric and straight-comedy roles that she now qualifies as one of the screen's best character actresses, with a slight accent on the grotesque. The blood of France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands mingles in Louise's veins. From the isle of Corsica, to banishment in Mexico, is the trail her forbears made. Among them was a sea-rover and a priest, one answering the call of rolling seas, the other speaking Avords of hope to troubled souls. The twilight zone between the temperaments of a roamer and a priest just about describes the prevailing mood of Louise. She has inherited the wanderlust spirit from her father, who at some sixty years of age is setting out on a world tour, and from her mother she has been endowed with a strong love of home, and also the virtue of thriftiness. She possesses a dominant avidity for life, and the search for it along unbeaten trails ; a mind that places