Women in Silent Comedies: Fay Tincher
The survival rate of silent film is sometimes promising but mostly frustrating. This is especially maddening in the area of silent screen comedy. Studies have presented a very large number of comic practitioners during cinema’s first thirty years, but any attempt to investigate their work is limited to that which is available.
Fay Tincher was one of the great women of silent screen comedy, a long list that also includes the likes of Mabel Normand, Louise Fazenda, Dorothy Devore and many others. Unfortunately we are limited to what we can see of her work.
The Topeka-born girl first became an actress on the New York stage, entering movies in 1914. Initially Tincher was acting in dramatic roles for the great D.W. Griffith who saw her qualities as an actress. But Tincher believed her forte was comedy, so before the end of that year, she was with the Mutual company appearing as Ethel the stenographer opposite Tammany Young as Bill in such movies as “Bill The Office Boy” and “Ethel Has a Steady.” The films were directed by Eddie Dillon, with supporting roles played by the likes of Tod Browning, Max Davidson, and Dillon himself .
The movies were popular, and Fay Tincher’s character of Ethel stood out as the most well-liked character in each short. Usually clad in dresses with bold stripes, and sporting a wide brimmed hat, the gum-chewing Ethel became a comic stereoype that was utilized in movies for years afterward. When this series ended after a year, Tincher investigated other possibilities at other comedy studios, including Triangle, which was releasing Mack Sennett’s Keystone product. Fay did some comedies with Shorty Hamilton and DeWolfe Hopper until she was eventually contacted by producer Al Christie.
Christie had recently gone into independent production and recently lost one of his leading female comics, Billie Rhodes, to William Parsons productions, being released by Goldwyn. He saw the diminutive Tincher’s formidable talents and built a series around her in which she did comedy within a western setting. Films like “Dangerous Nan McGrew” and “Wild and Western” were popular with audiences.
Of the existing Fay Tincher films, perhaps the most noted and accessible is “Rowdy Ann” (1919), one of her popular Christie comedies. “Rowdy Ann” works as a western, with its expansive long shots, and the many extras in background of some scenes while the stars work in the foreground. Tincher is an attractive comic presence throughout the proceedings, and appears very natural in the western setting despite having no real life background. When she headed a Wild West parade in Seattle, a 1919 issue of Film Fun stated:
“The admiring pedestrians who lined the walks to cheer the peppy little star never dreamed she wasn’t born and bred in a saddle; but one year ago the extent of her riding experience was on a wooden horse in a merry-go-round. Then Al Christie cast her as Rowdy Ann and Fay wasn’t going to let a double do her work, so she learned to ride. She was thrown off twice, stepped on once, and the day after her first lesson she was so sore she couldn’t walk. But she learned how to ride, and any cowboy ill tell you she is some cowgirl! The Seattle press called her a ‘typical western girl’ to whom riding came ‘as natural as breathing.’ Aside from the fact that up until very recently she didn’t know which side of a horse to mount, the story was absolutely correct.”
By the 1920s, Fay Tincher was involved in a series of comedies for Universal called The Gumps based on the popular Andy Gump comic series. Fay played Andy’s wife Min Gump, and while these films were the most popular she’d ever appeared in, they didn’t offer her as many opportunities. Most of the stories revolved around Andy (played by Joe Murphy and later Slim Summerville) with Fay as domestic support. Their popularity continued for five years until the series ended in 1928. After that, Fay Tincher, who had played many roles on stage and screen, found herself to be stereotyped as Min Gump and had trouble securing subsequent film work.
It was then that Fay decided to leave movies and return to the stage. And although she had a perfectly good speaking voice, she never did investigate talkies. Her whereabouts remained unknown for decades until her death was reported in October of 1983. Fay Tincher lived to be 99 years old. She never married.