THE ERA OF SILENT FILM IN AMERICA WAS A BREATHTAKINGLY RICH period of creativity, where pioneer artists were exploiting a new medium for which there were no models or precedents. This epoch presents a daunting challenge to historians because it is so difficult to locate and view the films of the 1910s and 1920s. Finding these early works is America’s version of the search in the Holy Land for the Dead Sea Scrolls.
When we started the American Film Institute in 1967 we learned that more than half of the films made up to that time were lost or missing or in danger of being destroyed. This was the result of neglect by the producing entities that turned out thousands of silent films with little concern for preservation and record-keeping, and because the nitrate motion picture stock used in their time was volatile, often turning to jelly in its containers, and was vulnerable to destructive fires.
I have great admiration for the dedicated historians of the silent era because of their persistence in seeking out difficult to find motion pictures, and for the priceless perspective they provide on this art that was developed to such a large extent in the United States.
Tony Slide is a pioneer film historian who has dedicated himself to the study of the silent era, dating back to the early 1960s when he became enchanted with film as a young man in his native England. I met him when he came to the United States in 1971 to work on the film rescue and cataloging efforts of the American Film Institute, and in ensuing years he has published more than seventy valuable works on motion picture history. He is considered a leading authority on the silent era.
Alice Howell had an extraordinary career as a film comedienne, and were it not for Anthony Slide and other industrious historians, her work would have been altogether forgotten. Slide first saw Alice on the screen in England in a 1920 short called A Mere Man’s Love. He found her enchanting, and over the years he pursued every opportunity to see and write about the Howell films that survive from among the more than a hundred she starred in.
Alice started out at the Mack Sennett studios in 1913 and appeared in the first six films that Chaplin directed. She went on to have a career as a leading comedienne, modeling aspects of her characters on what she learned from Chaplin.
Tony Slide sought me out when he was working at the American Film Institute to tell me of his admiration and interest in Alice Howell, whom he knew to be my maternal grandmother. He was eager to know more about her and I arranged for him to interview her daughter, my mother, Yvonne Stevens, who grew up in Hollywood and had the greatest body of first hand knowledge about Alice’s life and career. Tony includes those interviews in this book.
Now Tony Slide is telling the story of Alice Howell, adding a rich new chapter to the history of American motion pictures. Whereas in the past it was next to impossible to see Alice’s screen performances, we hope that as a result of contemporary preservation efforts, and accessibility through new media, her surviving films will be increasingly available to interested fans and film scholars.
To me Alice Howell was simply the nice lady who happened to be my grandmother, who lived across the courtyard from us when I was young. Now, in these pages we can come to know her as a talented movie pioneer who lived a fascinating creative life in early Hollywood.
George Stevens Jr.