Article Link: Funny girls – Heroines of slapstick…
Can women be clowns?
In many film historians’ accounts of the silent movie era, the answer is an emphatic “No!” Serious slapstick was the province of male performers like Charlie Chaplin, Harry Langdon and Buster Keaton. Women were there to play ingenues, vamps or character parts. The film historian Walter Kerr claimed that: “No comedienne ever became a truly important film clown.”
The stars were supposed to be beautiful and glamorous – the object of the gaze. Clowning Glories and Screwball Women, a season of comedy films screening during the Birds Eye View film festival, a celebration of women in film, seeks to challenge this hoary old chauvinistic thinking.
Check out this article from The Independent.
It’s worth a read!