The Extra Girl

Country girl Mabel Normand travels to Hollywood in the hope of becoming a movie star after winning a competition, without realising that her love rival for the boy-next-door, Ralph Graves, substituted a glamour photo for her own, so she ends up working in the costume department. Normand's health problems were finally beginning to take their toll when she made this pleasant but unremarkable comedy, and the William Desmond Taylor affair had irreparably damaged her career, but she still makes a winning heroine. Highlights include her disastrous audition and a lion on the loose in the studio.

The Extra Girl (1923)

*** (out of 4)

Producer Mack Sennett and star Mabel Normand made a great number of films together but this here would turn out to be the last one as they'd go their separate ways and not to mention that this was filmed during the actresses troubled aftermath of the William Desmond Taylor murder. In the film Normand plays a small town girl who decides to go to Hollywood where she knows she's gonna make it big. As soon as she hits town she gets a job but it's not in front of the camera but instead behind it sweeping floors. Soon her parents and her sweetheart (Ralph Graves) come to visit her and things don't get better. THE EXTRA GIRL is far from perfect but I thought it had enough very good moments to make it worth sitting through and not to mention some fine performances. Many have labeled this a comedy but I think that's pretty far-fetched as there's really not any funny moments throughout the film. The majority of the time is actually dealing with some dark subjects and situations and not to mention we get some pretty intense sequences that would have made D.W. Griffith proud. One such sequence has Normand accidentally letting a lion loose, which then goes on a chase throughout the studio. This sequence was extremely well shot and edited and you can feel the creature breathing down your spine. The ending, which I won't spoil, is also excellently done and contains some first rate drama. Normand is extremely good in her role as you can believe her every step of the way. She's perfectly charming in the picture and I thought she handled the drama just fine. Graves, probably best remembered for his films with Frank Capra, is also excellent in his role as are supporting players Vernon Dent, George Nichols and Anna Dodge.

An entertaining little comedy starring Mabel Normand, the beautiful funny girl who in her heyday was as famous as Chaplin but who is sadly mostly remembered today as a footnote to the spate of sex and drug scandals that afflicted Hollywood in the early twenties. At nearly thirty she does looks a bit old to be playing an ingénue, but she's nevertheless quite appealing as the scrappy but naïve farm girl Sue with her old fashioned ringlets and homemade dresses who is determined to take Hollywood by storm. She doesn't, and the movie rather than being a rags to riches chronicle you might have been expecting becomes a relatively prosaic account of the fate of thousands of girls who tried to make it in Hollywood, failed but ended up happy enough with ordinary lives as wives and mothers. The movie doesn't dwell too much on its more realistic elements, however, and viewers are most likely to remember those amusing set pieces as when Sue's overbearing father attempts to force her to get out of bed and dress for her wedding or (the highlight of the film) when Mabel, now working as a lackadaisical prop girl, mistakes a lion for a dog dressed up in a shoddy lion's costume and nonchalantly leads it about the set on a leash to the horror of onlookers.

"The Extra Girl" is good introduction to the work of a talented comedienne who deserves to be better know today.

Normand stars as a small-town girl who wants to be an actress. Through a trick, she wins a contest and goes to Hollywood to be a star. When the studio realizes the pictures sent in was not her, she's put in the wardrobe department. Choppy plot and rough transitions (heavy cutting?) don't help the story, but Normand is a winner. She's a cross between Harry Langdon and Giulietta Masina (especially in La Strada). Several very funny bits involving a lion and some gum. Her screen test is very funny. Ralph Graves is surprisingly good as a boy friend her follows her west. Graves didn't make it in talkies and usually played the stuffy best friend. But he's loose and funny here. Vernon Dent (from many Three Stooges shorts) is the jilted lover. The imposing Louise Carver is the wardrobe boss. George Nichols and Anna Hernandez play the parents. Normand remains a tragic Hollywood figure despite her huge stardom in the teens and early 20s and her work with Chaplin and Arbuckle. Her association with the still-unsolved murder of director, William Desmond Taylor, killed her career. She died in 1930 at 36 or 37. She made only a handful of films after this little gem. With Marie Dressler, Normand was one of the first cinema comediennes, and she is quite good in The Extra (as in screen extra) Girl. It sure looks like Normand in there with the lion and doing stunts off the back of a train. Remarkable. But Normand will be remembered by buffs for The Extra Girl and for the first comedy feature, Tillie's Punctured Romance.

Note: the grass widow, Belle Brown, was listed in the film credits as being played by Mary Mason. The IMDb lists her as played by Charlotte Mineau. Did Mineau use this other name?

This is not the usual Keystone comedy that we associate with Miss Normand. However, it should be understood that no 'Madcap Mabel' pictures had been produced since 1916, and the last of these contained little slapstick. The post-Goldwyn Sennett films are a build up to Extra Girl, which may be seen as the culmination of Mabel's art.

Extra Girl is a Cinderella story – sort of. The twist is that the heroine, Sue Graham, does not find happiness by marrying a prince, but an old friend. This plot is in total agreement with a then-current Hollywood maxim that no-one should come to tinsel town expecting to be put into movies, let alone become a star. Of course, Sue does go to Hollywood, but, for several reasons, finds life very tough indeed.

In the early scenes, Mabel is very pretty and passes tolerably well for the teenage small-town girl Sue with her banana curls. However, when she throws her arms around Ralph and exclaims 'My Sheik', the straining in her neck and face put more than a few years on her apparent age. By contrast, when she falls back into Ralph's arms, her face becomes relaxed and Mabel is instantly, and radiantly, beautiful. She is, fleetingly, the dying Cleopatra.

Mabel demonstrates a whole repertoire of facial expressions and eye movements while showing Ralph her acting ability. These are definitely worthy of the 'old Mabel'. Curiously, Mabel also uses certain facial expressions that are reminiscent of Stan Laurel. Now Stan didn't use these until after 1930, and after Mabel had collaborated with him at Hal Roach studios. I leave it to others to determine where the 'world's greatest mimic' got his famous face from. Elsewhere Mabel uses some of the classically cute Keystone Girl actions, like the poignant wave from the train, her head forward and one shoulder pulled up protectively (last seen in Mabel At The Wheel). Equally cute is the way she leans forward and points while delivering a firm message to the studio owner (also seen in Suzanna).

In this film, Mabel is fairly slim, but not overly so. Compared to the Mabel of, say, 'A Spanish Dilemma' (1912), Mabel does seem strangely flat chested, indicating, perhaps, that the common Sennett practice of chest strapping was used here. It is also clear that in some scenes, especially later in the film, Mabel looks quite ill and drained. Apparently, scenes requiring Mabel to look out of salts (e.g. when she was being married off and when her acting career was failing) were filmed on her worst days. The effects of the W.D. Taylor scandal cannot be underestimated in respect of these observations. It is odd to see Mabel in the film lying in wait for the swindler of her parents with a gun, considering the W.D. Taylor affair – a joke too far. The effect is doubled, as the Courtland Dines shooting occurred just after the film's completion, and another Dines affair weapon, a bottle, appears in the scene. Other aspects of the film that may reflect reality are the location of the Graham household at River Bend and the great swindle. Mabel had a good friend, Helen Holmes (of 'Hazards of Helen' fame), who originated in South Bend Indiana (like River Bend, between Pittsburgh and the Rocky Mountains). Helen's family were swindled of their money when they first moved to California.

Mabel ends up being a wardrobe girl, but persuades a director to give her a screen test. Due to various events the test turns out to be a hilarious farce. The wardrobe girl is wearing an old-fashioned crinoline hooped dress with the usual long pantalettes underneath. Unbeknown to her, as she bends over to pick some love letters up she exposes her white pantalettes, which have acquired the black imprint of a prop man's glove (she sat on the glove earlier). Everyone behind the camera begins to laugh, including Mack Sennett who has suddenly appeared in the scene. Was he there to ogle Mabel in her underwear, or was he there to laugh at the joke?

The best part of the film occurs later on when Mabel leads a lion around the studio thinking it is the Keystone dog, Teddy. It is hilarious to see the various actors running for their lives, while Mabel walks around totally oblivious to the danger. Mabel herself told a story about the director making her come close to the camera with the lion in tow, following which there was a sudden noise in the studio. This unnerved the lion who jumped and knocked Mabel flat, whereupon he bit into her posterior. However, it transpired that the 'bite' was the penetration of a pointed implement wielded by the director in order to drive the lion off – he'd missed! After the lion breaks away he chases Mabel around the studio in the old cranked-up way, with our heroine jumping and jerking in the old cranked-up way.

The Dines affair should have destroyed the box-office take of this film. However, Mack and Mabel (who had a 25% stake in the profits) made a supreme, nationwide effort to save it and were successful in their efforts. In court, nonetheless, Mabel ridiculed the prosecutors, and, as the newspapers were quick to relay, affected a pompous English accent and made continuous 'French' hand gestures. Mabel's career trickled away following the affair, and Mack canceled her next film 'Mary Anne'.