Tag: 1920s

On a Bad Imitation

Some historians claim that a woman named Sarah Bernhardt, was the first “modern” celebrity. The French actress used popular magazines and her relationships to famous painters and writers and musicians to publicize her stage career in the 1800s. As a result, people world-wide knew who she was, thus becoming the first international star. But the world has never seen the popularity of the (mostly silent) film star, Charlie Chaplin. Everywhere he went, even when he wasn’t in his usual costume as the character “The Little Tramp,” the talented actor and director was mobbed. He was so famous in the 1910s and ’20s that cities and organizations would often hold Charlie Chaplin Look-Alike contests, contests that offered cash prizes to the person who could best imitate the character’s signature splay-footed walk. Even a young Bob Hope, later to become a famous comedian in his own right, entered one such contest during that time.

One such competition was held near San Francisco in the late 1910s as part of a county fair and a new movie theater promotion. Several dozen competitors donned their little under-the-nose bristle mustaches, put on ill-fitting hats and too-big shoes, found ragged pairs of trousers, grabbed reedy canes, and made their way to the fairgrounds. As the crowd gathered to watch the competitors, one of their number, a young man named Spencer, watched with amusement. “Those clowns,” he said to his small group of friends who had joined him at the fair that day as they watched the look-alikes start to parade across the fairground’s stage, “they don’t have the walk right.” You see, Spencer considered himself somewhat of a Chaplin expert, having seen everything that the comedian had put out on the screen.

Spencer’s chums began to goad him good naturedly. One of them dared him to get up on the stage and show them how to imitate the Chaplin walk if he knew it so well. Spencer grinned at his friend. “You’re on,” he said. “Here,” he added, taking off his jacket, “hold this and watch!” And, with that, the competition had another entrant. Spencer made his way to the side of the stage where one of the organizers was trying to corral the several would-be Chaplins in line before they demonstrated their imitations on stage.

“Say,” Spencer said to the harried worker, “d’ya think I could join the competition?” The staffer didn’t care. He just wanted to get through the warm afternoon as quickly as possible. “Sure, what do I care?” he said handing Spencer a number and a safety pin. “Just put this on your shirt and go to the back of the line.” And, flashing a large grin and a thumbs-up to his group of friends, Spencer went to the end of the queue to wait his turn. Eventually, as the last entrant, Spencer–without any Chaplinesque costume at all–made his duck-walking way across the stage. A few people clapped, mainly Spencer’s friends, and a few in the crowd booed.

The organizers used a set of three local minor dignitaries as their judges, and the judges also used crowd approval as a criteria in selecting the five finalists for the competition that day. And, when the votes were tabulated and every competitor was judged, it turned out that Spencer didn’t make the cut. He and the other unsuccessful entrants were thanked by the emcee and they were dismissed. Spencer made his way back to his little coterie of friends. They laughed at his failure, telling him that maybe he wasn’t as good of a Chaplin fan as he thought he was if he couldn’t even do the Chaplin walk correctly. Spencer was incredulous. In his frustration, he didn’t want to stick around to see who won the contest, and, with his friends still laughing at his expense, the group made their way on down the fair’s midway.

Now, of course, no one remembers who won that look-alike competition that day.

However, we do remember the contest.

For, you see, it was the day that Charles Spencer Chaplin couldn’t even win a competition imitating himself.

On a Walking Woman

When Gladys Ingle died in 1981 at the age of 82, hardly anyone noticed. Gladys had moved into the home of her daughter, Bonnie, and had enjoyed the love and care of her family in her waning weeks of life. To be sure, the local newspaper printed its obituary. And it was then that the public found out that, some sixty years before, Gladys had been a professional walker.

Yes, that is not a typo. In the 1920s, Gladys was paid money for people to come and watch her walk. In fact, she was part of a group of professional walkers. It’s obvious to us today that the 1920s was a wacky time filled with things like dance marathons, crazy stunts, barnstorming, and the like, and the public was eager to pay for such things. The booming economy of the Roaring ’20s gave disposable income to the growing the middle class in the United States, and those folks wanted to spend it. So there was actually a market for people like Gladys to make money by, well, being paid for people to watch her walk.

Gladys had been born in Washington state. She had a reputation as a young girl of being somewhat of a tomboy. She was a bit of a cat, known for being able to walk on the tops of picket fences while barefoot. So it’s no wonder she made money for walking when she got older. She also learned to ride a motorcycle when only a teenager at a time when such activities were seen as being incredibly unladylike. To make matters worse in the eyes of polite society, Gladys began racing the motorbikes and events against men–and winning some of those races.

As a young adult, she moved to southern California and continued her racing and expanding her risky pastimes. She tried parachuting and ballooning. And she even managed to get some credits as a stunt double in some Hollywood films of the Silent Film era. But it was when she got her position as a walker that Gladys truly made a name for herself, joining the group of other professional walkers and making good money.

By the way, the name of the group that Gladys was in that was paid to walk was known as the 13 Black Cats. The name of the group should tell you that the group flaunted their distain of things like lucky charms and other such superstitions. Now, such a thing might seem like bravery if Gladys and her fellow walkers performed their perambulations on the ground. But, as you probably have deduced by now, Gladys Ingle wasn’t paid to walk on the ground.

No, Gladys Ingle made her money and reputation walking not on the ground but rather several hundred feet in the sky–and across the wings of airplanes and from one airplane to another more than 300 times in her career.