*** Welcome to piglix ***

Cissy Fitzgerald

Cissy Fitzgerald
Cissy Fitzgerald.jpg
1894
Born Mary Kate Kipping
(1873-02-01)1 February 1873
England, UK
Died 10 May 1941(1941-05-10) (aged 68)
Ovingdean, Sussex, England, UK
Other names "The Girl with the Wink"
Occupation Actress
Years active 1890s-1937
Spouse(s) Oliver Mark Tucker
Children Oliver Mark Fitzgerald(son)
Julia

Cissy Fitzgerald (1 February 1873 – 10 May 1941) [as Mary Kate Kipping] was an English-American vaudeville actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in numerous silent and sound films. She appeared in her first film almost at the beginning of film in 1896 appearing in a self-titled short film shot by Thomas Edison. She did not appear in films again until 1914 where she signed with the Vitagraph company and was quite popular in feature films and her own series of Cissy short films. Very little of Fitzgerald's silent material survives today but she can be seen in a comic backup role in the 1928 Lon Chaney vehicle Laugh, Clown, Laugh.

Fitzgerald later laid claims to having been the first woman ever filmed in motion pictures when she went to the Edison labs at New Jersey in 1896 to shoot 50 feet of film. This claim is certainly disputed as Annabelle Whitford had been filmed in 1894 by Edison engineer W. K. L. Dickson and the Lumiere's over in France were shooting motion pictures, i.e., men and women coming and going from a factory, by 1896. Fitzgerald had been appearing in a popular play The Gaiety Girl beginning in 1894 and was still in this play when she went to Edison.

Fitzgerald was married to Oliver Mark Tucker and had two children, a son and a daughter.

Fitzgerald was best recognized during her time and after for her left-eye "wink". This winking was uncontrollable due to an extra amount of tension in her orbicular muscles. While this wink was her trademark in the industry, it was quite controversial, and was also uncomfortable and had effects on her health. She did not have control over the wink, which was more so a twitch, and the wink outside of the studio was sometimes taken as a promiscuity. Today, Fitzgerald's wink serves a greater purpose to the feminist film industry. This somehow caused the media reproducibility to provide an eased nature to Cissy’s disorder. Cissy Fitzgerald’s wink provides a productive example for feminist historians, filmmakers, and producers today that are investigating and identifying the gender contradictions of early film entertainment. The constant repetitive image of Cissy’s wink in her performance caused the stage comedian involuntarily to imbrute her own gestures.


...
Wikipedia

...