Flora Finch(1867-1940)
- Actress
- Producer
Flora Finch was born in London, England, on June 17, 1867. After
spending time on the legitimate stage, she began to make films, and was
one of the early comedy stars of the silent-film era. Her first film
was Mrs. Jones Entertains (1909). After making nine more films she began appearing with
rotund comic John Bunny, and together they would make more than 250 shorts
over the next five years, becoming the cinema's first popular comedy
team. Among their more popular titles were The New Stenographer (1911), The Subduing of Mrs. Nag (1911) and
A Cure for Pokeritis (1912). She made other films on her own in addition to those she made
with Bunny, and after he died in 1915 she began her own series of
comedy shorts, although not meeting with the kind of success she had
with Bunny. By the time the sound era began she was relegated to minor
supporting roles and bit parts, although she did have a fairly decent
role in The Scarlet Letter (1934) with Colleen Moore, as one of the self-righteous women in
Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale of life in colonial America. Finch retired from acting
after appearing in The Women (1939), ending a long and illustrious career. On
January 4, 1940, she died of rheumatic fever, brought on by a
streptococcus infection, in Los Angeles, California. She was 70 years
old.
