Alf Collins | How Percy Won the Beauty Competition / 1909

how to get ahead

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alf Collins (scenarist and director) How Percy Won the Beauty Competition / 1909

 

Gaumont Studios England was first located at what was called the Camberwell’s Dog Kennel, Hillywood in 1898. Eventually, after building a new studio years later, Gaumont bought out its French originator and become the largest studio in England.

      Among one of its earliest actors/directors was Alf Collins who did a series of films, many of them with him performing as a woman or, as in How Percy Won the Beauty Competition of 1909, as a man portraying a member of the female sex.

      The entire story and plot is quite conventional for early comic drag works, and lacks little subtlety or structure, although there are some excellent long shots and few surprises along the way that are not typical of US filmmaking.

      In this case the handsome Percy (Collins) begins the film by reading the newspaper and noting that there is a 100 £ award for winning a local beauty competition. Obviously he could use the cash, and immediately heads off to Fox’s wigs, coming out of the store looking like a handsome woman of the Edwardian era.

      In the very next scene, a group of women sit on chairs before the judges’ table, each of them numbered, as the camera carefully scans their faces. Most of the women are well dressed having given particular attention to their headwear, and several of them are quite handsome if a bit more elderly than one might have expected for a beauty pageant. What also seems to be out of the ordinary is that Percy is not the only male in the gathering, but two other men also appear in women’s attire.

      The judges call up each of the “women,” one by one, to the table, finally awarding the first prize, along with the sack of the 100 £ to Percy. The rest of the group are clearly ruffled by the judges’ decision and, as the winner attempts to walk down the stairs from the location of the contest, they await him on both sides of his path, one woman rushing him and pulling off his wig to reveal his true sexuality at the very moment that the judges also are exiting.

       Terrified of the consequences, our hero momentarily trips before he quickly stands and leaps into a run, all the others chasing after, irate about the circumstance.

       He jumps fences, travels down steep embankments, enters a house unbidden, exists it, and races down several streets, the others all following, the women taking several rolls while the two males in drag, following behind, who take more serious dives and pratfalls, at one point crashing into an outdoor café table, taking its patron with them, obviously unused to their female attire.

       At several points it appears that the group has trapped him, but time and again he escapes until suddenly he meets up with a high wall, an apparent dead end. He pauses, clearly fearful of having to hand over his winnings and perhaps being beaten in the process. But suddenly he moves out of the camera frame and returns with a tall ladder, placing it against the wall and quickly scrambling up its steps before, just as the others come into site, to pull the ladder up after him and toss it to the other side. Back on the ground now opposite of his pursuers he laughs in derision at their attempts. He was won through his beauty, his fitness, and wits, having bested them all. In the end, accordingly we do know how Percy has won the beauty competition but know very little about why.

       It appears that this film is he only one of Collins’ film to have been converted from celluloid to the internet or DVD format, and none of them appear to be available in the United States.

 

Los Angeles, January 27, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2022).