Phyllis Allen
actress
- Born:
- 1861-11-25, Staten Island, New York, USA
- Died:
- 1938-03-26, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Professions:
- actress
Biography
A vaudeville house thundered with applause one night in the early 1900s, and out of the footlights lumbered Phyllis Allen—six feet of mischief wrapped in a floor-length dress. Audiences roared at the way a raised eyebrow or a perfectly mistimed trip could level a punch-line, and Mack Sennett, scout for chaos, whisked her west to Keystone. Between 1913 and 1917 she stampeded through more than sixty one-reel hurricanes, her bulk acting as both anchor and battering ram. Chaplin cast her twice: as the flustered wife whose stairway becomes his playground in “The Property Man” (1914) and again as the restaurant patron who watches him juggle dishes, dignity, and disaster. When the camera needed an even wider target, Sennett paired her with Mack Swain; the two mountains of humanity turned doorframes into demolition sites and polite society into slapstick rubble.
