Fay Tincher

Fay Tincher was born on April 17, 1884, in Topeka, Kansas, the daughter of George Tincher and Elizabeth Tincher. Her father served as mayor of Topeka and as state printer. She had three sisters: Mary, Ruth, and Julia. From childhood, Tincher studied dance, elocution, and music, and during her teenage years she attended a dramatic school in Chicago, where she also took part in light opera performances.

Although Tincher originally intended to pursue dramatic roles, her career moved toward comedy and eventually vaudeville, with performances in both the United States and Europe. Her stage work brought her to Broadway, where she appeared in productions between 1904 and 1912. Her Broadway credits include the musicals Twiddle-Twaddle, Hip! Hip! Hooray! (1907), Hokey-Pokey, Merry-Go-Round, and The Sho-Gun. By 1908 she was also touring in California with The Merry Go Round Company. That August, while on tour, she may have married fellow actor Ned Buckley, a Yale graduate and Bridgeport, Connecticut resident, reportedly on a dare; she subsequently consulted her lawyer at the New York Life Insurance Building at 112–114 Broadway to seek a divorce if the marriage proved legally valid.

While working the Keith-Albee-Orpheum vaudeville circuit, Tincher was approached by an agent who noted her resemblance to actress Mabel Normand. At that point, in 1913, Tincher had never seen a motion picture. The agent arranged for director D. W. Griffith to meet her at Biograph Studios, where Griffith initially cast her as a vamp. Within three weeks she transitioned into comedy, beginning with slapstick and progressing to comedy drama.

Tincher's film debut came in 1914. Among her early screen appearances was Bill Manages A Fighter, one of a series of Bill comedy shorts produced by the Komic Pictures Company of Los Angeles and shot at Reliance Studios. The film was directed by Edward Dillon and featured former lightweight fighter Hobo Dougherty. By the end of 1915, Tincher was working for the Fine Arts Film Company, where she took on working-class character types alongside comic roles. In Laundry Liz (1916), directed by Dillon with a scenario by Anita Loos and released by the Keystone Film Company, she portrayed a laundry girl. That same year, In Skirts cast her as an artist's model who becomes a victim of drugs, with Tully Marshall playing the artist.

In July 1915, Griffith organized the Pageant of the Photoplay, a large-scale public event featuring comic bullfights, theatrical comedy, drama, and demonstrations of filmmaking processes. On the final day, a stage was erected and four scenes were performed; Tincher appeared in a dramatic part within a comedy segment. Also in May 1915, she won a bathing suit contest at Venice Beach, California, taking first prize of fifty dollars. She wore a costume resembling the typewriter dress she was known for wearing in her films, and approximately 75,000 people attended the event.

In 1918, Tincher founded Fay Tincher Productions, with her films distributed by the World Film Company. That same year she shared a bungalow with scenario writer Maie B. Havey. From 1923 to 1928, Tincher played Min in the Andy Gump comedy film series, appearing alongside Joe Murphy as Andy Gump. The series comprised approximately forty-five films, produced by Universal Pictures and Samuel Von Honkel, and was based on characters created by American cartoonist Sidney Smith. Her final film was All Wet (1930), a two-reel comedy short directed by Sam Newfield.

Tincher inherited $25,000 from the estate of Mrs. Julian Dick, who died on December 22, 1930, from inhaling illuminating gas at her residence at 116 East 36th Street in New York City. Mrs. Dick's husband, Captain Dick, a member of the New York Cotton Exchange, had been accidentally shot to death by a friend in 1922. Among Tincher's personal interests was the fine art of vitreous enamel. She died on October 11, 1983, in Brooklyn, New York, at the age of 99, and is buried in an unmarked grave at Silver Mount Cemetery on Staten Island.