Flora Finch

Flora Finch (17 June 1867 – 4 January 1940) was an English-born actress who worked across music hall, vaudeville, stage, and film, appearing in more than 300 silent films over the course of her career. Born in London into a family with roots in music hall and travelling theatre, she was brought to the United States as a young child and continued the family's performance tradition through her twenties and thirties, working in theatre and on the vaudeville circuit. Her Broadway credits include the 1907 musical The Bad Boy and His Teddy Bears.

Finch's screen career began at the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1908, where she worked alongside Fatty Arbuckle, Mack Sennett, and Charlie Chaplin, among other prominent figures of the silent era. She and Mack Sennett were reportedly involved romantically for a brief period. In 1910 she joined Vitagraph Studios, where she was paired with comedian John Bunny for a series of comedy shorts that would define her early film reputation. The two made approximately 160 shorts together between 1910 and 1915, a body of work known variously as "Bunnygraphs," "Bunnyfinches," and "Bunnyfinchgraphs." The partnership established Finch and Bunny as the first widely popular comedy team in cinema. Mabel Normand briefly joined the duo at Vitagraph, temporarily expanding the pairing into a trio. In total, Finch appeared in more than 200 films for Vitagraph Studios, though the vast majority of her silent-era work is now considered lost.

Following Bunny's death in 1915, Finch continued producing comedy shorts independently, though with diminished commercial success. She founded her own production company in 1916 and released a film through it the following year. Among her more notable later silent-era performances was the role of Aunt Susan in Paul Leni's The Cat and the Canary in 1927. Her transition into sound films brought primarily supporting roles, though The Scarlet Letter in 1934 offered her a more substantial part. She also appeared in a cameo in the Laurel and Hardy feature Way Out West in 1937. Her final screen appearance came in The Women in 1939.

At the time of her death, Finch was employed as a stock player at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She died on 4 January 1940 at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. An accidental cut to her arm had led to a streptococcal infection, which spread and ultimately caused bronchial pneumonia; she died after lapsing into a coma.