Edna May Oliver

She’s got very little chin, this Edna May Oliver dame. So it kind of looks like her neck just sort of swelled up a little like a semi-inflated balloon, instead of being a head. You realise how important a chin is, a way for a head to identify itself. With so little chin, she has to rely more on stuff like eyes, nose and mouth to convince us she has a head. And those organs do a lot of hard and important work and so finally, we do believe we are indeed looking at a dame with a head.

We’re not necessarily so sure it’s a dame’s head, though. Not that she’s exactly mannish, despite the elongated Olive Oyl figure and the air of sharp, snappish authority. That air is maintained by the imperious, far-back-in-the-throat clarinet voice, which carries a quality of outraged dignity no matter what other emotions its conveying.

But to return to the head. It might be that a Masai warrior has donned a moose head and done a lot of limbering-up excercises to cultivate a supreme looseness of limb. A loose Masai moose with limbered limbs, if you get me. The lips, you see, drawn back in exasperation and tightening over the teeth like inner tubes under strain, have a very moose-like quality. The mouth is as wide as the head is long. The corners have to curve up to prevent them escaping the outside of the face altogether, which would be a disaster for all of us.

The eyes, rolling and gleaming, have the marble-like sheen of most eyes you see in moose heads. An unexpectedly sympathetic look, I must say.

The distance from upper lip to nose is immense: no man could traverse it. The whole head, if it is a head, is a great length. I’m pretty sure a head like that could encircle the globe, if you laid it end to end a sufficient number of times. The hair atop it is a dark, wavy skull-cap, clenching the scalp. Its shortness emphasises the length of everything else. There’s just enough of it to encase the ears. All you get of those are the lobes. That’s an iron rule.

This extraordinary cartoon face and personality, the moose of permanent outrage, sexless and skeptical, is somehow also loveable. A suitable movie aunt. And distinctive enough even to be allowed leading roles from time to time, because in spite of the parody of a regal manner, she’s somehow inherently warm. She’s okay, this dame.

This dame, she’s okay.

by David Cairns