In the fictional land of Morovenia, where large women are considered beautiful while thin ones are unattractive, the 'slim princess' Kalora struggles to attract a suitor until she meets a brash young American.The life of 'The Slim Princess' began in the fertile imagination of the humorist George Ade, (1866-1944) Ade's humor is very much in the traditions of Mark Twain. Ade was a master of American Slang, and has been said to purvey the American colloquial vernacular with sheer masterly turn of phase, his 'Fables in Slang' was one of the important Chicago satires. This story of Princess Kalora came from a different time and in many respects was written in a very different language.The Slim Princess is a 1920 American comedy film starring Mabel Normand, directed by Victor Schertzinger, produced by Samuel Goldwyn, and written by Gerald C. Duffy based on a musical play of the same name by Henry Blossom and Leslie Stuart, which was from a story by George Ade. The picture is a Goldwyn Pictures Corporation production with a supporting cast featuring Hugh Thompson, Tully Marshall, Russ Powell, Lillian Sylvester, and Harry Lorraine.As described in a film magazine, Princess Kalora (Normand) of Morovenia, a fictional country where obese women are prized and the normal-sized princess is widely regarded as being too slender, finds no suitors in the matrimonial market. Her younger sister, weighing in the neighborhood of 300 pounds and who is also the family favorite, is sought by the eligible men of the court. American millionaire Alexander Pike (Thompson) sees the princess and immediately falls in love with her, and is then hounded from the country by the police of her father. The princess is later sent to America to partake of a patent fat producer that is widely advertised, and meets Alexander at the Ambassador's ball. Their romance is interrupted when a cable calls the princess and her bodyguard back to Morovenia.
Author Biography:
George Ade was born in Kentland, Indiana, one of seven children raised by John and Adaline (Bush) Ade. While attending Purdue University, he became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. He also met and started a lifelong friendship with fellow cartoonist and Sigma Chi brother John T. McCutcheon and worked as a reporter for the Lafayette Call. He graduated in 1887. In 1890 Ade joined the Chicago Morning News, which later became the Chicago Record, where McCutcheon was working. He wrote the column, Stories of the Streets and of the Town. In the column, which McCutcheon illustrated, George Ade illustrated Chicago life. It featured characters like Artie, an office boy; Doc Horne, a gentlemanly liar; and Pink Marsh, a black shoeshine boy. Ade's well-known "fables in slang" also made their first appearance in this popular column. Ade's literary reputation rests upon his achievements as a great humorist of American character during an important era in American history: the first large wave of migration from the countryside to burgeoning cities like Chicago, where, in fact, Ade produced his best fiction. He was a practicing realist during the Age of (William Dean) Howells and a local colorist of Chicago and the Midwest. His work constitutes a vast comedy of Midwestern manners and, indeed, a comedy of late 19th-century American manners. In 1915, Sir Walter Raleigh, Oxford professor and man of letters, while on a lecture tour in America, called George Ade "the greatest living American writer." Ade's fiction dealt consistently with the "little man," the common, undistinguished, average American, usually a farmer or lower middle class citizen. (He sometimes skewered women, too, especially women with laughable social pretensions.) Ade followed in the footsteps of his idol Mark Twain by making expert use of the American language. In his unique "Fables in Slang," which purveyed not so much slang as the American colloquial vernacular, Ade pursued an effectively genial satire notable for its scrupulous objectivity. Ade's regular practice in the best fables is to present a little drama incorporating concrete, specific evidence with which he implicitly indicts the object of his satire-always a type (e.g., the social climber). The fable's actual moral is nearly always implicit, though he liked to tack on a mock, often ironic moral (e.g., "Industry and perseverance bring a sure reward").
