- published: 23 Jan 2014
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Flora Finch (17 June 1867 – 4 January 1940) was an English-born film actress who starred in over 300 silent films, including over 200 for the Vitagraph Studios film company.
Finch was born into a music hall and travelling theatrical family in London and was taken to the United States as a young child. She kept up the family tradition and worked in theatre and the vaudeville circuit right up until her 30s.
She had her first film roles at the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company starting in 1908. There she worked with Fatty Arbuckle, Mack Sennett (with whom she was romantically involved for a short time) and Charlie Chaplin amongst others.
Starting in 1910 at Vitagraph, she was paired with John Bunny for the first of 160 very popular shorts made between 1910 and 1915. These shorts, known as "Bunnygraphs", "Bunnyfinches", and "Bunnyfinchgraphs", established Finch and Bunny as the first popular comedy team in films.
After Bunny's death in 1915 she continued to make comedy shorts, but with less success. She started her own production company, "Flora Finch Productions", but was never able to regain her popularity. One of her best-known roles in the later silent years was Aunt Susan in Paul Leni's The Cat and the Canary (1927). She found film work in the sound era, but only in small supporting parts. The Scarlet Letter (1934) gave her one of her more substantial roles in sound films, and she had a cameo in one of Laurel and Hardy's best-known films Way Out West (1937). Her last film was The Women (1939).
Long hair is a hairstyle where the hair is allowed to grow to considerable length. Exactly what constitutes long hair can change from culture to culture, or even within cultures. For example, a woman with chin-length hair in some cultures may be said to have short hair, while a man with the same length of hair in some of the same cultures would be said to have long hair.
Males having short, cut hair is in many cultures viewed as being under society's control, such as while in the military or prison or as punishment for a crime, while males having long hair signifies being outside of the mainstream. Long lustrous female hair is rated attractive by both men and women across cultures. The prevalence of trichophilia (hair partialism or fetishism) is 7% in the population, and very long hair is a common subject of devotion in this group.
Humans, horses, and orangutangs are among the few species that may grow their head hair very long. Humans are believed to have lost their fur 2.5–3 million years ago when transitioning from a forest habitat to the open savanna, as an effect of natural selection, since this development made it possible to run fast and hunt animals close to the equator without getting overheated. An exception was however head hair, which was kept to provide thermal insulation of the scalp from the sun, to protect against ultra-violet radiation exposure, and also to provide cooling (when sweat evaporates from soaked hair). The ability to grow straight hair, has been observed among Homo sapiens sub-groups in less sunny regions further away from the equator. Relative to kinky Afro-textured hair, straight hair allows more UV light to pass to the scalp (which is essential for the production of vitamin D, that is important for bone development).