I learned about silent comedienne Wanda Wiley (1902-1987) through the good offices of the Silent Comedy Watch Party and That Slapstick Show, both of whom have presented her shorts.
How wonderful that she shares a birthday with Harold Lloyd! For she has been compared with him. Unlike that other great recent re-claimed comedienne Alice Howell, she was not a disheveled mess of a mama, but her image was more of a fashionable, up-to-date working girl, perky and full of determination. And attractive, more along the lines of a Jobyna Ralston or an Anita Garvin. Unlike the latter two though, Wiley wasn’t just a clown’s leading lady; she got to star in her own comedies. There are just under 50 of them, released between the years 1924 and 1927. Only a handful of them survive, and she was never affiliated with either Mack Sennett or Hal Roach, which is why you may never have heard of her. She was based mostly at Universal, by way of Century Comedies and the Stern Brothers.
Several of her films and fragments are available on Youtube and what there is of it is rewarding, lots of original slapstick gags, winningly executed by this game performer, who had originally broken into the field as a stuntwoman in westerns. Wiley was from New Boston, Texas, and had first studied to be a dentist — just like Fred Mace! When sound came in, the word is she went into vaudeville, then tried to break back into films circa 1933, to no avail. She she settled down and married a nice doctor.
For much more on Wanda Wiley, I now refer you to excellent articles on:
For still more on silent and slapstick comedy films please read Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.
(Travalanche) 
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