Chapter VIWHEN ACTING ABILITY HELPS
An amusing incident of studio life that might be seen by a visitor any day in the week with the moral “Never be shocked by anything you see in a motion picture studio”
Chapter VI
Chapter VI
Chapter VI
Chapter VI
No better illustration of the value of Mr. De Mille's foregoing remarks can be found than in the case of Charles Chaplin. Mr. Chaplin as well as being the world's greatest comedian, also directs his pictures.
Suppose that Mr. Chaplin decided to rehearse in every part of his picture so that his supporting players might pattern his performances after his. The completed product would show: One good Charles Chaplin and a dozen bad imitations of Charles Chaplin.
Mr. Chaplin has imitators enough without going to the trouble of bringing them right into his own pictures.
Incidentally the task that confronts the actor-director is extraordinarily difficult. He not only is obliged to face the lights in makeup and drop his own personality in the role he is playing but he must also be able to see his own work from behind the camera, to retain his perspective from this angle of the production as well as from the acting angle.
His is thus a twice difficult task and perhaps for this reason there are few surviving actor-directors. In the old days there used to be loads of them but the pictures were then too much actor and not enough director.
Besides Charles Chaplin only a few survive today, prominent among them being William S. Hart and Charles Ray and it may be said that each of these stars has done his best work when directed by someone else. When they essay the dual task of acting and directingthey pay too little attention to the supervision of the entire production and concentrate too largely on their own performances.
Despite this criticism of the actor-director and the cry against directors showing their players how to perform a scene no one can deny that a knowledge of acting, or rather a knowledge of how to act, comes in very handy from the director's point of view.
A little over a year ago I happened to visit one of the large eastern studios when John S. Robertson, probably one of the most competent men in the production craft was working there. Mr. Robertson has years of acting on the stage behind him. He played in stock for a long period and knows every role in every play of importance produced over a period of considerable years.
However Mr. Robertson is now a director and not an actor. What was my surprise then to discover him in the midst of a highly dramatic scene. The setting was the dressing room of a stage star. Mr. Robertson was half sitting, half reclining on a luxurious chaise-lounge. The atmosphere was fairly exotic.
Marc McDermott, excellent character actor that he is, stood in the background, immaculately clad in evening attire. He was gazing at Mr. Robertson with the glint of evil in his eyes.
The door opened and in walked Reginald Denny who immediately rushed madly to the couch on which Mr. Robertson was reclining languidly and proceeded to make violent love to him.
Naturally my first impulse was to make matters known to the Department of Health but on inquiry Isoon learned that Mr. Robertson was merely playing Elsie Ferguson's role in the preliminary rehearsal of “Footlights.” Miss Ferguson was a little late and Mr. Robertson was obliging for the benefit of Messrs. McDermott and Denny!
So I watched them further. A long scene was enacted with Mr. Robertson playing Miss Ferguson's role exactly as the script called. And he was doing it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As for the other participants they were so engrossed in their work that they didn't seem to notice the absence of Miss Ferguson and the presence of her capable substitute.
When at last she did appear the scene only needed one brief rehearsal before the cameras started to grind.
Besides pointing out the value of the ability to act to the director this little tale also points another moral, to wit, never be shocked at anything you see in a motion picture studio.