Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1931)

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Do These Hollywood Jobs Look More Thrilling Than Yours? "The trouble with so many girls and men is they won't work!" A woman heads the scenario and reading departments at Radio Pictures. Incidentally, Berry Roberts is a real power in that organization. Her position is really a self-created one. She has charge of the stenographers and the readers, and helps in the selection of scenario writers. She selects stories for the supervisors and directors, contact agents, outside writers, advises on the final cutting of pictures. She commenced as a secretary but always found reasons for staying late and arriving early. She says, "I have gone up because I made myself useful to so many people — made them learn to depend upon me." She hires numerous people and admits to a real difficulty in finding efficient ones. "We want readers who can write a clear synopsis, secretaries who are real helpers and have initiative. Anyone can make a place for himself or herself in a studio, who is willing to work." She pays from $25 a week to SI 00 for good readers, secretaries and assistants. THE Paramount reading and scenario department complains of the same difficulty. Irene Francis heads the readers under the supervision of Edward Montagne and his assistant, David Lewis. Lewis is a young chap who reached the executive field via stage acting. He ran away from school to try the footlights, had several successes, lost his voice, went to his last five cent piece, secured reading to do at home for Paramount. (Ann Harding followed the same course.) He came to Hollywood as assistant to a supervisor. The supervisor went out; Lewis was 70 Is this a job? Erne Westmore, chief makeup expert on the Radio Pictures lot, devotes some personal attention to the task of teaching Pearl Eaton's chorus girls to fix their faces One of the most delicate jobs in pictures — cutting the finished film. There are many excellent cutters among Hollywood's girls. One of them is Blanche Sewell, a real expert at M-G-M shunted back to the reading department where he worked up to assistant to Montagne. The reading department should offer splendid opportunity, but few people in it have the ambition to get out of it. They don't work hard enough. To get ahead in a studio you must dedicate your life to it. Marion Dix, Charles Furthman, Dorothy Arzner, Ann Harding have been readers. Most of our people come from colleges. A complete stranger begins as low as $25; good readers get from $60 to $100. Enid Hubbard is Paramount's best West-Coast reader. She writes synopses so well that stories have been purchased because the synopses were better than the original. IN the Paramount scenario department is Virginia Kellogg, formerly press-agent for Fred Niblo. When Niblo left Metro she visited me. "I am going to get into scenario work or die," she stated. It is that do-or-die spirit which wins. Although she is just a beginner, she has already had two original stories accepted by the studio where she landed. A script girl must be a stenographer, so ninety per cent of them have secured their jobs via this route. Catherine Hunter, for years with First National and now "freelancing," was a stenographer in Wall Street. Doris Kenyon, a personal friend, placed her as a secretary in the First National Studio. Then scripting. "We must know each detail of a picture. If the star carries a glove in the left hand on the first day of shooting, and there is a re-take of the shot on the last day, [please turn to page 116]