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Mr. Fitzmaurice directing Mae Murray.
Starring the Director
But Georo;e Fitzmaurice places true art before any stellar prerogatives.
By DELIGHT EVANS
HIS idea of hell is a studio where they use mid-victorian furniture in an old-Italian set. You probably recognize a Fitzmaurice picture by its sets. That is the trouble with being an artist — the audience decides forthwith that that's all you are. Fitzrnaurice's drama happens to be as good as his period furniture. His India is India. "The Witness for the Defense" brought India to Indiana — and maybe Indiana didn't enjoy it! His Turkey is the real Turkey. .And a Broadway chorus girl would instinctively take on the air of an English duchess if she ever stepped into one of George's baronial halls.
Fitzmaurice made a picture of New York life for Famous Players: it was not made as a "special production" or anything fancy like that. When it was shown for the first time, some officials sat in judgment. Result. "On With the Dance" was released as a widely-heralded special, the first of the "George Fitzmaurice Special Productions."
His company approached him with a contract. A contract to make Fitzmaurice himself the directing star of four de-luxc pictures a year, with his players onlv secondary. Fitzmaurice signed. One month later he went to his officials and asked if he might direct a star. The star was John Barrvmore and the play, "Peter Ibbetson."
That, as "Dere Mable"' might say about "Bill."' "that's him. all over." He is his own star: but you would never know it. You would think, to see him on the sidelines of his set. that he was a Wall Street man come to look 'em over. But — he goes through every bit of action himself. He is a director who doesn't let his assistant do much except draw his salary. He is on the job every minute: he is the hero, the heroine, the villain and the vamo.
^ He is important because he is one director who has never been an actor or a stage-manager, who has. in fact, had nothing at all to do with or on the stage. He is absoluteK untutored except in so far as he was bom with a keen dramatic sense and had a thorough worldly training, received in the humanityschools of Cairo and Paris. Constantinople and a villa by the blue sea, in Southern France.
He is French in appearance, French in speech. American in preference. — and Irish in wit. As a matter of fact he is Celtic, but he was born and brought up in France. His home was a villa where everything that is told of France in song and story came true. One day when he and his mother happened to be enjoying a singular solitude — usually the place was overrun with guests — a man came to the door and asked politely if the estate might be used as a cinema location.
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