Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

20 Can You Break Into the Movies? nicest clothes and prepare to walk miles and miles visiting studios. How shall you dress ? As well as you can. Look as young as you can and not look foolish, be you girl or man. Don't make up too much ; any casting director knows what an eyebrow pencil, lip stick, and rouge will do. On the other hand, if these things improve you greatly, by all means use them. Above all, male or female, be spick-and-span and have your shoes polished. Wear the kind of clothes that will look well after sitting around hours in crowded waiting rooms. Don't expect to be welcomed. As far as I have observed, even as a visitor with an introduction, the studios have a glittering stare for any one daring to approach them. The doormen have not yet learned the universal rule of all big corporations, which requires the turning down of applicants with such courtesy that the victim feels he has been crowned. Nothing like that at the studios. You will be received as a suspicious character ; prepare for it. But don't worry. These people are human underneath, even if some strange policy makes them think they can work better for not showing it. In course of time you will get to the casting director, and then use that talent you believe you possess. Impress him! Try anything you can think of to do it. I can't tell you how. No doubt some girls get in by looking pensive and sweet, and others by looking flippant and tough, and still others by seeming honest and sincere. And doubtless men get in by looking aggressive and /pugilistic, and others by looking • ana seeming world-worn and weary and blase. They need all kinds for motion pictures, and the casting director has to try out all types. Do your best, and if it doesn't work try a new stunt the next time. For you will come back, doubtless. The people who succeed in this business are -those who continue to come back and come back and back until some one tries them in desperation, if he doesn't try them for qualities of their own. But if you have all the assets I have enumerated you will get a trial. Now for a little help. The most besieged offices of any are those of the Famous Players-Lasky. Not considering the reputation of that corporation as makers of fine pictures, there are certain practical points that make them desirable. They are in the center of Hollywood, two blocks from a car line, easy to walk to. They keep a stock company of players working on annual salaries, which is a very desirable end in itself, as most companies engage from picture to picture, and there will be days and weeks of idleness in between. They are the only producers who furnish all costumes. Well, then, they can get the pick of the extras ; their studio is far more crowded with applicants than any other, and they rarely take a girl without experience. On the other hand. Universal City is so far away that you have to take a bus and pay a fifty-cent round-trip fare to get there. But Universal is the largest studio in the world. At the time I write it has twenty-five companies, all working, and this number is rather low. It offers the biggest market of any studio. Mr. Fred Dagit, the casting director, who kindly gave me much of the most helpful information in this article, says that, like all other studios, they are overcrowded with applicants ; but any one can see that relative chances here are good. Watch the newspapers for advertisements for needed actors. Some of these ■f^ fakes, but there are many genuine ones. Do not imagine that you will be the only one to watch the ads. Mr. Harry B. Harris, a director at Universal, was putting on a picture featuring Gladys Walton when Miss Walton hurt her toe and was unable to walk. Mr. Harris advertised for a girl to act as a double for Miss Walton, to be used in the scenes where walking was required. To spare applicants the expense of a trip to Universal City he directed that they call at the Motion Picture Producers' Service Bureau. When he arrived the street v/as full of women "aged," said Mr. Harris, "anywhere from sixteen to sixty — Miss Walton is eighteen — and two of them actually had babies in their arms. I interviewed, I think, about five hundred, and selected seventeen for a tryout before the camera. Of these seventeen just one photographed like Miss Walton. She herself did not really look very much like Miss Walton, but the photograph was so like her that no one could tell them apart." That is the history of any such newspaper advertisement, a host of applicants and a line wait. Perhaps the best chance a man or girl has to break in is with the comedy companies. There are over a hundred of these, and they do what the fake schools cannot do — they teach the mechanics of acting. They are a hard training school, but one of the best the profession offers, and they have graduated so many successful actors and actresses that the list would be a long one. Gloria Swanson, Betty Compson, Bebe Daniels, Billie Rhodes, and several others — as you know — began in comedies. Now, sooner or later, you are going to get a chance. You will get in, as an extra, you will have a chance to act, to find out how well you screen. We will have to assume that you pass the test and screen well, for if you do not go home at once or get a job at something else. If you do not screen well you are done for as a motion-picture possibility. You are "in" then as an extra. You get engagements in mob scenes and in crowds, help to fill up dance halls and ballrooms and restaurants and so forth. What are your chances for getting ahead? They depend on your ability to learn the mechanics of screen acting, to do what a director tells you, to portray accurately what is demanded of you. If you can do this much and will work as hard and as intelligently as you can you will in time arrive at small parts. Do you have to have a "pull" to go farther? I should say that most of the stars have a very active pull, but it is not the kind of thing that you are thinking of. It is the pull of chance. All people who engage in artistic professions are impressionable. They have to keep impressionable to keep going on producing live, active, attractive features. Motion-picture directors and producers are perhaps the most impressionable people in the world. Well, then Given two girls or two young men who have worked themselves into about equal parts. Let's assume that they are working for a director who is going to need a new leading lady. One of the two impresses him with charm, with potential possibilities. The other does not. Heaven only knows why one appeals to him more than the other. He doesn't. He just "can't see one" and he can see the other, that is all. The other girl or the other man may appeal to another director, but never to him. Henceforth this girl or man who makes the appeal has a pull with that particular director. All over the motion-picture world this kind of thing is recognized. IS THERE DANGER for a girl in the motion-picture business ? "There is much more danger for a girl in the motion-picture or theatrical business than in any of which I know, except trained nursing," is Mrs. Bennett's reply to this question. But no danger can imperil the person who is forewarned; and you will find in this article just what the dangers are, and how they may be avoided.