Close Up (Oct 1920 - Sep 1923)

BEAUTY IS DESIRABLE, SAY THE WISE JUDGES OF SCREEN TALENT, BUT BRAINS ARE ESSENTIAL IN THE MAKING OF A REALLY SUCCESSFUL ACTRESS BY CARMEN BALLEN Cheer up, little plain girl! The day has gone by when you looked into your mirror, and sighed: “Oh, if the Lord had only made me beautiful like Elsie Ferguson, or Katherine McDonald, or Helene Chadwick, or adorable little Colleen Moore, I might be a screen star, too!” Cheer up! Why? Because the screen is stabilizing itself. By that I mean the screen has passed the place where it requires only beautiful faces. Like the speaking stage, it requires brains, plus personality! Consider the famous women of the so-called legitimate drama. They would not be considered beautiful. Dignified, majestic, compelling, fascinating — yes — but not just — beautiful! Think over Ellen Terry, Modjeska, even the immortal “Divine Sarah.” They had what is ten times more valuable than beauty — personality and ability. That is why they might go on acting in their last days, and still thrill audiences. Today the screen offers the same possibilities for the girl wtih personality, rather than beauty. In fact, today it not only offers, but is fairly clamoring for new faces, and brains to go with them! INDIVIDUALITY NEEDED The silent drama, which for so long offered its public only beauty, has awakened to the fact that the public wants something more substantial. This is not strange when the screen is plunging greedy hands into the classics of all ages, and pulling out the strongest dramas and spectacles of history and fiction. It must then, certainly, have men and women of individuality and brains to enact them. Indeed, the day has gone by, little plain girl, when you thought because you did not have eyes like a kewpie doll, tresses like a hair tonic ad, or a figure like the sylphs that pose for lingerie ads, that you hadn’t a chance on the screen. The other day Rupert Hughes, one of America’s foremost writers, who has devoted the past year to the study of motion pictures, and to writing them, said: “Beauty is always pleasant to gaze at. I admit it. But the screen today is presenting life and history. Some of the most appealing, admirable, and fascinating figures in life and history and fiction, have not been those of merely beautiful women. The actress of today does not need to be beautiful. What she MUST have, is the ability to see herself as others see her. As Burns wrote: “Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us To see ourselves as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us An’ foolish notion.” “The girl who can see herself as she is and has also the ability to project her personality onto the screen, has the fundamentals of screen acting,” says Mr. Hughes. Now listen to Robert B. McIntyre, young in years, but old in experience and who is now casting director for the Goldwyn studios: “Beauty! Certainly, if the girl has brains with it, but of the two, give me brains! The girl who has brains is going to be the future screen actress. Beauty is desirable, of course, • and there must be always some beauties on the screen, but the girl who can take direction intelligently, and who makes the most of every opportunity, is the girl who is going to get ahead. When a girl comes to me and says: ‘Oh, I never would do atmosphere work, or a small part!’, I know that girl isn’t the kind we want on the screen, for that^girl is not willing to learn or to work. “Why girls think screen acting is merely putting on a bit of grease paint and powder, and walking about before the camera, I don’t know. It is work, as any other profession is work. A woman studying for the operatic stage would not expect to sing ‘Aida’ after her first lesson. TAKE HELEN FERGUSON, FOR INSTANCE “You can’t keep back the girl v/ho is determined to succeed. Take Helen Ferguson, for instance, who is now playing in ‘Hungry Hearts.’ Helen had a hard row to hoe, but she hoed it! She started six years ago, a long legged, big eyed kid in knee skirts and pig tails. She used to stay at the studios all day, watching people act. More than one assistant director has told her to run along home, that she never would be able to acWJ>ecause, you see, Helen wasn’t a startling beauty, though she had promise of being very pretty. "But Helen would not be discouraged. First she did atmosphere, then she got a small part, and every time she went before the camera, she learned something. Today she has an enviable knowledge of screen technique in her twenty-one-year-old head, and also, today, if Helen Ferguson were not as pretty as she is, she would be just as much in demand.” And here it is again, put very tersely from a director who has just finished Mary Pickford’s “Through the Back Door,” and "Little Lord Fauntleroy.” His name is Alfred E. Green. He directed Colleen Moore — and he knows! He says: “Give me common sense. I can’t do a thing with any one who is dumb and beautiful!” It is a very wonderful thing, when one considers that old men and old women, who might have been laid on the shelf, so to speak, a few years ago, are happily smearing on grease paint. Their very lack of physical beauty and their o>ld age, has become a thing of value! There isn’t a man or woman of any type, or in any condition of health or infirmity, who has not a place on the screen today. AGE NO BARRIER A bent little old woman, with toothless gums, and leaning on a cane, was called to play a bit of Irish atmosphere in a Rupert Hughes picture the other day. This is what she said: “Sure, when I was a colleen I was fair daft about the stage. But I nivver had a chanct! I was red headed, and freckle-faced, and not like the grand stage ladies, at all, at all!” If that little old lady were young today, she would not feel hersellf barred out. She displayed an astonishing sense of the dramatic. She reminded one, pathetically, of a flower that had bloomed too late, with just a suggestion of the beauty it might have had. And again, as a word of encouragement to the girl who has talent, but not great beauty, here is the statement of the vice-president of one of the largest motion picture plants in the world — Abraham Lehr, of the Goldwyn studios, who says: “Beauty is desirable, but ndt essential. The screen needs talent and common sense!”