Close Up (Oct 1920 - Aug 1923)

iiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiniiiiiiliiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiii!iuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiliiimimMiiiiiiiiimi:niiiiiiiiiiiliiiliniiiMiiiiniiliiiimiiinmiiiii!iiiiiiiiiiiiiMim^ A NEARER POINT OF VIEW “CLOSE-UP A MAGAZINE OF MOVIE-LAND | VOL. VII, NO. 9. LOS ANGELES, CALIF, MAY 20th, 1922 TEN CENTS g IblllllllllllllMIMIIIIIIIIIIlirillllllMIMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM^ The Merely Beautiful Girl Must Give Way to Talent By Emm. Ell. There was a time when a girl located in Squeedunk Corner, or Tim-buc-tu, and places of such kind, who, possessing a little beauty or charm, would instantly be sicc’d into the Motion Picture colony; then again newspapers, having but larger circulation ideas, would get up contests to find out who was the most beautiful girl in their vicinity, and offer as a reward, or prize, a fling to the successful aspirant into pictures. I have seen many, many and many more of these (beauties) appearing in the various production companies, and the result has been that merely one out of a thousand manage to succeed, but the one who does succeed usually pays very, very dearly for her success. Why, it used to be so that a beautiful girl was so common on the various (lots) that even the Assistant Director became quite bored looking at them. These charming little misses, 99% of whom possessed as much brains as a full blown lemon, have sweetly meandered from one studio to another, with their lisping, affectated manners, and their lack of talent — all seeking the laurels of high art. These girls should have been sheltered within their own homes until at least they had garnered a little grey matter in their pretty, empty heads, but, No! their well meaning, doting parents, resembling very much full grown hens strutting around with their first brood of chicks, who proudly careen about the farmyard and ask all denizens within hearing distance to — Behold the beauties of their families! and these human beings have been so hasty they did not take into consideration the fact that possibly their daughters who with proper financial support, and a like degree of talent might have succeeded, but have invariably sent them into the Colony to be the Bait of certain lascivious minded gentry, who are, unfortunately, still mixed up in a glorious profession. To gain their ends, many of these have placed these girls, temporarily, in positions where they possibly could make good, but, as I have said before, 99% of them are never heard of again in a cinema sense after six months, but many of them have been noted for “playing the game” in the lobbies of some of our best known hotels of Los Angeles; so you see their reward did not amount to very much, morally speaking. Fortunately, I have noticed of late a certain tendency among Directors and Production Managers to employ girls possessing previous experience on the speaking stage. I am only hoping that the time will come when positions will be given to professionals, who have made acting their life study, and not to ribbon clerks, and perfume department girls! who merely possess pulchritude. The same criticism applied to the girls, in respect to talent, also holds good for the masculine (Counter Jumpers), who have managed to become leading men in moving pictures. There will come a time when, as Chas. Froham used to say, “Talent in the profession will eventually meet its own reward.” In conclusion, I am suggesting to the Motion Picture Producers that, as a particlar step to Clean House, that they will immediately start discouraging vapid-minded, or weak and innocent girls from entering a profession that requires specific talent. If they do this, the Press of the United States will have less cause to criticise the moving picture profession as a whole.