International photographer (Jan-Dec 1934)

Twenty T h INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER May, 1934 Why and What Is an Assistant Director By Carlisle Jones HE "big noise" on any motion picture set is the assistant director. Only men with strong voices are fitted for this job. Studio visitors often go away with the impression that the assistant director they have seen at work on a set is the most important man in the company. This is not so, of course, but it is not as much of an exaggeration as it might seem. William Koenig, studio manager and active production chief of Warner Brothers-First National studios, receives more applications from men who want to be assistant directors than from any other one class of people. Many seem to believe that such a job is an easy back-door entrance into the ranks of the directors. This isn't true. More cutters and writers than assistant directors become directors. The successful assistant director is too valuable to his studio to be lost by promotion. He is the straw boss of a picture. His work starts as soon as the story is set, long before the cast has been fixed upon definitely and sometimes before even the director himself has been named. He holds a position of responsibility not unlike that of the stage manager in the theater. He is the liason officer between all departments and crafts in the studio from the start of the preparation of the picture to its final cutting. The assistant director is responsible for the management and the co-ordination of the directorial staff, which may include as many as forty men and women. He has charge of the cast and the extra players who may number hundreds or even thousands. He gives or relays all orders. In simpler language he is the "big noise" on the set. The "big noise" is also the big money saver for the producing company. He is the budget officer for the company with which he works and at the Warner studio he attends a daily "budget" meeting in Koenig's office every working day. Upon his ability to plan ahead, to anticipate trouble and to circumvent it, the eventual profit or loss of a picture often depends. No wonder he has a reputation for being hard and sometimes unreasonable. On the other hand a good assistant director must be tactful and able to deal with temperamental people. He it is who must ask Ruth Chatterton to work late at night, if that necessity presents itself, or to get up early in the morning to start for location. Miss Chatterton's well known dislike for early rising makes this task no easier. If Edward G. Robinson has been called to the set and an unavoidable delay in production leaves him idle for two hours — hours in which he might have bought a new chair for his new house — it is the assistant director who has to placate him. Not all famous players are punctual by nature. Ruby Keeler, who loves to oversleep, must be checked by telephone each morning during ffie making of one of her pictures, to make sure that she will be on hand when needed. If the assistant director forgets to do that and Ruby forgets to arrive on time it is the assistant director who gets the blame — not Ruby. Often the assistant director has an assistant. Sometimes, with special pictures when a great many extra people are to be handled, he will have two or even three assistants. But the responsibility is all his. Good assistant directors are the scarcest article in Hollywood, according to Mr. Koenig, who has hired and fired hundreds of them. He recruits them from all conceivable sources. Since they are only indirectly concerned with the actual filming of the picture, they are not necessarily of the "artistic" type. More often they are chosen for their ability at handling difficult people and their capacity for getting things done. Recently Koenig garnered one promising young assistant director from the ranks of the nation's football heroes. He is Russ Saunders and he finds use for all his football training in his new job. Most recently he worked with Director Ray Enright on the picture "Hells Bells." It was filmed during the football season and played by people who are without exception football fans. Russ had an easy time with that picture. Many assistant directors are tied, unofficially, to one director. Gordon Hollingshead, a veteran in the business, always assists when Mervyn Le Roy directs. For many years Hollingshead was the assistant director on every picture which his friend, John Barrymore, made. Barrymore himself wrote a public tribute to the assistant director not very long ago. "An assistant director," Barrymore said, "must have the tenacity of a bulldog, the fighting spirit of a Jack Dempsey and the diplomacy of a Talleyrand." Most of them are hoarse voiced from years of shouting at milling crowds of inattentive extras. Most of them are good fellows, too, who hunt out and help those on a set who need help most. Theirs is a troubled existence and they invariably have a deep seated sympathy for the underdog. Important people have gone out of their way to sing the praises of the studio property man, a modern miracle worker who never admits defeat. But until recently the assistant directors have gone almost unnoticed — even in Hollywood. A few months ago a place was made for them in the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences and their real importance to the industry was partially recognized. Some of the best known director-assistant director combinations in pictures include : Michael Curtiz and Frank Shaw ; George Fitzmaurice and Hezi Tate ; Clarence Brown and Charlie Darian ; Howard Hawks and Dick Rossen ; John Stahl and Scotty Beal ; Alfred E. Green and Bill Cannon. There is one misapprehension commonly in circulation about assistant directors. They do not, as a rule, carry the director's favorite cigars about in their pockets. That job is reserved for the ever-active property man. Almost every property man has one ambition. That is that he may become, some day, an assistant director. They generally make good ones too, according to William Koenig, the studio manager. Please mention The International Photographer when corresponding with advertisers.