Motion picture acting (1947)

Page scan 00083 from Motion picture acting

Record Details:

Title:
Motion picture acting
Date:
1947
Publisher:
New York, Funk & Wagnalls Co
Volume:
Motion picture acting
Leaf #:
00083
Language:
English
Contributor:
Internet Archive
Sponsor:
Internet Archive
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Date Added:
July 19, 2022
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CONCENTRATION You must put aside your sense of the ridiculous and give yourself whole-heartedly to making words, any words at all, convey any emotion you wish them to—so much so, that someone in another room, unable to distinguish the words you are speaking, will think from your tone of voice that you are angry, sarcastic, sad, or glad, according to the tone you are using. As your powers of concentration increase, you will be able to turn mood on and off as readily and as surely as you turn on a faucet and get water, and turn it off to stop the flow! Of course, this is on the assumption that you have a talent for acting—in other words, that you have acting imagination. If you have not, you will never quite know whether all this works or not, because, in that case, you won't be able to do it anyway. But don't sell yourself short—try it! To become a great actor it is absolutely neces- sary to gain complete command of mood, to make it your obedient slave to do your every bidding. I sometimes perform a little stunt for my stu- dents to illustrate what I mean by mood induced by concentration. In this case, it happens to be the mood of pathos. I choose any object in my office—the telephone, the lamp, a chair, anything—and, while saying 57