Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1930)

A Young Man Of Parts T enormous number of English plays are being done as talkies. Then there are stories of New York or Boston society mixed up on every studio schedule with stories of Oklahoma. Few, if any, of our most prominent screen actors are able to ring the changes necessary for these various localities, and carry any sort of conviction. The best they can do is change back and forth between broad and nasal "a's." Young and Ninety MAcKENNA'S latest job is the highly coveted one of leading man to Mary Pickford, in "Forever Yours." They needed a good-looking young chap who could make up to look ninety and talk like a man of that age. Who was there in Hollywood to do it? Nobody but MacKenna. He was vacationing at Lake Arrowhead at the time, but a hurry call was sent to bring him in. One day he was signed, the next he started rehearsing. And when I ran into him coming oflf the set for lunch, the second day of rehearsal, he was very nonchalant about it. Very pleased, of course, to get not only a part with character work to do, but also the lead opposite Pickford. And perfectly confident of his ability to do all that was required of him, and do it well. He smoked a pipe during a wait between scenes, and we strolled up and down the sunny studio street, every now and again dodging a speeding Rolls-Royce or some other plutocratic limousine which purred in, carrying a United Artist to work. MacKenna is the pipe-smoking kind of man. I would put him down as a super-Colman. He has a serious, thoughtful mind, which runs to books where the mind of an average movie hero would run to skirts and their contents. He is modest without being blatant about it. He is highly intelligent, and is not in the least interested in superficial things or superficial remarks. About his work and the industry in which he is employed, he seems to have his own thoughts, which are probably not entirely complimentary; but he is not going to give them up without a struggle. He Knows What He Wants ABOUT the talkies, he says: " I like them, /a. honestly. It is tremendously interesting work. I wouldn't say that I want to stay in them for good — I'll always want to go back to the stage at intervals. But as long as I get the right sort of parts I'm happy in a studio just as I am on the stage. This part in 'Forever Yours' is the sort of thing I like very much — it calls for character work. "Straight leading-man r31es bore me. I had several in a row when Fox first started me in talkies, and I was very discouraged; then ' Men Without Women ' came along — they had someone else picked for my part, but they couldn't get him, so I was put in at the last moment. After that picture one of the Fox executives came to me and said, 78 (Continued from page 51) quite seriously: 'Now you're learning to act. Up to now you were doing ordinary work, but you've picked the idea up very quickly.' But I don't think there is any credit due the talkies for teaching me whatever I can do in the way of acting. It was simply that before 'Men Without Women' She Knew Him When The girl (one of several) he left behind him: "I see you're wearing the hat you had before becoming a movie star!" I had never had a part I could get my teeth into. If it hadn't been for that assignment I think I would have asked for a release and gone back to New York. But since then I've been given credit for ability to do something besides straight leading-man stuff." Uncivilized Hollywood HERE'S what he thinks of life in Hollywood: "Oh, it was certainly hard at first to adjust myself to the different waking hours. In New York, every night after the show, I would always get together with friends and we would talk or play cards or something till at least three or four in the morning. Here, everyone goes to bed at ten or eleven. To go to bed at twelve is considered late indeed. But I wasn't surprised to find it this way. You could hardly expect anything else in a place where they have to go to work so early. One just has to accustom oneself to it — to living by day instead of half by day and half by night. I'm acclimatized now. "It's ridiculous to say that Hollywood is changing, that the New York people coming out here have made it more cosmopolitan and less rural. Bob Benchley said the last word on that, when they told him that all New York's men-about-town were in Hollywood and the place was at last waking up. He said that was impossible, because men about-town have got to have a town to about. "Hollywood is just a good place to wor it doesn't know much about civilized li; ; After all, most of the really civilized thin ' of life belong to the evening and the nigh and a place like this, where there cann possibly be any sort of nigh life, cannot be very civilized The principal thing abo Hollywood that he likes that there are lots of wonde f ul buys to be had in the boo^ shops, because so many pei pie come out to Hollywoc and then go broke and have t sell their libraries to ktie alive. Up from Wall Street ABOUT himself and his sue ±\, cess MacKenna has thi to say: "I have been ridiculousl;i lucky. In the first place, never intended to be an actoi at all. I was in a banking house on Wall Street, anc getting along well. Then 1 played in an amateur show and someone came to ask me if I would like to take a professional stage job. It was a leading part, and they had to get somebody at once. I decided to try it. That was nearly ten years ago, and I've never played anything but leads since then. Most of the time I've been under contract. " It does require hard work to get ahead on the stage, of course. You have to keep learning everything you possibly can about your business. But there are undoubtedly hundreds of actors, just as good as, or better than I, who never got a break and are still walking on or starving to death, or both. It is almost impossible to work up from the bottom. If you have the luck to start in something good, like myself, you can easily keep at the top as long as you work at it. There really is no sense to it at all, but that's the way it actually works out. "The same is true of all the big talkie contracts. It is almost impossible to work your way into them. But if you've had a break and the chance to show you can play leads, you get offers from almost every company. "I'm sure there are numbers of clever people in Hollywood who can't get a job. Yet anybody who is actually doing some thing in New York is pestered to death to join the talkie throng. And when anyone refuses an offer, they won't believe he sincerely doesn't want to come out here. I have a brother, for instance, who is an art director on Broadway. He was pestered for so long that finally he went to see the representative of the company that wanted him. They made him an exceptionally wonderful offer, but he held out for an astounding large amount of money; and when they wanted to compromise he just walked out of the office, saying he was perfectly happy where he was and didn't want to go to Hollywood, anyway. They can't believe it to the present day, and are still making him offers."