Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Aug 1919)

MOTION PICTURE CLASSIC I see it coming; the exceptions of the past have stood for the advancement of the drama, and the commercial manager who has sneered at stars and has made himself a star director will fade away . , . today. “Our people of the screen have been non-creators because directors have made them types, instead of giving them ability to act. Take, philosophically, the growth of this big business of motion pictures. We have progressed in a business way, and in a human way, the stage has advanced, become more real, so all things have their advantages. Very frequently, the advantage makes the producers of things theatrical forget the basic foundation of the very structure upon which they have built. Well, they are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. “Shakespeare never meant ‘The play s the thing’ as people have conceived and interpreted that saying. What he did mean would be true of a stick of wood. ‘The play’s the thing by which I will catch the king’s conscience!’ He meant that it was the vehicle used. Instead of meaning that the play was the whole thing, as people seem to think, we find that without interpretation the play is nothing. The men who have been found the illuminaries of the world — Euripides, Sophocles, ^schylus — were all writers and actors. Theodorus, the base of whose great statue still stands in Athens, taught Demosthenes and was seated in the Greek senate, but the monument was erected to him there because he was the greatest actor, not senator, of his time. “I said in a speech made at New York City, when they were throwing adulation at the managers of stage and screen, ‘Without a drama to manage, there can be no dramatic manager.’ Tourists of the world will come to London, will pass the tombs of kings and queens, and stand awe-struck before the tomb of the Bard of Avon, or before the tombs of great actors and actresses in Westminster Abbey. “The deterioration of the drama in an artistic way is because of its being now a business proposition. You cant blame managers exactly for saying ‘Why take this play off, when it’s good for two or three years?’ The actor who plays 'heavies’ will, therefore, always play heavies. Our screen director says, ‘Have Blank do this part? Oh, never — he’s a heavy! We cant use him at all.’ Consequently, many a fine actor is out of work for weeks at a time, while some mediocre type is put in at a good salary. However, he’s killing himself, because he cant do repertoire and the Nemesis of ignorance pursues him to an early death. You’ve only got to watch the life of an ingenue to see this for yourself. The character woman with ability to do anything lives on the screen in spite of her wrinkles. “Well, all this type idea has created wooden actors. I dont wonder they call Ideals and Idols — Past and Present {Continued from page 57) them ‘heavies’ ! A pretty good description,’’ laughed Mr. Keenan, with that whimsical quirk of the eyebrows which has so often appealed to us on the screen. “Do you consider the motion picture art in advance of the stage art ?’’ “The motion picture starts out where the stage left off. 'Unfortunately, however, instead of clinging to good ethics, they have taken in the past to engaging stenographers with big lollypop eyes and curly hair, counter-jumpers with straight features, ‘ham’ actors who because of poor diction and bad voices could not get a good hearing on the speaking stage and were relegated to cheap stock engagements, but who looked handsome and had some idea of characterization, and chorus-men — failures of the past, with a little gray matter and some knowledge of stagecraft, or super-captains, bellringers, men who rang up the curtain or told stage carpenters what to do next. “Yes, all these crept into the early days of the picture. Some have survived and become directors, making good commercial use of their early opportunities, but not advancing in true art. Good audiences never attended the motion picture at first ; that is how those people ‘got by’ for so long a time. Some of these are now titled great directors by the unknowing, but a few years will serve to eliminate those cheaters. Some will survive anyway, because they will jump to safety somewhere. “This motion picture game started and will survive because it is an art, no matter how clouded. It has grown in public favor because the middle class found it could see what it missed on the speaking stage, thru inability to pay the high prices of most theaters. Then it appeals to the actors because they are doing something different every day. “We are a very young nation; stage and screen are the mirror of our times. We are leaving behind us something for the future to see and remember, and if we dont do this well, we have cheated our future channels. One of my ideals is to leave nothing unworthy of the vision of the next generation. Sheridan’s ‘School for Scandal’ was a mirror of the time in which it was written. We are going eventually, and especially after this stirring up of the world, to conceive tremendous plots, plots of quality to survive time — plots which will interest us twenty years from now as much as today. . “But how is that possible, when big writers find no incentive to write for the screen owing to the poor prices paid for stories? .A. few like Gardner Sullivan, Jeanie Macpherson and Frances Marion have steady contracts, but outside writers wont write directly for the screen, since it pays better to write a novel, sell it to a monthly, publish it in book form and eventually sell the stage or screen rights. “That’s true, for at first big writers sneered at this industry, but things are to change from this very year on. We will pay for stories directly, good stories that have not been hashed about in public libraries first, or ruined by some continuity writer’s conception of a modern novel. “But what we have to study besides is the dramatic values. We cannot do this when a corporation head with no idea of art says, ‘Rush this picture thru in five weeks !’ I got so sick of the slogan of ‘It cant be done’ when suggesting innovations that, like many others, I was forced to produce independently. The birththroes of error are the cradle of the infant ideal which will be nursed into healthy growth by honest men and women of the screen today. “Instead of rushing a picture thru, when I note weariness in my company, I say, ‘Children, we’ll quit a while, take a little relaxation.’ What? Take five weeks for a production and put out something poor because we’re fagged and not up to our best work? Never! I’ll lose money first, and that’s putting it strongly, when so much is invested. I want people to say of my plays that I have done my duty by my author, that the play’s the thing as a vehicle, not a star exploitation, and that they will read an advertisement and say, ‘Oh, a Frank Keenan production; that’s sure to be good. Let’s go tonight.’ “Often an actor comes to me and says, ‘How big is my part ?’ I answer, ‘As big as you care to make it, so long as you dont destroy the author’s concept or spoil the dramatic values — one of our greatest assets. Dramatic proportions must be perfect if we would have a good production.’ I could put in special bits of dramatic acting for myself very often, something to exploit Frank Keenan, star, but I would kill my leading woman — so I leave it out. I will not yield to the temptation of star or star-director exploitation. What I want is ensemble playing — the thing which produces a great symphony, not a solo.’’ “Then you believe that thejype actor should be eliminated entirely?” “Most decidedly. I dont consider any man an actor who cannot do anything but one line of parts. He’s merely an impersonator and never will become a versatile artist, a flexible thinker. “If we are to promote a motion picture art, then we must have patience to direct and instruct men that they may become artists. That is the true idealism of the screen, and it will naturally mean a lot of fallen idols — but after all, we all want the survival of the fittest.” So this man who thrilled us in such screen dramas as “The Coward,” “The Crab” and “War's Women,” who made us shiver with horror over “The Bells,” who lectures, teaches and produces, who has done more actual propaganda work for the various war reliefs in Los Angeles than idle laymen, is laying a better foundation for the screen art, a bed-rock of success for future generations. {Sixty-two)