The Motion Picture Director (Sep 1925 - Feb 1926)

IS 192 5 director Getting What You Want, When You Want It, Is Given As One of the Reasons Why Hollywood By Robert Vignola The Second of a Series of Articles Discussing the Pros and Cons of Hollywood as the Center of Motion Picture Production OF the many genuinely adequate reasons why Hollywood is and in all probability will continue to be the logical center of motion picture production, the fact that Hollywood is the one place in the world where there are adequate facilities for making pictures impresses me as being a factor well worthy of consideration. As a result of the location of the industry in Hollywood and its having become an important factor in the community there has grown up around the industry an amazing array of accessory features which have today become absolutely essential to the efficient and economic production of modern film entertainment. Not the least important of these is the development of “prop” facilities. In addition to the highly organized property rooms of the various studies there are a number of independent prop houses supplying all sorts of accessories for settings and costuming to which any producing unit may turn. Where else can such facilities be found ? For instance, while making Fifth Avenue for Belasco Productions in New York last month, I had a sudden need for a hat, size 7%, such as might have been worn by a young blood of the fifties. In Hollywood a phone call -would have brought me twenty of them in an hour. I could have entrusted their selection to any of half a dozen agencies which exist for that purpose. In New York, it took me three days to get one — and two men spent all of their time searching for it. The picture industry is built on props and costumes, more or less, and actors. And the good will of the community. THERE is undoubtedly more genuine colonial furniture in New York than in Hollywood. There are, without question, more pewter mugs and bustles in Florida than in California. Spokane, Seattle, Portland and San Francisco — to mention several other cities that have embryo motion picture studios — may possibly have more Indian head-dresses, more flint-lock muskets, more ox-carts, within their confines than has Los Angeles. But in Los Angeles the man who wants a flintlock, a bustle or a colonial high-boy, or twenty of each, can get them more quickly and more certainly than can anyone anywhere. If the prop or the costume he wants is not in the wardrobe or the prop room of the studio where he is making his picture, he can phone the Western Costume Company or the immense rental prop department of the United Studios, or anyone of a score of other agencies and get what he wants in an hour or less. If he wants a lion, or a two-headed pink snake, or a dancing monkey or a whole menagerie ; if he wants a score of baldheaded negroes with white beards, or three red-headed Japanese; if he wants a threeinch cockroach that can’t swim or a Kaffir spear — all a director has to do is to consult a directory and phone the right number— or, simpler yet, tell his assistant to get them. Nearly fifty thousand people are listed on the books of the various casting agencies — and included among them are club-footed giants, bow-legged dwarfs, sword-swallowers, snake-eaters, mothers with children aged anywhere from two days to seventy years, women noted for their beauty and for their ugliness.