The Motion Picture Director (Sep 1925 - Feb 1926)

44 HIS personal story, like many others on the Hollywood lots, is remarkable. He was born in Chicago, sent himself through school by selling newspapers and conducting a boys’ orchestra, and began drawing an office clerk’s salary when he was 16. At 21, he had $1,000 saved up, and, coming to Los Angeles with an uncle, put it into an installment cloak and suit business. By 1917, the firm was doing a tremendous business, and Levee, married, was living in an expensive apartment and driving a high-priced car. He became interested in pictures through his wife, who had brief ambitions to become an actress, and took a furlough from his installment business to become an assistant prop man at $20 a week in the Fox studios. What he saw persuaded him that the picture business offered an easy highroad to success, and he finally sold out his other interests with the intention of getting into it. On a trip to San Francisco, he picked up an idea for a picture based on the Mooney trial. He secured the promise of financial backing from wealthy labor sympathizers, and returned to Los Angeles with the intention of becoming a producer. It was to secure studio space that he visited the Paralta on the momentous day which was to determine not only his personal future but, to a calculable degree, that of independent motion pictures. The Paralto had failed as a producing lot. It was heavily in debt. It’s owners were in Milwaukee, and had made the agreement with Mr. Brunton as a sort of last hope. Levee knew he could not finance a producing studio, but he thought he saw a way by which the Paralta could be saved from attachment, and turned into a profitable leasing lot. His own experience in searching for a studio where he could stage a production had shown him there was need for something of the kind. In addition, he had read in the newspapers a few days before that Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks had split with Famous and announced their intention of producing their own pictures. Perhaps Mr. Levee can himself best discuss this phase of the matter. “It all came to me in a moment,” he said the other day in his luxurious offices on the present twenty-seven and a half acre United lot. “There was nothing in sight except some muddy ground, a lot of scattered lumber, and a couple of stages. But I visioned a real leasing studio, big enough to handle any kind of production and with the facilities to handle every detail of it. I could almost see the completed project. I saw all the immense advantages of such a scheme from the standpoint of both the studio and the producer. “I remembered what I had read about Mary Pickford and Fairbanks. From my own experience, I knew there were a lot of other ambitious actors and actresses who Director could easily get financial backing to make their own pictures if they only had a place to produce them. I realized they had no chance while the big producers owned the studios. What the independents needed was a chance. I made up my mind right there that I was going to give it to them.” It was the urge of a dream — but it was a dream that was destined to become true. That night, the future president of the first independent leasing studio in the world, got the Milwaukee owners of Paralta on the telephone and made an agreement with them by which they put up one-third of money due the creditors on condition that he should take care of the rest within a comparatively short period. Relieved of the sheriff, and aided by the credit he had established here, Levee managed the rest of the financing without difficulty. In a few months, the Paralta producing studios were a memory, and the Robert Brunton Studios, jointly owned by Levee and the former I nee art director, was making a successful debut as an independent leasing lot. PART of Levee’s dream had been that Mary Pickford would be his first tenant, and he proceeded to realize it. At the moment, she was considering the purchase of a studio as the first step in her program of independence. It would have been an ambitious step, and perhaps ruinous financially. Levee went to Miss Pickford. He outlined his whole plan for a big leasing lot, capable of fulfilling every demand of a major production. He pointed out what an immense advantage such a studio would be, not only to her, but to every other actor or director with ambitions beyond the salaried routine. He appealed to her, not only on the ground of economy and service, but those of a high idealism. Miss Pickford still wavered. Then Levee played his trump card. He produced the plan of a bungalow. At that time, such a thing as a star’s dressing-room bungalow on the lot was undreamed of. “Why,” he said, “I’ve even had this bungalow designed for you. It goes with your lease whenever you are ready to start.” The bungalow, drawn and designed the previous day by Jack Okey, art director of the studio, proved the deciding factor. Miss Pickford signed, and the next day the bungalow was going up. It is still on the lot and is now used by Norma and Constance Talmadge. In a few months, Miss Pickford’s example had been followed by others. The studio boomed. Sets were smaller in those days, and, at one time, there were eleven companies working on the two stages. But, as business increased, Mr. Levee’s difficulties began. “You see,” he said, in discussing this phase of the situation, “we were pioneers. November If there were any mistakes to be made, we made them. “In nearly any business, you have precedent to guide you. But we were a new thing in a new field, and we had to solve all our problems on the spot. “The more tenants we got, the more problems there were. We started with a small mechanical department ; in a few months it had tripled. “I had made up my mind that, no matter how impossible a tenant’s request might seem, the studio would produce it. Now, it’s simple. Nine times out of ten, we either have it in our big prop department, or we can make it right on the lot. But, in those days, it often required a lot of patience and ingenuity. “Costs had to be estimated, and sometimes we went wrong. But we made progress anyway. The need of an independent leasing studio was great and when you fill a real need, you don’t have to worry about your eventual success.” Perhaps the first big vindication of the importance of an independent lot to the motion picture industry as a whole came with the George Loane Tucker production of The Miracle Man. The Miracle Man, as everyone conversant with pictures knows, established new standards of production. It was the sort of departure which only an independent producer would have made. Mr. Levee still looks back on it as one of the big steps in the fulfillment of his dream. In 1918, the studio had grown so that it was compelled to lease thirteen and one half acres next to the ten acres on which the Paralta had stood. In this same year, came the first serious setback. There was a depression in pictures, and the big producers, in an effort to make both ends meet, began leasing space to the independents themselves. But it did not endure. The producers soon found that the demands of the resident organizations weighed too heavily against their own. Several who had left came back, and the business continued to grow. An important factor, too, in meeting this competition, was the manner in which the studio had continued to build up its organization and facilities. It added a planing mill to its mechanical department. It laid the first concrete streets inside any studio in the world. It was the first studio to employ 3-ply veneer flats instead of compo hoard for its sets. It built new stages, new dressing-rooms, new executive offices. It raised its property department to the point where it could compete with any in the city, and then to the point where none can compete with it. And, under all difficulties, it adhered strictly to Levee’s precept that nothing was impossible if a client wanted it. (Continued on Page 56)