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19 27
THE MOTION PICTURE DIRECTOR OF HOLLY IV 00 D
5
If you Jo not think this is an old one all that is necessary — try to name them.
“Last but not least, 1 am referring to the driving spirit of all human en¬ deavor — Competition.
“Of course, there are plenty of people who can not register on their minds the fact that pictures are improving, have improved so tremendously that a revival of an old-timer considered great in its day, now is treated as a joke and brings howls of laughter from the audience. When we consider that motion pictures are only thirty years old, counting from the day when I'homas A. Edison made his first historic test with Cissy Fitz¬ gerald, at that time the popular ‘Gaiety Girl’ as the first actress to appear before the camera, away back in May, 1896, it seems all but incredible that they have raced to rank of fourth industry in America. There is only one other field of effort that can be compared to it and that is the automobile, whose progress curiously parallels that of films. But the auto was a necessity, whereas the motion picture even today is, primarily, a source of entertainment.
“I suppose 1896 might be called the
blackface age of pictures, because at that time no one knew anything about make¬ up for the camera, with the result that anyone who was daring enough to per¬ form before it saw that his face ap¬ peared on the screen with a distinctly ebony hue.
“From that e.xperimental period, films merged into the ‘jumpy’ age. In that ancient era, which was about twenty years ago, some of the problems of make¬ up had been solved and the players did look fairly white on the screen, but no one had yet been able to make the film ‘stay put’ when it was projected. Not only did the characters in the play move, but the entire photograph on the screen hopped up and down.
“Eventually, of course, the jumping was eliminated and pictures entered the stage of definite organization, r\hen companies were formed, devoted exclu¬ sively to the purpose of transferring stories into pictures.
“Now, up to this time, such improve¬ ments as had been made in films were the work of the engineering department,
if I can call it that. In other words, the progress that had been made was a cor¬ rection of mechanical defects which manifestly had to be overcome before motion pictures could be considered as of any real practical value. And the only films made up to that time were subjects from one quarter to one-half the length of one of our ordinary reels of today.
“In short, pictures were just floun¬ dering around, their makers trying to find out just what it was all about and what they could do with the finished product. But the public seized upon even those extraordinary crude products and the flickering, bobbing pictures were the rvonder of the age. They were shown in theaters, halls, anywhere where a square of canvas could be stretched, and the people came in in¬ creasing numbers.
“Then it occurred to several persons simultaneously apparently, that the mak¬ ing of motion pictures might become a profitable business. So the various origi[Continued on Page 56)
And nonco comes Jean Hers holt, he the master of make-up in a more modern pose — though nj.-e helieve in a fenxc years this side’walk
stuff ’will be passe