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How the Great
Frenzy and calm, sarcasm and coaxing, laughs and tears — business of directing motion
like writing love-letters on butcher paper." Charlie is even more particular than Lubitsch. The scene in A Woman of Paris where the old mother saw the body of her son brought home, was taken eighty-two times before Charlie got it to suit him.
N'
A LMOST every one who visits a motion
/% picture studio is surprised to 'find
/ % the directors more interesting than
■*■ -* the stars they are directing. Charlie Chaplin is an
amazing sight. In the first
place, he will not work at all
unless — or until — he feels
like it. Sometimes he will
spend days on end just sitting around the sets talking
himself and his actors into
the right mood. The camera
never starts until that right
mood arrives. When the
camera begins shooting,
Charlie goes thru many
emotions — and motions.
Sometimes he will throw
himself flat on his stomach
with his chin propped up on
his hands. At other times
he sits all hunched up in a
chair.
I remember one day while
they were taking A Woman of Paris, that one of the
actresses did not please him.
In the middle of her emotion, she stopped and looked
around : the director had
disappeared. He was back
in a corner of the set. He
was sitting down, bowed
with grief. His hands
covered his face. It had
been too much. He peeked
at her thru his fingers like a
little boy. At length he
raised his head and said to
her with . bitter reproach,
"Trying to make you act is 52
o one who sees Ernst Lubitsch at work will ever forget him. He is as eager "as a bull-terrier trying to break loose to run after a torn cat. He has black eyes that glitter like wet anthracite coal. You can always tell how things are going by the sparkle. When the star is inspired to great artistry, it seems as tho Lubitsch's eyes shot sparks.
I am always expecting to see him fly into a terrific passion and tear the scenery to rags. But he never does. I have never seen him lose his temper. He has the patience of Job. The nearest approach* to temperament I have seen in him is when the carpenters on an adjoining set make too much noise. He demands the stillness of the tomb.
The other day I saw him trying to make an actor execute a formal bow after the manner of Continental army officers. That was all he had to do : come to the door and bow. Click his heels : bend the stiff back-bone; straighten the stiff back-bone. One — two — three!
Time after time Lubitsch would stand in the doorway and do it for him.
"Oh, yes, I see," the actor would say. And then he would proceed to do it just exactly wrong. Tf Lubitsch had seized an axand had chopped him into a fricassee, I would have gone into court and testified that it was justifiable homicide. And thereafter would have sought to induce Congress to vote him a medal on the ground that he was a public benefactor. But Lubitsch never lost his patience or courtesy.
There is only one way you can ever tell that Lubitsch is working under a severe nervous strain. While
/ am always expecting Lubitsch to fly into a terrible passion and tear the scenery to rags — but he never does
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