Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1936)

business, which led, in turn, to newspaper reporting! After that it was simple, for one of his calibre, to write a couple of movies, to become a screen actor and to accept, eventually, D. W. Griffith's offer to be that great director's assistant. He made quickies and roaring, hard-riding Western serials for the old Essanay company — things like "Men of the Desert," "Barriers Burned Away," "Secret Service" and "Raw Country." Finally Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought his contract so that he might direct for them, in his inimitable fashion, a melodramatic little epic — full of whooping and loveunder-the-stars and gore — called "War Paint," with Tim McCoy. America loved it. The very notable location pictures he has turned out have never once been of his own choosing. Metro producers thought it might be a good thing to film an exploring story in a natural setting, and Woody matter-of-factly accepted the assignment because the studio was paying him a salary. He sailed off to Africa with a host of scared but expectant Hollywood people, tore into the darkest jungle, made his picture, and emerged triumphantly carrying the cans of finished film, later to be titled "Trader Horn." He boarded ship for the South Bob Montgomery and Maureen in "Hideout," above. Below, a scene from "Love on the Run." Woody had the most harrowing experience of his life making this picture Seas in order to do "The Pagan" and "White Shadows," and then flew casually up into the Polar Circle when Metro wanted "Eskimo" finished in real snow. CO the International Adventurer's Club and the Explorer's Club of New York elected him to membership. Kentucky made him a Colonel and the Marines commissioned him as Major. In the midst of all the to-do he found time quietly to turn out such best-sellers as "Tarzan the Ape-Man," "Penthouse," "The Prize-fighter and the Lady," "Laughing Boy," "Manhattan Melodrama," "The Thin Man," "Hide-Out," "Forsaking All Others," "Naughty Marietta" and "Rose Marie." The trouble is he won't take any credit for them. "Why should I?" he asked me when we sat talking, after lunch, in his wood-panelled office. "After all — I did a job for which I was paid. I took excellent stories and great box-office names and put them together. The result was inevitable. I would have had to be a pretty punk director to make flops out of sure-fire material like that." It isn't modesty. He's just being honest. "But the thing is," I pointed out, "you aren't a punk director. You're one of the best in Hollywood. And I want to know why. Maybe the studio does select your stories for you, maybe it does assign big stars to the roles, maybe you do have, from the very beginning, the component parts of a good motion picture. But the stories have to be developed and the stars directed and all the pieces put together correctly. There can't be portions that drag, there can't be any scenes done with such melodrama that the audiences will laugh, there can't be any stilted acting. The gags have to get a laugh and the love scenes a sigh and the dramatics a tear. All of which is your job." He leaned back in his leather chair — very tall and very tanned, with that impression of lean strength which always sits about him. "Well, first," he began, "the producer assigns a story — " "After you've passed on it?" I interrupted. "Nothing of the sort. I never have the slightest inkling of what my next picture will be until the studio calls me in and hands it over. Then I start work the next day." "Even if you think it's lousy?" "Even if I think that," he agreed gravely. "It's their funeral, not mine. I'll do the best I can with it and they can take either profits or losses — I'm satisfied with the salary they give me. Naturally I hope the pictures I make will be popular ones, because too many flops, no matter whose fault they are, will hurt me and my reputation. "I've only suggested one story in my entire career, and that with misgivings. But 'The Thin Man,' to me, was such a natural I couldn't resist." He paused. "Still, I think 1 was justified," he added seriously; "It made an awful lot of money." He lit a cigarette. "I refuse even to read anything until it's ready for the story department," he said. "Then, of course, I sit in on the murder — and I'm no silent observer, either, as the writing boys will tell you." They did, later. Woody Van Dyke, they admitted, is no easy guy to put anything over on. He comes into the conference rooms, it seems, grinning and full of jovial humor. And the humor is there, and the grin, until the first sequence is read to him. "That sounds swell," he says amiably. " Marvelous. Only there isn't an actor in Hollywood who could read the last few lines without looking like a fool. I can't film such a scene. Can you see Gable with a black eye, and all sweaty from fighting, declaiming a speech like that? It may have nice alliteration but — " Later he adds, "I think if you'll just have him say, 'Oh nuts' — why that'll do the trick just as well." Mildly he will explain that no human being on earth could leap an eightyfoot chasm, a feat called for in the present script. If anyone argues, a circumstance which happens often, he will drop the smile and rise towering over the table and roar his side of the question until he, and everybody else, is out of breath. [ PLEASE TURN n> PAGE 107 | n