Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

a; FEW years ago every young girl, at some dreary moment ?n her schooldays or in an hour of ambitious SflSn during vacation, asked this question: "How ^ *can I get into motion pictures?" A great many boys asked It, too aUhough as in the list of applicants to every art, eirls were greatly in the majority. ^ Time has altered that question, ^o"^^^^^^;, J^.^"^^ "^ Z ^™"' ITLltr tl a he p tue^aker has only to ask, nowXr.^ o'rS t^obtain th'e enthusiastic services^c,f any man f ^oman on earth. So the ^ueries^ now ■ .What^. the secret of screen success? ,,Whft makes a Jta ,„ ^•^^Jh^"rsr I ?o ^l:Sl a thrfndtrers a mo^nt^h from adoring strangers?" Photoplay Magazine, Let me say this to you, reaaers ui i n by way of general answer: You make the stars. It is not in my power, nor in the power of any manager, to "make" a motion picture star or a stage star. We can only set piomising people in your way. it you like them, you do the rest. It is your acclaim, your demand, which differentiates the mere leading ingenue, of practical utility and littl.e magnetism, from the national favorite who receives three hundred or five hundrec dollars every day of her life and is the literary heroine of a whole brigade of professional and volunteer press-agents. Of course it would be utterly ; silly for me to say that the only I necessary qualifications for interi national prominence on the screen were youth and an opportunity. If that were so, our once well,ordered world would be inundated by a race of movie queens, and in a universal congress of art and celebrity we should all die ot nothing' to eat, or perish durmg a cold winter for nothing to wear Ours is a business in which many are really called, while few are chosen by the multitude. Only a few of the many good young cinem.a actresses attain renuine stardom. And— alas!— some of the stars are very far from being good actresses. In a general, way, every star traverses the same path, and it is the route of hard work. There is no picture luminary today, male or female, whose name has simply been hung up in the electric sky, without years of preparation. The ambition to become a great and individual success as a screen actor is an honest and worthy one, and I will say that without that ambition, in some degree, it is not Tuch aTat:rt^in^h: ^uSfos^.^for it is only the continued belief in one's ability to do better and better work that enables ^"p^L?sin^g"Thi^'nturd'ambition, the girl,, or the boy, should seek a place in some good stock company and be w.llinr for an indefinite period, to do anything that comes to hand or m\y be assigned' From maid parts or ^^-f'^^^^, small "bits," the young actress progresses to a small pnncipal 1 that may run through the five or six or seven reels of a _u„.„„i„„ T-hfl npvt <;ten s a "supporting lead, that is to How to Win WKat makes a star? Managerial confidence exploitation — or public selection? The question is answered in this story. By JESSE L. LASKY sav a part opposite the foremost member of the cast, if the nla; is one in which anyone is starred, or one of the leading dSs if the play is a feature production, put out entirely parts, II me p y ^^^^ .^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ the name of a famous director who makes it. Young women who can play leads, and maintain a standard of interesting and acceptable work are so rare that, having reached this stage, the neophyte is an assured picture success whether she does or does not reach the stage in which her name, on the billjng, precedes the name of the drama. For the rest it is entirely up to the public. It audiences like her, the exhibitors will begin to write in to the managers of branch exchanges: "Give us some more pictures with Maude Muller in them." Presently, when these demands come in frequently, and from many different parts of the country, the producers will one day send out a piece with the magic announcement: "Maude Muller, m— and the deed is done! This is identically true of young men, except that there are, and probably always will be, many more idolized voung women than young men, hence women have a bigger stellar opportunity. In its loyalty to its comparatively few male stars the public is just as staunch, and sometimes I am inclined to think that the men have built more solidly; perhaps, because the male star has a longer, harder climb and the public is cooler and more wary in its picking. There is a glamour, a very spirit ot romance, about a beautiful young girl which no boy, however handsome, stalwart and capable, can ever have. A beautiful, spirited girl incarnates youth and its ideals to voung and old alike, to women as well as men. She possesses a certain faculty of enchantment because of the very fact that she is just a girl— apart from any mere sex appeal— tor all people, everywhere, are continually interested in what happens to a pretty gijl' f *f ^^^^^J n\J nf make-believe The successful young men of the screen, Sletr'a^rr'; his same .la^°-J.^d "dm^ri^t4i^sS of fourteen to forty -ho may be found^^admnmg^^_^^ wlhe'^toYath:? and mother, and To other young men, they must make good sheerly upon talent A managerial attempt to create a star, ^l^at is lo sdy, actua^process of placing a young P"^^^P^ ^^^/^s In Sis mediately in stellar parts, seldom if ever succeeds. Caiiipliell Jesse L, Lasky. in whose organization many stars have been torn, sJ^s that publie favor alone can establish an a:tor ^r actress in a position of stellar prominence.