We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
20
Hcr\jres ar\d ricr\jreOfoer
NOVEMBER 1924
The Search Perpetual
joy
DdVID SMITH
The word " Types " forms the be-all and end-all, the middle, and the whole of a Casting Director's existence. David Smith says so, he is Casting Director for the Vitagraph Co., so he ought to know.
Foil may know of a girl who looks like the Empress Josephine or a fellow with a head that Adonis might have coveted; or a baby with a tip-tilted nose, an angelic temper and a capacity for doing without its mother for a space of two hours. You may know of a girl who is young, exquisite to look upon, innocently attractive, and yet the possessor of much worldly experience ; and a woman with the air of a regular " vamp" who is, at heart, a sweet-natured, trusting
the eyes of disapproval upon the wine while it is red, can yet assume the inglorious mannerisms of the lady who has gazed upon the wine whilst red, until the bottle has been emptied ! (for film purposes.) And so on ad finitum.
Of course, there are millions of people who want to act for films and never will. There are, perhaps, scores who want to act for films, and may. Out of the never-ending stream of applications which arrive at the studios with a persistence worthy of the
Above : Sheldon Lewis and Laura La Varnie gi studies in " Orphans of the Slonn."
soul, with a habit of making everybody happy.
I say you may know all these sort of people; but, on the other hand (the most likely hand of the two) you may not.!
But, maybe, you aren't a Casting Director for a Film Company. Maybe you don't bother, anyway, about "types"' .... unless one happens to strike you as being the sort that would make life worth living — beside you !
"Types ! The word forms the be-all and end-all* the middle, and the whole of a Casting Director's existence. He must know and study "types" until there is left no shred of a possibility that the day will come when he cannot produce one, any one of them, to order. He must know of the man who can behave like a butler, and is willing to be a butler for the space of a day, a week, or a month, as required. He must know of the woman who, whilst turning
Right :
Otto Lederer
whose Hebrew
characterisations earned him stardom.
Reading downwards : Helen Ferguson's looks gained her the coveted star role in " Hungry Hearts;" Betty Balfour, a perfeet London type; and Nick dc Ruiz as " Kuroff" in " Bavu." methods of apolitical candidate, there are, perhaps, two a month that look " possible." The Casting Director has to keep a note of every "possible" film artist, with a photograph and all particulars of experience, specific recommenda1 tions and potentialities.
In addition to this, the
CD. has already on
his books the names of
hundreds of reliable,
experienced artists, who are ready to
obey his commands.
Even so, the task of casting a new picture is no mean one. Easy enough to settle the question of the leading lady and the leading man: perhaps of the two or three other important characters in the plot. But there the simplicity ends. There are, perhaps, a score of minor characters which must be interpreted . . . and it is the Casting Director's