Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1921 - Feb 1922)

Can You Break Into the Movies? 21 Don't expect to be welcomed. The studios have a glittering stare for any one daring to approach them, at the Lasky studios. These are extras waiting Every one knows that Mary A. has a pull with one director, Helen B. with another, John C. with a third. It is a perfectly legitimate pull, and it is going to last just as long as the profession. All it means is that the director has to believe in some one, as he simply has to believe to keep on working and that Mary A. or Helen B. or John C. has somehow impressed him that there is a big future there if he will work for it. The whole motion-picture profession knows how suddenly a director will take hold of a hitherto unknown or little-known actor or actress and "make" him or her. Nobody can explain why it wasn't done before or why it was ever done. The only thing left for you is to pray some director will discover you some day and make you. Then you will have a pull with that director, who will rave over you, believe in you, and work with you while other folks wonder how you did it, and you, if you are honest, will wonder a bit yourself. There are other kinds of pull in this business without a doubt. Any one with money can put a girl on the screen — many have done it — but no one can make her last. The thing that gave the pull with the director is, after all, something honestly worth while, something that will make a hit with a motion-picture audience. If the girl financed into pictures has it she will last. Without it she will be off the screen before long. In the matter of pull the odds are even. Is there danger for a girl in the motion-picture business? Danger in this connection means just one thing — danger of bartering one's virtue for a job or promotion or of losing it for nothing. In a recent magazine article Mr. Benjamin B. Hampton, himself a producer, states that "a girl runs no more risk in the movies than she would encounter in the shoe factories of Lynn, Massachusetts; the carpet factories of Yonkers, New York; or a wholesale drug establishment in Atlanta, Georgia." I am not acquainted with these particular geographical spots and cannot tell the reason that led Mr. Hampton to this particular selection, but, assuming that they are merely ordinary industrial centers of their kind and no worse than others, I am going to disagree with him. There is much more danger for a girl in the motionpicture and theatrical profession than in any of which I know except trained nursing. And the reason is this — that the people in the motion-picture and theatrical profession, whatever their standard for morals, are, for the most part, such charming, lovable people that their personalities loom larger than their conventional worth. The girl who, in her teens, goes from home life into pictures is almost sure to know that there are two classes of people — those who are "nice," and those who are "not nice." When she gets into pictures she finds many people who, according to her ideas, are "not nice" and yet who are awfully jolly, lovable human beings. If she met a real stage or screen villain she would repulse him sternly, but she will meet folks much kinder perha;is than any she has known — so good to her that she is disarmed. They have, moreover, no intention of doing her harm ; indeed they do not know her idea of "harm" as she knows it. This insidious changing of standards, this toppling over of her own artificial world of "nice" and "not nice" leaves many a young girl honestly so perplexed that she is likely to flounder badly. A girl h'ke this recently applied for a job at one of the big studios. The director asked her to raise her skirts to her knees as he had to have short-skirted girls in the picture. She complied and he engaged her. But she hesitated. "What do I have to do?" she asked. The director explained, but although the matter was merely one of short skirts she still hesitated. "Are the girls in this picture good girls?" she asked.