Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1926 - Feb 1927)

20 He Rolls His Own room mirror, and extracted a cigarette from a packet on the table. He talked with all the warmth of an orator on his favorite subject and with the emphasis that is pleasantly typical of him to those who know him. "So you see," he went on, "the profits of a picture come mainly from Main Street and its environs, and it is to Main Street, like the old-time actor to his gallery, that we are largely playing. This, in a phrase, means broader strokes, and a selection of material that is fairly general in appeal. It doesn't mean anything juvenile necessarily, for the biggest and most moving things are the simplest — accessible to almost every type of mind. But it does mean material that is not restricted to unfamiliar particulars, and treatment that is broad enough for every one to comprehend. Accomplish this and you have something of universal appeal, which is the end we are striving toward always." He turned away with abrupt finality, hunting a sash or something, that was part of his attire for the afternoon, when, once more resplendent in white velvet and patent leather, he would again masquerade as a prince in this shaft of celluloid satire on all the misdeeds of George Barr McCutcheon. Indeed, the satirical point of the picture, which had become evident to us a short while before on the set below, made us think of a revue we had seen once, when two of the performers had delighted us keenly by suddenly rendering a syncopated recitation of Kipling's "Gunga Din." Quite, we had decided at the time, as it should be. "But how have you done it all ?" we persisted, having in mind the story that his recent activities, we felt certain, would make. We knew that he had been controlling the making of his own pictures for some time past, and we were curious to learn how the wind had blown. Valentino, we recalled, had quarreled once on this very score with the organization that employed him, and the growing custom among picture companies of vesting the selective control of pictures in the stars themselves seemed an interesting departure from the old order. We wondered how Richard had fared. He turned back at once, fired again with the zeal of his interest. "Do you know," he asked suddenly, "that this is the third picture we have made without a scenario?" It seemed an extraordinary statement, and we thought immediately, with irrelevant humor, of the man who said the Irish riots looked like a lot of movie actors working without a scenario, to which some one had added — "or with one." We said nothing, however, except to murmur faintly and incredulously our astonishment. "I wouldn't want to do it again, though," he proceeded, "not after this one, for it's altogether too much of a strain. It means that the responsibility for the picture's being good falls entirely upon the star and the director, and there's such a thing, I've learned recently, as having too much to worry about." He limped — one boot on, the other off — across the room to his clothes closet, and extracted a coat that was heavily emblazoned with gold braid. In our younger days we would have given much to -wear a coat like that. Richard inspected it in silence for a moment, then placed it on the back of a chair within easy reach. "Yes," we agreed, provocatively, "I should think one of the prime requirements of comedy making is peace of mind. You can't be funny when you are worried — at least, not in the right way." Richard felt tenderly of his left hand, which he had injured in a melee with some rough characters, a day or so previous, in part of the picture's stirring, if facetious, action. The hand was bruised and badly swollen. A doctor would have had a wonderful time with it. "Some time ago," he explained finally, "the company gave me my own unit, as we say in the studios, with the authority to handle it as I saw fit. This meant literally making my own pictures from cellar to attic, and so, with the carte blanche it carried, I went to work in earnest. I wanted a director who hadn't done big things, for that is the only sort of director you can work zvith. Otherwise, you work for him, and I had my own ideas on what I wanted to do. This resulted in my finally selecting Gregory La Cava, whose work I had liked in the l past, and, together, we started \ lining up what we figured should be our plan of campaign. " 'Greg,' I'd say to him, 'what's the funniest situation you can imagine for any one like myself ?' "This would start the ball rolling and, gradually, out of a dozen hopeless ideas, possibly would come one that we'd select as our starting point. Then, with a given scene and situation, we would build upon it in the obvious manner, so as to select the maximum of comedy values. We'd get together at night and say to each other, 'Now, here ! What is the funniest thing we can do with a cigarette? Or a hat? How can I wear this silk hat as to get a laugh out of Main Street?' His current comedy, "Say It Again," is a satire on the Graustark type of film. For, understand, Main Street was the mark that we never ceased shooting at, in all our searches for material. "Greg used to ring me on the phone late at night, or early in the morning, telling me of something new that had occurred to him. It might be a joke out of a newspaper, or a comic situation he had sensed in some news item. On the other hand, I was just as keen to get to him with every new wrinkle of amusing behavior that occurred to me. For instance, I called him up late one night to tell him of a story I had just read in a magazine. A woman temperance lecturer, whose charms were not of the physical sort, was making a speech and telling how she herself had been a sufferer from the drink evil. Her husband, she said, had been addicted to the habit for years. But one day, she added, she had got him to sign the pledge. T was so overjoyed,' she cried, 'that I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him.' At which a voice in the auditorium called out: 'And served him jolly well right, too !' "Here, I thought, might be the germ of a laugh for a scene in one of our pictures, so I passed it along to La Cava. In the same manner, we'd discuss comic situations in which the romantic element was in a sense preserved, for we couldn't entirely lose sight of this. Continued on page 98