Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1926 - Feb 1927)

74 From Jolly Old England Ralph Forbes, the young English actor who makes his first appearance on the American screen in "Beau Geste," is amazed at how much easier it is to make movies here than in England. By Myrtle Gebhart WHEN the "Beau Geste" troupe arrived at its desert location and started unpacking, a blond, blue-eyed youth left the group of actors and, draping a camera tripod over his shoulder, grabbed a box of film, and waded into the sand. "Hey !" cried a seventeenth assistant, elegantly. "Buddy, old top, I'm helping you," replied the blond youth. "I am terribly anxious to be of service." It was too much for the assistant. And the young actor, realizing that he had committed a breach of studio etiquette, explained, "I am accustomed to lending a hand. When I made films in England, you know, I helped the boys. It's the thing to do here also, isn't it?" Most decidedly it is not, but Ralph Forbes, used to the hardships of working in the small English companies, is just beginning to realize that screen actors over here are not required to double as prop boys and assistants. "I'm in clover, don't you know?" he commenced when, a few weeks later, the "Beau Geste" company had returned, weary and sunburned, to Hollywood, and -he and I faced each other across a table in a cafe. "I am still astounded at the marvelous efficiency of American movie methods. Money to burn, any amount of waste countenanced that the best effects may be achieved, dozens of assistants to attend to every detail. "All that an actor must do here is act. Terribly surprising." Overwhelmed by the strangeness of this fact, he stared at me. Amused at his ingenuousness, I am afraid that I burst into unladylike laughter. "It isn't that way in England," he explained, his brow knit into a frown. "There, the film companies are short-handed. The troupes are small — only the director, sometimes one assistant, a cameraman, and the fewest possible number in the cast. Every one lends a hand. "No, you don't have to, but if you are any sort of a sport, you do. Only a cad would stand by and feel himself too good to work, when watching an overloaded camera man struggling along with his paraphernalia. "Often, in Scotland, when our motor car would stall going up a steep incline, we actors would hop out, help carry the cameras up the mountain, do an emotional scene, and heft them down again. When we were camping out, I did my share of putting up the tents, carryingwater, and the thousand and one little things that are necessary when a group of people are on their own, with few hands to work. "Here in America, I find myself in a clover field. Every production unit has a corps of assistants, money for any need, a marvelous machine of efficiency. It is terribly bewildering. You raise a finger, and what you want is instantly provided. How can they ever make poor pictures here, with such facilities? "Remeniber that the cinema in England is as yet scarcely an industry. The financiers over there are not interested in its business possibilities, considering it too hazardous. You Arnericans, who dare and do, probably would chafe at such conservatism, but it is the backbone of our slow and methodical nation. "Few Englishmen are so venturesome as to enter competition in what is regarded as a typically American industry ; therefore there is no money. The average film in England costs in pounds the equivalent of twenty thousand dollars. To spend more is foolhardy. Occasionally, when a backer is found who wishes to be extravagantly lavish, one hundred thousand dollars may be allowed, but that very seldom occurs. "So, economy is vitally necessary. Film being precious, retakes over there are unheard of. It amazes me, the number of times one scene is enacted here, the best shot being selected. With the amount of film discarded on a production like 'Beau Geste,' any number of English pictures might be made. I have often worried with an English director over how a sequence which should require, say, one hundred feet, might be expressed logically in twenty. That sort of thing is fine training, for it teaches an actor to condense, to portray his emotions quickly and exactly. "That speed, however, coupled with other unfortunate circumstances, gives many English films a disjointed continuity. For instance, we cannot afford to erect sets for the less important sequences. Much is therefore left to the spectator's imagination. So, when you judge English films, please be kind enough to take these various factors into consideration." His experiences in a land where the motion picture is just attempting to walk remind me of the tales they tell here of our own movies' childhood. Doubles are unknown in England. Once, Forbes had to fight two wild dogs — a police dog of cranky disposition and an untamed Wiirttemberg sheep dog. That it was realistic may be well imagined from the fact that three suits of clothes were torn off the actor before the wrangle was considered sufficiently thrilling. "They framed me," he chuckles now. "They saved that scene until the last, vou know, afraid that I might be killed." And there was an eventful day when he shot a waterfall in a canoe and really saved the life of the boy playing his younger brother. Needless to say, the director and camera man did not foolishly lose their heads — every bit of the struggle in the rapids was recorded. So it is no wonder that Forbes considers an American motion-picture studio a paradise. A likable boy of twenty-three, is this English lad, who isn't English at all and whose greatest wish is to be called an American. He is Scotch and French, with a dash of Italian. What does that make him? Your guess is as good as mine. Yet, though he has no English blood, he was born and reared in England and looks thoroughly British. They smile, in Hollywood, at his earnest, boyish efforts to become American. Fair and blue-eyed, he has a genial and ingratiating smile, and is anxious to establish a friendly camaraderie with every one, even with the extras. "Buddy," he calls every man on the lot, though occasionally habit betrays him, and "Old top" will slip out. His accent, he fancies, is very, very broad and American. "My wife calls me her middleWestern husband," he tells every one. He is married to Ruth Chatterton, one of America's foremost stage stars. "She speaks with very careful diction, has the cultivated voice of the stage actress, and is quick to grasp and unconsciously assimilate influences. When s^ie returned from two weeks in Continued on page 105