Screenland (May–Oct 1927)

8 I SCREENLAND altar and peer into the unknown future for better or worse. Again and again the shot was taken. During the confusion of the mob which ran out and mixed with the fighters someone kicked Miss Valli. She laughed. People in the Movies get fun from the least ex' pected sources. I've never before seen any one laugh when kicked. Dwan left his seat and came forward. "Someone kicked me." said Miss Valli, "it's the funniest feeling." Dwan bent over and took off one of her slippers and rubbed her foot. Then he took the foot and bent it backward and forward. It might have been a rubber foot . . . Miss Valli winced, pulled her foot away and said it was all right. "All set," said Dwan. The long slim hook-nosed Allen-streeter yelled something through his megaphone and the crowd went wild with excited action . . . "Hold it. Hold it. Save it. Lay off . . . Wait a minute," yelled the assistant director and the man with the bucket and the whisk broom came out and the O'Brien perspiration was renewed . . . Then the merry festivities were under way again . . . and \ Jl 1 1 1 N Mi ... ,.'V *. '(f Lewis Stone consoles "Lonesome Ladies". ]ane Winton. one This of the one is would have run on indefinitely if Dwan hadn't suddenly disappeared at five o'clock. Then began the real labor of the day. Up till then all had been play. There is a lot of fun to be had out of the making of a motion picture. The directors like to tell you that it's all hard work. Well, maybe it is but it seems to me as if everybody was having a good time. And now the day was over. The Allen Streeters were herded together. The assistant director jumped up on a chair and weeded out those he wanted tomorrow, paid them off and sent them on home. I saw one woman get a dollar and a half. "That's not her salary?" I asked incredulous. "No, no," I was informed, "That's for her pickles I guess." These Yiddish extras then picked up their babies and other accessories and filed silently out into the street. Unlike the professional extras they didn't call taxis. Not a bit of it. They walked the three or four miles that lay between their "studio" and their homes. But it seemed a shame they couldn't have slept on the set for it was so like home they would never have known the difference. Gary Cooper Continued from page 24 him more important things than all these. He taught him traits and habits for all the world to see and know and admire. With text-books of mountains and stars, plains and rocky-bedded streams, his Indian mentor implanted in the lad the Indian reserve, the redman's dignity and poise. He made him honest, honest as the faithful pony he rode. Mike Belgarde didn't know he was training the white boy for motion picture stardom. The lad was Gary Cooper, son of Montana's broad landscapes, Paramount's newest star, one of the greatest potentialities in the industry. Little more than a year ago an extra, one of Hollywood's humble. Today a star in his own right and in training — literally — for one of the "fattest" roles in pictures — the lead in "Beau Sabreur", the sequal to Paramount's smashing roadshow .success, "Beau Geste". That's Gary Cooper, the star that extras mention most often these days, with a pessimistic shake of the head at their own fate, and a muttered "What a break! What a break!" But they're wrong. It wasn't a break that pushed Gary Cooper up and up — suddenly, swiftly, — to stardom. It never is. In his physical characteristics, an intangible, an indefinable something called sometimes personality, sometimes magnetism. In toto, it can't be denned, this commodity that is Gary Cooper. It can be analyzed, partially. "Well, I guess Mike Belgarde is responsible a lot for the way I think and act," Gary will admit. "Every interviewer I've talked to in the last few months always has written about how silent I am," he told me. "They talk about 'his reserve' and 'his poise' and call me a 'son of the ranch.' I'll bet you will too." I started, because I had already visualized these lines in this story. I couldn't help it. They're part of Gary, and they're part of his story. I asked him more about Mike. "I guess the writers were right, at that," he said. "I did learn silence from Mike Belgarde. When he and his kid and I would go hunting sometimes we'd ride for hours without saying a word. We didn't need to. There's something about Indians and being with them outdoors for a long time that makes you able to communicate without talking. Mike would look over a hillside with a quick glance. My eyes would follow his. We'd see a coyote there, maybe two of them. And we'd ride on, without a word. But both of us knew, and knew the other knew, that in the spring we'd go back there and dig out the coyote pups. Yes, Mike taught me lots." I dragged information out of Gary as we sat in the gymnasium on the Lasky lot in Hollywood. I had interrupted a sword fight to talk to him. He took off one of those fencing helmets that look like bird cages, laid down a heavy, two-edged sword and sat down to talk to me. The instructor seemed grateful for the rest. "Beau Sabreur", he explained. "I have a couple of duels in the picture, and I'm learning how to use a sword. The cowboys on Dad's ranch never used weapons like this." "You see, except for 'Children of Divorce,' I've played cowboys in every picture I've been in, and I never have had a chance to learn fencing before." It will be — this "Beau Sabreur" picture — the biggest thing he has done, and that's why he is taking his lessons so seriously. "I can't just learn how to fence," he said, "I've got to be good, darn good. I hate to be just fair in anything." And, determinedly, "I'm going to be a good fencer before that picture starts, I won't feel like drawing my salary if I'm not." Honest. Unless he's good, he wouldn't feel like taking Jesse L. Lasky's money. I believe he meant it, too. That's the way he impressed me. My impression is borne out by the facts in his career, one of the most sensational that Hollywood has ever discussed. He had been a private in Hollywood's extra army for over a year when he got his first part. He had the leading role, but it lasted just one week. Needless to say, it was a Poverty Row "two-reeler." When the part was finished, he sank right back into extra ranks. "Every time I'd hear about a part coming up I'd go after it," he told me, "the casting director would say, 'Have you had any experience?" And that would finish me. They would tell me that I looked all right for the part but they needed someone with experience. So, you see, I just couldn't get started." "But didn't it ever occur to you to tell them that you had played a big part somewhere, say in New York?" I suggested. "Well, yes, it did," Cooper replied. "But I heard all these other extra people lying about their experience and telling what big parts they had played and how they would have stolen the picture if their role hadn't been all cut out, and I just didn't see any sense in lying about it. I couldn't see where it got them." Cooper's start — his "lucky break," as the extras put it — was in "The Winning of Barbara Worth". He knew Samuel Goldwyn's casting director. Robert Mclntyre. Knew him from calling on him many times when he had previously been at MetroGoldwyn-Mayer. "I walked in on him one day and he remembered me and put me up for the part of Abe Lee in 'Barbara Worth'," Cooper relates. "The director asked me, as usual, what experience, and for once I was able to tell him: 'Well, I played a lead in an independent two-reeler.' He smiled, but I got the part." The rest any good motion picture fan knows. Cooper "stole" his way into almost equal honors with Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky, received offers from three or four producing companies and accepted the one from Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation. It was the most extraordinary agreement ever made between star and producer. Cooper took a "cameraless screen test." Once a week at the Paramount studio, the executives gather for the "Friday conference," when all important production matters are discussed and decided. Cooper, summoned last August to the office of B. P. Schulberg, associate producer, opened a door and walked in — to the Friday conference. He faced a big roomful of men. He was introduced to each and every one. He smiled at each. He sat down and wondered what to do next. He answered a few questions. He got up and went out. He was called back the same afternoon,