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.
THIS is addressed to all you young people with screen ambitions who happen to read it. I've been asked to tell you what I think of your chances in Hollywood today. There's a certain danger attached to the giving of advice, a responsibility assumed by the adviser which he has no right to assume when, as in this case, the advisees are unknown to him and what's right for Mary may be wrong as sin for Jack.
So I'm offering no advice. Instead, I give you the facts as I see them from where I sit. Since I'm closer to the ring, my clearer view of them may be helpful to you in the bleachers. It's for you to apply them to your own cases.
Now that I've shifted the onus of responsibility, I make bold to tell you that if you have personality and the will to act, Hollywood needs you. The chance of her taking you is another matter, which I shall presently delve into. But that she needs you Hollywood herself, at her most confused, will not dispute. Personalities form her chief stock-in-trade, her most precious asset. Take them away, and what's left are liabilities.
You will note that I stress personality above acting ability. This is by design. I consider it more important. Call it by any name you like — vitality, sex appeal, emotional warmth — the fact remains that acting ability can be acquired, personality can't. If you haven't it to begin with, nothing and nobody on God's green earth can inject it into you. Without it, you'll be a dud on the screen.
With it, you stand a chance. I wish I could say a good, even a fair chance. All I can honestly say, is a chance. It's not my object to discourage you. On the contrary. If only for Hollywood's sake, I should like to spur you on to every effort. But not by pulling the wool over your eyes. Some knowledge of the obstacles ahead may help you steer your effort to better purpose.
There's no producer or director in the industry worth his salt who doesn't, according to his temperament, pray, bellow or weep for new faces. Every time we cast a picture, we go through hell. We know we haven't the proper tools to build with. It's like saying to a man,
Great director Sam Wood, top left, has such fine films as ''Goodbye, M r. Chi ps, " "Our Town," d now "Kings Row" to his credit. Top, he coaches Ann Sheridan; above, Ann with Ronald Reagan in scene from "Kings Row" — which we will present in fiction form in an early issue; right, refreshment and fun on the set.
here's a shovel, go make a boat. He can't make a boat with a shovel, and we can't make the kind of pictures we want to make with the inadequate human inventory we have to draw on. So what happens? We're desperate for an actor to play a certain part. We scramble around, we try to borrow, we run tests of knowns and unknowns, we get to the point where expenses pile up. shooting's scheduled to start and everyone's squirming. We set out with hopes of Clark Gable and end up. willing to settle for Old King Cole.
Which leads to the question you're going to ask next. With so many aspirants (Please turn to page 73)
29