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Star-dust in Hollywood
of the scenario's development, we could observe how difficult a business this directing was. To watch Von Sternberg shaping out with living and often reluctant actors, with dead scenery and subtle arrangements of light and shade, the whole dramatic actuality of his story was the revelation of a complexity hitherto unsuspected.
At his side sat the script-girl, an industrious young woman in breeches and a beret. Now and again, as a change, she had to sit on his knee, but that was merely an aloof and complaisant gesture of the purely abstract but general amorousness that rules in these circles. On her knee was a big-typed book. This contained all the small segmentary scenes into which the craft of the continuity man had chopped the original plot. All round in the darkness of the big ' stage ' were the sets of scenery to be used in the play, and at the far end we might hear the carpenters hammering on new sets or pulling down old ones. Only the scene immediately in use was glowing under the glare of the arcs and scoops.
The need of using the scenery as it is built often prevents the story from being developed as the author has written it or as a play is rehearsed. It is rather made as a painter paints a picture. Here a piece, there a piece. Sometimes the last scenes may be shot almost at the beginning, the beginning scenes at the end. In The Docks of New Tork^ with the big street and the ocean liner as a background, parts were to take place in the daylight, parts at night with the fog effects. Serially most of the daylight scenes came after those at night, but they were shot first before the whole set was enshrouded in its light-excluding tarpaulins. Or, again, Bancroft photographed entering from the outside might have been already photographed entering the inside, which was built on the stage, or, on the other hand, he might not come in for a week yet. An actor may knock an enemy through a door of a hut built on the high deserts of Arizona and the victim may finish
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