Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Hollywood — The Band of Hope flops in Hollywood's got to eat some dirt before they forgets it on him. . . ." Egomania of the leading lady, drunkenness of the leading man ; good excuses both, and yet I could not help wondering what Von Sternberg would have done in such cases. Clearly, if ever there was a business for which a man must be born and not made it is this art of directing. For there can be no road by which one may learn. An assistant director has to order the actors about ; he may be permitted to arrange a few minor scenes, though not many ; but he has little chance of intimate contact with that strenuous imaginative labour of the director's mind, visualizing the whole, scene after scene, in pictured sequence. The task of the inexperienced director on his first film must be terrifying. It is almost as though a painter's apprentice who had done no more than mix his master's colours and clean his brushes were suddenly commanded to paint a great decoration that will cost some ten thousand pounds in paint and canvas. He has nobody that can help him. He must face alone a gigantic task and, although unpractised, carry it to a successful conclusion. Before he enters on the job he cannot know whether he is really capable or no ; nor, indeed, can anyone know. Small wonder, then, that excuses fly when flopped directors meet ! Small wonder that they must spend the rest of their lives explaining not only to the world, but to themselves ! Even Michelangelo set to a similar task and condemned to eternal sterility as the reward of an initial failure might be excused if he should flinch. These were the greater tragedies of extradom, but there were others. One day we emerged from the studio with an untidy, small, dark, and unwashed creature, who had been arguing with young Cerberus. He heard us speak, and, with the easy familiarity of the States, turned and addressed us : [>43]