_Seven qualities that indicate fitness for a screen career_
_--Why they are important--An illus-_
_tration of vitality._
As I have said, I have been asked by thousands of correspondents for
the formula for screen success. I have never felt able to answer. I
don’t believe there is any such formula.
Putting the proposition another way:
If I were requested to choose from among ten beginners the one who
would go the farthest in motion pictures I should unhesitatingly lay my
finger upon the one who possessed the following qualifications:
(1) Natural talent.
(2) Ambition.
(3) Personality.
(4) Sincerity.
(5) Agreeable appearance.
(6) Vitality and strength.
(7) Ability to learn quickly.
I am sure that I should not go far wrong if I were to place my trust in
one endowed with these qualities.
A natural talent for acting implies more than a mere desire to act. It
is the art, usually discovered during childhood, of mimicry, and the
joy in that art.
How many of us have been convulsed in our earlier years at some school
girl friend’s take-off of our teacher? How many of us, indeed, have
played the mimics? I seem to remember that in my grammar school days I
was called upon more or less to take-off one of our teachers.
If not called upon I volunteered. None of my school chums got more
enjoyment out of my “imitation of Miss Blank” than I did. I never
dreamed at that time--or, if I did, they were vague dreams--that I was
to become an actress. Since then I have come to the conclusion that I
was actually taking my first steps toward what I chose as a career.
Natural talent, as I have called it, is no more than a tendency toward,
or an aptitude for, some form of endeavor. In youth my first artistic
loves were for mimicry and painting--the latter of which took the form
of sculpturing--and both of these loves have been enduring.
For that reason unless my candidate for screen success had previously
shown some love for acting or mimicry I should come to the conclusion
that he or she was intoxicated merely with the glamour of the
profession, with no especial love for the fundamental thing itself.
This is an important point. If its significance were duly impressed
upon the thousands of girls and boys, who would like to choose the
screen for a career, perhaps, some of them would abandon their dreams
and turn to things for which they have displayed some natural aptitude.
Ambition must, of course, go hand in hand with natural talent. In
any form of vocational training it is assumed that the student has a
feverish desire to succeed in the particular line that he has elected
to follow. It is the same on the screen.
Possibly I might have written down enthusiasm in the place of ambition.
After one has attained stardom and thus, perhaps, achieved his or
her ambition the ability to sustain enthusiasm in one’s work becomes
more important than ambition. But ambition and enthusiasm are closely
correlated.
They mean that one has an ambition to gain the top, and that to reach
that position one has the enthusiasm to practise all the forms of
self-denial, discipline and study that are important to artistic
success in any line.
Personality is important for the reason that the camera has a way of
registering it unerringly. It is keen in detecting the weak or vapid.
In my eight years before a motion picture camera I have never met a
person of inferior fibre whose inferiority was not accentuated by the
camera. For that reason to sustain success on the screen I believe
there is nothing more important than clean thoughts and clean living.
They do register.
It is precisely the same with sincerity. In any line there is probably
little hope for those who lack this salient quality. But a motion
picture camera seems especially to delight in exposing insincerity.
I think considerable of the success of Mary Pickford and Charles
Ray--to name but two stars--is due to their absolute and abundant
sincerity. The camera, finding so much that is clean and real, has
joyously reproduced it. It is the love that Miss Pickford radiates from
the screen and the obvious manliness of Mr. Ray that are among their
biggest assets. This is sincere love and sincere manliness, or it would
never be so emphasized by the camera.
My candidate for screen honors, therefore, must have the God-given
quality of sincerity. Only that kind can feel deeply, think cleanly and
develop the sterling traits without which neither a camera or a public
can be very long deceived.
I now come to the matter of personal appearance. This is a topic
in which every man under 65, and every woman under 100 years seem
interested. I sometimes wonder if it is not the desire to see how they
would look on the screen, rather than how they might act, that fills
so many boys and girls and men and women with an ambition for a screen
career.
[Illustration: _Charles Ray, plus his abundant sincerity, as reflected
in “The Old Swimmin’ Hole.”_]
I have found the subject of such universal interest that I believe it
deserves a chapter to itself. Therefore I shall dismiss this matter
until the next. I may say, however, that in my candidate I should rank
agreeable appearance and an expressive face as superior to mere beauty.
To paraphrase, nothing succeeds like good health. Of itself it is the
most valuable thing that we should own. Good health can be translated
into terms of capacity for work. Therefore since a screen career means
both hard and trying work I should insist that my candidate possess or
develop the qualities of strength and vitality.
I am aware that in many forms of art such artists as Chopin, Stevenson
and Milton, have become famous in spite of great physical handicaps. I
do not believe the same can be done in pictures.
It seems to me that healthy persons like to see and be among well
people. Motion picture audiences being invariably in first-class
physical shape themselves, desire that those who appear before them on
the screen be likewise fortunate. It is my belief that an audience is
usually bored to tears by a convalescing hero or heroine. If I were in
charge of all the scenarios played I should cut such episodes very
short. They beget more impatience than sympathy.
But it is not only because good health radiates from the screen that it
is important. In point of nervous and muscular strain, and the often
long studio hours that are necessary when production has begun, good
health is essential.
To illustrate: While we were filming “Polly of the Circus” in Fort Lee
one morning I reported at the studio at nine o’clock. We were working
on some interior scenes that were vital to the success of the story.
My director at that time was Mr. Charles Horan. Mr. Vernon Steele was
playing the male lead.
That day we became so engrossed in playing some rather delicate scenes
that before we knew it--or at least before I could realize it--it was
six o’clock, and we weren’t half done.
“What do you say to continuing?” asked Mr. Horan.
“Good; we’re right in the spirit of it,” I replied.
We had a bite to eat and worked on until midnight. In spite of our
hard and earnest efforts there were several scenes with which we were
dissatisfied.
“Well,” said Mr. Horan ruefully. “Tomorrow will be another day.”
As he spoke it dawned upon me how one of the scenes on which we felt
we had failed could be done with probable success.
“Why tomorrow?” I replied. “Let’s make a night of it if necessary. We
simply have to get that scene.”
Mr. Horan grinned. That had been his wish. But he had feared breaking
the camel’s back.
We worked until four o’clock that morning. Things went swimmingly. It
was broad daylight when I ferried across the Hudson but if I was very
tired I was equally happy.
Several times during “Polly of the Circus” we had experiences which, in
the number of hours put in, were similar to that which I have related.
But in the end it was worth while. We had a picture.
At that time I was feeling in the best of health but, even so, the
long hours had been a severe drain upon my none too great vitality.
For anyone lacking strength and vitality such hours would have been
impossible.
It is not my intention to write a booklet on health. But all of us
should be very careful of our most precious possession. I know of so
many young girls in motion pictures who have let their health get away
from them. And some of the cases are so pitiful....
My candidate, then, will have strength and vitality and, equally
important, he or she will cling to both, whatever social sacrifices may
have to be made to preserve them.
The ability to learn quickly will save anyone going into screen work so
much trouble and possible humiliation that it may well be listed as an
essential qualification.
The screen is no place for the mental laggard. The beginner,
particularly, must be alive to learn the new lessons that each day will
bring, and learning them he must remember.
During the course of production in a studio things are at high tension.
Time is money. Each of us constitutes a more or less important cog in
a great machine. Those cogs that inexcusably forget to function are
eliminated.