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Taylorology Issue 77
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* T A Y L O R O L O G Y *
* A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor *
* *
* Issue 77 -- May 1999 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
Maurice Tourneur
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What is TAYLOROLOGY?
TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond
Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to
death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major
scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life;
(b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor
murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood
silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given
toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it
for accuracy.
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Maurice Tourneur
The following is a selection of articles by, and interviews with,
Maurice Tourneur, a leading silent film director who was one of Taylor's
contemporaries.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
July 3, 1915
NEW YORK CLIPPER
Maurice Tourneur Voices a Few Opinions
In the rapidly changing panorama of the moving picture production field
there looms a new and important factor, a personality which will be felt.
He is Mons. Maurice Tourneur, the latest addition to the World Film direction
corps. M. Tourneur was born in Paris thirty-eight years ago, and educated
there. He attained some degree of fame as a painter, and to this training
may be attributed the artistic manner in which his photoplays are put on.
Feeling the call of the closer touch with his fellow man, M. Tourneur
abandoned the palette and brush for the stage and worked under the master
hand of Andre Antoine, the Belasco of Paris, playing important parts with
Mme. Rejane in England and South America and on the continent, and assisting
in the stage direction. In one or the other capacity, he participated in
four hundred plays, including Shakespearean and other classical
presentations, before leaving the speaking stage for that of the silent
drama.
"I consider moving pictures," said M. Tourneur, in a recent interview,
"the most important invention for education since the printing press. It is
absurd to say it is in its infancy since so much has developed in it, but
truly it is in its childhood, as is evidenced by the almost daily strides
forward. It stands alone today as a growing industry, and so great is its
promise, its future cannot be foretold. I do not favor the combination of
the pictures with the spoken drama, as experimentally put forth in 'The
Alien.' The silent stage is a thing as much apart from the so-called
'legitimate' stage as ice skating is from roller skating.
"What we need for the cinema today is authors. There are few real
screen authors. Whether acknowledged or not, nearly everything worth while
in the pictures is an adaptation of a book, a play, a poem. A new sort of
creative literary brain must develop for filmdom. There must be a better and
a more natural showing of human nature, in which the conflicting sides, both
good and bad, are shown in their true combination.
"Our screen heroes and heroines today are saintly; there are no such
people in life. Our villains are so bitterly bad and deep-dyed in their
wickedness that nothing so evil can be found this side of hades. Let our
hero digress occasionally from the flowery paths of virtue; otherwise he is
far from human. Let us find a redeeming trait, a kindly impulse at least
once in a while in our villain, there's a ray of good in every human breast."
"Who is, in your opinion, the foremost director in moving pictures?" he
was asked. The answer came with a smile and without a moment's hesitation.
"Mr. Griffith," said Mr. Tourneur, "he had the first big chance and had
brains enough and courage enough to seize it. He made the most of it. All
others suffer by comparison with him. He stands alone."
M. Tourneur's ambition is to produce strong and appealing detective
stories. He believes they interest the greatest number of people. He has
already produced J. Storer Clouston's "The Lunatic at Large," and is seeking
for material along that line. His productions with the World Film in the
last eight months have been "Mother," with Emma Dunne; "The Face in the
Moonlight" and "The Man of the Hour" with Robert Warwick; "The Wishing Ring"
with Vivian Martin; "The Pit," with Wilton Lackaye; "The Boss," "Trilby,"
with Wilton Lackaye and Clara Kimball Young, and "Alias Jimmy Valentine,"
with Robert Warwick. He is now producing "The Cub," with Robert Warwick."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
November 6, 1915
MOTOGRAPHY
Tourneur Heads New Firm
With "Quality, not Quantity" as its motto, a new film manufacturing
concern, the Paragon Film, Inc., will open a great studio, now nearing
completion, at a factory at Fort Lee, N. J., about December 1. At the head
of the organization, which is backed by ample capital, is M. Maurice
Tourneur, the eminent French producer of motion pictures, who came to this
country from Paris a year ago and has staged some of the most artistic screen
productions seen in this country. His office in the New Jersey corporation
is the dual one of vice-president and general manager. The Paragon will
release its output through the World Film Corporation, with which M. Tourneur
has been associated.
"The new company," said M. Tourneur in an interview, "will enable me to
present photodramas of five or more reels each, along special lines, which I
have long felt would be very profitable. We will not attempt to turn out a
million feet a week, nor even from thirty to forty reels, as nothing really
artistic can be assured to such an output. Our intention is to produce about
twenty-four big five-reel features a year and perhaps three or four larger
ones, which will mean from 10,000 to 15,000 feet of film a month. We are
certain of a market for such an output and we expect to produce better
pictures than have yet been made. This will make the exhibitors our friends.
"The new plant is ideally located in the center of the woods near the
Universal plant, and it will contain many original improvements, the effect
of which will be felt by those seeing our pictures. We have already
contracted for the best French directors in America, the best original
scenarios and adaptations from the recent plays of the most successful
theatrical managers, and for the best American actors whom I regard as
superior to any we have in Europe.
"Although we have gone so far with our plans, the door is still open and
always will be for new talent and for original artistic suggestions. While
we start from a high point, we feel that we have much to learn, and our
policy will be one of progress, and not of satisfaction to continue with what
we have accomplished. I detest a crowded or a noisy studio and I feel that
these two conditions have held back the motion picture more than any other
factors. I shall have but three or at most four directors beside myself, and
these will have plenty of room and privacy for their work. I shall try to
eliminate rush, as time is most important to the artistic creator in any form
of endeavor.
"With the absence of noise and trouble, caused by imperfect system, I
think I can do away with all the nervousness which has so often proved fatal
to the production of the high-class drama. I have invented and adapted means
for new and correct lighting, one of the chief requisites for convincing
screen results. The greatest care will be taken in the selection of our
casts. Our successes already in that particular will testify to our ability
in that direction.
"We will not hesitate to spend money to secure desired results, as our
directors have been so carefully chosen as to make them worthy of the highest
trust. They will not be hampered in any way. They will not have to wait and
keep their actors waiting for hours while a scene is being set, for there
will be stages enough to have these all set at night, so that the work on the
actual making of the picture will begin the first thing in the morning, while
all are fresh and can give the best that is in them. In this way, instead of
devoting most of the day to the mechanical work and a small part to the
artistic, the entire day will be given over to the acting, thus obtaining the
coveted prize of director and actor alike, time."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
April 29, 1916
Maurice Tourneur
HARPER'S WEEKLY
Movies Create Art
Movies: a quivering rift in an emerald woods, silver-shot with a
summer's sun; a startled nymph beside a mirrored pool, the play of whose form
is a prayer; a charnel house, grimy and shadowy, its damp marble slabs
glinting green against the moon; a baby's smile, also its tears, the one as
unfeigned as the other; a mountain ridge at night with silhouetted riders
speeding by against the clouds; a jungle kraal, with a panther brood
frolicking about a recumbent mother, whose eyes are lit with the maternal
fire that shines not on the land nor on the sea--these motion picture
miracles, the tabulation of scarce more than a single hand against an
overwhelming array, many as inspiring, many more thrilling, many more
enthralling alike to the artist and all others--and these are but exhibits of
a craft?
Bezeul, now a confrere at the Paragon studios, several months ago
stalked the woods of the Champagne section in France at the close of a
battle, equipped with a movie camera, and the world has since thrilled with
the chill of death as shown by war's horrors in the raw; no sheltering
fiction of paint as Meissonier gives it, nor of molded mineral Rodin forms,
but death real, stark, limp and fearful, carpeting an actual glade, animate
only in the mute, orderly stepping from corpse to corpse to check the
victims' identities by their regiment tags. Merely mechanical, to turn the
crank that rolls the film upon whose solution the heroism of a nation is writ
indelibly. Staging death in the mass, yet with restraint, keeping the will
master of the emotions, so directing the camera that the merely gruesome
shall be but an underlying terror of the whole--this, too, is but
craftsmanship--a cutey?
I produced the French stage version of "Alias Jimmy Valentine." I later
filmed the play for this country. Paul Armstrong's piece in its stage form
needed little adapting for the films. Armstrong, as everyone knows, took the
character of "Jimmy" from an O. Henry tale and that's all he took. Scarcely
more than four printed pages in length in its O. Henry form, it was the idea
of a semi-polished outlaw gaily fastening himself upon the payroll of a bank
that he designed subsequently to rob, that fired Armstrong. Structurally
there is no more resemblance between the O. Henry fiction and the Armstrong
comedy than there is between a chess board and a woman weeping. Do the
learned judges of the new art deny that Armstrong created an enlivening
drama? Do they deny that the mere record of Jimmy's job-taking in the bank,
even without the details of its original fiction, was in essence a play?
Would they deny this adaptation practice to the credentialed film director!
Isn't the history of the acting drama and the printed fiction that inspires
it a voluminous record of interchanges? Didn't the great romancer take
largely from Montaigne? Doesn't Montaigne freely confess his own
appropriations from multiple sources? Aren't we all creatures of just so
many emotions? Isn't drama mere criss-crossed collisions of these, taking
new forms with each fresh alignment? Isn't there in Shakespeare an entire
gamut of masculine character, also a more or less complete feminine galaxy as
it exists about us today?
Do filmdom's decriers concede the necessity for the preservation of
something like a unified whole in a spoken stage piece or a mute filmed one?
Do these captious weeping willows know that if a film director produced
verbatim the average scenario as detailed in, say, a five reel picture, the
audience would consider the six-day Chinese drama a delightful tabloid in
comparison? Do they know that one entire reel of one thousand feet of film
may be interestingly devoted to the mere entrance of a single person into a
room?
I have not seen anywhere any claim of any manufacturer of films that he
considers himself an artist or even a purveyor of art, or that he aspires or
seeks to mold public taste in photoplays, nor do I believe he makes a
practice to producing what he thinks the public thinks it wants. Considering
the difficulties besetting his supply, I think the film manufacturer is doing
in the short time of his existence, a great deal more than any publisher or
theatrical manager of an equally brief existence did, not even excepting the
early days of the French, German and English stage and literature, which
reminds me that Shakespeare shows in all his work that he would have reveled
in the magical volubility of the motion camera. Not a play of his but shows
his flair for scenic embellishment and brilliant variety. What he would have
done with his filmed battle scenes--a flash here of panoply, a shift to a
portentous conference, a flash of helmeted couriers, all filigrees of his
main current.
The quarrel with close-ups by the present school of film decriers is
without consideration. The close-up, which, by the way, is not new, is
merely a director's emphasis of a phase of his play, an auxiliary he employs
to insure the conveyance of a definite thought at a definite stage of the
play. Reference to their abnormal size is as intelligent as the same
criticism would be of the colossal bronze of Daniel Webster in Central Park,
the Bartholdi Liberty Lady in New York bay, or the Sherman equestrian figure
on the Plaza on Fifth Avenue, New York.
Authorities agree that the stage production methods of Max Reinhardt are
art. Are film directors, who write, create, adapt stage and camera plays
less entitled to the term? Capellani, a Paragon associate director, filmed
"Les Miserables." If photoplay critics think the people--the common people--
are artistically obtuse, let them scan the royalty records of the Hugo
fiction in films and note the millions who came, wondered and wept with
Valjean and the other unfortunates of the imperishable tale.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Dorothy Nutting
July 1918
PHOTOPLAY
[from an article on Maurice Tourneur]...The cinema tried to beckon to
him. He haunted the funny little theatres which soon sprang up, paying often
as much as fifty centimes (ten cents) a ticket. This was a great
extravagance for the young student at the Lycee Condorcet, and soon
abandoned, for he obtained an engagement with the great tragedienne, Rejane,
who was making a tour of the world, including Africa.
"One unique engagement," says M. Tourneur, "Was at Dakar, on the
northern edge of the Sahara in Algiers. We reached the town on a queer sort
of boat, the engine of which was dying by inches. We were due at eight
o'clock at night, and arrived at midnight exactly. Everyone was asleep and
we would lose our evening's receipts. We were all truly dismayed! For we
needed the money, so Madame Rejane, with all her adorable aplomb, merely
attached bells to the necks of a few of the natives and turned them lose to
announce the news of our arrival. Behold, in half an hour there we had an
audience ten times larger than we would have had at eight!"
But, to come back to America and the matter in hand, the art of this
poet of the screen, his views are refreshingly different from that of most of
the producers. For example:
"There is an odious fallacy that a great many people still believe, in
regard to the moving picture. It is almost as widespread as that the cinema
is in its infancy. By that I mean the belief that we must give the public
what it wants. To me, that is absurd. As absurd as if the fashion dictators
should attempt to suit women's wishes in costumes. In reality, the opposite
is the case, is it not? The fashion dictators say: 'Next year you shall look
like umbrellas, ladies--but this year you shall be as a broomstick;' and the
ladies obey like lambs and even enjoy their servitude! The public does not
know what it wants until it sees it--how should it? So we must try over and
over again, until we have discovered what it is they really do want to see."
Another of the Tourneur antipathies is the remark that many people think
must be true today because Shakespeare made it many hundred years ago, "The
play's the thing." This idea M. Tourneur combats with all the force at his
command.
"I know there are few to agree with me," he said, "but I shall always
assert that the play is NOT the thing. If it were true, one would merely
read a play, and the acting, the beautiful presentation, the 'ensemble' as we
say, would amount to nothing. Then, if the play were the thing, the lack of
these, of the acting and good interpretation and ensemble would not spoil it.
To me, neither the play, the acting, the star, the director, nor the
presentation is the thing. It takes all of them.
"Of course, I believe that the play, a classic such as 'The Blue Bird,'
'A Doll's House' or 'Prunella' should not be changed. Nor should there be a
dragged-in, illogical 'happy ending' to replace the author's conclusion. But
I do believe that to make a play of this sort there must be the best acting,
the best directing, and the best presentation available. And with the
showing of it, good music. Any one of these elements missing, and your
picture will not succeed.
"I enjoyed making 'The Blue Bird,'" he went on thoughtfully. "But if I
could have had another six months to work on it, I would have enjoyed it much
more. Then, too, I cannot work so well with children. They are disturbing.
Work at the studio should go along smoothly like the clock--but, children,
ah! they cannot be regulated! However, this I must say, that little Tula
Belle and Robin MacDougall, the two child actors in 'The Blue Bird' are
exceptionally clever little players and will be heard of one day in the
future."...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
May 18, 1918
EXHIBITOR'S TRADE REVIEW
Maurice Tourneur Asserts That Wartime Mental
Reaction Is Creating Demand For Shorter Films
Maurice Tourneur, the famous director, now at work on his initial
independent picture, "Sporting Life," which is to be a companion picture to
his very successful production, "The Whip," believes that the world war is
creating a trend towards shorter picture dramas.
"The movement, as I see it, is distinctly away from the full evening
photoplay," declares Mr. Tourneur. "This is psychological in its cause. The
world war, with its attendant excitement, sacrifice and worry is playing upon
the nervous system of the world. Whether we know or realize it, the war has
keyed up our nerves to a high pitch. We are keenly restless, high strung,
unable to concentrate for any length of time upon anything but the world's
tragedy.
"This nervous reaction is reflecting itself in every walk of life.
Short stories, requiring but fifteen minutes or so to read, were never so
popular as now. Poetry, which is, after all, but the drama of life condensed
into more or less beautiful particles, is tremendously popular, too. So it
is coming to be with pictures.
"I am, of course, a steady patron of the film houses. It is part of my
business to watch the progress of my fellow workers. I have come to note a
marked unrest in audiences when a drama runs longer than six reels--or six
thousand feet. Six reels requires about an hour and a half for adequate
presentation.
"I had a curious example of this nervous reaction presented to me the
other night when I once again witnessed 'The Birth of a Nation.' This
beautiful drama--a classic of the screen--did not seem overlong when first
presented, but the audience of today reflects the war-time reaction. A man
who sat just ahead of me remarked to a friend, 'It's beautiful--but just a
little too long.'
"For my part, I do not intend to run my productions over six reels, or
seven at the very most, for the duration of the war. We must meet conditions
as they are.
"It is part of our duty as purveyors of entertainment to the great
majority, to see to it that the public gets wholesome, optimistic and, if
possible, amusing entertainment. It is up to the screen to sustain the
spirits of the nation. Let us keep away from the morbid and gruesome and
throw the tremendous power of the photoplay into the civilized world's war
for democracy.
"Another interesting reaction I have noted in wartime audiences,"
continues Mr. Tourneur, "is the steadily growing spiritual note. We are all
turning more and more to religious support in these grim days. You can
observe this in the way audiences respond to the spiritual element in
pictures. People are coming to think profoundly of the problems of life."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
June 22, 1918
MOVING PICTURE WORLD
Maurice Tourneur, who has just launched his own producing organization,
is a firm believer in the big opportunities now offered the independent film
maker.
"The star system of today is fast proving its fallacy," declares Mr.
Tourneur. "Consider the problem of the producer with a chain of stars. He
must manufacture films regularly, using these stars at systematic intervals,
in order to succeed. It is natural that the stars are allotted certain roles
to which they have shown themselves fitted. From two and three to twenty
stars must be fitted, and there is not time to study a player's
possibilities.
"Thus these stars come to get stereotyped stories, providing them with
essentially the same characters. This is dangerous from many angles. Except
in rare instances film fans tend to lose interest in stars who keep on
playing upon the same string. Screen patrons come to be familiar with the
stories and they know just what is likely to happen in their working out, so
that all novelty is gone. All this spells the ultimate eclipse of the star
in question.
"Today the star has no substantial hold upon his or her following.
A series of three bad pictures can send a star sliding downward rapidly,
while one or two unusual vehicles will pull a star back into popularity.
This has been demonstrated a dozen times this year. This all goes to show
the insecurity--steadily growing--of the star system.
"Don't think that the stars do not realize all this themselves! Note
how they change leading men and leading women with each production, hoping to
gain some novelty in this fashion.
"The independent producer, on the other hand, can afford to select the
star to fit his photodrama or to produce his film play as he feels it should
be produced. He can put time, undivided attention and care into his efforts
as against the machine-made productions of the star system."
Mr. Tourneur, in speaking of the steadily advancing prominence of the
director, says: "The charge is made that to substitute the prominence of the
director in place of the player is but to shift stars, and is therefore no
cure for the star system evil. This is obviously not true. The director is
the man who paints the dramatic picture. Give him a bigger canvas and
recognition and he will do bigger things; but make him paint around the
limitations of a certain player and you curb him, stunt his growth and
prevent his development.
"Let us not forget that the director and the scenario writer must be the
big factors of the photoplay's future."
Mr. Tourneur is now completing his first independent production,
"Sporting Life," adapted from the famous Drury Lane melodrama.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
July 27, 1918
MOVING PICTURE WORLD
Tourneur Protests Use of "Photoplay" Promiscuously
Maurice Tourneur, the independent producer, who has completed his
production of the Drury Lane melodrama, "Sporting Life," which is to be
released by Hiller & Wilk, Inc., protests against the indiscriminate use of
the word "photoplay."
Says Mr. Tourneur, "We see the word used in various ways, as 'photoplay
comedy,' 'photoplay farce,' 'photoplay tragedy,' and so on, all of which are
as wrong as the theatrical use of drama comedy, drama farce or drama tragedy
would be. Why not photofarce, photocomedy or other combinations?
"Again, the use of 'photoplay' to cover all forms of silent drama from
that written originally for the screen to the adapted drama and novel, is not
correct.
"Personally, I don't think photoplay is the word we have been awaiting
to describe the motion picture drama. Why not try to get a better one?
"The movies have brought many words and new uses of old words to the
language, as fade-out, switchback, cut-back, iris, register, shoot (otherwise
to photograph), screenization, scenario, script and continuity and we need a
bigger word to describe the output.
"Movies is, of course, hardly a word to be used professionally. It only
indicates something that moves. Surely the screen drama is something more
than that now. Not that I dislike the Americanism of the word. It is rather
a term of endearment, indicating the hold of the motion picture play upon the
heart of the masses. We will never be able to get away from it."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
September 1918
Maurice Tourneur
MOTION PICTURE
Stylization in Motion Picture Direction
It was Gordon Craig who developed the new impressionistic school of
stage production. With him in the field of stylization, as the newer stage
tendency is termed, appeared Max Reinhardt, Stanislavsky, Granville Barker,
and others. I take pride in the fact that the opportunity was given me to
bring stylization to the screen.
Stylization has been defined as the development of style in stage
settings; style, in turn, being the manner of doing a thing. In stage
settings or studio direction, style implies an expression of the
individuality of the producer.
Before Craig, realism was the thing behind the footlights. A room must
be perfect in every detail, from the real pictures on the wall to the real
wooden door; from the real glass windows to the real books in the real
bookcase. Then came Craig, who declared for style in place of realism. "Why
copy nature," he demanded, "without adding something of our own? A mere copy
is imitation, and not art."
Craig, for instance, has explained how he attained his results. "We
take 'Macbeth,'" he has said. "How does it look, first of all, to our mind's
eye; secondly, to our eye?
"I see two things. I see a lofty and steep rock, and I see the moist
cloud which envelops the head of this rock; that is to say, a place for
fierce and warlike men to inhabit; a place for phantoms to nest in.
Ultimately, this moisture will destroy the rock; ultimately, these spirits
will destroy the men. Now, then, you are quick in your question as to what
actually is created for the eye. I answer as swiftly: Place there a rock!
Let it mount up high. Swiftly, I tell you, convey the idea of a mist which
hugs the head of this rock. Now, have I departed at all for one-eighth of an
inch from the vision which I saw in the mind's eye?" Having fixed upon his
exterior, Craig utilized a rearrangement of the same setting for his grim
castle interiors, thus retaining a unity of staging.
Volumes could, of course, be written upon stylization. I have here
tried to condense into a few sentences something of a definition. In a
phrase, it is an endeavor to express to others one's mental reactions upon
studying a drama.
I endeavored to apply stylization, in the best of my ability, to my
production of Maurice Maeterlinck's "The Blue Bird." Here I tried to sound
the note of fragile, symbolical phantasy. Again, in Laurence Housman and
Granville Barker's "Prunella," I tried to catch the gossamer of whimsical
romance. Again, in Ibsen's "A Doll's House," my purpose was to utilize
simplicity of setting to accentuate the drama of the grim Norseman.
Whatever my own personal failure or success with stylization, I am
content of the value of impressionistic methods on the screen. The artistic
effects alone are invaluable. It affords better opportunities for lighting,
better balance of scene, opens up unlimited effects of blacks and whites.
The time has come when we can no longer merely photograph moving and
inanimate objects and call it art. We are not photographers, but artists--at
least, I hope so. We must present the effect such a scene has upon the
artist-director's mind, so that an audience will catch the mental reaction.
It was obvious that early directors would be impressed with the
importance of photographing real scenery as a background for their actors.
To the pioneer, this was the one instance where the movie topped the spoken
drama. For the camera can catch the stretch of many miles where the stage
presents but a series of canvas hangings.
That day is passing. The idea of sending a company to Central America
to film a Central American story is, to my way of thinking, valueless from
the standpoint of art. What we really need is an artist to produce the story
so that we will get an artist's impression of tropical America. I have an
instance in mind. I recall Raoul Walsh's production of "Carmen." Walsh had
never been to Spain; but, being an artist, he gave an artist's impression of
Spain that is still unforgettable to me.
The appalling cost of constructing elaborate sets and of transporting
large companies about the country in the making of photoplays has made the
cost of a five-reel production run anywhere from $10,000, at the very lowest,
to extreme instances of as much as $90,000. The average has been for some
time in the neighborhood of $30,000.
Spend this money, if we must, on the scenario, and let us utilize the
inexpensive but artistic impressionist methods. And let us not forget that
we have been foolish and extravagant--as well as inartistic--enough to spend
small fortunes on real marble staircases, solid wood interiors and even on
reconstructing whole cities.
Now let me turn to another subject dear to my heart. With all our
spending of millions of dollars, we of the screen world have neglected to pay
tribute to the pioneers who blazed the way to the Motion Picture drama--the
men who made the photoplay possible. For instance, how many film fans
realize that the photoplay is exactly forty years old? Back in 1878, out in
California, one Edward Muybridge perfected his investigations which
ultimately gave us the Motion Picture. In 1872, Muybridge started to study
the movements of animals, particularly of race-horses, for the purposes of
science and art. He placed a number of plate cameras side by side and had a
horse galloped in front of the machines. Tiny threads, connecting with the
shutters, stretched in front of each camera. They were pulled and broken by
the horse as he passed, the jerk of the thread snapping the shutters. The
result was a series of instantaneous pictures of a race-horse in motion--the
forerunners of the photoplay of today.
I believe some distinct honor should be paid Muybridge, Edison, Eastman
and the other pioneers. Let us, I suggest, build a movie hall of fame, where
the representative pictures of each year may be preserved, where films of
important men and events may be kept for posterity, and where the records of
the development of pictures may be safely housed.
Such a hall of fame would be a mighty encouragement to artistic advance.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
December 27, 1918
Maurice Tourneur
VARIETY
Directing Pictures
Directing motion pictures is merely capturing life. There is no one set
way of staging pictures. It is a realm in which there are no precedents. It
is a very rare thing for any two human beings, even of the same temperament,
to act alike under the same conditions. One has but to observe an excited
mob at a thief chase or at a fire in a factory or dwelling that may mean
tragedy to be convinced of this. Directors cannot be turned out by tutelage
any more than can actors. The player is born. In the myriad ranks of
everyday life there are countless geniuses that would win fame and fortune on
the stage or in the studio if the powers they have were but developed. It is
this latent capacity for drama that makes children in their pantalettes and
frocks play house and weave romances and tragedies in their little worlds of
make-believe that often startle listening grown-ups. It is this same quality
that makes an audience artistically critical, enabling certain of its
personal components to discover instantly flaws in character drawing,
incident or feeling in the screened work of a director. Directing a picture
presupposes the possession of dramatic instinct and artistic perception in
the man entrusted with the transfer to the screen of the play of an author.
The author possesses the instinct else he couldn't have cohered in
dramatic form the characters, scenes, incidents, situations, complications,
suspense and other elements of which his play may be compounded. Like music,
plays must address and stimulate the emotions. An added quality of the play
as against music is that it must engage the intellect as well as the
feelings. If it isn't plausible, doesn't measure up to the intelligence
standards of the observer or auditor, it is poor stuff. If it merely stabs
at the emotions without comprising a definite and cumulative conception,
gripping the attention despite the will or whim of the auditor, it might just
as well at once be relegated to the playhouse for small children or morons.
When an author has turned out a man's size concept in playmaking, instantly
engaging in characters, with reasonable consideration of the desirability of
contrast in types, and with a story that is heard by the heart and the brain,
the director that gets the privilege of screening such a play has made
another big stride toward his right to rank with efficient stagers of the
mute drama.
Just as no two plays are alike, so, too, no two plays will respond to
the same kind of treatment. There are no stereotyped laws that practiced men
may lay down for students save those designed to conserve fidelity to life,
truth and beauty. The human element is the mixture with which the director
is ever dealing. And the human element is ever changing its complexions.
What was true yesterday is often false tomorrow, and vice versa. The war
changed almost all human values, just as other wars did before it.
It is for each of us who have selected the screen for our workshop to be
observant of these changes, and to be faithful to such new truths as come to
us. Even the most practiced of us must ever be at school. There isn't an
hour of a director's day that isn't fascinating with the magic of studying
human character. If more of us would give more time to studying faces and
the psychologies and impulses of people there would be fewer useless books.
The screen is not an endless white page upon which we may write or draw
what characters we please. The screen's tools are limited. Cinematography
is not a plastic art. If our theatrical forms were like those of the Chinese
when days and even weeks may be devoted to the presentation of a single play,
we might call our material elastic. But we must, within a limited number of
feet of hypersensitive chemicals, crowd related scenes that in their entirety
will animate and beautify the concepts of the author we are striving to
adapt. Ours is a selective responsibility. We have not the space to picture
all that the author might tell in words in a spoken drama or on the printed
page. We must seize that part of the whole which within our limited space
best approximates the spirit and action of the original concept. To effect
this transfer faithfully we must endeavor to allow for the absence of the
living bodies of the characters of our play. We must concede that without
the warmth of pulsing vocal speech, or the magnetism of the living human
spirit, our task is not an easy one. There is no greater address to the
emotions than living bodies and animate speech where the story and situation
introduce thoughts of fear, hope, love or sacrifice. We lack this vocal aid
on the screen.
As directors we must aim deftly to create substitutes for these mediums.
There is no set way to do this either. Our success or failure depend upon
our particular genius at the moment of our consideration of the material we
would flash to screen form. And the measure of our successes or failures
will depend upon the measure of our possession of dramatic instinct and our
personal sympathy with the particular play we are directing.
The screen play has evolved a form of its own wholly apart from a manner
of the spoken play, and all but wholly apart from the form of what might be
termed the pantomime of the legitimate stage. The form is yet far from
anything like its finale. Yet it is leagues and leagues away from the
infancy about which so many thoughtless critics lightly prate. It is
possible to compress in five reels of one thousand feet each the dramatic
spirit and color of any spoken drama of average length. It is possible to
build up character so that it enlists our approval, pity, admiration,
resentment or hate. It is possible within the limits of a screen play of
five reels to seize interest at the outset and hold it in suspense during the
entire unspooling. It is possible to hold the attention of a screen audience
during an entire reel with a single situation, though such a course would mar
the symmetry of one's play as a whole.
The little boy who, after several years' attendance at the movies, was
one night taken by his father to a staged play--Stevenson's "Treasure Island"-
-a marvel of high adventure in strange places across strange seas, even in
its stage form--summed up for me the crux of difference between the spoken
and the screened drama in what he said after the curtain had fallen on the
last act.
"Well," said the pater, "now, Bobbie, that you've seen your first spoken
play on the regular stage, after all the many plays you've seen at the
movies, what do you think of it?"
"The people stayed too long at the same place!"
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
August 22, 1919
Maurice Tourneur
VARIETY
Los Angeles, Cal., Aug. 8.
Editor VARIETY:
Thank you, Miss Variety--or is it Mr.?--for your new symposium.
A welcome harbor of refuge it must be for all of us who are striving to get
the best there is out of the cinema privilege of dramatic expression.
I feel certain that none of us in the industry will abuse its good
offices by seeking to make it the medium for recording desires that properly
belong in the advertising departments.
A council table to which we may resort for a ventilation of points that
no advertisement could so adequately elucidate must work for the eventual
clarity of our cherished craft.
And now for the immediate inspiration of my own voice at this week's
meeting: I wish to chat informally with authors, telling them of some
particular things that stand as obstacles between their genius and the
interpreting arteries of their creations--the directors--and hope, in turn,
the writers will through your weekly opportunities, talk as freely with me so
that thereby both branches may swiftly clear the barriers that cause so much
unnecessary loss of time in the transaction of our ends of the business.
I want scenarios.
And I am but one voice among several hundred directors similarly
plighted. Almost every other division of our industry is moving smoothly
save this all important department. Writers there are aplenty, gifted with
visions that might entertain, excite, thrill and otherwise divert the
multitudes that now find in the motion picture play a satisfying form of
emotional excitant. Directors temperamentally, emotionally, dramatically,
poetically equipped to translate the visions of these writers there are too,
in sufficient array.
But the system of communication between the two factions is without
order. Director So-and-So doesn't know where to get the special kind of
material he seeks at the time he seeks it. Perhaps at the very moment of his
greatest anxiety in his search for the desired material, the identical story
or play he wishes--fiction carrying the thought he wishes to translate--is
knocking unheard at countless other doors which at that particular moment are
not interested in that particular kind of play.
How may such a condition be corrected? I am sure I myself do not know.
Many ways suggest themselves, but it would require more space than I feel
privileged to employ at a single writing to outline even the more interesting
of these. Perhaps your readers of this new department who are authors or
directors might aid with suggestions that may finally chart the courses for
all clearly--writers and directors.
Just now I am seeking manuscripts with, perhaps, a finer poetic appeal
than is generally considered the best market material at this post-war
period. I, personally, feel sure that human consciousness is at a stage when
no play or story can err that reflects the eternal sublimity of spiritual
truths. I do not mean religious truths, but that something that is the
mentor of every soul, that other person that is in every one of us, that
voice whose messages are conveyed to us often in actual words that come in
articulate whispers to our brains or our hearts, messages that direct our
steps, if we be receptive, to the higher things of the spirit rather than the
sordid desires of the flesh. No more dramatic character has been conceived
in all the writings of man than that of the Saviour. Dismissing absolutely
any relation that the Messiah may have to creeds, the story of this one Man's
sensitive understanding of the human heart and its countless vagaries, is and
must ever be the one great drama of all time. Transcendently beautiful in
all its aspects of pity, fortitude, sacrifice, patience, courage, who will
say that it did not inspire Hugo to give us that big and powerful modern
reflex of human life in its passage through life in the places and at the
times the French author circumstanced his characters? The story of Jesus is
a drama of suffering, a play of infinite appeal, with forgiveness, charity,
pity, humility, intermingled in its phases and with beauty of the tincture
that magically inspires all ennobling thoughts, ambitions and desires--its
guardian angel.
It is of plays that have an underlying understanding of the great
spiritual stratas that vibrate and quiver beneath the whole structure of
human kind that sincere directors speak when they say they are in need of
plays of spiritual appeal. The physical matter of the dramas they desire may
be as blood-curdling as the most sanguinary melodramatist may conceive, if
beneath this physical conflict will be found logically interwoven something
of man's pity for his fellow man, the right of every human creature to fair
shares in the world's happiness, the concession that to the humblest of God's
children may come moments of great exaltation, instances when Bill Sykes may
become divine in a spiritualizing of his love for Nancy, when the bishop in
the Hugo gallery of unfortunates reflected God himself in his tenderness for
the outcast who had robbed him.
Give us plays of the spirit as well as of the body, another "Bluebird,"
if you will, another "My Lady's Dress," another "Daddy Long Legs," another
"Prunella!"
Maurice Tourneur
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
September 13, 1919
Richard Willis
PICTURES AND PICTUREGOER
Visited Maurice Tourneur--looks rather like an enlarged version of late
Sydney Drew--distinguished looking, courteous, gentlemanly--appallingly
outspoken--says "don't give public all it asks for; educate it"--born in
Paris--directed and appeared in over four hundred speaking stage
productions--hard work--directed screen stories in Paris--came to America--
technique, methods, everything away ahead here...--great admirer of D. W.
Griffith--thinks Mary Pickford finest screen actress and Elsie Ferguson
brilliant artist--voracious reader--artist in oils and water-colours--
humorous and kindly--deplores present-day taste in photoplay--wishes he did
not have to study commercialism--loves his art--thinks nothing of money--
Maurice Tourneur--fine gentleman and credit to screendom.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
May 1920
Maurice Tourneur
SHADOWLAND
Meeting the Public Demands
Oliver Goldsmith once said, "The little mind which loves itself will
write and think with the vulgar; the great mind will be bravely eccentric,
and scorn the beaten road." Had Goldsmith been a present-day producer of
motion pictures he would probably never have spoken that line, for the mind
that tries to be eccentric and scorn the beaten road in pictures usually
leads the head in which it is contained to disaster.
Making pictures is a commercial business, the same as making soap and,
to be successful, one must make a commodity that will sell. We have the
choice between making bad, silly, childish and useless pictures, which make a
lot of money, and make everybody rich, or nice stories, which are practically
lost. No body wants to see them. The State right buyers wouldn't buy them;
if they did, the exhibitors wouldn't show them.
I remember how delighted I was when I read what the reviewers had to say
about my "The Blue Bird." Do you know, amongst the hundreds of exhibitors in
New York, how many showed it? To my knowledge Mr. Rothapfel and a few
fellows uptown.
Those of us who are familiar with the productions of the articulate
stage know very well that every time we go to see a show we sit before the
curtain in a thrill of anticipation, waiting for the magic moment to come,
feeling certain that we shall get an excitement of some sort or other. The
orchestra plays, the footlights go on and the curtains part.
But what do we see if it is the screen? A sneering, hip-wriggling,
cigarette-smoking vampire. She exercises a wonderful fascination upon every
man that is brought anywhere near her, and so far as I have been able to
judge, the only reason for this strange fascination is the combination of the
three attributes I have already mentioned. They are good enough to
apparently kill any man at fifty yards.
If it is not a vampire, it's a cute, curly-headed, sun-bonneted, smiling
and pouting ingenue. She also is full of wonderful fascination. She runs
through beautiful gardens, (always with the same nice back-lighting effects),
or the poor little thing is working under dreadful factory conditions that
have not been known for at least forty years. Torn between the sheer idiocy
of the hero and the inexplicable hate of the heavy, is it any wonder that her
sole communion is with the dear dumb animals, pigs, cows, ducks, goats--
anything so long as it can't talk.
If it is not either a vampire or an ingenue, it is a band of cowboys,
generous-hearted, impulsive souls. They never do a stroke of work; they
couldn't--they have not got time. They must be hanging around the saloon,
ready to spring into the saddle and rescue the heroine, whether she is a
telegraph operator or a lumberman's daughter, or a school-teacher up in the
mountains. I saw all that many times, but I have yet to see a cowboy looking
after a cow.
Next comes our old friend the convict. He is always innocent, but
unjustly imprisoned. Although the picture is one of today and the clothes of
everybody were bought last week, our unhappy convict's sole consolation is
the fact that he is able to wear striped clothing, abolished years ago. He
insists on wearing it; it is the one thing that reconciles him to the rigors
of the prison existence, from which he escapes so easily whenever he has a
mind to do so.
Another old friend is the screen doctor. Carrying always his little
black bag, he enters the room where the patient lies unconscious; he feels
the pulse, listens to the fluttering motions of the heart, and then one of
two things occurs. If the patient is a man, the doctor steps back from the
bed, takes off his hat and looks sadly at the floor. This indicates the
patient is dead. If the patient is a girl, more particularly if she is the
leading lady, he gives her a glass of water, and whether she fell from a
thirty foot cliff, was poisoned by the villain, shot in the back by a
Japanese spy or run over by the Lumberlands Express, she is instantly cured.
You would imagine that the doctor would express some sort of delight at such
a miracle, but he doesn't; he remains comparatively unmoved. It is only when
a patient dies that he develops an intensity of sympathetic grief such as he
would exhibit if the patient were his own twin brother. One thing is
certain; if many of his patients die, his own life will be seriously
endangered, a merely human constitution being unable to withstand many such
shocks. I could keep on describing types like those from now till the middle
of next week. Up to the present time the public has not seemed to realize
how bad the average picture is, because they have been rather fooled by the
fact that directors have introduced new lighting effects, by the personality
of the star and by tricks generally.
I would rather starve and make good pictures, if I knew they were going
to be shown, but to starve and make pictures which are thrown in the ash-can
is above anybody's strength. As long as the public taste will oblige us to
make what is very justly called machine-made stories, we can only bow and
give them what they want.
"Prunella" was one of my productions that the reviewers spoke of as an
artistic achievement. The first time I saw it shown to the public was in one
of the side-shows in Atlantic City. An automatic piano furnished the musical
score, which consisted of popular dance music. A week or so later it was
shown in one of the leading New York theatres with success, but the managers
of the smaller houses throughout the country considered it "too high brow"
for their patrons. "Broken Blossoms" was a very good picture, but suppose it
had been shown without the two Russian orchestras, the two prologues, and
about fifty thousand dollars' worth of publicity, who would have gone to see
it? Suppose Mr. Cecil De Mille made "The Admirable Crichton" as Barrie wrote
it, instead of putting on "Male and Female" as Mr. De Mille saw it, what
would have been the result? The picture wouldn't have made any money, which
is not so important, but it would not have been shown, and this is the main
thing to a producer, and to my mind it is going to be the greatest event of
next year.
The American producers will have to change entirely their machine-made
stories and come to a closer and truer view of humanity, or the foreign
market is going to sweep us out with their pictures, made in an inferior way,
but carried over by human, possible, different stories. I am not going to
elaborate on the mental anguish of the director who has been talked into
accepting a bad script that he knows is bad, because this has happened to me
four times out of five and I would rather not think about it, as it is too
painful and I remember only too vividly the feeling of gloom and depression
with which I have walked away with a script of this sort under my arm,
wondering how in the name of heaven I was going to live the next few weeks
without committing suicide, or what sort of new stunt I could invent to make
it get by.
Good stories are not only a necessity, but some day they will actually
come. The industry is founded on the firm basis of providing healthy
entertainment, and I look forward to the future with confidence. If anyone
wants to awake the sleeping beauty, I certainly do, but the poor lady has
been sleeping for so many years that at times it seems like an impossible
job.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
November 1920
Truman B. Handy
MOTION PICTURE
That Exotic Frenchman
Perhaps pictures will develop in the next two or three years more than
they have in the past three or four; perhaps the various obstacles that today
stand in the way of producers will be removed. Perhaps.
Maurice Tourneur, the man who has brought stagecraft into photoplay
production, although he says that the market is filled with worse plays at
the present time than it was two years ago, looks hopefully at the
silversheet, feels the public pulse, and refuses to prophesy. Prophesy is
mere speculation, and he emphatically says that he will not take a chance.
Wherefore, we shall deal with pictures as they are and have been--not as
they will be.
When Griffith produced "Judith of Bethulia" some years ago, says
Tourneur, he sold something that would not sell today. "Judith," "The Woman
God Forgot," "The Blue Bird," "The Birth of a Nation," combined the artistry
of their directors.
Today the same men, Griffith, De Mille and he himself, are putting
fourth romances of happy valleys, sporting lives, you-can't-have-everythings,
et al. But Tourneur believes--and says--that the public taste is not
lowered; the reasons are multitudinous mediums between the public, the
exhibitor and the producer. Why, he doesn't know, although to him the
mediums are potent.
"When we were working on a program we could make pictures as we wanted,"
he sighed. "Now we who are independent producers must consider our market;
we must regard the little exhibitor in the Bad Lands of Dakota as carefully
as we look to the various Sam Rothapfels of our biggest metropolis.
"The future? We shall have to do something--something to get out of the
rut. It is a rut. The new director will be a young man who will neglect
everything done by his predecessors. He will do things his own way; he will
take untrained actors and make a series of snapshots of them--he will work
with the kodak rather than the time-exposure camera. We shall notice a great
difference, a dissimilitude as great as that between the present-day war
pictures made in the Hollywood trenches and the real Pathe views of the
European battlegrounds."
Artificiality in plays today is one of the decadent reactions.
Contemporary screen love-making is a thing of public interest, pictorially
speaking, that takes place amidst the most sumptuous surroundings. Tourneur
looks forward to the day when love-making in pictures will take place as it
does in real life, away from the spotlight, in secluded corners, and not
always amid aesthetic surroundings. The director of the future will open the
doors and the windows and let the sunlight in.
With this preamble, permit me to introduce Maurice Tourneur, the man.
He is a big-hearted, generous Frenchman, perhaps in his late thirties, who
refuses to glimpse life through a pair of rose-colored spectacles held in
place by egotism. He has struggled from the depths of theatrical craft to a
leadership in the photoplay thought. His first days on the stage were spent
with a cheap French repertoire company on the outskirts of Paris, in which he
frequently played not only the butler who announced the guests but the guests
themselves. And received ninety francs, fifteen dollars, a month for the
performance of such domestic duties.
"It was the salary I asked for," he chuckled. "The director said to me,
'Can you get along on it?' and I said, 'Yes.' I didn't get along very well,
although I saved a little money. Things weren't expensive in those days and
I didn't have much to eat."
After a number of seasons in repertoire, each season with a better
company, he played with Rejane on her South American tour, and still later
with the great French director, Antoine. He has been making pictures in
America for five years, developing his ideas in each new release, making
practical his theories, and carrying out his convictions.
His record in this country reads like the tale of leading-ladies-whom-I-
have-loved-professionally, as his work has been with everyone from Emma Dunn
to Pauline Starke, including Elsie Ferguson, Petrova, Mary Pickford,
Marguerite Clark, the Binney sisters, Constance and Faire, and Alma Hanlon,
in such plays as "Mother," "Barbary Sheep," "The Rise of Jennie Cushing,"
"Rose of the World, ""The Butterfly on the Wheel," "Trilby," with Clara
Kimball Young and Wilton Lackaye, "The Whip," perhaps the most popular of the
earlier melodramas given to the screen, "Prunella," "The Blue Bird," "Woman,"
"My Lady's Garter," "White Heather," "Sporting Life," and "Treasure Island."
Legend has it that Tourneur is temperamental, a leader who drives with a
hard rein; that he is egotistical, that he is eccentric. Not at all.
Tourneur, when I saw him, was fearfully worried lest the Kliegs were too
bright for the leading lady's eyes, and that the "heavy's" beard would make
him a laughing-stock on the street. He looks and dresses like other normal
men, and he begged me profusely not to tell anything about him that wasn't
true. If he is either eccentric or egotistical, he leaves no such
impression.
Stories are his particular bete noire. In each he requires a great deal
of human sympathy, understandable psychology, and intense, quick action.
"Show the people anything, but show them something," he declares. "This
can be either funny or dramatic, but there must be something."
And at this juncture Tourneur proves something of an iconoclast. The
screen ought not to be a platform for the uplift of the masses, he told me.
Its forte is amusement, first, last and always.
"I do not believe in using the screen as a way of teaching; we have the
pulpit and the college. It may be a means of propaganda, but I do not intend
to use it as such. Never!"
He doesn't believe in the star system, and says no good story can be
built around a single gleaming personality, as there are no real "stars" in
real life. The most obscure man can in a moment become a so-called "star,"
afterward only to return to oblivion. The man who stops the runaway,
Tourneur tells, is the star of the moment. And after the incident,
typically, he is forgotten.
"And neither is anyone very good or bad," he remarked.
Tourneur works differently with his actors than any other director. He
tells them the story as he goes along and asks them to think for themselves.
When I saw him, the "set" was the gallery of a cheap London playhouse.
Dramatis personae, typical cockneys, and afterward he told me that the entire
effect was practically an exact reproduction of the theater and audience of
the little repertoire company on the outskirts of Paris.
I noticed particularly that he showed the effect on his audience of the
supposed drama on the stage below. But not the drama. This is his
particular fad. In none of his plays he has showed the subject of his
discussion, but always the suggestion. An assistant, crouched underneath the
camera, held in his hand a stick to the end of which there was tied a small
cloth doll. This he moved slowly in front of him as the supposed actors on
the stage below were likely to move in front of the footlights. The
"audience" followed the movement of the doll with their eyes, evincing more
or less signs of emotion.
"He's got a knife!" yelled the "heavy," wild-eyed, pointing to the doll.
"Shut up!" echoed an extra in the top row of the gallery.
By that method Tourneur will hold the attention of his audience in the
picture theater without showing an actual flash of the play within the play.
The suggestion is far more dramatic than the actuality, is his theory. In an
electrocution, for instance, he says that he would show everything but the
actual death in the chair--t
he warden, the empty cell, the chair, the
prisoner, the reporters making their notes--everything but the very thing.
Such a means gives the audience's mind a chance to work and every individual
will at once form his conception of the subject.
The director must be a psychologist who can fathom the mind of his
audience as well as of his actors. His duty does not consist in showing
artists their business, says Tourneur, and when he works with stars he does
not consider it necessary to teach them their work, nor they to instruct him
in his. He must create "atmosphere."
You can't tell a girl that she has lost her father and must emote over
the incident. With the noise of the carpenters, the sight of the bystanders
and the irregularity of the entire situation, she may be self-conscious.
Tourneur tries to talk her into the mood by explaining the situation and
suggesting the atmosphere. When she is emotionally in the right mood she
will do her scene, he says. If not, he will work with her until she has
grasped the meaning.
Nor can a director get results with his actors by thundering at them, he
insists. Some are self-conscious and will lose their heads if yelled at.
"Just tell them and the work is easy," is his motto.
"The whole motion picture business is our joy, our trouble," he remarked
philosophically. "We think, we talk of nothing else. Nothing else but our
work interests us. If we make money, it is all right--that is, if we believe
in picture standards and have ideals to guide us. Personally, if I don't
make money on this picture or that, I shall try again. We are all in
business to succeed, to make the most of what we can.
"Only now since I am in America, am I getting to know what money is and
how to have a good time. We owe all this to Mr. Griffith.
"Whatever new effects we try to get, we discover that Mr. Griffith made
them before we did. Without him we should not be where we are, riding in
limousines and talking in terms of sunken gardens and fine homes. Griffith
has invented everything in our business. I can't see a thing he hasn't done.
"It's a shame we use the screen the way we do. When I see that
beautiful white sheet I realize all the lovely things that we haven't done.
We have no limitations as to production, funds, nor as to ideals. And still
we do continue to see cowboys loitering around bars, and vampires smoking
cigarettes. We have been falsified so many times and from so many sources
that it is a lifelong task to live down the effect."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 1922
Maurice Tourneur
PHOTOPLAY
[from an article discussing whether New York or Los Angeles is better
suited for film production]
From the material standpoint of facilities, costs, climate and the like
there is no comparison; Los Angeles is vastly superior. I have always
regarded New York's theaters, its music, its arts, its hustle and bustle, its
noise and clamor and color, its startling cosmopolitanism, as a most valuable
mental stimulant. I honestly consider that bigger things artistically could
and would be done were the industry more largely centered in New York and
more productions made there. New York's intellectual circles preclude any
possibility of cerebral staleness. They awaken new ideas and revive lagging
ambitions. London, Paris and Vienna are like that.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
February 4, 1923
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
Motion Pictures Should Be Impressionistic--Tourneur
Maurice Tourneur was originally a French actor who played in Paris with
Rejane and other French actresses, but is now ranked among the ablest
directors in the country. That is why Goldwyn selected him to make its
screen version of Sir Hall Caine's "The Christian," which will be the feature
at the Capitol Theatre next week. That, also, is why what Mr. Tourneur has
to say about motion pictures and the new tendencies in their development is
worth hearing.
Mr. Tourneur is keenly interested in mental action in films--in getting
psychological effects instead of physical action.
"I heard a good deal of discussion to the effect that we were going to
photograph 'The Christian' in its natural settings in England for the sake of
'realism', said Mr. Tourneur recently. "That to my mind is not the important
thing at all. I believe we have passed through the period of physical
conflict and crowds, so far as the screen is concerned. What we are after
now is the psychology of the drama--the mental action of the characters.
"Realism has been emphasized too much. I think that most of us would
prefer to see Africa through the eyes of the artist, than through the prosaic
lens of the camera. The impression is the thing.
"There is such a thing as overdoing beauty in settings. A pretty
background is all right, but the background should never be allowed to
interfere with the dramatic action. The action should overshadow all else.
Pictures must get away from being merely tales portrayed against pretty
backgrounds.
"The screen is a better medium than the dramatic stage for getting over
psychological effects. We can drive ideas across. For instance, what better
way is there to express corruption than to show a close-up of the check with
which a man has bribed. It takes much longer to put over a mental state like
that in words.
"The Goldwyn company agreed with me that you can get more to the
spectators by showing a banging shutter, by indicating the howling of the
wind, or the shrieking of a woman, than by numberless words. Motion
pictures, first of all, should be impressionistic.
"No artist thinks of his public. If the public likes the results--
great! If the public doesn't like the results--too bad, but all right!
Better luck next time. Perhaps you have found in your own experience that
you can't reach any measure of real success if you are trying to please any
one except yourself. It's the same old story that if you wish to meet a
woman or a man favorably, you generally do the wrong thing and make a bad
impression.
"'Let 'em come to you,' is the best motto. Do your best and see what
happens. That's what the artist has to do."
Mr. Tourneur's attitude on background comes as a surprise, particularly
as he has enjoyed an enviable reputation for the beautiful "composition" of
his photodramas. And there is extra food for thought in his statements that
"we in pictures now are conveying subtle states of mind," and that "there is
no sense in sacrificing reality for mere beauty of sets."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
July 1, 1923
Maurice Tourneur
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
Next Generation Will See The Great Motion Pictures
The present generation will never see the really great motion pictures.
The difference in film entertainment a hundred years from now will be as
great as that between the present aeroplane and the ox cart mode of
transportation of the past, is my contention.
We are too close to the pioneering stage of the motion picture to
develop its subtleties. We of this generation have been clearing away the
brush, felling trees, blasting out stumps and carting away boulders. We are
preparing the soil. With the next generation will come the cultivation of
the really fine things on the screen.
The most distinctive evolution in motion pictures will be in the
"language" of the pictures or their method of telling a story. The picture
of the future will suggest rather than depict. An indication of this is had
already. A man leaves his home and goes to his office. We show him today
with his arms about his wife at the door. Then in his office dictating to a
stenographer. When pictures were new we would have shown him running down to
the curb, stepping into his automobile, riding, with trees, homes and
telegraph poles flashing by, then with business houses appearing through the
automobile window, alighting from his car, getting into the elevator, hanging
his hat on the rack, opening the door with his name lettered on it, calling
to his stenographer and then the dictation scene to which we jump now.
Pictures ultimately will jump with the abruptness of present day
cartoons. For instance, Jiggs contradicting Maggie. In the next drawing
Jiggs on the sidewalk with a black eye and stars rotating around his head.
You don't see him hit, but you know what has happened.
Just as the pioneers of this country were in the main occupied with
building their homes and developing the soil for the present generation which
has developed the finer inventions now common in municipal life, so are we of
the motion pictures merely preparing the way for the real things to be
portrayed on the screen by the coming generation.
But I want to call attention to the fact that certain producing
organizations are stifling the progress of the motion picture by taking away
from directors various responsibilities and lessening the importance of the
director in motion picture production.
This practice among some of the larger producing organizations disclosed
in recent months of buying stories, adapting them to scenario form, casting
the picture and building the sets before the director is engaged is one that
will do more to block the progress of motion pictures if it is allowed to
continue than anything else.
Among one or two big companies the director is having less and less to
say about the pictures he makes. In one instance, a fortune was paid for a
story, an expensive cast was engaged and work on the building of tremendous
sets actually started before the director was engaged. Then a director of
doubtful talents was placed "in charge" of the picture.
Evidence of giving the director less and less to say about the selection
of stories, the casting of pictures and the building of sets is had daily.
But wonderful pictures from large organizations are very much the exception.
Big organizations can maintain a certain average quality of production, but
they cannot create the real masterpieces that mark progress in the march of
the photoplay.
Pictures, the kind that mean something to the industry, are the works of
individuals who are solely responsible for all phases of production. The big
achievements of Griffith, the late George Loane Tucker, Neilan, Ingram and
others of prominence in the producing field embody the execution of the
creative ideas of individuals and not the dictatorial conglomerations of
large organizations. These men are allowed--in fact, they demand--free rein.
In this manner only can pictures reach a higher average of merit. A review
of film history clearly proves this.
Organizations which endeavor to relieve the director of all the most
important responsibilities of his job are blocking the path of progress.
Such organizations may turn out a fair average product and keep the standard
of production where it is today. They will never be conducive to progress.
The motion picture cannot stay where it is. If it does not progress, it must
stagnate.
On the shoulders of the director should rest the full responsibilities
of a production. To relieve him of any of these responsibilities and to
compel him to confine his efforts to adapting himself to the ideas of a half
dozen "experts" will strike at the very foundation of successful pictures.
If allowed to continue the motion picture both from artistic and financial
standpoints will promptly start on its downward path in public favor.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
October 14, 1923
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
American Public Wants Types, Not Facts,
Says Film Director
Los Angeles, Oct. 8.--The American public demands "types," It has a
standardized conception of the farmer, the banker, the Western sheriff, and
scores of other characters, a conception which it will not allow facts to
alter.
So Maurice Tourneur told Samuel Guard, of the American Farm Bureau
Federation, in an open letter this week, when Guard challenged the screen
depiction of the farmer. Complaints that film producers have "failed" to
depict farmers, but prefer to picture them as "hicks and rubes," Mr. Guard
declared in a statement at a federation convention that its publicity
division would produce its own pictures unless the farmer was given justice.
Tourneur's reply has given wide publicity in newspapers here which
published Guard's original statement. Pete Smith, Tourneur's press
representative, saw to that.
The letter follows:
"The American public demands types. It recognizes a farmer as a farmer
only when he chews a straw, wears jeans and chin whiskers. It wants a Texas
sheriff to wear a sombrero with a six-inch brim, not a derby, as one of my
acquaintance does.
"You are quoted in a news dispatch from Chicago in this morning's Los
Angeles Times, a dispatch doubtless printed in hundreds of other newspapers
as saying that 'the farm is modern and up-to-date, with all the conveniences
of the city, but the film producer has woefully neglected to keep pace with
the farmer. They fail to depict us as citizens, but prefer to picture us as
hicks and rubes. We don't want this kind of caricature before the public,
and if the motion picture interests won't picture rural life and districts as
they should be, we intend to produce our own pictures.'
"That, sir, would be a financial mistake, from which I hope I can save
you by two statements of fact. The first is, no propaganda film has ever
returned enough to repay the cost of making. The second is, if you can show
us how to make a financially successful motion picture depicting rural life
without introducing into it characters which picture fans will instantly
recognize as rural characters, I shall be only too happy to do so.
"No American bankers that I have met wear frock clothes to business.
Yet the public would not recognize a banker without a silk hat and frock
coat. I have lived most of my life in France. I never shrug my shoulders.
I gesticulate no more, I dare say, than you. But if I were depicting a
Frenchman on the screen I would both shrug and gesticulate frequently.
"Gypsies, today, I found during several weeks of visiting Southern
California camps, travel in motors and live in tents. Some of them even have
gasoline stoves and hot water flowing from the tank through a faucet. But
when I filmed a gypsy story, 'Jealous Fools,' his Summer, I pictured a band
of them living in the wagon; tradition says they do. Gypsies in a motor
would not have been accepted by the motion picture public.
"Life as it exists in the imagination of the American public is not life
as it is lived, but it is the life that must be pictured for the public's
entertainment, whether in a novel or a newspaper, on the stage or on the
screen.
"Every man with an income of more than $5,000 a year and who habitually
wears a white collar, is a clubman in the newspapers, particularly if he is
involved in a scandal. Every feminine member of his family more than fifteen
years old is a society girl and beautiful in the same circumstances.
"All newspaper reporters carry notebooks, all Englishmen wear spats and
a monocle, all Southerners besprinkle their conversations with "you-all" on
the stage. All detectives carry caps and false whiskers in their pockets;
all farmers' daughters have the purity of the lily and a complexion like a
rose petal; all chorus girls live in great luxury and sell their charms to
the highest bidder--in novels.
"Do sailors really have a sweetheart in every port? Do all policemen
have big, flat feet? In how many barber shops have you ever heard a barber
shop chord? Is a manicure girl necessarily naughtier than a milkmaid?
"If you still object to chin-whiskered farmers who lift their feet high
enough to step over the stubble as they walk, come to Los Angeles, and within
Twenty-four hours I will have summoned, through a motion picture employment
bureau, a hundred men who have spent their whole lives on farms, who do wear
chin whiskers and do step high.
"Although California farmers, as a class, are the wealthiest in the
country, I will take you to a score of farms within fifty miles of Los
Angeles which have no water supply, except the barnyard pump, no light except
that from an oil lamp, no automobiles, tractors or other modern machinery;
farms on which the owner owns no clothes, except those on his back, where the
barn is bigger and more substantial than the house."
(signed) "Maurice Tourneur."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
November 25, 1923
NEW YORK TELEGRAPH
Shorter Feature Pictures Coming Back,
Says Tourneur
That shorter feature productions will come back into favor among
producers as a result of the present condition of the producing industry is
the contention of Maurice Tourneur, following a survey of producing and
exhibiting conditions.
"The present slump in the producing industry has proved to film
executives that it is a fallacy to make a so-called special production for
the sake of achieving a physically big picture," says the director.
"Splendor, tremendous sets and long footage will never prove good sales
points to either the exhibitor or the public in the distribution of pictures.
"A number of recent illustrations of this have been evident. The moving
about of the characters of a story amidst towering sets as so many chess men
is not sufficient to hold public interest. Big sets must have a reason for
being in the picture aside from the belief that they offer an excuse for
higher film rentals and higher admission prices.
"Many of the 'big' pictures released in recent months in nine, ten or
more reels could not only have been told as effectively in six or seven
reels, but better.
"Excessive footage is the enemy of the theatre owner. It is the
picture's downfall as far as the public is concerned. Harold Lloyd's five-
reelers will make more money than most ten-reelers. It's not the length of
the production, but what's in it, that counts. There are some few stories
that are best told in ten reels, but these are mighty scarce.
"A favorite remark among those identified with the production of a
recent super-film (as to length and settings) was 'It has bigger sets than
"Robin Hood."' This is a phrase that started on the lot and was carried on
through the organization and to theatre owners by the salesmen of the
company. The sets did look larger than those in the Fairbanks picture, but
'Robin Hood' continues a tremendous success, not because of its spectacular
effects, but because the other production is a failure.
"Since my affiliation with M. C. Levee in the production of First
National pictures we have enforced a definite policy of telling our stories
in six or seven reels. This policy has saved us from making the mistakes
that have led others into trouble. It is my belief that this policy will be
general in the producing industry within the next two months."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
1924
Maurice Tourneur
THE TRUTH ABOUT HOLLYWOOD
Why Motion Pictures Reach Greater Artistic Heights Than The Stage
When motion pictures first became a commercial possibility in length
longer than two reels, the leaders of the industry naturally turned to the
stage to recruit their actors, directors and technicians. The first motion
picture of feature length was really a motion picture of stage plays. Their
interiors were identical to those used on the stage. The added advantage was
in being able to show what went on behind the scenes, which, on the stage,
was explained by the spoken word. Particularly were they able to photograph
their exteriors in the actual settings in which the plot was laid. This
added the element of realism.
The settings used on the stage at that time were not very different from
those used today. In other words, the stage has not made very great strides
in the direction of realism. In comparison with the strides made by motion
pictures, it has practically stood still.
Nowadays, when we have the opportunity to see some of the pictures made
long ago, it is a source of great merriment. To think that when the villain
came blustering into the room covered with paper snow and slammed the door,
the entire scene would rock back and forth, is amusing. If the pictures were
not painted on the walls they might fall off or assume weird angles. In one
of the older pictures, I remember a bit of realism injected by using the limb
of a tree projected through a back drop on which was painted a tree. When
the scene was photographed, the man holding the limb of the tree would sway
it back and forth. Today, those in the motion picture business look at such
things in amazement. They have progressed tremendously toward greater
realism and they have only begun.
Before I returned West to begin production on a new picture I had the
opportunity to visit the principal current stage attractions in New York.
The one thing that impressed me most was their lack of progress in settings.
It seems unbelievable that, in this day and age, we should still see framed
pictures painted on the back drop. Yes, and even windows, doors and
furniture treated in the same manner. Paper snow and rain that looked as if
it were being poured from a sprinkling can by a stage hand. Food cooked on
the stove heated by red electric lights and no steam coming from the pots on
the stove. Property food and water in the tea and coffee pots, are only some
of the things I might mention. In one scene, the setting shook as if it were
about to fall down when the door was closed a bit more vigorously than
planned. It reminded me of the first motion pictures.
These are minor details but they keep the audience reminded that they
are watching an unreal performance. If we should attempt to do such things
in motion pictures today, we would never hear the end of it.
The motion picture industry from the prop man to the star is constantly
working to improve itself. The theatre has been content to rest where it was
ten years ago.
The result is that motion pictures have reached greater artistic heights
than the stage and will continue on--years in advance of the stage.
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