In each you can find the same blazing white or greenish-blue lights, with their tangled cables like snakes underfoot, the same kind of complicated “sets” on various stages, the same nonchalant camera men chewing gum and cranking unconcernedly away while the director implores the leading lady with tears in his voice—and perhaps even a megaphone at his mouth—to: “Now see him! On the floor at your feet! Stare at him! Now down—kneel down! Now touch him! Touch him again, as if you were afraid of him! Now quicker—feel of him! Feel of him! He’s DEAD!”
Suppose we step inside the door of a typical motion-picture studio. We find ourselves in a little ante-room, separated by a railing from larger offices beyond. The place seems like a sort of cross between an employment office and the outer office of some big business enterprise. At one point there is a little barred cashier’s window like that at a bank. There is usually an attendant at a desk or window marked “Information,” with one or two office boys, like “bell-hops” in a hotel, to run errands.
Coming and going, or waiting on benches along the walls, are a varied assortment of people: a young woman with a good deal of rouge on her cheeks and a wonderful coiffure of blonde hair, an old man with a wrinkled face and long whiskers, a couple of energetic-looking young advertising men, and a chap with big hoot-owl spectacles and a flowing tie who wants to get a position as scenario writer. In the most comfortable chair a fat man, with eyeglasses astride a thick curved nose, is waiting to see the general manager, and fretting at being detained so long.
A very pretty girl comes into the office with a big collie dog on a leash, as a motor purrs away from the door outside. One of the boys like bell-hops jumps to open the inner door for her, and she sails on through without even a glance around. She is one of the minor stars, with a salary of about six hundred dollars a week. The collie is an actor, too: he is on the pay-roll at $75 a week—and worth every dollar of it to the pictures.
At one side is the office of the “casting director,” who passes on the various “types,” hires the “extras,” and decides whether or not this or that actor or actress is a real “trouper” who can fill the bill. Into this office the army of “extra people” who make a precarious living picking up a day’s work here and there around the studios as “atmosphere” gradually find their way; here the innumerable applicants for screen honors come to be looked over, and given a try, or turned away with a shake of the head, and perhaps a single comment such as “eyes won’t photograph well—too blue”; here the many experienced actors, temporarily out of work, come to be greeted by: “Hello, Harry! You’re just the bird I wanted to see! Got a great little part for you in an English story; older brother—sort of half-heavy”; or: “Sorry, Mame—not a thing to-day. Try us next week. We’ll probably begin casting for ‘Wheels of Fate’ about Friday.”
Courtesy Goldwyn Pictures Corporation.
Applying the Mysteries of “Make-Up.”
A veteran actor building a beard, bit by bit, with a surgeon’s artery-holding apparatus, an orange-stick, spirit gum, wool-carder, and a fine comb.
