An amusing incident of studio life that might be seen by a visitor any day in the week with the moral “Never be shocked by anything you see in a motion picture studio”
Chapter VI
No better illustration of the value of Mr. De Mille's foregoing remarks can be found than in the case of Charles Chaplin. Mr. Chaplin as well as being the world's greatest comedian, also directs his pictures.
Suppose that Mr. Chaplin decided to rehearse in every part of his picture so that his supporting players might pattern his performances after his. The completed product would show: One good Charles Chaplin and a dozen bad imitations of Charles Chaplin.
Mr. Chaplin has imitators enough without going to the trouble of bringing them right into his own pictures.
Incidentally the task that confronts the actor-director is extraordinarily difficult. He not only is obliged to face the lights in makeup and drop his own personality in the role he is playing but he must also be able to see his own work from behind the camera, to retain his perspective from this angle of the production as well as from the acting angle.
His is thus a twice difficult task and perhaps for this reason there are few surviving actor-directors. In the old days there used to be loads of them but the pictures were then too much actor and not enough director.
Besides Charles Chaplin only a few survive today, prominent among them being William S. Hart and Charles Ray and it may be said that each of these stars has done his best work when directed by someone else. When they essay the dual task of acting and directing they pay too little attention to the supervision of the entire production and concentrate too largely on their own performances.
Despite this criticism of the actor-director and the cry against directors showing their players how to perform a scene no one can deny that a knowledge of acting, or rather a knowledge of how to act, comes in very handy from the director's point of view.
A little over a year ago I happened to visit one of the large eastern studios when John S. Robertson, probably one of the most competent men in the production craft was working there. Mr. Robertson has years of acting on the stage behind him. He played in stock for a long period and knows every role in every play of importance produced over a period of considerable years.