Josef von Sternberg

*

ACTING
IN
FILM
AND
THEATRE

“THE MANAGER: Not at all. Your soul, or whatever you like to call it, takes shape here. The actors give body and form to it, voice and gesture. And my actors—let me tell you—have given expression to much better material than this little drama of yours, which may or may not hold up on the stage. But if it does, its merit, believe me, will be due to my actors.

THE FATHER: I don’t dare contradict you, sir; but it is torture for us who are as we are, with these bodies of ours, to see those faces. . .

THE MANAGER: (Cutting him short and out of patience) Good heavens! The make-up will remedy all that, the make-up. . .” —PIRANDELLO

THE RICE FIELDS of Java remain in my eyes as if I had been there yesterday. Standing in the center of these lovely green stretches furrowed with quiet water are the most interesting scarecrows that can be found on earth. High over the rice on bamboo stilts is a palmleaf-covered hut and long strings with hundreds of tiny bells reach from it to the far corners of these plantations. When the birds come for the rice, a graceful Javanese woman lazily stretches out a shining copper hued arm and frightens the birds away with an eerie tinkle.

The actor is the opposite of a scarecrow—it is his function to attract. The easiest way to attract is to be beautiful. Arnold Schoenberg’s wife once said to me with a good measure of unnecessary passion: “How can a person think and not engrave the face with ugly wrinkles?” Though this is far-fetched, it may not be entirely without foundation. It is not particularly necessary to think deeply, but it is, perhaps, superfluous for a handsome person to think deeply. Fortunately, the ability of an actor to think is not subjected to the same strain as his appearance.

The sing-song girl, wheeled in a festively lighted jinricksha through the streets of China, has a simple task. The girls who live on flower boats have a simpler task. They are not required to sing or to move. Not always is entertainment expressed in this primitive form. The rice-powdered geisha in Japan is many steps higher and often has achieved enough grace and intelligence to make her charm and wit the prime essentials. The theatre tries to make use of all these values. Generally speaking, the original attraction of the theatre was carnal rather than intellectual, and is still so today.

But no matter how beautiful men or women may be, they rarely are content to live by looks alone, and the theatre has witnessed interesting combinations of beauty and intelligence. Beauty alone has little lasting effect and so, because of the necessity to interpret elements other than empty beauty, the stage accumulated many who were forced to combine a portion of brain with a portion of beauty.

Though the balance to date is strongly in favor of good looks only, we can observe side by side with it old age and ugliness. This would not be tolerated on the stage without compensating qualities. And we often find those who have grown old with countenances so noble that we know their possessors have worked hard to remove every trace of cheap sentiment. Even when an actor has an apparently repulsive face, his features, on closer inspection, have a baseness of classic quality; and in the ugliest faces are found twinkling eyes determined to present their masks relentlessly to portray the basest instincts for critical inspection.

Trained memories that know the classics, ability to simulate age or youth at a moment’s notice, joy and grief projected by precise control of feeling, personal suffering forgotten to portray impersonal happiness; a vast army of actors and actresses lurk in every cultural center to carry out the innermost thoughts of dramatists, to whom few, if any, human impulses have remained secret. What sort of human being is this actor and how does he differ from those who form his audience?

The most essential qualification in an actor must be not to conceal himself but to show himself freely. All those things which move the engine of our life and which we do our best to conceal are those the actor must do his best to show. What we are most ashamed to acknowledge he does his utmost to accent. No corner is dark enough for us to hide our love, no stage is bright enough for him to display it. The idea of killing inspires us with horror—it fills the actor with celestial delight to hold a dagger or pistol in his hand. Death to us is not pleasant, but no actor I have ever known fails to relish the idea of showing the agonies of abandoning life, gasp by gasp. His life begins when the eyes of others are leveled at him, it ends when he exits from the stage. He is helpless in the face of flattery and dreams of applause when he shuts his eyes at night. He prefers being hissed to being ignored, and his private life can be an unpleasant break in his design for living.

These traits have been registered for many centuries, and often with little affection. Lucian writes in the year 122: “Take away their mask and tinseled dress, and what is left over is ridiculous!” Hazlitt in 1817: “It is only when they are themselves that they are nothing. Made up of mimic laughter and tears, passing from the extremes of joy or woe at the prompter’s call, they wear the livery of other men’s fortunes; their very thoughts are not their own.”

A doctor I knew had many contacts with actors and told me that when he was much younger he had been constantly puzzled by finding symptoms of claustrophobia every time he was called in to treat an actor.

Claustrophobia is the fear of being confined in a closed room. He mentioned this to Sigmund Freud. Freud took the doctor by the shoulders and shook him like a puppy when he was asked why every actor had this phobia, and roared that everyone with claustrophobia becomes an actor.

It is related that when Sir Henry Irving heard that another actor was going to play Hamlet he exclaimed: “Good God! How does he know he won’t do himself a grievous physical injury!” I should like to add that the audience, too, can be badly hurt.

Acting is not the memorizing of lines while wearing a disguise, but the clear reconstruction of the thoughts that cause the actions and the lines. This is not easy. In the finest sense of the word, the actor is not only an interpreter, and not only a carrier of ideas that originate in others, but himself can be (though not without difficulty) a good creative artist. He is the mechanic who can take the word of the playwright and the instructions of the director and fuse the two with all the complicated elements of which he himself is composed to give fluent voice to inspiring ideas, with an effect so strong that one is impressed with the meaning of even the simplest word. It is his function at his best to tear emotion and mind apart and put them together again in orderly condition.

The actor also can take the loftiest sentiment and make it ridiculous, and he can take what apparently is an absurd idea and with it illuminate the most obscure problem. He can give us clear sight instead of darkness as readily as a flash of lightning can show what the deepest night contains. He can portray sin for us in its ugliest form and can purge any evil desire by depicting the brutality of the criminal and his tormented history. He offers us breathless excitement and thrill, no less strong because it is vicarious. He can take our thoughts into his body, and return them safe and sound when the curtain falls.

He makes us laugh at human stupidity, and though we prefer not to recognize ourselves, we always notice the resemblance to a neighbor. He can make us howl at the most powerful king, and make us respect a fool.

He can make the ugliest qualities attractive by investing them with charm and grace, and he can take a fine sentiment and deliver it to be absurd.

Those who sometimes stand in the snow and rain to see a tired actor, divested of his trappings and paint, come hurrying out of the stage door, may or may not know that this exhausted animal has just pulled out of himself energy enough to swim the English Channel. But there are some enthusiasts who have sensed that it can be as heroic to struggle with brain and nerves as it is to conquer the elements and have been so responsive that they have carried the actor for miles on their shoulders to his home. They still do that to bull-fighters when the bull-fighter succeeds in making vivid the qualities of skill and courage. But a maddened bull is easy to see. Not so easy to perceive is the problem of the actor.

Life itself may often teach us little except discouragement, pettiness, and care, and we are grateful to those who recall our ideals and inspire courage and give us new and unsuspected strength. The actor can make us walk out of a theatre with determination to conquer our fears, and he can empty our bag of troubles as if we were newly born. The actor can make us aware of the beauty of something we have seen every day and until now thought ugly—he can make us feel as if we have never before really seen a human being, but he can also make us feel as if we never want to see another.

Some of us are partial to the idea that all the world’s a stage with exits and entrances, but for the moment, I confine myself to the man or woman who is professionally known as an actor or actress, and who is paid for it, sometimes with bags of gold, though more often with copper pennies. The pay that an actor receives is not a measure of his worth and many a strutter, making as much noise as a sack full of tin cans, has become rich. The acquisition of wealth is a study in itself. Were quality valued according to income, the armament profiteer would be the greatest actor. One of the startling tragedies in our profession was caused by paying an actor ten thousand dollars a week and not permitting him to act at all.

I have known many actors and actresses. Some of them were good and some of them were bad, but among the good ones I often found many despicable traits and, among the worst, fine qualities. I don’t believe that actors are essentially different from others, nor that they all get on a stage, nor that they all remain actors. I do believe that they seek exposure more than others, and that a lack of self-esteem drives them to solicit praise and applause. The key to this behavior is the same as the key to the behavior of others—it is to be found in the first few helpless years of life.

Since I cannot discuss the great actors who were before my time, my observations must be based on those whom I have myself witnessed. I did see Sarah Bernhardt both on the stage and in films, but only when she was old and crippled, and I have seen all those reputed to be great since. Not always was I impressed. I have been moved and inspired by many lesser-known actors and actresses on hundreds of different stages in many corners of the world. But rarely, if ever, have I been inspired or moved by a performer in the films, though I may have been impressed by the film itself.

There is a very important technical reason for this. On the stage an actor is sent out before an audience on his own, though he may be instructed to the hilt. But, once in front of the footlights, he must establish his own contact with the audience and build a continuity of action and thought. The destiny of his performance is in his own hands.

He can gauge the response of the audience clearly—or at least not disregard its testimony easily. He would be a fool to ignore the fact that an intended joke fails to gain response or that an exaggerated gesture is greeted with tittering. (I do not rule out the possibility that fools fail to achieve success.) He is the boss of his own body and of his own mind, knows without any doubt the direction from which he is being watched and himself relays directly everything he thinks and feels to the audience.

All this is not the case in motion pictures. Though the photographed actor is popularized and reproduced so that he can be adored in Bombay, as well as in Milwaukee, and, unlike the actor in the flesh, can appear in both places at the same time, this is accomplished by a mechanism which does not confine itself to multiplication alone. This mechanism not only distributes the actor like popular dolls turned out wholesale, but it actually makes those dolls look as if they could move and speak by themselves. A child, a shark or a horse is made to act the same way as a great actor—easier, as a matter of fact, since they do not resist so much. But whether children, animals, or actors, they are invested with an intelligence that apparently stems from them. In film cartoons, when a tail-wagging duck goes into action, the audience knows at once that behind it there is someone that causes it to move and squawk. When the ventriloquist takes a puppet out of a box, it also is accepted as a unit of intelligence, but the audience is not for a moment deceived about its being a dummy, though it may not care whether it is or not. But when a film actor, who undergoes much more manipulation than a duck or dummy, begins to function, he is judged, praised and condemned, even by our best critics, on the basis of being a self-determining and self-contained human being. This is not so. Actors are usually tricked into a performance not too dissimilar from the process employed by Walt Disney or Edgar Bergen.

In films we have a large assortment of actors with a variety of looks and talent, but they are as powerless to function alone as is the mechanical dummy before he is put on his master’s lap and has the strings pulled that move head and jaw. I doubt if many are intensely interested in the mechanism that moves an actual dummy, and it is possible that no one is interested in the strings which move the stars of our day, but I am going to discuss the strings anyway, though they are tangled up badly, pulled by many, and laboriously concealed, after the movements have been made.

Though not wishing to imply that the result may be favorable, it is possible for the actor on the stage to select his material and to appear directly to the audience without any distortion of purpose. But this is impossible in films. Here a complicated machine extracts an essence from the actor, over which the actor has no control. He can be superior to another in proportion to his personal superiority, but his ultimate importance is regulated by manipulators who demand and receive a pliability which, given graciously, results in his advancement, and given reluctantly, causes him to be discarded.

In Paris, the artists lovingly employ a phrase of Cezanne’s “Le bon Dieu est dans le détail.” May that be my justification for going into detail, even where detail may be unpopular. The more I ponder on the problems of the artist, the less they resemble the problems of the actor.

Though the actor in the theatre and in films is interchangeable, and can even be active in both media at the same time, there are some generally observable distinctions. On the film stage, in contrast to the theatre, the actor rarely knows where the audience is going to be nor usually cares. Often three cameras are aimed at him from three different directions. He can note (to his surprise) a camera leveled at him from ten feet above and a camera looking at him from the ground, both from opposite directions and both recording his movements simultaneously. If he communicates with the camera attendant, he can persuade him to define what parts of his person will be included. He, himself, can never judge whether he is close or if his whole body is seen, since the determining factor is not his distance from the camera, but the focal length of the lens used.

His face is so enlarged that its features may no longer be viewed without discomfort. An inadvertent light can make his nose look like a twisted radish, or it can completely obliterate the expression of his eyes, which usually is a mercy. Though the actor normally is made to look better than he is, the bad use of a lens or the camera placed at a bad angle can produce an effect over which he has no control.

His voice can be garbled beyond recognition by the sound apparatus (unfortunately, it usually is only reproduced), and he can be made voiceless by the dangling microphone swinging in a direction in which he cannot aim his words.

No accumulation of emotion or continuity of thought is easy, if at all possible, to the film actor, as the technique of making a film is such that it sometimes requires the player to enter his house from the street three months after he made the street scene, though afterwards the action on the screen takes place in sequence. The exigency of film production may require the street scene to be taken on the sixth day of October and the scene of the house which we see him enter a second later on the fifth of January the following year. (That shrewd arrangement is called a schedule.) The actor has the most extraordinary difficulty in remembering what sort of necktie he wore three months ago, without adding to his concern exactly what he thought or felt. Notes and drawings on the pattern and color of his necktie help a little.

If he is a genius and gifted with great memory, even then he is at the mercy of the instructions given him by whoever happens to be the most convincing person around. The most convincing person is usually the property-man, the script-girl, his servant, or the boy who measures the distance of his nose from the camera.

I have been asked often why it is necessary to be disconnected in the making of a film. Why cannot a film be taken in continuity so that the distressed actor will know precisely what he is doing? Aside from the fact that there is rarely room enough to put up all the sets at once, or to construct, let us say, a replica of a street to connect with the house which the actor must enter, a film takes from four weeks to an occasional six months to complete. It usually takes an hour and a half to show the finished work. Somewhere in this loss of time you will find the reason for not making a film in continuity. It takes time to build sets, to place the camera and the lights, and to instruct the actors, though this last function is considered wasteful by all but a few directors.

No longer a new medium, the film has absorbed countless men who have attempted to find better ways to good results, and uninterrupted continuity of action has been found too difficult. The actor in motion pictures, as on the stage, is told what to do, but there is no dress rehearsal before an audience, nor a collective tableau to give him any indication that he has been told the right thing. Only the finished product reveals that—and then clearly.

But the finished product is not finished with the actor, but with a pair of scissors. These are flourished afterwards by someone who has little idea (usually none) of what was originally intended and he can remove the most precious word from the mouth of the actor or eliminate his most effective expression. This posthumous operator, known as a cutter, literally cuts the actor’s words and face. He can make a stutterer speak rapidly and a person of slow thought think quickly. He can also reverse that process and does not hesitate to do this often. He can change the tempo and the rhythm of the actor’s walk and his purpose. He can retain pieces of the performance which the actor fails to consider essential because at that moment he was no longer acting, but thinking of lunch; and with an easy snip of the shears, he can destroy the one expression the actor valued most—or the phrase he thought would make him immortal.

He can retain pieces which make hands and legs look like slabs of blubber (physical distortions are less ridiculous than mental ones), and he can cause the most thoughtless women in the world to think by retaining parts of her anatomy that she planned to conceal.

Not only does the cutter cut, but everyone who can possibly contact the film, even including the exhibitor who is to show it, has plans and often the power to alter the film. Actually were each one permitted to exercise his genius for improving a film, nothing would be left but the title, and that is usually debated, too, until the night before the film is shown.

Far from being responsible for his own performance, the actor cannot even be quite certain that the final result will not disclose the use of a double or even a voice which is not his. In any form of physical danger, usually featured in the motion picture, the actor is replaced by someone who is supposed to look like him, and though the actor often is willing to take the physical risks himself (rather than the mental ones), the producer is not so willing since a bodily injury means delay. As for the voice, he may for some reason be unable to sing, or what is more common, be unable to talk.

I have myself replaced the voices of many actors with their own voices from other scenes and in many cases have replaced their voices with the voices of other actors, thereby using the voice of one man and the face of another. Though this is not usual, it can always be done and is to be recommended. (The ideal film will be a synthetic one.)

In An American Tragedy, I replaced the voice of the man who played the important part of the judge in the famous trial. This man was not a bad actor, but only too late did I discover that his diction betrayed an accent which was inconsistent with the intended portrayal. I was asked afterwards how I had failed to notice this accent. I confessed my fault but pleaded that the actor had impressed me by not speaking when I met him. Rather than replace the actor himself and hurt his feelings, I replaced his voice, without anyone being the wiser for it, except the actor who must have experienced no mean surprise to see his mouth open and speak with a voice not his. This process is called “dubbing” and is extensively used.

I have corrected faulty diction and exaggerated sibilants by using pen and ink on the sound track that runs with the film; and it has been announced that someone had succeeded in writing on the sound track markings so skillfully resembling the photostatic image of words that, when projected, the human language was heard. Imagine writing the sound of a human language with pen and ink—or changing the human language not only with pen and ink but with the slightest twist of a dial or alteration of speed raising or lowering the pitch of a voice.

Since few are dissatisfied with the voices of our popular actors, little such manipulation is normally indulged in, but ample sections of speech are always eliminated without the actor’s participation, and every actor has been asked to make what is known as “wild track,” sometimes by telephone. This “wild track” is made to be placed in some section of the actor’s performance when his back is turned or when he accidentally waves a hand so that it looks as if he were talking. This “wild” part is usually some tender sentiment that has been omitted by the author or director and which is now recorded separately and then injected into the image of the actor. But normally the voice and body of the same actor is used, though long after he has finished he may be recalled twenty times by twenty different men to patch up something which afterwards passes for a memorable characterization.

Personally, I have frequently been forced to cheat sentiment into the “finished” performance by concealing flaws and revealing meanings with sound and music (all this is done afterwards without knowledge or authority of the actor), and I have had no end of trouble disguising what is technically known as a dry mouth, which means the clicking of the actor’s tongue against the roof of his mouth is recorded so that it sounds like the clatter of hail. Such an actor has to be continually lubricated by having large quantities of water funneled into his mouth, which process does not improve a performance.

Intelligent performances have been coaxed out of idiots who have not been able to walk across a room without stumbling, and I have seen intelligent men and women made to appear like half-wits without their being aware of it until they sat in the theatre and beheld the transformation.

Though one can hold the film actor responsible for his person, one cannot hold him responsible for his performance. The more the actor knows about the films, the more he will realize his helplessness and seek to determine the selection of director, cameraman and story, and that process of ultimate demolition known as editing or cutting. But worse than that, until quite recently, not even the most prominent director, except in rare cases (where it could not be prevented) was permitted to cut the film, since the usually anonymous producer had only this opportunity to actively participate as a creative craftsman.

Not many actors have even achieved the position where they can control the factors which influence their career, and when they have, they rarely, if ever, have been able to avoid failure. The history of motion pictures is littered with the wrecks of players who achieved control of their own productions, though there have been two or three unimportant exceptions.

The average film actor, capable or not, prefers to be called upon to turn on his emotions like water from a tap at nine in the morning—emotions that normally take time to develop—and at the request of even the most incompetent director, the trained star or supporting player will, without too much questioning, laugh hysterically or weep, with or without the aid of tickling or glycerine—and be content in the belief that he is considered to be performing the work of an artist.

It is naturally easier for the actor of little ability to adapt himself than for one with great intelligence, as the system of producing films is more often than not a severe shock to anyone whose mind has made some progress since childhood. But an actor is not easily shocked, and so he goes about the task of learning, as swiftly as he knows, just where he fits into the crossword puzzle of films; how he can function best and how he can sneak past the controls. When he finally is so experienced that he manages to do what he thinks is best without authoritative restraint and guidance, the result is not good.

Not the system alone, but the intricate mechanism and unavoidable complications are against the actor. Usually organized by men who have no sympathy with problems that require thinking, the confusion of the normal studio is ghastly. Everything is ordered except the work of those who actually make a film.

When the film actor enters a set in the morning, the chances are that he has never before seen it (he may even not have heard of the director), but five minutes later he is required to behave in it as though it were a home of twenty years standing and to be familiar with every object. That is not very difficult. He is required to act as though he were alone, but from every possible lurking place electricians and other workers inspect each movement. They are indifferent to his problems and yawn at the slightest provocation, and he must purchase their tolerance with forced good fellowship. He soon is used to that, too.

He may be required to throw his arms around another actor and call him his best friend—without having seen this individual two seconds before playing such a scene. He is induced, and sometimes prefers, to play ardent love scenes to a space near the lens which, in the absence of the leading lady, who is reclining in her dressing room or still emoting in another film, represents her until she can appear. This doesn’t bother him at all, for if the woman is present, who for the moment represents the love of his life, she is asked to look beyond him or at his ears, as otherwise the camera, due to the fact that film lovers are not separated by normal distance, makes them both appear to be cross-eyed.

The actor is often not given a manuscript until half an hour before having to act a part (I am told there exist actors who read an entire script and not only their dialogue excerpts) and must take instructions like a soldier to turn and walk to the left or to the right, and be content with the assurance that he is doing nothing wrong and will learn more by and by. If he rehearses too long he is put down as difficult and his reputation suffers. But he never feels that he needs much rehearsal, though he does feel that the other actors need it badly.

With the exception of a very few, whose abnormality should be discussed in detail, I have never known an actor to spend so much time on the inside of his head as on its outside. Apparently, the make-up is really worth taking trouble with, and this phase of his interpretive ability is never neglected. I am considered a martinet because of my insistence that an actor listen to my instructions without dividing his attention with a close study of his curling irons, whiskbrooms, powder-puffs and “fan” magazines. But normally, the director will not insist on being listened to very closely (he may then appear to be delaying the schedule), and his performer lends an ear while the other is belabored by a group whose sole purpose it is to make his appearance ready for the ordeal of acting. Generally speaking, an electrifying statement like: “Come on, Charles, put this over and we’ll knock off for lunch” suffices. Melting make-up is then patched with hasty hands, he is brushed off, hustled and thrust into lights which generate enough heat for a Turkish Bath, and given those aids, he coolly portrays a man of the world while the perspiration runs down his back and puddles at his feet.

If the words he then has to speak in a superior manner prove too much for his memory, he reads them from a blackboard, which is placed out of sight of the camera. These words are usually chalked up by someone whose spelling is on the archaic side. Some of the greatest speeches in film history have been put together from thirty different attempts to read them. Sometimes these speeches have been pieced together from efforts to get the actor to speak them that ran over a period of a month. In showing such a speech afterwards to the thrilled mob, it can be noticed that instead of seeing the actor deliver this speech, say the Gettysburg speech, one hears the words while other actors are shown listening with open mouths. Their mouths are not opened because of admiration for the orator’s memory.

No, in the film world the actor loves to be known as a man who walks on the stage, views the situation with an eagle eye, establishes quick contact with all the sundry, and then if his name is, let us say, Spencer, to be known as “One Take Spencer.” He will value such a nickname more than a gangster who establishes his menace by being lovingly called “Machine Gun Kelly.” I once had an actor who said to me while we were rehearsing: “They call me One Take Warner.” It took all day to get him to say “Good morning.” But to take a scene more than once, though the acting may be execrable, is to waste film, unless the actor fumbles his lines. Believing that every time he opens his mouth the audience will be staggered with delight, the actor is offended if it is intimated that placing words in proper rotation and breathing with relief after every comma is not sufficient to embody them with meaning.

But let me continue to describe this intellectual atmosphere. Peter Arno succeeded in epitomizing the whole absurdity of the usual film stage in a cartoon which shows an actor energetically climbing into the bed where his leading lady languidly reposes and being introduced to her by the director as he prepares to lie down at her side. Of course, Arno exaggerates, as the chances are that the actor will have to introduce himself. With some exceptions, actors do not mind that. What they do mind is being ignored. There are but few actors who like to hide. Recently I passed one who was recognized in a theatre lobby by a tourist who appreached him and said : “Aren’t you in the movies? Your face is familiar.” The actor turned pale, mumbled: “My God!” and vanished.

But as a rule, the actor does not vanish quickly enough. Particularly on the screen, where a second often seems to be endless. The one who insists on staying before the camera the longest is the star-actor, and one would think that he ought to remember that he did not become a star that way. But being a star gives him prerogatives. When he portrays, let us say, an explorer, he will do no more than don the smeared uniform selected by the wardrobe, and then enter the stage not as if after an exhausting and dangerous journey, but as if he had just left his dressing room. The director who points out the difference in distance will not remain his friend, I presume. (Directors are usually chosen by their ability to get along with actors, and with other less essential functionaries.) As for a minor player, who, for example, is to portray a monarch, nobody bothers much with him. He is practically booted onto the set by an assistant who, in addition to this doubtful method of inducing the proper kingly mood, has just shouted, “Hey, Emperor, what the hell is the matter with you? Didn’t I tell you to be here on time?” The same actor will immediately assume the part of a noble ruler distinguished for his wisdom, and issue commands to a benign minister who, yesterday, played an apoplectic sheriff in a film in which the king was a horse-thief.

It is also easy to understand that striking story about the man with a real beard, who was called in hurriedly from the street because the director suddenly had the idea that he wanted a man with a beard to walk across a scene. The beard demanded to read the manuscript. The crew on the stage, the actors who were waiting for this man, the director and his staff, could not credit their ears. Why should a man who merely had to walk across a stage demand a manuscript? The extra, who needed ten dollars very badly, nevertheless insisted, and said that unless he read the manuscript he would not know how to walk or what its purpose was in relation to the story and therefore could no more walk than he was able to fly. It is a tolerably apt commentary on motion pictures that this inquisitive actor was instantly displaced by another beard which did not care how it walked or what for. I later heard that the first man shaved.

But it is not easy to understand why the motion picture actor insists on being rated as a creative artist. He may be a hero or an exceptionally charming individual with fantastic energy. He may be worth everything he gets, which in the long run is usually taken from him. He may be one who chooses this rash way of earning a livelihood rather than another, but creative art has other servants and other standards and is based on no such nonsense.

I was the first to deal with the film machine in The Last Command, in which the late Emil Jannings played the part of an extra. If anyone remembers this film of long ago, he might recall that Jannings, who had been Commanding General of the Russian Army, is propelled by fate to Hollywood and there chosen from the ranks of the extras to depict his own history. The picture ended with Jannings driven mad and dying in the belief that he was once more in real command. But this ending was poetic, like all my endings. The film actor is not driven crazy—he is driven to become the idol of millions.

And the length of time in which he retains his popularity does not depend upon him, but upon his stories, current fads—and his directors. The supporting players usually last the longest in their screen life because they do not carry the burden of the failures. They are selected according to types catalogued as fat, thin, monks, doctors, baldheads, beards, soldiers, detectives, diplomats, leg girls, emperors, etc., and heaven help the man who has once played a monk and thinks that on a better day he may be a doctor.

The star is typed as much as the supporting player and strongly identified with the part he plays, not only by public and critic, but by himself (though one hears once in a while that some actor or actress aspires to play something that sounds better than the piffle that made them stars) so that he usually assumes the good or bad qualities for which he has been noted and is only with difficulty weaned away from them when another part requires other qualifications. The difference in Jannings’ household when he entered it as a general and when he came home as a film extra was appalling. He would on one day flick the maids with his whip when asking for a cigarette and on the next plead with them in a broken voice for permission to enter.

The nature of his work in film does not allow the actor much energy for the contemplation of abstract virtue and he therefore seeks his praise where he finds it in abundance, and he will avoid any extraneous issues by talking only about himself or about his part and will not listen to others unless he knows his turn will come.

But there is a reason for this lack of balance in the flustered life of the film actor. It is induced by the abnormal demands made on him. He is asked to play a climax first and the scenes leading to it afterwards. He may play an ardent love scene on the first day of the production, and show how he casually met the girl, originally, after he played the father of her child. These acrobatics are strenuous and exhausting and drain nerves which are needed to restore normality.

Remarkable is the stretching of emotions which must be interrupted in flow by hours of preparation for each scene, and sometimes by the finish of the day’s work which, likely as not, breaks off in the midst of complications that scream for compietion, say: when an actor is told that someone followed his wife and saw her enter a hotel with a stranger and register under an assumed name. The suspense will not be broken until nine the next morning.

Failing to be guided by the director, the sole guide to which he will trust is whether he feels a scene or not. And no worse guide can be imagined. Acting is not quite so simple. Nor do many directors care to guide the actor, since they thereby assume a responsibility they may not wish to carry—nor do I presume that all directors are capable of guiding the actor.

But then the vital interests of the normal film are above acting. Though he will battle to have as many words or close-ups as the other, he will not inspect the content of the words or the meaning of the enlargement. He will insist that his dressing room is as good as the other fellow’s and that his lunch when he motors to location is at least as palatable as the director’s, and that when he returns from location that only those ride with him who think him irresistible.

Acting is not made-up nor is it memorizing words. Nor is it feeling a scene. An actor must not only feel but be able to guide his feelings, and his delivery must contain criticism and comment on what he is expressing. He must know when to restrain and when to let go and his intellect must always be in advance of his impulse. He must know why the words that he speaks were written and whether they were given to reveal or to conceal his thoughts. He must be able to listen to the other actor and to consider what he hears, and not merely think of his cue and then act in his turn uncolored by what the other had conveyed. His person may be less visible than the ideals he is expressing, and he must know when his image interferes with or represents these ideas. Most of all he must be in control of the effect he wishes to cause. His humility as a human being must be genuine and not coupled with false modesty because he feels himself to be important. There is no such thing as an important actor or an unimportant one, there is only the actor who gives full expression to the purpose to which he owes his presence. Wherever such a purpose is unclear or shallow, no actor can do anything but be likewise.

We observe how enthusiastic the performance is of someone who dances, skates, sings, rides a horse, or runs to catch a train. But that is only because in those cases the actor knows precisely what he is doing. When portraying a great emotion, the film actor rarely ever can do more than guess where it ultimately will be used—or which of the many attempts to squeeze it from him will finally be shown.

There is another man who may know where all these pieces fit and who is capable of determining what is required of the actor who stands on his stage and who, on occasion with the patience of Job, compels everyone to something which can resemble a work of art. But that is not the actor.

I, therefore, suggest that the motion picture actor cannot function as an artist, and will deal with him not as I might deal with the actor who appears! to dominate the stage of the theatre, but only as one of the complex materials of our work. Since he has been magnified in importance, you may detect a tendency on my part to incline in the other direction. But my purpose is neither to reduce nor to increase his stature, but simply to study him. In order to do so properly, further analysis is necessary of the personalities who are literally multiplied into three or four hundred images, each of whom can attract a great audience, and can return to the original fame and fortune such as is not gained by a statesman, a poet, a musician, a painter, a scientist, teacher and physician, or anyone else whose approach to his work cannot be reconciled with a failure to master his profession.

From Film Culture, I, nos. 5-6, Winter 1955, pp. 1-4, 27-29.