The Confessions of an Interviewer (1924) 🇺🇸

The most difficult movie star I ever tried to interview was Dorothy Phillips; the easiest was Douglas Fairbanks.

by Harry Carr

In fact, Douglas [Douglas Fairbanks Sr.] interviews himself. He is like Major Rupert Hughes. He knows better than the average magazine writer what ought to be in an interview and he pours it out like milk from a pitcher. Douglas would have been a star writer — a master journalist.

The only trouble about interviewing Douglas is the strain on wind and limb. You start out by casually meeting him in the middle of the Bagdad set. He suddenly thinks of something to illustrate a point over in his art studio ten acres away and you try to canter after him at breakneck speed. Then he thinks of a photograph he wants to tell you about in his dressing-room ten acres in the other direction. You come to the end of the interview gasping for breath and verging on a collapse — but you always get a “story.”

Mary Pickford is easy to interview too. She always receives you in a charming little English bungalow over in the middle of the studio. It has an odd little air of toy formality — like a party in a doll’s house. Mary is absolutely, always late. Every interview begins with Mary’s alibi for thinking that half-past two was half-past one. But she is so charming when she begins to talk that you forget all about it.

This will surprise you: Mary is very indiscreet. She talks so frankly and with so few reservations that you always have to protect Mary from Mary.

That is nearly always true of big brains.

The secretary of the village school board is shy and suspicious and wants to see what you are going to print before you print it. The Secretary of State says what’s on his mind and trusts you not to print the wrong thing.

I once interviewed a great admiral who became so frank and reckless in what he told me that I was appalled and asked him if he thought he ought to be telling all these things to a newspaper interviewer.

It made the old sea-dog really angry.

“Well, you’ve got sense enough to know what you ought to print and what you oughten. My job is knowing how to run war-ships. Your job is knowing what ought to be printed.”

And that’s how it is with Mary. She says what is on her alert, keen, incisive mind and relies upon you to do the rest. Once or twice she has trusted in the wrong people — to her subsequent rage and dismay.

And I don’t mean this as a dig to Dorothy Phillips. She is an able, brainy woman; but she is so bashful that it is absolute agony for her to be lined up by an interviewer seeking the secret of her soul.

Eric von Stroheim [Erich von Stroheim] — interviewing him is an odd experience. He is frankly bored to death. He sits on the back of his spine and looks at his gold bracelet and then at you with an unsmiling cynicism. He suggests the old vaudeville song, “It hurts me but I do it.” He never makes any secret of the fact that he considers the whole thing an absurd and tiresome waste of time. He answers questions with very little enthusiasm indeed.

But when you really get to know von Stroheim. Well now that’s different. He is one of the most charming companions I ever met. Of all the directors, he is the most popular with newspaper men. he has humor, sparkling wit: a naive unguarded frankness. Also he is the most detached and impersonal soul I ever met. He sits there anti watches the procession of life go by and one of those in the procession is Eric von Stroheim. Underneath the sparkling veneer of his cynical indifference, von Stroheim is a tender, sentimental, devoted friend.

Blanche Sweet is a little like that, too. When you sit down to interview her, you always face a young lady with the light of mockery in her eyes. And often it is not confined to the eyes. If you start asking her all those old bromide questions about her favorite part and her life’s ambitions, she will begin to kid you without mercy.

“Oh for Heaven’s sake — not that old bunk,” says Blanche.

But, like von Stroheim, Blanche can be very charming if she thinks you are worth talking to. For some reason I cant imagine having a real talk with Blanche Sweet in any place like a drawing-room, sitting on chairs. My most interesting conversations with her have been sitting on the steps of the cutting-room or perched on the running-board of somebody’s automobile. Blanche has read very widely and talks well if you really get her interested in talking. Her favorite topic is her husband, Marshall Neilan; and as that happens to be mine, also —

Corinne Griffith is charming to talk to but hard to get a real story from. She always seems depressed and distrait. If you hit some subject in which she is interested, she suddenly becomes animated and shoots a few flashing-sentences at you.

She always impresses me as being ill at ease — not thru embarrassment, but as tho she were worried about this and that — There is a distinct note of sadness about everything she does. Petulance with the world rather than real tragedy however.

Norma Talmadge is the least impressed by publicity of anyone I ever met — man, woman or child. If Norma likes you, she will rattle off anything that happens to be on her mind — discreet or otherwise. If she doesn’t like you, she will turn you a cold shoulder no matter who you are. The biggest journalist in the world and the cub reporter on the Bingtown Evening Bugle look just alike to her. She is one of the most fearless characters I have ever known. As nearly without vanity as it is possible for any actress to be.

Constance doesn’t think much about it — either one way or another. She is a merry light-hearted, unselfish, gay little flapper. If she thought it was going to help you very much she would walk the soles off her shoes to get herself interviewed; but to tell the truth, I don’t believe she ever reads what they write about her. She is too busy with her giddy little passage down the River of Jazz to bother either one way or another.

An interview with Louise Fazenda is a hilarious experience. She is so unexpected that she takes your breath away. One time I had an appointment to interview Louise and at the last moment she switched the meeting-place to a café to a dinner at which she insisted she should be the hostess.

“I think we ought to try to give the impression of great refinement,” she said, “so we will eat here a while; then we will go to the café next door and eat a while, thus giving the impression of extremely polite appetites in both places.” And she insisted upon doing this. Louise is the most brilliant talker I ever listened to. She sizzles epigrams and aphorisms. Not all word jugglery either. She has a remarkable imagination; sane penetrating analysis and a vivid way of speaking. Nobody ever really wrote a Louise Fazenda interview. Nobody could ever remember ail she said. Oddly enough, she is really of an unhappy disposition. Her soul is in a torment of wishing she were on the other side of the hill most of the time.

Emmett Flynn

The most “up-stage” director I ever tried to interview is Emmett Flynn [Emmett J. Flynn] who affects a great weariness of spirit with the idea that the cruel world bothers him with fame and such. Underneath this blase attitude, I imagine that Mr. Flynn has much charm of character and disposition that will come out when he is older and wiser.

The Gish Girls

Lillian Gish is the hope and delight of all the scared little girl interviewers in the world. Lillian is so calm and poised and sweet and she knows so well what they ought to ask her that she just does the story up in a package and hands it to them— as it were. Lillian has the broadest outlook on life of any person I ever met — the sanest and gentlest judgment. She is the only person I have ever talked to for live or six hours at a stretch and then gone away feeling that we had hardly started talking. Many times in the old Griffith studio, I have talked all day long with Lillian without a lag in the interest of the conversation.

Dorothy [Dorothy Gish] is the same. Underneath her witty, sparkling, airy little chatter, Dorothy is a smart, shrewd, interesting, well-read girl. She has the most withering power of assessing the elements of a given situation of any girl I know.

There is a wealth of good sound character and courage and loyalty in Dorothy that not many people know. An interview with her is a delightful experience. I have always felt that both Lillian and Dorothy could write and write well.

Ernst Lubitsch

An interview with Ernst Lubitsch is a heavy and portentous affair — until you come to know each other. Herr Ernst Lubitsch fortifies himself behind a big desk with an interpreter to whom he turns with agony when his English fails him. He isy however, an interesting and vivid talker, altho he feels that he is facing a difficult position and is very guarded in what he says. Sometimes when you ask him a question that is a little indiscreet, he says shyly, “Confidential ches?” and when you answer, “Yes, confidential,” he will give some fascinating opinions as to the merits and demerits of American artists and directors — none of which he will ever allow you to print.

Pola Negri

Pola Negri has an inward contempt of interviewers, for which I do not blame her. She came from a country where artists speak to the public — if at all — about art. Here they ask which are the hottest lips she has ever kissed and why she loved Charlie Chaplin. Pola receives interviewers with the finished ease and polish of a trained society woman and talks well. But she thinks what she thinks.

Gloria Swanson

Gloria Swanson usually misses the appointment at which you were to have interviewed her, but she is friendly and frank. She feels that she has had ruthless treatment at the hands of the American papers — and this is true. Nevertheless, she is cordial and entertaining and has a shrewd half-humorous outlook on life that is captivating.

Betty Compson

Betty Compson is sweet and gracious but I always feel the professional cordiality of a politician in her hand shake.

Thomas H. Ince

With the exception of Bobbie Harron [Robert Harron] who died two or three years ago, I never saw anyone who hated to be interviewed so much as Thomas H. Ince, the big producer. This is the more singular in that Ince is an excellent talker and a man of brilliant ideas.

D. W. Griffith

I don’t believe that D. W. Griffith really likes being interviewed, but once caught, he always takes the utmost pains to see that the interviewer gets a thrill. You might not expect it of him but he gives the same attention to the kid reporter from the Farmers Almanac that he would to W. R. Hearst. Having been a newspaper man himself, he is keen enough to know that the newspaper business is a rapidly changing profession and that a green awkward reporter today may tomorrow be a big critic with your professional life in the hollow of his hand. So Griffith will always stop everything to be interviewed at any time — by anybody. He always stages a good show and makes a point of saying something that will work up into a spectacular story.

He is so charming to them personally that every writer always goes away from the studio D. W.’s devoted friend for life. The more so, because they always approach the throne scared down to the bottom of their souls.

Charlie Chaplin

The actor whom new interviewers usually dread is, as a matter of fact, among the easiest. This is Charlie Chaplin. Charlie always continues to give you the impression that it is a special concession that he wouldn’t make for anyone else; but he is really very accessible and always gives up interesting and striking ideas without any coaxing. In fact, Charlie is one of the most interesting and extraordinary conversationalists I ever talked to. He has a certain shy charm that makes an alluring setting for his words and ideas.

Most actors spill a dreary lot of bromides about art and the uplift and so on but everything Charlie says is absolutely his own and absolutely original.

Mack Sennett

One of the oddest birds that anybody ever tried to interview is Mack Sennett. He always has to be led by the nose to the ordeal. His press department has to plead on bended knees and when you finally get in to see him he always has an air of saying, “What! You here again!” Then he sighs as tho he were saying “Well, we all have our crosses to bear and I suppose this is mine.” But finally he begins to be interested in spite of himself — if you know how to ask questions. At that point, you are due for an intellectual treat. Sennett has a most unusual mind with a quaint sound, sane philosophy and an original way of talking. He has a withering power of analysis and a depth of feeling and vision that you might not suspect from the inventor of the Keystone Kops.

Mabel Normand

And lastly, Mabel Normand. She is a woman of unusual intellect and of vivid originality — but you might as well try to interview the March wind. If you ask Mabel about uplifting the drama, it will make her think of a story she heard once about a darky who found a rattlesnake in his bed. And before you can ask her anything she has seen someone going by in an automobile who has a wolfhound that she wants to buy and she rushes away, leaving you flat in your ruffled dignity.

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I don’t believe that D. W. Griffith really likes being interviewed, but once caught, he always takes the utmost pains to see that the interviewer gets a thrill. He always stages a good show and makes a point of saying something that will work up into a spectacular story

Photo by: Melbourne Spurr (1888–1964)

Lillian Gish is the delight of every scared little girl interviewer. She knows so well what they ought to ask her that she does the story up in a package and hands it to them. And Dorothy is quite the same

Photo by: Kenneth Alexander (1887–1975)

When he is interviewed Eric von Stroheim is frankly bored to death. But when you get to know him — that is different. For beneath the sparkling veneer of his cynical indifference, von Stroheim is a tender, sentimental and devoted friend

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Constance Talmadge doesn’t think very much about it. But if she thought it was going to help you very much, she would walk the soles off her shoes to get herself interviewed. But I doubt if she ever reads what is written about her

Photo by: Walter Fredrick Seely (1886–1959)

When you sit down and face Blanche Sweet, you face a young lady with the light of mockery in her eyes. And if you ply her with bromide questions, she is apt to reply “Oh, for Heaven’s sake — not that old bunk!”

Gloria Swanson usually misses the appointment at which you were to have interviewed her but she is friendly and frank. And! she feels she has had ruthless treatment at the hands of the American papers — and this is true

Photo by: Donald Biddle Keyes (1894–1974)

Corinne Griffith is charming to talk to but hard to get a story from. She always seems depressed and distrait. There is a distinct note of sadness about everything she does. Petulance with the world rather than real tragedy, however.

Photo by: Woodbury

An interview with Louise Fazenda, on the other hand, is a hilarious experience. She is the most brilliant talker I have ever listened to. She sizzles epigrams and aphorisms

Photo by: Clarence Sinclair Bull (1896–1979)

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Mary Pickford is easy to interview. She is indiscreet. She talks so frankly, you have to protect Mary from Mary. That is nearly always true of big brains.

Doug interviews himself. He would have been a star writer, a master journalist. He is the easiest person I ever interviewed

Photo by: Melbourne Spurr (1888–1964)

Mabel Normand is a woman of unusual intellect and of vivid originality, but you might as well try to interview the March wind. If you ask her about uplifting the drama, it will make her think of a story she once heard about a darky who found a rattlesnake in his bed

Photo by: Edwin Bower Hesser (1893–1962)

Pola Negri has an inward contempt of interviewers. But she receives them with the finished ease and polish of a trained society woman and talks well. But she thinks what she thinks

An interview with Ernst Lubitsch is a heavy and portentous affair — until you come to know each other. He fortifies himself behind a big desk with an interpreter to whom he turns in agony when his English fails him. He is, however, very guarded in what he says

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Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, March 1924