George Fitzmaurice — Starring the Director (1920) 🇺🇸

George Fitzmaurice and Ouida Bergère — Starring the Director (1920) | www.vintoz.com

March 13, 2023

His idea of hell is a studio where they use mid-victorian furniture in an old-Italian set.

by Delight Evans

You probably recognize a Fitzmaurice picture by its sets. That is the trouble with being an artist — the audience decides forthwith that that's all you are. Fitzmaurice's drama happens to be as good as his period furniture. His India is India. "The Witness for the Defense" brought India to Indiana — and maybe Indiana didn't enjoy it! His Turkey is the real Turkey. And a Broadway chorus girl would instinctively take on the air of an English duchess if she ever stepped into one of George's baronial halls.

Fitzmaurice made a picture of New York life for Famous Players: it was not made as a "special production" or anything fancy like that. When it was shown for the first time, some officials sat in judgment. Result: On with the Dance was released as a widely-heralded special, the first of the "George Fitzmaurice Special Productions."

His company approached him with a contract. A contract to make Fitzmaurice himself the directing star of four de-luxe pictures a year, with his players only secondary. Fitzmaurice signed. One month later he went to his officials and asked if he might direct a star. The star was John Barrymore and the play, "Peter Ibbetson."

That, as "Dere Mable"' might say about "Bill."' "that's him. all over." He is his own star: but you would never know it. You would think, to see him on the sidelines of his set. that he was a Wall Street man come to look 'em over. But — he goes through every bit of action himself. He is a director who doesn't let his assistant do much except draw his salary. He is on the job every minute: he is the hero, the heroine, the villain and the vamp.

He is important because he is one director who has never been an actor or a stage-manager, who has. in fact, had nothing at all to do with or on the stage. He is absolutely untutored except in so far as he was born with a keen dramatic sense and had a thorough worldly training, received in the humanity-schools of Cairo and Paris. Constantinople and a villa by the blue sea, in Southern France.

He is French in appearance, French in speech. American in preference. — and Irish in wit. As a matter of fact he is Celtic, but he was born and brought up in France. His home was a villa where everything that is told of France in song and story came true. One day when he and his mother happened to be enjoying a singular solitude — usually the place was overrun with guests — a man came to the door and asked politely if the estate might be used as a cinema location.

George's mother demurred at first hut finally yielded to the wishes of her son, who wanted to learn, first-hand, what actors were like, anyway. Pictures in France did not then have much prestige. So the company came and camped on the grounds, and spilled their make-up and their props all over the place, while George looked curiously on and wondered.

The director thanked them, when his company had finished, for their courtesy, and bowed himself gratefully out, whiskers and all —

Not many years later, George Fitzmaurice — the same, but having learned that there is more in life than polo, sunshine and debutantes — was looking for work. He sought it in the studios. The man who finally engaged him was the same director who had expressed himself as grateful for his courtesies, long ago in France! For, you see, George came to America and went into trade, and trade failed him, and he turned to the pictures — George, with his clothes of British cut, his spats, his smooth hair, his perfect ties. The studio people looked him over and said, "Some nut."

Not that Fitzmaurice knew the first thing about a studio. He only remembered what he had seen on his estate in France, and the life attracted him. Never having had any dramatic experience, he went in to learn. He did — from the lowest rung of the ladder. It only happened that the particular studio to which he was recommended was presided over by the ex-French director.

George clung to his spats. He did not see any reason why one should dress clumsily simply because one worked in a studio. And by and by the studio hands began to admire him for it. One of them started to calf him "George" one day — but caught himself in time.

Young Mr. Fitzmaurice kept right at it. He was a scenario writer at first. He says in those days you not only had to note on paper to the directors what to do; you had to give them very careful instructions what not to do.

"Once," he says "there was a ship-wreck scene to write about. The hero and some other people are set adrift and have to stay on a small raft for weeks, after having been almost drowned. But when the hero — in the scene as the director took it — finally climbed on board the rescuing ship — he accepted a cigarette and carelessly took a box of matches out of his pocket to light it with. I remonstrated with the director. I said, "But the man would not have the matches in the pocket after he has been shipwrecked and tossed about in the water.' 'Well,' growled the director, 'why the — didn't you write that in'?"

In spite of the fact that his efforts for realism were irritating to the slapstick craftsman of that period, he persevered. Pretty soon he had some real things to direct, including The Naulahka, the vivid Indian take of Kipling's, with Doraldina; "Sylvia of the Secret Service," with Mrs. Castle, and "Innocent" and "Common Clay," with Fannie Ward. But even here his style was cramped. He couldn't do all that he wanted to do. He is as temperamental about sets as a prima-donna is about orchestration. His expense accounts were checked within an inch of his life; he couldn't spend all the company's money on real settings and real effects. It was a shame.

He was called to Famous Players to direct Elsie Ferguson. They got along famously — I defy any woman, to quarrel with Fitzmaurice. He brought to his new work all his knowledge of the continent, of the orient and the isles. He knew when a property man was trying to pass off a queer piece of pottery from the prop room for a Ming vase of the 'nth dynasty. He was given the exclusive right to use his own expert judgment on things of that sort, and intelligent people began to know and watch for Fitzmaurice films.

His has an exquisite taste, a fine sense of proportion. He detests vulgarity; ostentation. That is why he never does a "poor" picture, a middle-class drama, or an optical study of the slums. His scenes of the accident in "On With the Dance" — in which the father of Sonia is run over and killed — is hurriedly gotten through with as being the least interesting detail of all that glittering pageant. Fitzmaurice has a naive philosophy, the Frenchman's childlike enjoyment of the beautiful. I venture to say he never screens a tale of violence if he can help himself.

Did you notice the impertinent acting canine in the street-car scenes? That's Scotti, his Airedale. When Scotti isn't acting, he is on the set anyway, with his tail wagging a mile a minute and his inquisitive nose upturned towards the high platform from which his master directs. For Fitzmaurice sets most of his interiors in the stately long high rooms that frame the actors in a sort of stage. They are built on a level with the platform and "shot" directly down their length.

His wife, Ouida Bergère, writes the scenarios for all his films. They live in a duplex apartment in the Hotel Des Artistes, one of Manhattan's most expensive and accordingly more exclusive apartment-hotels — and "Fitzy's" own drawing-room is his best set.

Mr. Fitzmaurice directing Mae Murray.

French in appearance, French in Speech, and Irish in wit.

Mr. Fitzmaurice, and his equally talented wife, Ouida Bergère, who writes the scenarios of all his productions, in their studio apartment.

Collection: Photoplay MagazineJuly 1920