Harry Rapf Offers Young Men a Chance (1924) 🇺🇸
Transitions go on almost daily in the motion picture industry, gradually forcing out the old-time producers, directors, actors and scenarist, admitting the modern school of authors and playwrights, college boys with weird, sparkling ideas which mature heads may revamp into something worth while, newspaper men with their knowledge of human nature and their insistence on realism, even men in the more prosaic walks of life who possess the all-essential quality of imagination.
by Sumner Smith
There is a departure from hackneyed themes and hackneyed treatment of themes, once considered the surest method from a box-office standpoint. The motion picture now must have behind it imaginative brains, that touch of inspiration which, focussed on a cold strip of celluloid, makes people laugh and cry and dream.
So new blood is needed and the young man has his chance.
These are the views of Harry Rapf, a power on the production end of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in Hollywood. They have been voiced before, but casually; never, it seems, quite so clearly and sincerely as by Mr. Rapf last week. He is in New York City on the trail of ideas, inspecting stories and plays and talking with authors, playwrights and newspaper men, and he says that some of the men he is meeting will be offered a chance to receive motion picture instruction “on the lot” and will be depended on for new ideas when they have mastered basic technique.
Metro-Goldwyn, he says, is earnestly seeking to advance the standards of the motion picture. Fifty program features will be produced next year and four big specials, one of which will be “A Message to Garcia.” This does not mark an increase in output. Rather than produce more pictures Metro-Goldwyn will center its efforts on quality. As it has no outside producers, all of its pictures being made under one roof, this may be brought about through the skilled supervision of Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg and Mr. Rapf, the production heads.
One of the first steps in this direction is the signing of Josef von Sternberg, who made The Salvation Hunters, a $5,000 feature hailed by Charlie Chaplin as “the finest ever produced,” and about which a controversy is now raging. Mary Pickford will make one picture under von Sternberg’s direction, it is announced, then he will go on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot until Mary exercises her privilege to “borrow” him for one more feature.
“The motion picture industry must have new blood,” Mr. Rapf said. “We now have many young men studying on the lot to ultimately become directors, scenarists and so forth, and we want more of them — witty college boys, writers, newspaper men. I hope to find several here in New York. Furthermore, I want good stories and plays. The industry must get away from hackneyed themes and treatment, and Metro-Goldwyn will give its writers every encouragement and pay them well. They will do plot action for us without having to bother about fine phraseology. They will give us the originality which is so great a need of the screen.”
“Will you specialize more on characterization to give the plot action realism?” the writer asked. “There ought to be strong characters as well as a good plot, otherwise realism will suffer.”
The question developed perhaps the most interesting talk on story technique that the writer has heard. Mr. Rapf agreed as to the utmost necessity for characterization, pointing out instances where pictures with slight plots have delighted by means of their unique characters. He pointed out the need of incident in developing a character — the showing of some revealing trait during the course of the story rather than an unconvincing explanation in subtitles. The brave man displays bravery in an extraordinary situation, stamping him definitely as courageous; he is not convincingly brave simply because he wins a fist fight and a subtitle extols his victory.
“The need of new blood is apparent,” Mr. Rapf continued. “As an instance, the radio is faced with identically the same problem. Radio programs to many people are becoming something of a bore because of their similarity. The picture business is purely one of entertainment. We must not sermonize. People want to forget their troubles.
“Mr. Mayer, Mr. Thalberg and I are insistent on that. We always are studying the field, watching the different stars and directors, picking up a bit of knowledge here and unlearning a bit there; listening to the advice of the exhibitor, for he knows what the public wants.
“Mr. Thalberg and I cut and supervise each picture that leaves the Metro studios. It is as nearly right as we can make it before it goes out. If retakes are needed, we order them. Just as plays are rewritten after an unsuccessful try-out in, say, Atlantic City, so we have revamped films. Why not, since the investment in a motion picture is so much greater than that in a play?”
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Collection: Moving Picture World, December 1924