Irving Cummings — You Can’t Do That (1937) 🇬🇧
At the turn of the century a twelve-year-old New York boy by the name of Irving Cummings unwrapped his most-anticipated Christmas present, a magic lantern, and after reading the directions, threw them in the waste basket and went ahead with its operation in violation of all the "Don't" compiled for his benefit. The contraption smoked a bit, but Irving remedied that by opening a vent that the instructions cautioned him to keep closed.
After their fears about setting the house on fire had lulled, the youth's family and friends admitted he had figured out a way to put on a pretty good show. He thought so, too, although he didn't think much of the slides that came with the machine.
He announced he'd make his own slides. Somebody warned him: "You can't do that! The magic lantern people know what kind of slides they want used."
Irving replied with the 1900 version of "So what" and proceeded with his iconoclastic practices. When he eventually broke into the glorified magic lantern business he continued to pay as little attention as possible to rules that interfered with his own ideas.
Refusal to follow the directions when they didn't make sense has had a lot to do with Irving Cummings' long tenure in the ranks of ace motion picture directors.
Irving Cummings has been in pictures, in front and back of the cameras, for nearly thirty years. Once a dashing star of silent pictures, he experienced difficulty in getting out of acting.
To the producers' fiats, "You can't do that," when he wanted to throw away his make-up kit and take up the megaphone, he finally had to become a producer himself in order to get his hands on the directorial reins.
Years later, with a new medium and a new set of rules to contend with, Cummings defied convention by directing an outdoor talking picture, whereas Hollywood said the way to control sound was to keep it within the confines of tightly locked, tomb-like buildings called stages. Recently, tackling another new medium, colour, for the first time, he again refused to abide by the rules.
The things they said he couldn't do, Cummings did in directing Walter Wangers's "Vogues of 1938," and now Hollywood is hearing predictions, backed by leading producers' announcements, that there won't be any more important pictures photographed in black-and-white after the next year or so.
Instead of bowing to colour as a sacred cow and letting the experts tell him how to use it, Cummings practically ignored it. He concentrated on story values and personalities and treated the hues, like sound, as merely an adjunct of the entertainment as a whole.
At the age of forty-eight, Cummings in appearance belies the popular conception of a pioneer in even as comparatively young a business as the movies.
Save for grey, thinning hair, he's still the imposing, handsome, six-plus-footer who shared honours with the greatest stars of the day on Broadway and on the silent screen.
Financially independent, arrived at that high plane in the Hollywood caste system where he can write his own ticket and direct one or two important pictures yearly, Cummings also has a profitable hobby. He owns and operates one of the largest citrus groves in southern California. His ranch markets thousands of crates of lemons each year. The smart-crackers have had a lot of fun with his side-line, but Cummings' box office record since In Old Arizona reveals no lemons.
Born in Manhattan on October 9, 1888, Cummings left high school at the age of fifteen, determined to break into the theatrical profession. As a stepping-stone, he landed a bank messenger job in the white light district and besieged stage managers and booking agents at every opportunity.
Before he was sixteen he had become a full-fledged member of the Proctor Stock Company. His debut was in Diplomacy, playing a 70-year-old character.
He had plenty of confidence in himself even in this fledgling period and insisted on helping the stage director, but the boss persuaded him to stick to acting until he had acquired more experience. He began to attract attention as a Broadway juvenile and soon was appearing in support of Lillian Russell and other famous stars.
William A. Brady made Cummings a star. During the early 1900's he tasted fame as a matinee idol in Man of the Hour, Object Matrimony, Way Down East and similar hits of the era.
The infant movies, regarded with disdain by the majority of "legitimate" actors, intrigued Cummings. He saw in the crude medium something to investigate before joining the rest of the Broadway scoffers. When an offer at "important money" was made, he accepted his first screen assignment.
The picture, a single-reeler, was produced by the old Pat Powers company in a barn at Mount Vernon, N.J., in 1909. Cummings introduced his own idea of acting naturally instead of indulging in the arm-flailing and facial contortions thought necessary in movie technique. "You can't do that!" roared the director.
"Well, then, get another leading man," was the ultimatum. Cummings won his point, and with the picture's release, the "trade" started talking about him. In the meantime he had accepted a fourteen weeks' engagement with the Davidson Stock company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Preparing to return to New York, he received a telegram from the Pathé company in Hollywood, offering him a year's contract at the then fabulous salary of £34 weekly.
Cummings first broke into direction while he was starring in a serial, "Diamond from the Sky," the longest ever produced, for the Flying-A company. After four of the thirty episodes had been filmed, he took over the megaphone from William Desmond Taylor, who several years later, was to be the victim in Hollywood's greatest real-life murder mystery.
With the completion of the marathon thriller, Cummings returned east to fulfil a contract with Famous Players, now Paramount. He co-starred with Pauline Frederick, Hazel Dawn, Margaret Mayo and other favourites. It was during the filming of "The World's Great Snare" with Miss Frederick that he met his future wife, Ruth Sinclair.
World Films, another of the pioneer studios, lured Cummings from Famous Players and starred him in many pictures, including "The Whip." His screen daughter in several stories was the Shirley Temple of the day, Madge Evans, now a prominent Hollywood personality.
Cummings was at the height of his acting fame, but his ambition was to direct and do things the studios said couldn't be done. When producers told him he'd have to stick to acting, he left and formed a partnership with Sol Lesser to write, direct and act in pictures to be released by First National. One of the films was the first picture starring the pioneer canine personality, Rin-Tin-Tin.
Cummings' last picture as actor-director was "The Man From Hell's River," in which Wallace Beery and Eva Novak appeared with him. Determined to devote his future exclusively to directing, he built a story for a practically unknown character actor by the name of Lon Chaney and sold Lesser and First National on the idea of directing it for them.
"Flesh and Blood" scored a hit at the box office and Cummings' services were in demand at every studio. Pictures such as "Fool's Highway," "The Johnstown Flood," "Pigs," "The Brute" and Dressed to Kill put him in the front ranks of directorial aces in the days before sound.
He also scored as a picker of talent, discovering Janet Gaynor and other future stars and furthering the careers of Colleen Moore, Milton Sills, Edmund Lowe, Mary Astor and Warner Baxter.
In Old Arizona catapulted both Cummings and Baxter to world fame and since then they've been "tops" in the Hollywood scheme of things. Among Cummings' outstanding pictures were "The Cisco Kid," "Curly Top," "Poor Little Rich Girl," "The White Parade" and "Girls' Dormitory." He has directed practically every famous star, including Shirley Temple, who became the world leader at the box office under his guidance.
As a Hollywood celebrity he shuns the limelight and rarely is seen at first nights, banquets and parties. He doesn't go in for directorial folderol. Stooges and yes-men are abhorrent to him.
He never puts on an "act" on the set and won't stand for temperament, which he defines as merely plain temper — from anybody. He seldom shows up at his modest office. He prefers to transact business informally — in other people's offices, over a luncheon table or on the lawns and sidewalks at the studio.
His contract with Walter Wanger associates him with a producer who knows him well enough never to cramp his style by telling him: "You can't do that!"
A recent portrait of Irving Cummings, United Artists' ace director.
Collection: Picturegoer Magazine, July 1937