Otis Skinner — Lost in the Hollywood Maze (1930) 🇺🇸
Otis Skinner, the most beloved star on the American stage today, writes for Screenland an account of his adventures in Hollywood where he filmed Kismet. The only other magazine, incidentally, to persuade Mr. Skinner to write about Hollywood and the screen is The Saturday Evening Post.
by Otis Skinner
It is an amazing city, this Hollywood; a spot put on the map entirely by the motion picture. To the Easterner, like myself, who comes within the charm of its appeal, it is a town of youth and gaiety. It seems to be living in a continual state of Mardi-Gras. Moving picture premieres are matters of real civic importance.
On the evening of my arrival from across the continent I discovered the city en fete, quite bursting with excitement. Illuminated airplanes swept the sky, crowds surged through the streets, and hundreds of searchlights shot their shafts to the stars. Vehicular traffic was almost at a standstill.
It seemed to me that the Pope, Mussolini, King George, the Prince of Wales, and Queen Marie must have arrived, and that President Hoover and Lindberg were here to welcome them. Upon making some timid queries I learned that it was all because The Dawn Patrol was having its premiere!
I have ceased to marvel at these exhibitions. It is but natural that Hollywood, where entertainment is born and reared for the recreation of the universe, should be a town of joy and festivity. Hollywood has a lurking twinkle in its eye. Even in the stress of the intensive work at the studios you're never quite sure when a laugh is going to break forth. Or at whose expense.
It was in the silent picture version of my old play, Kismet, in 1920, that I made my initial acquaintance with the films and the intricacies of the studio.
In those days I received whispered warnings from my initiated friends and from studio officials. I was informed that I must forget the theater.
We of the regular stage were looked upon somewhat askance by the old line silent-film folk. We referred to them rather tolerantly as the 'Movies.' They retorted by calling us the 'speakies.' I felt myself wholly persona non grata. Everybody seemed to look to me to be decidedly 'high-hat.'
But I approached my task with due humility. I had much to learn and I knew it. I asked questions right and left and I profited by my instructions. I had been told that it was in the power of the cameraman to make you or mar you. If he didn't take a fancy to you he could throw your features into repellent shadows and make you look like the very devil!
I confided my fears to Tony Gaudio, who has since that day achieved a brilliant success in the camera field. I invited him to lunch at the little studio cafe.
"Tony," I said, "I'm told that if the cameraman doesn't like me he is going to ruin me. Well, there's only one way out of it. You've got to like me! Whenever I am doing the wrong thing you tell me. I am in your hands."
When I saw the rushes I felt that Tony had thrown me a life-line and my fears abated. He must have liked me. Anyway, he produced some beautiful photography.
But really, I needn't have been so apprehensive. I was an actor and actors should know how to act. This was my old play, Kismet, and I had presented it for three long seasons in the theater.
It was a strange new art, this cinema, but not so unapproachable if only you did your work quietly and slowly in the close-ups.
That was ten years ago. We are all 'speakies' now. Hollywood has become the Great White Way of Manhattan, and where formerly only the motion picture actors were to be seen, the personnel of the stage has merged with that of these silent people.
But with the newer order has entered a new timidity; and, perhaps, a new inspiration — the microphone. If it isn't an encouragement, at least it's a terror, and terror moves us to desperate deeds.
No longer do we hear the studio orchestra — a piano, a violin and a saxophone droning out sad ditties for emotional scenes, and melodramatic 'hurries' for the dramatic episodes; the music that caused the heroine's eyes to overflow, the hero to swell to a perfect inflation of heroism, and the comedian to outdo his mugging and his back falls.
I recall that our orchestra was a single instrument — an accordion. I think it was the biggest one in captivity, and its owner, McNeill, poured his soul into it from morn to dewy eve. It moved us all to tears.
One morning our little ingenue found her lacrimal flow somewhat obstructed. She was playing a scene of great sadness and was hopelessly dry-eyed. McNeill wailed out the most sentimental of melodies, the assistant director hovered over her telling her how terribly sad everything was. How she had been greatly abused, how her father had cursed her, and how she would never see her lover again. Tony Gaudio was awaiting the moment when his cameramen could record her sorrow by spilling tear drops on the film.
She buried her face in her hands and strove to plumb the depths of her emotion. There were no depths!
The strains of Orientale, the appealing minors of eastern music leaked from the accordion keys. We became filled with breathless expectancy. Of course, we could resort to the glycerine tear drops, but that device was becoming musty. Presently a slight spasm shook her shapely shoulders. She murmured to the orchestra:
"Play Kiss Me Again!"
The orchestra obeyed and in a moment she uncovered her eyes and the cameras recorded a perfect Niagara of sorrow.
Today, the orchestra has no place in the studio. "Where the soulful ballad was once the font of all feeling, now the stern eye of the 'mike' is the only thing that stings us to madness.
The art of the cinema has progressed. We are becoming grown-up. Cameras are growing more and more perfect. The recording disc is surer and the new art of sound mixing has come to the rescue of voice records that sounded as if the speaker was talking into a hogshead. Detail has been pursued into its very lair in the matter of direction, and it is its persistence that makes plays like Kismet, full of the flavor of old romance, possible.
There has been a distinct reluctance on the part of motion picture producers to present plays of pure romanticism. The talking film has removed the difficulty by the Open Sesame of the spoken word.
In its most perfect form, the filmed play is but the play of the regular theater reduced in time. The Kismet of the dramatic stage ran in its evening performance from eight o'clock to eleven.
This screen version presents the self-same drama in half the time, and with much pictorial elaboration which the stage could never show.
I enjoyed Hollywood. I enjoyed making a 'modernized' version of my dear old Kismet. I enjoyed the association with technical experts, stars, and with players at the First National Studio.
But, by Allah, may my life be forfeit if I could ever take to my friendly heart that disc of doom, the 'mike.' True, it was my prophet — but I was its slave!
Skinner, enacting his famous role of Hajj, the wily beggar in Kismet, is supported by Mary Duncan and Loretta Young.
Kismet was filmed for the silent screen in 1920. Skinner survived the ordeal only to be coaxed to do it again in sound, with that 'disc of doom, the mike,' hanging over his head!
Collection: Screenland Magazine, December 1930