Pearl White — How to Act (1918) 🇺🇸
Words of wisdom to lighten the way of would-be stars from one who has reached the top of the ladder
by Pearl White
My advice to any girl wishing to become a motion-picture actress is — first get a physician’s certificate testifying that you are physically fit. For the first requisite for acting in the movies, according to my notion of things, is supreme health. You may think you have a cast-iron constitution, you may be able to dodge the doctor, the dentist, and the undertaker for years, but go into pictures, and you are likely to call for all three of them in rapid succession, with a coroner thrown in for good measure.
Go into a gymnasium and train yourself into shape; get over the first soreness that exertion always means to the person with untrained muscles, and work till they are as hard as steel, with never an ounce of superfluous fat. Out-of-door exercise is better, provided it is stiff enough, and regular as clockwork, but for most people in the city a “gym” is more accessible.
From the time of my first serial, The Perils of Pauline, I have been in training. Incidentally, I like acting in serials better than I do in features, although a feature, if a good, snappy one, varies the strenuous work I do in serials. For a long time I took regular lessons under a competent instructor, hardening my muscles by the use of dumb-bells, Indian clubs, pulley machines, and rowing machines. Now I find that fifteen minutes to a half hour daily keeps me in good trim, my muscles hard, and makes me fit for the day’s work.
My second word of advice to the aspirant to movie fame is study. Study, study, study! I cannot over-emphasize this part of your training.
Study yourself, your good points and bad points of face and figure. Study other people, particularly how they register emotions. Study the work of other film actors and in addition study the possibilities and the limitations of screen work.
It always amuses me to hear persons who don’t know anything about it repeat the hackneyed phrase: ‘‘Motion pictures have unlimited possibilities.” If that is true, they also have unlimited handicaps as well, and it is these that the girl who wants to be a success in picture work must consider.
The actor on the legitimate stage has appearance, voice, coloring, mannerisms, and other things that attract and please the spectator. If one of these fails, there are still the other means of attracting. The actor on the screen has none of these things to help create the impression he is after. He has only himself as he really is — and the camera is a startling revealer of physical defects — in addition to whatever personality or magnetism he has to help him in putting across what he really wants to get over to his audience.
For this reason it is my claim that the actor of the screen must be more of an artist than the actor on the legitimate stage. For when the latter appears in an ordinary performance, if he does poorly he can remedy his acting another time by profiting by the advice of his friends, the criticism of the newspaper critics, and he can have the benefit of the constant advice of a good stage director.
When an actor appears on the screen, or, rather, when his picture is taken and thrown on the screen, it is immutable. And so it remains, as long as the picture is shown. The impression he has made as an actor may be good, bad, or indifferent, but no matter how much he himself can see his own mistakes in the picture, he cannot change it.
When I began my screen work most of the directors had the idea that it was action that carried pictures, instead of acting. Dramatic ability did not count for so much as the ability to move around and do stunts. To-day there has to be a combination of both. You have to act, you must have personality to get the situations over, and then, if you have the ability to do stunts, to put up a good fight and stand the game, you will get over.
By study I don’t mean so much that you should go to dramatic school, although this helps mightily, as it gives you an idea of how to express emotions, and trains you to bring certain facial muscles into play when the director tells you to register sadness, gladness, madness, or badness — but I mean study yourself diligently before a mirror at least one hour a day. Don’t get up in front of the mirror and think how nice you are, how pretty you are, but look at yourself from the point of view of the most critical director and the most crabbed individual in the audience. Go to the motion pictures, study not only the picture, but the faces of the persons in the audiences around you. See whether the action of the actors really gets over — comes right off the screen and affects the audiences as it was intended to affect them.
Then, when you are studying yourself before the mirror, pick out, in your mind, the man in the audience who looked the picture of gloom — who looked as though nothing on earth or in the movies pleased him — and try to figure to yourself what you would do to get over the same action as the girl on the screen, so that he would be won by it.
When you go at this work seriously and critically you will get your first idea of how discouraging it is, and how difficult it is to be an actress. Most girls think it is just a mere matter of looking pretty, wearing nice clothes, and walking into the hero’s arms.
When you start to study before the mirror you will find that your hands and your feet loom larger and bulk bigger than you ever thought they would, could, or did. What to do with the hands is one of the big problems of the motion-picture actress. So many times they hang down like knobs at the end of two dead sticks — your arms, You try to move them naturally and gracefully, and you are conscious of the desire to do so, but you move them awkwardly and uncertainly. Study the motion of your hands. They are eloquent if used properly. Watch how actresses on the stage and on the screen use their hands, and, while not affecting their mannerisms, try to use your own hands in a graceful and natural manner.
Few girls know how to walk gracefully. They lumber along, and the camera reveals all defects along this line. No matter what natural ability for acting a girl may have, if she cannot walk across a stage gracefully, if she is clumsy, she must overcome these defects before she can hope to attain to the heights of stardom. Here again the girl should put herself through a rigid training before she goes into acting or into the motion-picture game, and this training will stand her in good stead. The most graceful animals in the world are the tigers. They have forms of well-muscled sleekness, and they move with ease and grace. These animals have healthy bodies because they do not stuff themselves with dainties; they eat only when they are hungry, and they have to scramble so hard for what they do eat that there is no chance for them to acquire layers of useless fat. If the average girl would eat less and take plenty of healthy outdoor exercise, there would be more opportunity for her in the motion-picture game than there is at the present time.
To become a really good actress, you must always act a part except when you are really acting. In other words, you must put yourself into all kinds of situations and roles, and be forever considering the possibilities of characterizations you will or might be called upon to play. Then, when you go before the camera you are not taking the part of the character; you are that person herself.
My first two precepts to the budding star would be — become healthy and become graceful.
The third precept is — become a good soldier. The director is your commanding officer. He gives orders you are supposed to obey to the best of your ability. If he is a good director, he will try to bring out whatever latent possibilities there are in you. He will give you the scenario to study, will let you put yourself in the role of the character you are playing, and will let you show him how you think it should be put over. If his trained eye sees that it is not going to register on the screen, he will coach you, telling you what you must do until you are perfect. Here is where good health comes in. It is sometimes trying to work in a hot studio on a sweltering summer day, when there is a mugginess in the atmosphere that saps your strength and you have to work under hot electric lights. If you are not healthy your temper gets worn to a frazzle, you think the director captious, you think your fellow players a bunch of dubs. You want to be any place but the place where you are after you have rehearsed the same scene for three or four hours, and the director is still dissatisfied with the way it is done.
If you have good health and strength, you are more easily able to keep your temper, figuring that it is all in a day’s work. If you lack this essential you become nervous and go to pieces. The result is that, when the director casts for another picture, he remembers you all right — but he remembers to leave you out in the cold.
You may think that you have beautiful neck and shoulders, and want to show them, but it is best to consider and study how to show them in a natural way, instead of showing your neck as a swan would show its neck. I knew one girl, a local beauty, who had been told by her many friends that her neck was beautiful and graceful. When she got into the pictures she spoiled the first production she was in by the way she maneuvered her neck. Another girl I knew was supposed to take the part of the vampire. She believed that she could play this part best by drawing her head down and shoving her shoulders upward. She looked deformed on the screen. And this posture was taken against the protest of the director. The girl got by with it because she was supposed to be an actress of some ability, but she appeared on the screen as lacking a neck.
From dubdom to stardom is, in most instances, a long, long journey. You will find your best helps on the way to be your own critical eye, the critical eye of a friendly director, the mirror before which you must register and keep on registering thousands of different kinds of emotions, and a good constitution. You must be able to “emote” on the slightest pretext. You must be able to throw yourself into any situation, conceive you are the victim of any kind of circumstances, and live all kinds of parts.
If you don’t know how to ride horse-back or swim, you should learn at once, for in these days there is not so much doubling — the substituting of a trained athlete for the principal — as there formerly was in motion pictures. Nowadays the lead plays the part right straight through. Boxing lessons will help you, particularly if you are going in for serial work. Even if you are not, they will help keep you in trim.
—
—
Study the motion of your hands — they are eloquent if used properly.
—
A star should combine the dramatic ability with the capacity for getting around and doing stunts.
—
“You must be able, on the slightest pretext, to throw yourself into the situation and live all kinds of parts.”
—
Pearl White is a glowing example of her own rules for health, which include riding, swimming, plenty of gymnasium exercise, and a well-regulated, rather scanty diet.
—
Being physically fit is necessary for the nervous strain of an exacting part.
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, April 1918