Ralph Ince — Shopping for Human Beings (1921) 🇺🇸

August 13, 2024

Ralph Ince tossed a page from his notebook into my lap, touched a match to a cigarette, and sank contentedly into the capacious depths of an armchair. On the slip of yellow paper were these penciled notes:

by Susie Sexton

One leading woman, distinctly clinging vine, accustomed to good clothes and knowing how to wear them.

One leading man, educated, athletic, well-bred, drawing-room type.

One villain, not of conventional order, all-round good fellow of small town, who ran put over evil characteristics and yet create suspense with hero’s wife.

One infant, retrousse nose, disposition to smile under all circumstances, even before the camera.

One character man for small part; excellent characterization essential.

“My shopping list for our next production,” he volunteered, puffing energetically at his cigarette. “Buying humanity carefully, you know, is even more important than getting the correct settings for a production.

“Fashions in heroes and heroines change as inevitably as the latitude of a skirt hem in these modern times,” he went on. “Some of the screen idols of 1915 would be as out of place before the camera to-day as the bonnet of five years ago on this season’s debutante.” And after a thoughtful pause, he went on: “A short time ago the leading man was likely to have a distinctly middle-class appeal — to put it mildly.”

“The modern idea is different. To-day the popular conception of a hero is an intellectual man. He is essentially a gentleman; his chief qualifications are breeding and education — which give him a certain poise that substitutes for the handsome but vapid features of an Adonis.

“This change in the style and cut of the leading man’s pattern is undoubtedly due to a change in audiences. With more intelligent audiences coming to motion-picture theaters, productions have to be made more intelligently. The best audiences won’t tolerate a man ignorant of all polite usage, in a society part.

“The director who starts out to shop for a cast today is not likely to find a 1920-model hero the first time he looks over his card index. His man must dress well, have a college education or its equivalent, and be an artist in the bargain. Many actors will possess two, or perhaps three, of the necessary qualifications, but to discover the man who has all of them, the director must shop as indefatigably as a woman haunts a bargain counter.

“The English actor, for instance, specializes in clothes. In this respect he surpasses the American, who is likely to place the emphasis on athletics. The director’s search must aim for the man who has both the English and American characteristics and a few others.” “But what about new styles in heroines?” I asked, fearing that he would stop without giving ambitious girls a hint.

“Must be the drawing-room type like the hero. It takes diligent shopping to find her, too, for she must have all the physical characteristics that are associated in the mind with the supposed weakness of the woman.”

“The modern woman who runs for congress or secretary of state is not likely to become the heroine of many romances on the screen — at least for the present,” he explained. “The man’s woman, the appealing type, is still in the ascendancy and is likely to remain there. Poor Annie cannot starve to death convincingly on the screen if she appears thoroughly capable of taking care of herself. Nobody would believe her sad story.

“On the stage, of course, the self-reliant-looking woman might use a sympathetic voice to convince the public that her plight was pitiable, but on the screen her physical appearance is all she has to gain her point. So she must cling and look frail and dependent.”

And if that doesn’t surprise you, perhaps his next will.

“It is very difficult to find a woman who knows how to wear good clothes before the camera. There they are, with fortunes to spend, with the shops of the world and the most exclusive dressmakers at their call, and yet how many of them still look as though they were dressed in hand-me-downs. This can be attributed to the fact that they are not accustomed to wearing such exquisite creations as the picture productions call for. That is why the director is constantly looking for an actress who comes from a family whose women have always worn beautiful clothes. She will wear them with distinction.”

“And how about villains?” I asked. “Is it hard to find just the right kind of dyed-in-the-wool, blown-in-the-bottle villain?”

“Just like the others,” Mr. Ince said despairingly. “A conscientious director exerts every effort to find just the types the public wants to see. It may be that the particular actor he needs for a certain part is out of work and living in an obscure part of the world waiting to be called back to his land of make-believe. He may be filling an engagement in a distant city on the legitimate or vaudeville stage. Or it may be that among the unknown but ambitious aspirants to screen honors one will come into prominence because of a special suitability for a part.”

Mr. Ince is one of those encouraging di rectors who believe that there may be planets of Pickford or Fairbanks magnitude among the 9,527,656 uninitiated fans who are constantly begging for a try-out.

“Just to illustrate my point,” he continued, “I had to do a lot of screen shopping among actor villains past and present before I finally decided on Harry Tighe to play the heavy in our productions, ‘Red Foam.’ This was the unusual type which always necessitates a search. The man in the story to all outward appearances was not a regular villain. He was somewhat of a Jekyll-Hyde villain at heart, but outwardly the man you have known back in your own home town, hale fellow well met, fat, good-natured, always with the latest story on the tip of his tongue. Just at that time the local market in villains was very discouraging. None of the actors available really fitted into the part. I had searched for days and days, and then some one reminded me of Harry Tighe, who was playing in vaudeville out on the road. He was just the man I wanted. I had an equally strenuous hunt for a juvenile for that picture. Most juveniles know little of makeup, and the one who does is a rare find.

“The director casting a picture is much like a housewife on a shopping expedition. She makes her purchases with an eye to moderate price and wearing qualities, because she knows these will prove the wisest investment in the long run. He looks for breeding and education when he picks a cast for the same reason. An actor with years of experience, but without education, may not do nearly as well as the man with a good education and natural talent but little experience on the screen.

“One of the most striking instances of this sort of thing came to my notice at the studio a few months ago. A marine just out of service secured a job sweeping out the studio. He did his work so well that he was promoted from one position of responsibility to another until he finally became my assistant.

“In time we discovered that he was a college graduate, and that before the war had swept away his business he had owned a chain of ten restaurants and had an income of twenty thousand dollars a year. One day I had to cast the part of a colonel in a production. An actor who had the ease of manner and bearing necessary for the role was not at hand, so my assistant undertook the part. He not only played that one well, but has done several others since very creditably and has recently been offered a position as director himself. A year ago he had never been inside a studio, but today he promises to become one of the leading men in motion pictures. He never would have been able to do any of these things without the education and breeding which made him perfectly at home wherever he was placed.”

After leaving Mr. Ince I discovered that he is not the only director who shops diligently and in many different markets for his casts. Sometimes a director on this side of the Atlantic has been called upon to duplicate in New York or Los Angeles a character photographed in London, England, or elsewhere. Character duplication of this sort naturally must be accomplished with the same fastidious care a woman exercises in matching the shade of an evening gown when she has not bought quite enough material in the first place.

Not long ago a big producer had his camera man shoot some scenes of a railway station near London. They showed a side-whiskered, knobby-nosed old man alighting from a tram. Just at this point the producer decided the remainder of this particular scene must be finished in Brooklyn. He cabled to this effect, and it was up to the Brooklyn director to find as soon as possible the double of that particular old man. Not an easy task. But it was accomplished. After a thorough search of all the professional humanity available the director’s eye lighted on the studio cabinetmaker, who was such a perfect double of the Englishman that not one fan has yet suspected two different men appeared in the part.

Every director does his shopping for casts in a different manner. It is conceded that the man who has whims has ideas, and he is given a clear field without interference.

Some parts are so very unusual that the director must advertise his need very widely in order to get adequate results. One company which produced a Lincoln play was much concerned over the casting of the leading role.

A Sunday newspaper in New York carried an advertisement for a man who could pose as Lincoln’s double. By Monday noon the director found himself literally buried in three hundred applications for the job from points as far West as Chicago and presented in person, by special delivery, and by telegraph. The part went, not to an actor of years’ experience, but to a versatile waiter in a popular roof-garden, whose resemblance to the emancipator was so striking that a second glance was unnecessary.