Richard Dix — He Rolls His Own (1926) 🇺🇸

February 18, 2023

Part of the painful impedimenta of screen success, it would seem, is a multiplication of cares and worries concerning the mechanism of the vehicle one rides in. In the beginning, an actor of the silent stage is a spoke, as it were, in the wheel of the cart that carries him; he revolves, indifferent to the destination of the cart itself, content to consider himself a spoke and nothing more. Later, if he becomes anything at all, he changes — for the sake of the metaphor — into the hub, or rim, or whatever is most important in the life of a wheel; and then we may consider that his troubles have fairly begun. For his vehicle may carry him uphill or down in public favor, and nature has made it easy for a wheeled vehicle to coast.

by David A. Balch

Thus, Richard Dix, a star now in his own right upon the silent stage, has reached Part Two of a star's existence, and the vehicle that carries him — his pictures, as it were — has become a matter of concern more vital to him, let us say, than his breakfast. And mindful of the journey that leads either uphill or down. Richard is, literally, "rolling his own."

"How do you do it?" we asked him, in the seclusion of his dressing room out at the Famous Players-Lasky studio on Long Island. He had commenced stepping out of a Graustark costume that was a miracle of military coat, patent-leather boots, and glove-fitting breeches. It was the suit he wears when, as a prince, he encounters all manner of amazing adventures in "Say It Again," his current picture. A stack of fan mail of the most insinuating character decorated one corner of his dressing table — stationery of variegated hues that covered the entire chromatic scale. There were letters addressed variously and hinting of importance, such as — Personal for Richard Dix. Richard Dix, Strictly Personal, and Richard Dix, Confidential. Ah, well, we concluded softly, such was screen fame.

"Well, I've had my troubles," he replied, ridding himself of a contrivance that resembled a ballet dancer's skirt. Strange fellows, these princes! "And it has reduced me, finally, to a state where I eat. sleep, and dream pictures. In fact, I'm like the postman who. on his day off, went for a walk. I spend my Sundays over here at the Long Island studio, watching reels of film, looking for a thought, for a suggestion, that may point the path to some possible improvement. I still hunt for new ideas. Pictures now are my whole existence."

We watched him as he stood there divesting himself of the trappings of princedom, a little thinner, we thought than we had ever remembered having seen him before. Perhaps the fans like him that way — like consommé, thin but good! It was two years exactly since we had last seen Richard, and he had changed in the interval, it seemed, ever so slightly, had grown more serious in manner than he had been when we first knew him. Work, we decided, had done it.

"My last three pictures," he continued, "have been comedies, for Mr. Lasky and I have both felt that people want to laugh more than they want to do anything else. When I say 'people,' I mean the inhabitants of small communities who make up the majority of picture patrons. For instance," he illustrated, pausing in his effort to drag off a patent-leather boot, "I was out last night with a man named Brandt, who owns a big string of Brooklyn theaters. Brandt told me that of all the theaters in the United States, fully seventy-five per cent of them have a seating capacity of not more than two hundred persons. That means," he added, "that we play, in the overwhelming main, not to Broadway — not to the Rivoli nor the Rialto, nor to the Metropolitan in Boston — but to little out-of-the-way places whose inhabitants are what the politicians call 'the backbone of the nation.'"

Richard glanced at himself in his full-length dressing-room mirror, and extracted a cigarette from a packet on the table. He talked with all the warmth of an orator on his favorite subject and with the emphasis that is pleasantly typical of him to those who know him.

"So you see," he went on, "the profits of a picture come mainly from Main Street and its environs, and it is to Main Street, like the old-time actor to his gallery, that we are largely playing. This, in a phrase, means broader strokes, and a selection of material that is fairly general in appeal. It doesn't mean anything juvenile necessarily, for the biggest and most moving things are the simplest — accessible to almost every type of mind. But it does mean material that is not restricted to unfamiliar particulars, and treatment that is broad enough for every one to comprehend. Accomplish this and you have something of universal appeal, which is the end we are striving toward always."

He turned away with abrupt finality, hunting a sash or something, that was part of his attire for the afternoon, when, once more resplendent in white velvet and patent leather, he would again masquerade as a prince in this shaft of celluloid satire on all the misdeeds of George Barr McCutcheon. Indeed, the satirical point of the picture, which had become evident to us a short while before on the set below, made us think of a revue we had seen once, when two of the performers had delighted us keenly by suddenly rendering a syncopated recitation of Kipling's "Gunga Din." Quite, we had decided at the time, as it should be.

"But how have you done it all?" we persisted, having in mind the story that his recent activities, we felt certain, would make. We knew that he had been controlling the making of his own pictures for some time past, and we were curious to learn how the wind had blown. Valentino, we recalled, had quarreled once on this very score with the organization that employed him, and the growing custom among picture companies of vesting the selective control of pictures in the stars themselves seemed an interesting departure from the old order. We wondered how Richard had fared.

He turned back at once, fired again with the zeal of his interest.

"Do you know," he asked suddenly, "that this is the third picture we have made without a scenario?"

It seemed an extraordinary statement, and we thought immediately, with irrelevant humor, of the man who said the Irish riots looked like a lot of movie actors working without a scenario, to which some one had added — "or with one." We said nothing, however, except to murmur faintly and incredulously our astonishment.

"I wouldn't want to do it again, though," he proceeded, "not after this one, for it's altogether too much of a strain. It means that the responsibility for the picture's being good falls entirely upon the star and the director, and there's such a thing, I've learned recently, as having too much to worry about." He limped — one boot on, the other off — across the room to his clothes closet, and extracted a coat that was heavily emblazoned with gold braid. In our younger days we would have given much to wear a coat like that. Richard inspected it in silence for a moment, then placed it on the back of a chair within easy reach.

"Yes," we agreed, provocatively, "I should think one of the prime requirements of comedy making is peace of mind. You can't be funny when you are worried — at least, not in the right way."

Richard felt tenderly of his left hand, which he had injured in a melee with some rough characters, a day or so previous, in part of the picture's stirring, if facetious, action. The hand was bruised and badly swollen. A doctor would have had a wonderful time with it.

"Some time ago," he explained finally, "the company gave me my own unit, as we say in the studios, with the authority to handle it as I saw fit. This meant literally making my own pictures from cellar to attic, and so, with the carte blanche it carried, I went to work in earnest. I wanted a director who hadn't done big things, for that is the only sort of director you can work with. Otherwise, you work for him, and I had my own ideas on what I wanted to do. This resulted in my finally selecting Gregory La Cava, whose work I had liked in the past, and, together, we started lining up what we figured should be our plan of campaign.

"'Greg,' I'd say to him, 'what's the funniest situation you can imagine for any one like myself?'

"This would start the ball rolling and, gradually, out of a dozen hopeless ideas, possibly would come one that we'd select as our starting point. Then, with a given scene and situation, we would build upon it in the obvious manner, so as to select the maximum of comedy values. We'd get together at night and say to each other, 'Now, here! What is the funniest thing we can do with a cigarette? Or a hat? How can I wear this silk hat so as to get a laugh out of Main Street?' For, understand, Main Street was the mark that we never ceased shooting at, in all our searches for material.

"Greg used to ring me on the phone late at night, or early in the morning, telling me of something new that had occurred to him. It might be a joke out of a newspaper, or a comic situation he had sensed in some news item. On the other hand, I was just as keen to get to him with every new wrinkle of amusing behavior that occurred to me. For instance, I called him up late one night to tell him of a story I had just read in a magazine. A woman temperance lecturer, whose charms were not of the physical sort, was making a speech and telling how she herself had been a sufferer from the drink evil. Her husband, she said, had been addicted to the habit for years. But one day, she added, she had got him to sign the pledge. I was so overjoyed,' she cried, 'that I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him.' At which a voice in the auditorium called out: 'And served him jolly well right, too!'

"Here, I thought, might be the germ of a laugh for a scene in one of our pictures, so I passed it along to La Cava. In the same manner, we'd discuss comic situations in which the romantic element was in a sense preserved, for we couldn't entirely lose sight of this.

"In this way, starting with what we felt was a humorous idea, we built up our stories, always with a weather eye on Main Street, and guided, of course, by the scenario department itself. Those were days in which Ralph Block, the scenario editor, haunted me like a shadow. And as regularly as Greg and I would wander off the trail in our enthusiasm to pick up stray nuggets of golden laughs, Mr. Block would just as regularly lead us back again to the path that the story itself must take."

"The first picture we did in this way," Richard went on presently, "was 'Womanhandled,' and it went over, I am told, with a bang. We were working constantly for rapid-fire action and lots of laughs, and I imagine we got both of them, if we can judge by results. Then, Greg and I followed this with, 'Let's Get Married,' and this went over, too, although, as I've said, we had our troubles with both of them. Now we are doing 'Say It Again,' which is just a burlesque of all that old mythical-kingdom bunk, with the beautiful princess and the dashing young American, only in this case he isn't quite so dashing. It's our third, and it's the last.

"The last of the comedies," he explained, "and the last of working without a scenario. The new order is to be melodrama, and little Richard will be a swashbuckling hero."

Somehow, we were rather glad to hear this, for we have always felt that Richard left less to be desired in the romantic way than almost any other American star.

His dressing completed at last, he stood before us a faultless figure of sartorial elegance. In the hall without, we encountered a quiet man in a gray suit who was going in our direction as far as the floor below. It was D. W. Griffith. Mr. Griffith paused to admire Richard.

"My!" he said finally. "You look fine. Doesn't he?" he asked.

We nodded with enthusiasm.

Which is why, if for no other reason, we are glad Richard Dix is forsaking comedy for melodrama, only we hope that he will continue artfully to "roll his own."