Stephen Roberts — How to Become a Movie Director (1933) 🇺🇸

If an ugly looking customer suddenly leaped out of the bushes one night, stuck a gun against my ribs in a business-like manner and briskly demanded, “Quick now, — how can I become a movie director? Spill it in a few words! Your answer or your life!” — I must confess frankly that I wouldn’t know what to tell him.

by Stephen R. Roberts

True, I became a movie director myself, and I know the successive steps which led up to my present job. And I know personally a large number of other Hollywood directors, and how they became directors.

But to tell any person — not identified at present with the picture business — how he can become a director, seems to me to shape up as a nearly impossible task.

For the truth is that a director is a hybrid sort of animal. You will discover all types of men in the directorial ranks. Some of them are cultured, brilliantly educated men, who can discourse learnedly upon technique, rhythm, mood, tempo and all the other theoretical phases of picture making.

Others have very little formal education — in fact they may never have gone through grammar school, and to meet them at a social gathering, a stranger might be surprised to learn that they were film directors at all — much less men who had been responsible for some exceedingly artistic and delicately handled films.

The fact is that the composite director is a curious combination of the artistic genius, the business executive, the psychologist, and the literary mind. But an astonishing fact about this director job is that a good many men who would guffaw and wisecrack if anybody were to refer to them as artistic geniuses, business executives, psychologists, or literary minds, actually combine all of those qualities, and that very combination has made them extremely able directors.

But perhaps I can best illustrate my point about the diverse backgrounds, whence came some of our noted directors, by citing some actual cases.

Cecil B. DeMille, who made The Ten Commandments, The King of Kings and recently The Sign of the Cross, was an actor and stage manager. He entered films in their early days and always has exhibited a daring, pioneering quality in his pictures.

Frank Borzage, who directed A Farewell To Arms, Seventh Heaven and other fine productions, was also an actor.

Norman Taurog, who directed Skippy and “The Phantom President,” began his career as a child actor at the age of nine years, playing juvenile leads when he grew old enough. Then he directed two-reel comedies, was a gag man, and finally showed such ability that he was given a chance to direct feature productions, and has made good, needless to say.

Josef von Sternberg, a graduate of the University of Vienna, worked successively as a film patcher, a property man, a cutter, a cameraman, as a writer, and finally as an assistant director, before he startled Hollywood by producing for the modest sum of $5000 a film called The Salvation Hunters. That achievement earned him his chance to direct, but it will be noted that he had prepared himself previously by training, study and travel abroad.

Stuart Walker, who recently directed “Tonight is Ours,” was a stage manager and director for many years. He is a newcomer to Hollywood, his presence being attributable to talking pictures. He is a college graduate, who studied acting in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and later was an actor, play reader and stage manager.

To become personal, I studied engineering at Ohio State University, was a flyer in the World War, barnstormed the country with my own air circus after the Armistice, and entered films as a stunt flyer. For a while I acted in Western pictures, and then, because I once had lived on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma and knew Indian customs, I became an assistant director on a picture starring William S. Hart. I was an assistant director for some years, then directed short comedies. Later I wrote screen stories, and finally I became a full fledged director, after spending ten years in the business.

Max Marcin, who has co-directed several pictures, was a newspaper reporter, an author, a playwright and a film scenarist, before he entered the directorial ranks as co-director of his own play, “Silence.”

Rouben Mamoulian, who directed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and is now directing Marlene Dietrich in The Song of Songs, became a devotee of the theater while he was a student at the University of Moscow. He acted in, and staged plays in Moscow with such skill that London and then New York beckoned. After he had staged Porgy, Wings Over Europe and other plays for the Theater Guild, the movies pre-empted his talents.

Norman McLeod [Norman Z. McLeod], who directed Horse Feathers with the Four Marx Brothers, was a flyer in the Royal Flying Corps, following his graduation from the University of Washington. In the war he met a comedy director, who thought so highly of his mental attainments that he invited him to become his assistant in peace time. He was for years an assistant director, then a director of short comedies, and a comedy constructionist, (or gag man, as they are known technically in the business).

Ernst Lubitsch studied with Max Reinhardt, the German stage genius, and was an actor, both on the stage and in German films, before he became a director.

Erle Kenton [Erle C. Kenton], who directed “Guilty as Hell” and “The Island of Lost Souls,” is a product of carnivals, dog and pony shows, vaudeville and the original Keystone Komedy Kops. He became director of short comedies and eventually director of features. Other directors who began their careers as Keystoners are Eddie Cline [Edward F. Cline], D. Ross Lederman and Mal St. Clair.

“Lucky” Humberstone [H. Bruce Humberstone], who recently co-directed “The King of the Jungle,” for Paramount, is only twenty-nine. He was an assistant cameraman, a script clerk, an actor in Western pictures, and served as an assistant to Sam Taylor, King Vidor, George Fitzmaurice and Edmund Goulding, who made Grand Hotel.

Marion Gering, who made Madame Butterfly, studied stagecraft in his native Russia, became an actor, then directed plays in Chicago and New York with such unusual effects, that he, too, was sought by Hollywood.

George Abbott first won eminence as a Broadway stage director. John Adolfi [John G. Adolfi] was an actor. Del Andrews was a film cutter. So was Edward L. Cahn and Dorothy Arzner, the woman director. A large number of directors began their careers as actors — George Archainbaud, Lloyd Bacon, James Cruze, David Wark Griffith [D. W. Griffith], Clarence Badger [Clarence G. Badger], Herbert Brenon, and Edward Sutherland [A. Edward Sutherland], and many others.

Monta Bell was a newspaperman, who was one of Chaplin’s [Charles Chaplin] assistants during the making of A Woman of Paris, and later made good as a director. George Fitzmaurice was an art director.

Victor Fleming, Al Rogell [Albert S. Rogell] and numerous other directors, started as cameramen.

But the foregoing only serves to give the reader a general idea of the various avenues which have led certain men to a director’s chair. It does not tell how you can get there.

The five imperative qualifications of a 1933 movie director, as I understand them, are:

1. Story telling ability, expressed visually upon the screen.
2. A knowledge of characterization.
3. The human job of working harmoniously, constructively and sympathetically, with actors, cameramen, property men, and all the other highly important technical workers on the set.
4. A broad understanding — not necessarily a technical one — of photography, lighting, sound reproduction, cutting and editing. The more we know of these vital subjects, the better equipped we are.
5. A certain executive ability, and a practical appreciation of the business end of making films.

The director’s job, fundamentally expressed, is to relate a story visually upon the screen. The manner in which he succeeds in narrating this story on the screen is the direct measure of his skill and success as a director.

In order that he may tell his story in an entertaining, interesting, dramatically convincing and pictorial way, it is imperative that a director know how to utilize to their fullest all the resources placed at his beck and call by the large studios. We must possess, too, a sense of values, an instinctive good taste, an appreciation of dramatic and comedy effects. And I have noted, too, that the truly great directors all have been endowed with that editorial judgment of what the masses want to see, that stamps the successful magazine or newspaper editor.

The basis of a motion picture is the story. Therefore, a director who lacks the ability to build a story is seriously handicapped, in my opinion.

The reason I say a director must have story building knowledge is that, regardless of the ability and craftsmanship of the writers or dramatists who create the script finally turned over to the director to convert into a picture, he alone must bear the brunt of bringing their conception into screen images.

In brief, they write words, and he makes pictures. There is a vast difference. Just try it yourself, some time. Read a story in a book, or a magazine. Then close your eyes, let your imagination wander, try to visualize how the writer’s characters would look, if you could rub a lamp, Aladdin like, and summon them before you. Try to invest them with those mannerisms and odd traits which give reality to a screen character. Better yet, take some novel which is about to be made into a movie, and try to visualize how the characters and story will look in celluloid. Then go to see the story when it reaches the screen, and check your own impressions with those of the director. After that, you will perceive what I mean by stressing the importance of a director’s gift of story building.

To me, a flair for characterization is equally important. My pictures have emphasized this phase. Critics have been kind enough to write that the humanness of some of the minor characters in my productions have animated the pace of the story.

I believe that the most important phase of picture making is during the preparatory stages. I study the script thoroughly, visualizing the characters again and again in my mind’s eye, until I feel that they are people I have known, and lived with, for years. And then I collect the finest cast of actors obtainable. In this connection, I wish to express my opinion that the work of minor characters in a picture is extremely important. In fact, these “bit” players can make or break a picture in many instances. They are the people who lend conviction to a plot, or help to break down the illusion of realism a director has been striving deliberately to produce.

The settings, too, are important, as well as the clothes and costumes, but fortunately, the major studios have experts responsible for these duties, so that a director has very little cause to worry about them.

Speaking of acting, I want honest mood and feeling from my actors, rather than a technical imitation of a character. On the stage that is good acting. In pictures, it is not, the reason being that the camera is so observant that it actually photographs your feelings.

The placement of cameras and achievement of lighting effects, I entrust entirely to my cameraman. Virtually all of the Hollywood cameramen today are artists, with a knowledge of lighting effects, and the application of camera work to the moods and characterizations which the director is seeking. In my opinion, it is not essential that a director have a technical knowledge of camera and lighting. Of course it is extremely helpful if he has that knowledge, as in the case of von Sternberg, Fitzmaurice, Cruze, Lubitsch, Mamoulian and other directors. But I think that a director can get by with only a knowledge of how to dramatize his action by placing the camera in the most advantageous spot to take in what is happening.

Similarly, I leave the problem of sound reproduction to my sound man. He is an expert and a specialist. That is his problem.

But making a picture today calls for the work of so many specialists that teamwork and harmonious cooperation are an absolute requirement of the successful director.

Enthusiasm, originality, intelligent effort by the actors, cameramen, sound engineer, property man, script clerk and others on the set, are essential to the making of good pictures. To paraphrase the old saying about many hands making light work, many minds make good pictures.

But how you, or you, or you, can become a movie director is, as I warned you, a difficult thing to say.

Generally speaking, I would prescribe a good education, with emphasis upon the literary and dramatic fields. Then, by hook or by crook, get a job identified closely with the theater, or in a film studio and — good luck to you!

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Stephen R. Roberts Paramount Director

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Editorial Note: Stephen R. Roberts, the author of this article, which he dictated to Mary A. Roberts, is one of Paramount’s most brilliant directors, having made The Night of June 13, “Lady and Gent”, “The Sky Bride” and “The Story of Temple Drake,” with Miriam Hopkins and George Raft. Like “Nick” Mamula, of Paramount’s publicity staff, “Steve” was a student at Ohio State University. This is the third of a series of articles of or by the screen’s greatest motion picture directors which this magazine is running exclusively.

$2.00 is the bargain price per two years subscription to Broadway And Hollywood Movies magazine! Foreign $3.00.

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Stephen Roberts directing Jack La Rue and Miriam Hopkins in a scene from Paramount’s “The Story of Temple Drake.”

Collection: Broadway and Hollywood “Movies” Magazine, November 1933