Whitman Bennett — Advice to Would-Be Stars (1921) 🇺🇸
Wearied by his struggle to turn a Latin sentence into English or to solve a problem in geometry, the discouraged youth often seeks relaxation in the motion picture theatre. Why should he continue to labor with this uninteresting material which brings so little recognition in its train — at the best only his name on the honor roll? This is his line of thought as he watches a sprightly youth leap nimbly on a moving train or burst through a barn door in his high-powered motor car.
by Whitman Bennett
The discontented one makes a mental resolution to apply for a similar position as soon as school closes. Then when the years have made him a little too stout or stiff to perform such acrobatic stunts there is the comfortable place of director. He has heard how these directors strut about in knickerbockers, calling to dancing girls and sweet-faced ingenues through megaphones.
But before the youth turns in his Latin and geometry books it might be well for him to glance over the qualifications which are necessary for the successful director of the future.
In the first place, the prospective director must have an intense desire to create. If he can be happy at keeping a shop or making some article necessary to human welfare he owes it to art to keep out of the production end of motion pictures.
Seldom is tact married to executive ability, but the two characteristics must abide in the worthwhile director. He must be able to manage crowds and to discipline and at the same time to create an atmosphere of good fellowship and cooperation. The spirit which pervades a case steals into the film. And to manage women is a knack in itself. Just as to some reporters a woman will tell her whole story, so to another she will scarcely give a line.
In the early days the film director was usually an unsuccessful stage director. No person of high repute would stoop to what was then considered such a degrading profession. Today the colleges are furnishing some recruits but whatever the preparation, the director must be a citizen of the world — one who has had a broad training and has taken all learning to be his province. For example, this month he may be making a picture which requires a minute understanding of Chinese customs. Later there comes into his hands a script dealing with the Northland or one requiring knowledge of primitive life among Southern mountaineers.
For example, in my latest picture, “Wife Against Wife,” it was necessary to plan and inject the necessary backgrounds and atmosphere of the artists’ colony in the Latin quarter of Paris whereas in another, preceding it, England with its own peculiar customs and surroundings is the locale.
A company when engaging a director does not take into consideration where or in what manner this widely varied knowledge was gained. It is enough that the candidate possesses it. David W. Griffith [D. W. Griffith] has had myriad experiences in various kinds of work. Marshall Neilan was once a chauffeur, but worked his way up as an actor, writer and finally director. Most of the directors now come from the ranks of actors.
Emotional experience is also a requisite. He who would be a director should not be afraid to unfurl his sail and visit the various ports of human experience. Else how can he touch the springs of emotion in those whom he directs? No experience is ever wasted. All of them come into use some time. To be able to suffer and to rejoice and to express the gamut of human emotions falls to the director’s lot.
Love of beauty must also be his. Some directors make a specialty of interiors, while others have an instinct which leads them to the garden spots of the earth, and with these shots they adorn their pictures.
To top off all these requirements comes the capacity to work diligently and without tiring. Nearly everyone can work when warm with the glow of inspiration, but he who can keep treading the plain of mediocrity without tiring until he reaches his goal is the one to whom the motion pictures beckon.
It seems like a rather large order to fill to become a successful director. One might conclude that it is a profession in which knowledge of Latin and geometry might not be amiss.
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Collection: Pantomime Magazine, September 1921