William Beaudine — Directorial Versatility (1926) 🇺🇸
Not all tears and not all smiles, but a sequence of joys and sorrows — that is life.
Directorial Versatility — as viewed by William Beaudine
Life is not a specialist in any one emotion, and those whose duty it is to register, depict and interpret these emotions for humanity have no reason to specialize in any one of them. Specialization in this field, according to William Beaudine, youngest of the successful directors of today, has a tendency to narrow one’s faculties.
And because of this danger, Beaudine welcomed the contract to make two comedy features for Douglas MacLean. The first one, “That’s My Baby,” a comedy of the most delightfully subtle humor has caused a sensation among the fans, and the second, which is now in production is destined to even greater plaudits at the hands of the film public.
Shakespeare was a great dramatist because he could play on every one of the emotional strings with equal ability. Other dramatists who may be compared to Shakespeare in certain qualities are now lost to the world because of their lack of universal appeal. And it is this universal appeal that the director must have to be successful.
How well Beaudine has been able to interpret the universal appeal of comedy and tragedy can be seen in the two pictures he directed for Mary Pickford, Little Annie Rooney and “Sparrows.” In these two pictures, Beaudine displayed his ability to interpret the tragic and comic events of every day life with fidelity. Of course the comic and lighter sides were dominated by the tragic and dramatic, but each of them were directed with consummate skill, so that the comedy scenes did not appear to be injected just “for the laughs.”
Beaudine’s skill in the comedy sequences will now be given full play in the feature comedies for MacLean, and that Beaudine knows comedy in all its phases is indicated by the fact that in his first years of directorship, Beaudine directed several of the slap-stick variety for Christie [Al Christie].
Beaudine ascribes some of his ability to depict the various emotions of life and instill them into the casts under his control to the fact that he is the father of four husky and active children to whom he is a real and affectionate daddy, studying their likes and dislikes, their loves and hates, their fears and their desires with great intensity, and as the emotions of children are much nearer the surface than that of adults,
Beaudine considers that he has a perfect working laboratory of the soul in his own home.
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William Beaudine considers that he has a perfect working laboratory of the soul in his own home and is here seen with three of his four children, Margaret, Helen and William, Jr., while back of them stand Mrs. Phillip Fletcher, Mrs. Beaudine’s mother, and Mrs. Beaudine.
Collection: Motion Picture Director, July 1926