Add Row 
Add 
Job Hunting in Hollywood
Angle! Angle! And You Need It! BY LOUISE GALLAGHER
GET the angle!
This was formerly the password to the studio scenario departments only, but it has now spread to all branches of motion picture making and is the unspoken slogan of every person connected with the business.
Your interpretation of how this is done varies according to your parking space in the studios. The extra girl, whether she is the petted and pampered offspring of a soap manufacturer, the modest daughter of a Babbitt or a courageous young person of pioneer stock, gets the angle in exactly the same way. She puts herself out after she has learned a little about the game, to know and call by their first name as many assistant cameramen, electricians and property men as possible.
‘ No high-brow complex goes while you belong in this class. Just try once Rit ying the most significant of the electricans or up-staging any of the other assistants and see where you’ll land when they begin shooting the extras into camera range. This is not what you hoped for when you came to Hollywood to dazzle Valentino or Eugene O’Brien, but most of them are young boys and pretty nice kids, and then in the very beginning you find you must change the spelling of “Art” to a very small “a. ”
You ask why you must waste your harms on these artisans of the screen clicking family? What possible assistance can they be to you? You never can tell when they can help you get a job.
The assistant director says to his assistant, ‘ ‘We need a dozen more girls on the set. Round ’em up will you?” The assistant’s assistant sprints over to the casting office and asks for certain girls to be phoned for-the one whom he remembers by name and whom he happens to like.
You Never Can Tell.
Then, too, this class of workers shift constantly from one studio to another and you may know a friendly property man one week at Universal and find him occupying the same position the next week at Goldwyn’s. I was on a set last week where an extra girl was picked out to double for the lead in a long shot in an automobile ride. Every extra eye followed her enviously, for it meant an additional check of $15 or more for a half hour’s work.
After her part was over, she wasted no time resting on her laurels. Over at the side, out of camera range, she spent a busy hour playing up to an assistant cameraman who happened also not to be busy just then. When he was called back to work the girl came over and joined another girl sitting near me. “I hated like the deuce,” she told her friend, “to have that native son of Arizona hold my hand and I was scared his dirty coat would get against my dress, but he is changing over to the Fox studio next week and I want him to give me the low-down on work there. I can nearly always get in on all big sets if I find out in time when they are casting, but I haven’t a single drag at Fox to help me.” The other girl nodded solemnly her approval of her little game. That is the way the extra salamander, “Gets the Angle.”
A small part player-to which class, thank goodness, I now belong-does not associate with the extras and neither does she waste her charms or her time on the same class of men. She has made the first grade, and, though she is still running along pretty slow in second, her flickering career can only receive assistance from first cameramen and electricians. The assistant director calls you by your first name and extends little courtesies to you from time to time, such as telling you how long the work is likely to last, etc.
It sometimes happens, though it is not a thing you can bank upon, that the director, himself, if he happens to be unusually democratic, or has ever been a boy scout, says a kind word to you. You are getting the angle from a different viewpoint and with a better perspective. Directors and producers get the angle through the box office entirely, and are the only ones connected with the industry who see it clearly.
Reflected Glares.
Stars get the angle only as a reflection of their own radiance, and if their slippery foothold fails to balance them, the shock absorbers along the way down, ease the fall somewhat. There is nothing that is quite so pathetic as a one-time favorite start trying to stage a comeback to popular favor. They do not seem to “get the angle” at all. Their past glory has so weakened their vision that it is impossible for them to see themselves clearly. They become embittered when they are forced to accept minor roles and their general attitude is that the world has given them an unfair deal.
I have been working for the past three nights on a Constance Talmadge set, the same one that I worked in before. There are five of us visiting Contance at the home of her aunt-Edyth Chapman-and we have had a good time. Johnny Herron, brother of Bobby-plays the juvenile lead and Antonio Marino the other lead. Last night we had some unusually distinguished visitors. Eugene O’Brien, Theda Bara, Anita Loos and Natalie Keaton honored us by acting as audience. Yes, girls, Eugene, is just as handsome off stage, without makeup, as he is on, and has the sort of speaking voice that would be worth traveling across a continent to hear. “Bull” Montana is the tough taxi driver in the play, who knows life as it is, and “Bull” seems to be equally well up in the part, off and on. He tells you quite frankly that, having won his place in pictures, he thinks it is “all the bunk,” and if it were not for the money he gets out of it, he would quit them cold.
No danger of ever having “Bull”-we have become pretty good friends since I have been working on this set -get between you and the camera. He prefers staying in the background whenever possible. Courteous treatment, good salary and short working hours you can depend upon when working for United.
