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Job Hunting in Hollywood
BY LOUISE GALLAGHER
FOR the first time in my picture career I am feeling decidely upstage. This rather pleasant state of feeling has been brought about by holding up a production two days waiting for me to feel up to taking part. The reason that I can afford to be temperamental is because I have been used in every previous scene with the hero and they couldn’t switch in a new girl on the wind-up.
One of the most unfortunate conditions in studio work is the frequent antagonistic attitude by the players to the production managers and -directors, This comes about by directors, who in turn have received their orders from those higher up, attempting to complete a picture in half the time that should be allowed. There is supposed to be an eight hour law prohibiting the working of players over that length of time but the ways are endless by which the studio heads can evade it. The only benefit that small part and extra players derive from this law is that after the eight hours, an additional check or half check, must be paid them. It is not an uncommon thing, when a director is speeding up, for you to have to be on a set for from sixteen to twenty-four hours at a time. The director and his numerous assistants who are working at high tension, become cross and exacting, the actors weary and uninterested in their parts. It is not surprising that so many pictures turned out at a low cost of production, fall to be snappy or convincing. It is to their credit that they are as good as they are.
We had been working four days on a picture, with sixteen to eighteen hours on the set on a stretch. When on the afternoon of the fourth day we were dismissed at five o’clock and told to report back at seven for night work, long faces and caustic remarks were in order. The leads never make the howl that the small part players do for they are shown consideration. If they are only in one or two shots the sequence is switched so that these may be shot first and they are then allowed to go home. Not so with other members of the cast whose salaries fall below the three figure mark. Whether they are used or not they must remain within call and fully made up.
Lot’s wife may have been saved a great deal of the inconveniences of quick traveling by being turned into a pillar of salt but I bet she found it pretty monotonous standing still and watching the world go by. A placid existence is not always as easy as it seems.
On this set I was a statue in a Venetian garden. Try standing on a pedestal for thirty or forty minutes at a time and see how much fun it is. The intervals when the cameras stopped grinding long enough for me to get down and limber up, I would be so stiff that the prop man would have to lift me off. The heavy whitening on my face, neck, arms and legs was so thick it had to be applied with a regular size paint brush and when I got all made up it felt as though I had taken a dip into the glue pot. My tonic of glistening metal cloth is comfortable enough when I first put it on but after three hours it weighs a ton. My white wig is too tight over all my hair but if I could shake my head occasionally it would help. If I take even so much as a drink of water, my lips have to be rewhitened and it is a ticklish job getting back the same curve to my mouth. The “cone and kiss me” lips of the present day were not in vogue at the time of my statue existence.
The story was a silly one, anyway. The artist, with the usual handicap of a jealous wife was in love with a statue of his own creation. Friend wife, evidently with the best motives, objected to his admiration of the charms of an in animated lady and pointed out defects of my general makeup right under my marble nose. Not once was I permitted to answer her back. Not even by the batting of an eyelash. Promptly at seven, I climbed up on my pedestal and at three in the morning we were still working. Everything had gone wrong from the beginning. First, one of the big Kleig lights went bad and had to be repaired: then I spoilt twenty feet of film by wabbling on my insecure base and now the lead refused to take a fifteen foot ball from the balcony into the lake, declaring that in the start it was understood he was to have a double for any rough stuff-anyway he had a cold that has just developed, and he did not intend taking a cold plunge to help it along. I didn’t blame him for it was cold as the deuce. A prop boy had been stationed just out of camera range with my coat and slippers ready to put them on the moment the out signal flashed, but I was having a hard time to keep the camera from registering a shivering piece of art.
Work was suspended while the lead and the director argued as to whether a $500 a week man has the privilege of developing sudden ailments. It was finally decided that he had and a substitute was put in his place. He was a wise extra, too, in knowing he was the only one on the set the correct size to double. $15.00 for that fall-not much he wouldn’t. $20.00, then? No! He was not anxious, but it would be $25.00 or nothing, and no retakes without an additional $25.00. We, therefore, rehearsed up to the point we could, so as to get it over right the first time.
“One more shot now and then we will all go home,” the director promised. The double dressed in the glad regalia of the poet, took his place on the balcony with his back slighty to the cameras so his features would not be recognized. He looked down into the garden to where the blue lightning was playing all around me and held out his arms. So far so good. Just at this point was to come a downpour of rain that drenched everything in sight but the statue who received not a drop on her cold brow. The hoses were all adjusted-wife was ready to skip forth with a playful little shove that would send Ewardo tumbling from his balcony down through the rain into the lake.
“Ready! Action!” Bing! Bing! Something went wrong with the rain apparatus and the storm hit me full in the face, knocking me off my pedestal with such a force that for a moment I was stunned. When they got to me to pick me up, I had time to grasp what had happened and didn’t I do a good first class faint when they stood me on my own feet. I was wrapped in a blanket and carried over for the wardrobe woman to give me a steambath. I had stalled for two days saying I was too nervous to go on-I know my salary will-and honestly I was all worn out from loss of sleep. I am due the salary I will receive for the days I am not working as extra money for the fatigue of long hours. My only regret is that the double didn’t get in his fall before the rain hit me. Tomorrow I work and all the cast should be grateful to me for the needed rest.
And now to tell you something worthwhile. Whom do you think I met at a tea the other afternoon, sat on the same wide chair all nice and comfy – Kathlyn Williams? If that doesn’t properly thrill you I’ll forgive you for I’ll know you have never met Kathlyn Williams. She is not a bit like she screens or maybe it is because I have associated her with roles of statuesque beauty, where she is always the perfectly coiffed, beautiful gowned wife of the millionaire or other dominant, mascul-power of the film. She is ever so much better looking off than on the screen and has the most winsome smile and the prettiest blue eyes. She looks very young to have been in pictures for such a long time. Yet she was a part of them in those early days when n.w. Griffith gave to the silver sheet such artists as Kathlyn Williams, Henry Walthall and Mary Pickford.
“You girls have it easy now,” she told me. “You have such good photography, you are rehearsed in your roles, even have music on the sets to help you portray emotions. The first few years in pictures were wonderful indeed. Our photography was poor, but our stories were full of action and characterization. We made them quickly, rehearsed little if at all, and kept in the mood of the role from the time we entered the studio until the film was finished. Those were the days of three films a week. Sometimes even we did a film a day. There was spontaneity and interest in every player, and no pause in which to drop your role.”
“In your first serial pictures, didn’t you play around a lot with lions and tigers,” I asked.
“Those early pictures had no psychology,” she laughed, “but, my, they did have alot of acrobats, especially when it came to getting out of the way of a giant leopard whose velvet paw could have killed me with one pat. I lived on intense excitement and called it a day lost when I had had no actual escape from sudden death, either from some wild horse’s back or in the jungles. We didn’t know much about doubles ‘n those days. Everyone did his stuff with such courage as he could muster. We didn’t need technic to know how to express reality for it was the real thing, dangers and all. Trick photography eliminates much of the dangers of today and technical knowledge has improved the films but, alas, it has made the actor’s life duller-and safer.”
“Our celluloid films,” she continued, “have such an important place now in the world of art and commerce that it has narrowed down to a routine profession, lacking in the fire and enthusiasm of a dozen years ago. The first days of the cinemas were like the famous ‘gold rushes’ of early California and Alaska, vivid with adventure, daring and hazard.”
Besides being an actress, Miss Williams is a student, a globe trotter and a builder. Every time she has a few months between pictures she crosses the ocean in search of foreign color and atmosphere. She is much interested in Oriental religions and hopes to spend next Winter in India. She loves to build houses, but the trouble is, she builds such perfect ones that someone comes along and persuades her to sell. She and her husband live in a beautiful home now on the top of Vine Street, surrounded by three lovely terraced gardens and with the misty blue of the Pacific in the distance.
