Marc Connelly, the playwright, once posed the question: what should an author’s approach be in writing for the theatre? Should it be the intellectual or the emotional? I think primarily emotional, because it is more interesting in the theatre than intellect; the theatre is designed for it, its rostrum, its proscenium, its red curtains, its whole architectural flounce is addressed to the emotion. Naturally intellect participates but it is secondary. Chekhov knew this; so did Molnár and many other playwrights. They also knew the importance of theatricalism, which is basically the art in playwriting.
To me theatricalism means dramatic embellishment: the art of the aposiopesis; the abrupt closing of a book; the lighting of a cigarette; the effects off-stage, a pistol shot, a cry, a fall, a crash; an effective entrance, an effective exit – all of which may seem cheap and obvious, but if treated sensitively and with discretion, they are the poetry of the theatre.
An idea without theatrical sense is of little value. It is more important to be effective. With a theatrical sense one can be effective about nothing.
An example of what I mean was a prologue I put on in New York with my picture A Woman of Paris. In those days prologues went with all feature pictures and lasted about half an hour. I had no script or story but I remembered a sentimental coloured print captioned ‘Beethoven’s Sonata’, depicting an artistic studio and a group of bohemians sitting moodily about in half-light, listening to a violinist. So I reproduced the scene on the stage, having only two days to prepare it.
I engaged a pianist, a violinist, apache dancers and a singer, then utilized every theatrical trick I knew. Guests sat around on settees or on the floor with their backs to the audience, ignoring them and drinking Scotch, while the violinist poured out his sonata, and in a musical pause a drunk snored. After the violinist had played, the apache dancers had danced, and the singer had sung Auprès de ma Blonde two lines were spoken. Said a guest: ‘It’s three O’clock, I must be going.’ Said another: ‘Yes, we must all be going,’ ad libbing as they exited. When the last had gone, the host lit a cigarette and began turning out the lights of the studio as voices were heard singing down the street Auprès de ma Blonde. When the stage had darkened, except for the moonlight streaming in through the centre window, the host exited and, as the singing grew fainter, the curtain slowly descended.
During this nonsense you could have heard a pin drop from the audience. For half an hour nothing had been said, nothing but a few ordinary vaudeville acts had taken place on the stage. Yet on the opening night the cast took nine curtain calls.
I cannot pretend to enjoy Shakespeare in the theatre. My feeling is too contemporary. It requires a special panache type of acting which I do not like, and in which I am not interested. I feel I am listening to a scholarship oration.
My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou remember’st
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid’s music.
This may be eminently beautiful but I do not enjoy that kind of poetry in the theatre. Moreover, I dislike Shakespearean themes involving kings, queens, august people and their honour. Perhaps it is something psychological within me, possibly my peculiar solipsism. In my pursuit of bread and cheese, honour was seldom trafficked in. I cannot identify myself with a prince’s problems. Hamlet’s mother could have slept with everyone at court and I would still feel indifferent to the hurt it would have inflicted on Hamlet.
As for my preference in presenting a play, I like the conventional theatre, with its proscenium that separates the audience from the world of make-believe. I like the scene to be revealed by the lifting or parting of curtains. I dislike plays that come over the footlights and participate with an audience, in which a character leans against the proscenium and explains the plot. Besides being didactic, this device destroys the charm of the theatre, and is a prosaic way of getting over exposition.
In stage décor I prefer that which contributes reality to the scene and nothing more. If it is a modern play of everyday life, I do not want geometric design. These prodigious effects destroy my make-believe.
Some very fine artists have imposed their scenic effusions to the degree of subordinating both the actor and the play. On the other hand just curtains and steps running up into infinity are worse intrusions. They reek of erudition and shout: ‘We leave much to your noble sensibility and imagination!’ I once saw Laurence Olivier in evening dress recite an excerpt from Richard III at a benefit. Although he achieved a medieval mood by his histrionics, his white tie and tails were rather incongruous.
Someone said that the art of acting is relaxing. Of course this basic principle can be applied to all the arts, but an actor especially must have restraint and an inner containment. No matter how frenzied the scene, the technician within the actor should be calm and relaxed, editing and guiding the rise and fall of his emotions – the outer man excited and the inner controlled. Only through relaxation can an actor achieve this. How does one relax? That is difficult. My own method is rather personal: before going on the stage, I am always extremely nervous and excited, and in this state I get so exhausted that by the time I make my entrance I am relaxed.
I do not believe acting can be taught. I have seen intelligent people fail at it and dullards act quite well. But acting essentially requires feeling. Wainewright, an authority on aesthetics, a friend of Charles Lamb and the literary lights of his time, was a ruthless, cold-blooded murderer who poisoned his cousin for mercenary reasons. Here is an example of an intelligent man who could never have been a good actor because he had little feeling.
All intellect and no feeling can be characteristic of the arch-criminal, and all feeling and no intellect exemplify the harmless idiot. But when intellect and feeling are perfectly balanced, then we get the superlative actor.
The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting. I do not mean it in a derogatory sense. Often I have heard an actor say: ‘How I’d love to play that part,’ meaning he would love himself in the part. This may be egocentric; but the great actor is mainly preoccupied with his own virtuosity: Irving in The Bells, Tree as Svengali, Martin Harvey in A Cigarette Maker’s Romance, all three very ordinary plays, but very good parts. Just a fervent love of the theatre is not sufficient; there must also be a fervent love of and belief in oneself.
The Method school of acting I know little about. I understand it concentrates on development of personality – which could very well be less developed in some actors. After all, acting is pretending to be other people. Personality is an indefinable thing that shines through a performance in any case. But there is something to all methods. Stanislavski, for example, strove for ‘inner truth’, which I understand, means ‘being it’ instead of ‘acting it’. This requires empathy, a feeling into things: one should be able to feel what it is like to be a lion or an eagle, also to feel a character’s soul instinctively, to know under all circumstances what his reactions will be. This part of acting cannot be taught.
In instructing a true actor or actress about a character, a word or a phrase will often suffice: ‘This is Falstaffian’ or ‘This is a modern Madame Bovary’. Jed Harris is reported to have told an actress: ‘This character has the mobility of a weaving black tulip.’ This goes too far.
The theory that one must know a character’s life story is unnecessary. No one could write into a play or a part those remarkable nuances that Duse conveyed to an audience. They must have been dimensions beyond the concept of the author. And Duse, I understand, was not an intellectual.
I abhor dramatic schools that indulge in reflections and introspections to evoke the right emotion. The mere fact that a student must be mentally operated upon is sufficient proof that he should give up acting.
As for that much-to
uted metaphysical word ‘truth’, there are different forms of it and one truth is as good as another. The classical acting at the Comédie Française is as believable as the so-called realistic acting in an Ibsen play; both are in the realm of artificiality and designed to give the illusion of truth – after all, in all truth there is the seed of falsehood.
I have never studied acting, but as a boy I was fortunate in living in an era of great actors, and I acquired an extension of their knowledge and experience. Although I was gifted, I was surprised at rehearsals to find how much I had to learn about technique. Even the beginner with talent must be taught technique, for no matter how great his gifts, he must have the skill to make them effective.
I have found that orientation is the most important means of achieving this; that is, knowing where you are and what you’re doing every moment you’re on the stage. Walking into a scene one must have the authority of knowing where to stop; when to turn; where to stand; when and where to sit; whether to talk directly to a character or indirectly. Orientation gives authority and distinguishes the professional from the amateur. I have always insisted on this method of orientation with the cast when I’m directing my films.
In acting I like subtlety and restraint. John Drew was undoubtedly the epitome of this. He was debonair, humorous, subtle and had great charm. It is easy to be emotional – that is expected of a good actor – and of course diction and voice are necessary. Although David Warfield had a magnificent voice and ability to express emotion, somehow one felt that the Ten Commandments were in everything he said.
I have often been asked who were my favourite actors and actresses on the American stage. This is difficult to answer, for a choice implies that the rest were inferior, which was not so. My favourites were not all serious actors. Some were comedians, others even entertainers.
Al Jolson, for instance, was a great instinctive artist with magic and vitality. He was the most impressive entertainer on the American stage, a black-faced minstrel with a loud baritone voice, telling banal jokes and singing sentimental songs. Whatever he sang, he brought you up or down to his level; even his ridiculous song ‘Mammy’ enthralled everyone. Only a shadow of himself appeared in films, but in 1918 he was at the height of his fame and electrified an audience. He had a strange appeal, with his lithe body, large head and sunken piercing eyes. When he sang such songs as ‘There’s a Rainbow Round My Shoulder’ and ‘When I Leave the World Behind’, he lifted the audience by unadulterated compulsion. He personified the poetry of Broadway, its vitality and vulgarity, its aims and dreams.
Sam Bernard, the Dutch comedian, another fine artist, was exasperated about everything. ‘Eggs! Sixty cents a dozen – and rotten ones! And the price of corned beef! Two dollars you pay! Two dollars – for a tiny, little bit of corned beef!’ Here he would exaggerate the tininess of it, as though threading a needle, then explode, expostulating and throwing himself in all directions: ‘I remember the time when you COULDN’T CARRY TWO DOLLARS WORTH OF CORNED BEEF!’
Off-stage he was a philosopher. When Ford Sterling went to him weeping about his wife having double-crossed him, said Sam: ‘So what? They double-crossed Napoleon!’
Frank Tinney I saw when I first came to New York. He was a great favourite at the Winter Garden, and had a gregarious intimacy with his audience. He would lean over the footlights and whisper: ‘The leading lady’s kind of stuck on me,’ then surreptitiously look off-stage to see that no one was listening, then back at the audience and confide: ‘It’s pathetic; as she was coming through the stage door tonight I said “good-evening”, but she’s so stuck on me she couldn’t answer.’
At this point the leading lady crosses the stage, and Tinney quickly puts his finger on his lips, warning the audience not to betray him. Cheerily he hails her: ‘Hi, kiddo!’ She turns indignantly and in a huff struts off the stage, dropping her haircomb.
Then he whispers to the audience: ‘What did I tell you? But in private we are just like that.’ He crosses his two fingers. Picking up her comb, he calls to the stage-manager: ‘Harry, put this in our dressing-room, will you, please?’
I saw him again on the stage a few years later and was shocked, for the comic Muse had left him. He was so self-conscious that I could not believe it was the same man. It was this change in him that gave me the idea years later for my film Limelight. I wanted to know why he had lost his spirit and his assurance. In Limelight the case was age; Calvero grew old and introspective and acquired a feeling of dignity, and this divorced him from all intimacy with the audience.
Among the American actresses I most admired were Mrs Fiske, ebullient, humorous and intelligent, and her niece, Emily Stevens, a gifted actress with style and lightness of touch. Jane Cowl had projection and intensity, and Mrs Leslie Carter was equally arresting. Among the comediennes, I enjoyed Trixie Friganza and, of course, Fanny Brice, whose great talent for burlesque was enriched by her sense of histrionics. We English had our great actresses: Ellen Terry, Ada Reeve, Irene Vanbrugh, Sybil Thorndike and the sagacious Mrs Pat Campbell – all of whom I saw except Mrs Pat.
John Barrymore stood out as having the true tradition of the theatre, but John had the vulgarity of wearing his talent like silk socks without garters – a nonchalance that treated everything rather contemptuously; whether it was a performance of Hamlet or sleeping with a duchess, it was all a joke to him.
In his biography by Gene Fowler there is a story about him getting out of a warm bed after a terrific champagne binge and being pushed on to play Hamlet, which he did between sporadic vomitings at the side of the wings and alcoholic restoratives. The English critics were supposed to have hailed his performance that night as the greatest Hamlet of the age. Such a ridiculous story insults everyone’s intelligence.
I first met John at the height of his success sitting broodingly in an office in the United Artists building. After being introduced, we were left alone and I began to talk about his triumph as Hamlet. I said that Hamlet gave a greater account of himself than any other character of Shakespeare.
He mused a moment. ‘The King is not a bad part either. In fact, I prefer it to Hamlet.’
I thought this odd and wondered how sincere he was. Had he been less vain and more simple he could have been in line with the greatest actors: Booth, Irving, Mansfield and Tree. But they had the noble spirit and the sensitive outlook. The trouble with Jack was that he had a naïve, romantic conception of himself as a genius doomed to self-destruction – which he eventually achieved in a vulgar, boisterous way by drinking himself to death.
*
Although The Kid was a great success my problems were not yet over: I still had four pictures to deliver to First National. In a state of quiet desperation, I wandered through the property room in the hope of finding an old prop that might give me an idea: remnants of old sets, a jail door, a piano or a mangle. My eye caught a set of old golf-clubs. That’s it! The tramp plays golf – The Idle Class.
The plot was simple. The tramp indulges in all the pleasures of the rich. He goes south for the warm weather, but travels under the trains instead of inside them. He plays golf with balls he finds on the golf-course. At a fancy-dress ball he mingles with the rich, dressed as a tramp, and becomes involved with a beautiful girl. After a romantic misadventure he escapes from the irate guests and is on his way again.
During one of the scenes I had a slight accident with a blowtorch. The heat of it went through my asbestos pants, so we added another layer of asbestos. Carl Robinson saw an opportunity for publicity and gave the story to the Press. That evening I was shocked to read headlines that I had been severely burnt about the face, hands and body. Hundreds of letters, wires and telephone calls swamped the studio. I issued a denial, but few newspapers printed it. As a consequence amongst my English mail was a letter from H. G. Wells, stating that it affected him with a great deal of shock to read of my accident. He went on to say how much he admired my work and how regrettable it would be if I were unable to continue. I immedia
tely wired back stating the true facts.
At the completion of The Idle Class I intended starting another two-reeler and toyed with an idea of a burlesque on the prosperous occupation of plumbers. The first scene was to show their arrival in a chauffeured limousine with Mack Swain and me stepping out of it. We are lavishly entertained by the beautiful mistress of the house, Edna Purviance, and after she wines and dines us we are shown the bathroom, where I immediately go to work with a stethoscope, placing it on the floor, listening to the pipes, and tapping them as a doctor would a patient.
This was as far as I got. I could concentrate no further. I did not realize how tired I was. Besides in the last two months I had developed an insatiable desire to visit London – I had dreamed about it, and H. G. Wells’s letter was an added inducement. And after ten years I had received a letter from Hetty Kelly. She wrote: ‘Do you remember a silly young girl’.… She was now married and living in Portman Square, and if ever I came to London would I look her up? The letter was without tone and could arouse little, if any, emotional resurgence. After all, in the interim of ten years I had been in and out of love several times. However, I would certainly look her up.
I told Tom to pack my things, and Reeves to close the studio and give the company a holiday. I intended going to England.
seventeen
THE night before sailing from New York, I gave a party at the Élysée Café for about forty guests, among them Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Madame Maeterlinck. We played charades. Douglas and Mary acted the first one. Douglas, a street-car conductor, punched a ticket and gave it to Mary. For the second syllable they pantomimed a rescue, Mary screaming for help and Douglas swimming to her and bringing her safely to the side of the river. Of course, all of us yelled: ‘Fairbanks!’
As the evening grew merry Madame Maeterlinck and I did the death scene from Camille, Madame Maeterlinck playing Camille and I playing Armand. As she was dying in my arms, she started coughing, slightly at first, then with increasing momentum. Her coughing became so infectious that I caught it from her. Then it became a coughing contest between us. Eventually it was I who did the dying in Camille’s arms.
My Autobiography Page 29
