CAMERA Comedy Clippings, September 15, 1923
Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2009 10:22 am
I'm starting off a new issue of CAMERA transcriptions with a half page interview featuring William Austin giving his views on where screen comedy is heading.
Enjoy
Joe Moore
________________________________________________________-
Austin Says Day of Slap-Stick is Gone by Lucille Erskine
William Austin attained success on the stage in that blithest of all comedies, “A Tailor-Made Man.” For years he has raised a good number of laughs nightly at the Morosco Theatre. And now he has just finished in “Ruggles of Red Gap,” a Lasky production under the direction of James Cruze, the director. As many are beginning to call him, since “The Covered Wagon.”
Comedies this successful comedian knows as Paderewski knows the keys of the piano. And he says the days of the slap-stick are gone.
“Now, the public demands more than a fat clown who falls down. Of course, the funny screen play will always be light, but there is going to be more art to it, and it's even to have an intellectual appeal.”
I expressed my doubts.
“But back of every good comedian,” he insisted, “is a great and subtle intellect. Charlie Chaplin draws in his net of appreciation the stately Chinese mandarin and the small American child. But not every one knows that this great jester is a widely-read, deeply-thinking man. And the subtle touches in his comedies are put there because his own exacting mind demands it.”
With all the race of fun-makers, this Mr. Austin thinks being funny is no joke.
“On the speaking stage, you have the incentive of the audience. For all fun should appear impromptu. But we on the screen have to warm up with a cold and empty house before us. And you never know when the laugh will come, after the story gets before the audience. I've sat in a theater and watched myself on the screen; would hear a laugh, when I had little thought of raising one. And when I was sure of a roar, well, it wouldn't always be as loud as I expected.”
For several years he played in English comedies and has very definite ideas about how you put over the glittering wit of Oscar Wilde.
“It has to be played casually-handed over to the audience in small doses, so to speak, or they will get blinded by the too-much brilliancy. Some of his later plays were very heartless. And when a Wilde comedy is screened, it exposes the lack of heart back of the cold, steely glitter of the words. There has to be emotion to get over on the screen and his plays had none. I expect 'Lady Windermere's Fan' to live, because it exposes not the rottenness of English society, but of a certain small group that used to be powerful, but now are being forced out to earn their bread.”
And William Austin knows whereof he speaks. For he comes of a distinguished English family, is another of the emigre that makes the population of Hollywood so picturesque. Russian, English, and Italian aristocracy are here in this cinema city, an artistic melting pot, working beside Americans descended from the Mayflower and others who bring the rich vigor that comes from being close to the soil.
“If I may be critical,” he said, “English society is rarely portrayed correctly on the screen. Take a house party shown in a recent movie drama. The hostess greets her guests with such cold, such freezing hauteur as if to say 'Who are you? How dare you come here?' I do think in real life she would have been simpler and more cordial.”
He was born in British Guiana and educated in private schools in England. But the stage claimed him after years spent in the Orient. He was a soldier in the International army, organized to protect the Europeans in China.
“Where rebellion,” he said with a smile, “was part of the day's work. One of the most interesting memories that stays with me from my days in China was a visit to the Chinese theatre. The audience go right on talking, seemingly giving no attention to the actors, pay visits from seat to seat and wash their faces in hot cloths that are brought around. You pay so much a wipe.”
The Chines drama with its mummified classicism could give him little, but he thinks the Russian players who took New York by storm last winter are to leave their impress on the screen.
“I did not know a word of their language,” he went on, “and had read only a synopsis of the play, but such was the perfection of their pantomime that I was thrilled at every line. Especially was the way they handled crowds on the stage new and wonderful. There were no still figures. Every one seemed to be doing something, yet the audience felt no distraction. And since we on the screen are their brothers in pantomime, the subtlest emotions now ought not to be beyond us.”
Whether playing comedies has made him hopeful or not, he is sure art is going to down commercialism in the movie world.
(Camera Vol. 6 No. 22 pg. 5)
Enjoy
Joe Moore
________________________________________________________-
Austin Says Day of Slap-Stick is Gone by Lucille Erskine
William Austin attained success on the stage in that blithest of all comedies, “A Tailor-Made Man.” For years he has raised a good number of laughs nightly at the Morosco Theatre. And now he has just finished in “Ruggles of Red Gap,” a Lasky production under the direction of James Cruze, the director. As many are beginning to call him, since “The Covered Wagon.”
Comedies this successful comedian knows as Paderewski knows the keys of the piano. And he says the days of the slap-stick are gone.
“Now, the public demands more than a fat clown who falls down. Of course, the funny screen play will always be light, but there is going to be more art to it, and it's even to have an intellectual appeal.”
I expressed my doubts.
“But back of every good comedian,” he insisted, “is a great and subtle intellect. Charlie Chaplin draws in his net of appreciation the stately Chinese mandarin and the small American child. But not every one knows that this great jester is a widely-read, deeply-thinking man. And the subtle touches in his comedies are put there because his own exacting mind demands it.”
With all the race of fun-makers, this Mr. Austin thinks being funny is no joke.
“On the speaking stage, you have the incentive of the audience. For all fun should appear impromptu. But we on the screen have to warm up with a cold and empty house before us. And you never know when the laugh will come, after the story gets before the audience. I've sat in a theater and watched myself on the screen; would hear a laugh, when I had little thought of raising one. And when I was sure of a roar, well, it wouldn't always be as loud as I expected.”
For several years he played in English comedies and has very definite ideas about how you put over the glittering wit of Oscar Wilde.
“It has to be played casually-handed over to the audience in small doses, so to speak, or they will get blinded by the too-much brilliancy. Some of his later plays were very heartless. And when a Wilde comedy is screened, it exposes the lack of heart back of the cold, steely glitter of the words. There has to be emotion to get over on the screen and his plays had none. I expect 'Lady Windermere's Fan' to live, because it exposes not the rottenness of English society, but of a certain small group that used to be powerful, but now are being forced out to earn their bread.”
And William Austin knows whereof he speaks. For he comes of a distinguished English family, is another of the emigre that makes the population of Hollywood so picturesque. Russian, English, and Italian aristocracy are here in this cinema city, an artistic melting pot, working beside Americans descended from the Mayflower and others who bring the rich vigor that comes from being close to the soil.
“If I may be critical,” he said, “English society is rarely portrayed correctly on the screen. Take a house party shown in a recent movie drama. The hostess greets her guests with such cold, such freezing hauteur as if to say 'Who are you? How dare you come here?' I do think in real life she would have been simpler and more cordial.”
He was born in British Guiana and educated in private schools in England. But the stage claimed him after years spent in the Orient. He was a soldier in the International army, organized to protect the Europeans in China.
“Where rebellion,” he said with a smile, “was part of the day's work. One of the most interesting memories that stays with me from my days in China was a visit to the Chinese theatre. The audience go right on talking, seemingly giving no attention to the actors, pay visits from seat to seat and wash their faces in hot cloths that are brought around. You pay so much a wipe.”
The Chines drama with its mummified classicism could give him little, but he thinks the Russian players who took New York by storm last winter are to leave their impress on the screen.
“I did not know a word of their language,” he went on, “and had read only a synopsis of the play, but such was the perfection of their pantomime that I was thrilled at every line. Especially was the way they handled crowds on the stage new and wonderful. There were no still figures. Every one seemed to be doing something, yet the audience felt no distraction. And since we on the screen are their brothers in pantomime, the subtlest emotions now ought not to be beyond us.”
Whether playing comedies has made him hopeful or not, he is sure art is going to down commercialism in the movie world.
(Camera Vol. 6 No. 22 pg. 5)