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Harry Carr, Motion Picture, New York, May 1925.

The Gold Rush Set on Location, Motion Picture Stills,

University of California Los Angeles 

& Charles Chaplin Photo

(...) Motion Picture, May 1925

& I am always expecting Lubitsch to fly into a terrible passion

and tear the scenery to rags – but he never does

(...) Ernst Lubitsch Photo, Motion Picture, May 1925

„Trying to make you act is like writing love-letters on butcher paper“

Editorial content. „How the Great Directors Work

      Frenzy and calm, sarcasm and flattery, brow-beating

      and coaxing, laughs and tears – all go into the

      difficult business of directing motion picture stars, says

      Harry Carr

      Almost every one who visits a motion-picture studio

is surprised to find the directors more interesting than the stars

they are directing.

      Charlie Chaplin is an amazing sight. In the first place,

he will not work at all unless – or until – he feels like

it. Sometimes he will spend days on end just sitting around

the sets talking himself and his actors into the right

mood. The camera never starts until that right mood arrives.

When the camera begins shooting, Charlie goes thru

many emotions – and motions. Sometimes he will throw himself

flat on his stomach with his chin propped up on his

hands. At other times he sits all hunched up in a chair.

      I remember one day while they were taking A Woman of Paris,

that one of the actresses did not please him. In the middle

of her emotion, she stopped and looked around: the director had

disappeared. He was back in a corner of the set. He was

sitting down, bowed with grief. His hands covered his face. It had

been too much. He peeked at her thru his fingers like

a little boy. At length he raised his head and said to her with

bitter reproach, ,Trying to make you act is like writing

love-letters on butcher paper.´ Charlie is even more particular

than Lubitsch. The scene in A Woman of Paris

where the old mother saw the body of her son brought

home, was taken eighty-two times before Charlie

got it to suit him.“ (...)

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