Breaking into the Business

By 1915 the motion-picture industry had achieved a certain sophistication in the way it produced, marketed, and exhibited its pictures. Significant economic and industrial forces now acted to standardize these procedures, although filmmaking in the silent era could hardly be thought of as routine. What remained in a primitive and even chaotic state was the most elementary aspect of the filmmaking process: recruitment and training of new personnel. This is not to say that there was any shortage of activity in this area. Many volumes of self-instruction were published, schools abounded (some of them even legitimate), and magazine advertisements enticed men and women out to the studios. But the results of all this activity were negligible. Some actors and directors successfully came from the legitimate stage (many more were unsuccessful), and a few short-story writers and romantic novelists found new careers as photoplaywrights...