Despite the drawbacks of cost and that still-missing shade of blue, The Toll of the Sea sparked interest from several of Hollywood’s most influential citizens including Jesse L. Lasky, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith. As a result, Kalmus sent several engineers including Ball, now a Technical Director, to the west coast. The group rented a building and set up their Technicolor shop—just a small extension of their Boston business.
In 1923, the Famous Players Lasky Corporation signed up to produce a colorized version of The Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924). The film was based on a Zane Grey novel and starred favorite cowboy hero Jack Holt. It was also the first western filmed in Technicolor—still a two-color process. Due to their limited facilities, however, much of the work had to be done in Boston. Shipping the film back and forth across the country was cumbersome and certainly not an efficient way to do business. Although Lasky didn’t mind the long distance, other filmmakers did. Therefore, the group built a more sophisticated laboratory in Hollywood and, in 1924, they were ready to do business on a full scale—except for that hard-topin-down color, blue.
The following year, Kalmus and Comstock experienced a disagreement resulting in Kalmus’ departure from the partnership. He took Technicolor, Ball and Norman Osann with him. It would take some time, and a whole lot of effort, but the face of film would one day transform. Ball commented on the future of colorized film:
Any art which makes its appeal wholly through the eye must be severely limited if it has no color at its command, and especially if this art aims to affect our emotions.… The photoplay is such an art.… But there are some skeptical people who maintain that color is not wanted. This is to be expected for every innovation encounters opposition from skeptics. When motion pictures were in their infancy the same type of people said that pictures were and always would be a cheap and inferior imitation of the stage. Today, the photoplay is recognized as a new and separate art.… If it is assumed that the purpose of the photoplay is to hold a mirror up to nature, both for the mind and for the eye, then, obviously color is not only desirable but necessary by … excluding colors, we must exclude all other attempts at realism in pictures such as authentic sets, costumes and details generally in a scene …
Art director Cedric Gibbons had his own thoughts about color. Since the audience couldn’t see it, the only reason he used color in his innovative sets was to benefit the actors. When it came to authenticity, however, he would have certainly nodded his head in ready agreement with Ball.
In the early days of film, interior scenes were thrown together in a clash of styles—a French chair may have sat next to a colonial table with a garish flower arrangement gloating on top. It wasn’t unusual for a biblical picture to showcase a Victorian settee or a Roman lady sporting Twentieth Century jewelry. Clutter often ruled. Many scenes were filmed in front of a painted backdrop—much like a play. Realism and eye appeal didn’t seem to count. In the beginning, it didn’t have to. Spectators came to see pictures move. The details didn’t matter. Now, however, the tide was turning.
The novelty of motion was wearing off and maintaining audience attention became ever more important. As author Austin C. Lescarboura explained in 1921:
… the audience must be made to forget the mechanical end of picture production; and to this end every effort is made to have even the most insignificant details accurate and confidence-inspiring.
This new demand for realism made way for a new kind of filmmaking position—the technical or art director. It was his job to study the photoplay and determine the type of sets that needed building, how furniture and other props should be arranged on-screen, as well as overseeing the costumes worn by the players. As a result, this position required some impressive qualifications. According to Lescarboura:
The technical director must be a veritable human encyclopedia. His must be a remarkably broad knowledge, acquired through travel, reading, and a wide range of acquaintances. And what he does not know he must be able to “dig up” at short notice.
Austin Cedric Gibbons not only fit the bill—he ultimately defined the role. An Irishman, he liked to say he was born in Dublin, but he really came from an Irish Catholic neighborhood in Brooklyn. His father, Austin Patrick Gibbons, was born in England to Irish parents and came to the United States in 1869 when he was five years old. As an adult, he owned an architectural firm in New York and married seventeen-year-old Veronica Fitzpatrick in 1889. The couple had their first son, Austin Cedric, on March 23, 1890, followed by Veronica in 1892 and Elliot in 1904.
Gibbons led a privileged life and, as a youth, was schooled at home. With an interest in paintings and sculptures, Patrick allowed his teenage son to visit several major European cities. Gibbons then entered the historic Art Students League of New York founded in 1875 where he studied art and architecture. He also collected books on these same subjects. His personal library eventually totaled over 4,000 volumes. With degree in hand, he took a job as a draftsman in his father’s firm. After two years, he decided that his future was not in the family business, but in the movies.
His next stop was at the Edison Studios where he worked as an assistant to pioneer set designer Hugo Ballin—also an alumnus of the Art Student’s League of New York. One of the earliest set designers who also worked in the theater mostly painting backdrops, Ballin was later known for his creative murals displayed in places like the Griffith Observatory and Burbank City Hall. Gibbons soon preferred the three-dimensional look, which meant replacing painted props with actual items—furniture, draperies, wall clocks, etc. Realism was slowly finding its way to the silver screen.
Ballin and Gibbons moved on to Goldwyn Pictures until The Great War interrupted. Gibbons joined the U.S. Navy and, after being discharged, returned to New York and Ballin who was still working for Goldwyn. By now, Goldwyn had established an official art department. Unlike other early studios that appointed a specific set designer to a movie, Goldwyn’s art department was responsible for all productions. The head designers would read the photoplays and then sketch the sets, which would then be built by another team of artisans—all members of the unified art department. As a result, a Goldwyn set enhanced the story rather than distracted from it.
When the company moved to California in 1919, Gibbons went with them. One of his biggest successes was the small-scale set he designed to make the players look larger in The Slim Princess (1920), a fairy tale-like story where beauty was measured by girth—the larger the girl, the more desirable she was. Reviews for the Geraldine Ferrar vehicle even mentioned the unusual sets and praised them for establishing the movie’s magical aura. The following year, Gibbons built a realistic version of the city of Verona for Will Rogers’ Doubling for Romeo (1921). Shakespeare would have been proud. No doubt, Goldwyn was pleased.
Gibbons, an impeccable dresser, never settled for anything less than perfection—including the way he looked. Always classy with an air of sophistication, his tall, lanky form supported broad shoulders making him seem more like leading man material than one of Goldwyn’s most successful and efficient department heads. In charge of the Art Department, his name surfaced in Hollywood social circles while his artistic influence crept into everyday life. He told the press in 1920:
… art directors have a great opportunity to improve the general level of good taste in home decorations. There is no doubt of the influence of the screen in the lives of the American people … they observe closely the sets which they see in photoplays and that many of them copy our ideas in their own homes.
By 1923, Gibbons was considered a “radical” in his field and “the most original art director in the business.” He viewed his sets as an extension of the story itself and because color was impossible for an audience to perceive, he effectively enhanced the film’s aura through lighting. His simple philosophy served him well: “Never let a motion-picture set look like a motion-picture set.”
Aside from pioneering Technicolor and experimenting with set designs, developing “camera lies
” or “trick pictures” gave way to another specialized filmmaking position—the special effects technician. Movie magic was just beginning and spectators couldn’t get enough of the amazing sights they witnessed on-screen.
Disappearing characters were one of the earliest tricks that left audiences wide-eyed. Stopping the camera at just the right moment, a smoking pot would be placed in the exact spot where a player was last seen. The camera would then resume rolling and, like magic, the spectators would see their favorite star vanish into a whirl of white mist. The same technique was used as characters or objects morphed into someone or something else.
Early filmmakers also brought inanimate objects to life through stop motion. By filming a toy soldier one frame at a time and slightly altering the little man’s position before each shot, he appeared to march on-screen. Dancing forks, along with flying pigs, never failed to charm an audience and the possibilities were endless.
Double printing was another early method of screen magic. Done in the editing room, it was sure to amaze a spectator and often aid in the story telling. Lescarboura gives a clever example:
… a fairy would appear in the bottle of a heavy drinker and dance about to his amazement.… the full-sized player was first filmed in a close-up with a dark bottle which … left a black or blank space on the negative. Then another full-sized player, dressed as a fairy, was photographed against a dead black drop at a sufficient distance away to bring down the size of the image to that required to fit the bottle.… Then the two films, with their subjects carefully registered, were printed on one positive with wonderful result.
This process also worked well when “identical twins” shared a scene or when it was necessary to “show” a character’s deepest thoughts or daydreams.
Reverse motion resulted in another popular trick. To accomplish this outside of the editing room, the camera was simply turned upside down while filming. The result? Instead of a car racing down the street, the vehicle would appear to be traveling backwards. The camera could also film at a slower rate, which would then give the players a look of accelerated action once the film was shown at normal speeds.
As screen tricks became more complex, the role of the technical director grew more demanding. This part wizard, part scientist, part mechanical genius had to come equipped with a whole lot of imagination. Saying “that’s impossible” was not allowed. Roy J. Pomeroy worked his movie magic so well that for a while, he stood alone with no equal.
A British subject, Pomeroy was born in Darjeeling, India on April 20, 1892. At that time, the Brits controlled India including Darjeeling, which is located in the state of West Bengal. Eventually, Darjeeling was home to a British sanitarium and health resort, as well as the historic Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. The English also found that the land was an ideal spot for growing the now internationally famous tea.
Pomeroy’s father was an Englishman living and working in India and his mother was originally from Ohio. As a lad, Pomeroy was educated at Malvern Wells in Worcester, England. He then traveled to his mother’s home state to attend Ohio Wesleyan University located about twenty miles north of Columbus. Before hitting Hollywood, he worked in New York as a self-employed artist. Jesse L. Lasky later recalled:
We had discovered Pomeroy as a struggling artist with an inventive mind, who had some exceedingly original and useful ideas about the employment of miniature sets and background projection to affect enormous budget savings in picture-making. I hired him and he did some fine creative work on tricks and special effects. He was the first specialist in that field and there has never been a better one.… Perhaps it isn’t strange under the circumstances that he came to feel he was God …
By the time he entered the movie business in 1922, Pomeroy had a receding hairline and a thin, waxed mustache, which made him look even older than his thirty years. He also had a deeply rooted passion for archery along with a new wife, Sylvia, who was originally from Kentucky. One of his first major tasks at Paramount was parting the Red Sea for Cecil B. DeMille ‘s biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923). Unlike Moses, who relied on his staff and a miracle, Pomeroy used a whole lot of gelatin, a few gas jets and some clever filming tricks. He also masterminded the blazing letters that spelled out each of the Ten Commandments. As a result, the movie-going crowd met the wow-factor and launched their long-term relationship.
Hollywood lore also says that it was Pomeroy’s idea to bury the colossal sets of ancient Egypt in the sands of Guadalupe Dunes where the movie was filmed north of Los Angeles. He thought it made more sense than lugging the oversized statues, chariots and other props all the way back to the studio. DeMille supposedly loved the idea of some future archeologist digging up Egyptian ruins on a California beach. Sixty years later, the shifting sands revealed parts of a “sphinx” and other “Egyptian artifacts” that were left behind. Several archeological film buffs began uncovering what they called “The Lost City of DeMille.” They even came across some Prohibition-era cough syrup—widely favored at the time for its alcohol content.
Wowing not only the spectators, but also his studio superiors and coworkers, Pomeroy enjoyed the awe he inspired. The special effects he continued designing only enhanced his reputation as something of a miracle worker, but the adulation encouraged some pompous behavior. Pomeroy held the trump card and he knew it. He never hesitated using this advantage to further his career or pump up his own self-worth. His success was so great that Pomeroy was given the position of head of Paramount’s Special Effects Department, or as it was better known, The Pomeroy Department. This specialized group was responsible for resolving any technical issues that came up during filming and creating any magic that a photoplay required.
Next up was Feet of Clay (1924) where Pomeroy depicted life after death in a smoky haze of spirits and heavenly beings. Then for the ground-breaking production of J.M. Barrie’s famous story Peter Pan (1924), he allowed the ageless boy and the Darling children to fly by attaching piano wires to corsets hidden under their costumes.
No one argued his brilliance, but his self-inflated ego and the fact that he often spit in the middle of a conversation didn’t endear him to his associates. However, with the advent of sound in 1927 and his understanding of how it worked, Pomeroy’s power multiplied. Well-liked or not, he created a special effects empire that dominated the world of movies. His reign may not have lasted long, but for a few short years Roy Pomeroy, thanks to his technical know-how, was a major Hollywood force.
With experts like the scientific Ball improving the color process, the artistic Gibbons designing those stunning sets and the savvy Pomeroy in charge of miracles, spectators soon learned that anything can happen in the movies.
Chapter Nine
HEAD OF THE HOUSE
With directors directing, actors acting, writers writing and technicians keeping up with the latest innovations, the role of movie producer evolved from haphazard businessman into elite executive. While the director remained primarily responsible for the creative aspects of day-to-day movie making, the producer ran the business acting as a liaison between his production unit and the studio. It was the producer who approved the photoplay and cast, assigned the director, eyed the budget, viewed the daily rushes and acted as peacemaker when differences arose between employees under his regime. He also had to come up with resourceful solutions on the spot when unexpected crises surfaced.
Final decisions were his alone. To his filmmakers, he was the “go-to” guy who had the power to fix almost anything, but to his studio, the producer was all about the bottom line. He had to ensure their money was not squandered by seeing that his completed movies were properly marketed and distributed, and turned a profit once all the overhead was accounted for.
In the early studio days, the producer championed all aspects of his films from pre- to post-production. At the same time, he continued to solicit and approve new stories, supervise the writers, sign new talent, work through legalities, remain abreast of industry trends, take no
te of what was occurring at other studios and network with Hollywood officials to keep his momentum going. In addition, he often had to placate the censors. He lived inside a whirlwind of moving pictures that made Dorothy’s Kansas twister look like a summer breeze.
Producer Harry Rapf had the energy and stamina the job required. He also had a nose for talent—human and otherwise—and he knew a good contortionist when he saw one. Short in stature with a sometime abrasive personality that hid a soft heart, his over-sized proboscis conjured dubious nicknames like “anteater” or “Mayer’s sundial,” but it didn’t deter the way he did business. The eldest of four brothers, Rapf was born in New York City on October 16, 1880, to Eliza Brooks and her husband, Maurice Rapf. Maurice, originally from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a prosperous tailor who owned his own business.
Circumstances changed for the Rapfs when Maurice was diagnosed with tuberculosis before the turn of the century. At that time, doctors usually recommended TB sufferers get as much fresh air and sunlight as possible. Denver was considered an ideal place for these patients to live and seek treatment. As a result, the Rapf family, which now included Joseph, Matthew and Arthur, moved to the Mile High City where Maurice eventually lost his battle with the dreaded lung disease. Now the sole support of her boys, Eliza bought a grocery store while her eldest son took an interest in the stage. By the time he was eighteen, Rapf had organized and managed a small minstrel show out west.
Bringing Up Oscar: The Story of the Men and Women Who Founded the Academy Page 11