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Behind the Screen
ILLUSTRATED
Chapter One
IN WHICH IS FILMED THE BIRTH OF A NOTION
It was something more than nine years ago that I walked into a little motion-picture theatre on Broadway. I paid ten cents admission. As I took my seat a player-piano was digging viciously into a waltz. Upon the floor a squalid statuette lay under its rain of peanut-shells.
And all around me men, women, and children were divided between the sustained comfort of chewing-gum and the sharp, fleeting rapture of the nut.
Only a decade ago! Yet this was a representative setting and audience for motion-pictures. Likewise typical was the film itself. For, as were practically all productions of that day, this was only one or two reels. And, faithful to the prevailing tradition, the drama of to-night was Western.
I looked at the cowboys galloping over the Western plains, and in their place there rose before me Henry Esmond crossing swords with the Young Pretender, wiry young D’Artagnan riding out from Gascony on his pony to the Paris of Richelieu, Carmen on her way to the bull-fight where Don José waited to stab her.
Why not? Here was the most wonderful medium of expression in the world. Through it every great novel, every great drama, might be uttered in the one language that needs no translation. Why get nothing from this medium save situations which were just about as fresh and unexpected as the multiplication tables?
When I went into that theatre I had no idea of ever going into the film business. When I went out I was glowing with the sudden realisation of my way to fortune. I could hardly wait until I told my idea to my brother-in-law, Jesse Lasky.
“Lasky, do you want to make a fortune?” With these words I burst in upon him that evening.
Lasky, who was at that time in the vaudeville business, indicated that he had no morbid dread of the responsibility of great wealth.
“Very well, then,” I continued. “Put up some money.”
“In what?”
“In motion-pictures,” I answered.
“Motion-pictures!” scoffed he. “You and I would be a fine pair in that business—me, a vaudeville man, and you, a glove salesman! What do we know about the game? Besides, how about the trust?”
Chapter One
IN WHICH IS FILMED THE BIRTH OF A NOTION
It was something more than nine years ago that I walked into a little motion-picture theatre on Broadway. I paid ten cents admission. As I took my seat a player-piano was digging viciously into a waltz. Upon the floor a squalid statuette lay under its rain of peanut-shells.
And all around me men, women, and children were divided between the sustained comfort of chewing-gum and the sharp, fleeting rapture of the nut.
Only a decade ago! Yet this was a representative setting and audience for motion-pictures. Likewise typical was the film itself. For, as were practically all productions of that day, this was only one or two reels. And, faithful to the prevailing tradition, the drama of to-night was Western.
I looked at the cowboys galloping over the Western plains, and in their place there rose before me Henry Esmond crossing swords with the Young Pretender, wiry young D’Artagnan riding out from Gascony on his pony to the Paris of Richelieu, Carmen on her way to the bull-fight where Don José waited to stab her.
Why not? Here was the most wonderful medium of expression in the world. Through it every great novel, every great drama, might be uttered in the one language that needs no translation. Why get nothing from this medium save situations which were just about as fresh and unexpected as the multiplication tables?
When I went into that theatre I had no idea of ever going into the film business. When I went out I was glowing with the sudden realisation of my way to fortune. I could hardly wait until I told my idea to my brother-in-law, Jesse Lasky.
“Lasky, do you want to make a fortune?” With these words I burst in upon him that evening.
Lasky, who was at that time in the vaudeville business, indicated that he had no morbid dread of the responsibility of great wealth.
“Very well, then,” I continued. “Put up some money.”
“In what?”
“In motion-pictures,” I answered.
“Motion-pictures!” scoffed he. “You and I would be a fine pair in that business—me, a vaudeville man, and you, a glove salesman! What do we know about the game? Besides, how about the trust?”
- GenresNonfiction
252 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 5, 2008
Fun book, wonder if Goldwyn ever looked at it. Certainly he didn’t write it. Very little about him, mostly a book about stars, some of whom he didn’t work with. Source of the stories about Pauline Frederick and Geraldine Farrar’s rivalry and partisanship towards their loser husbands. Also chapters on Norma Talmadge and Charlie Chaplin.
March 23, 2017
Samuel Goldwyn (born Samuel Goldfish in Poland) began as a film producer in 1913. Nine years later, he wrote his first book, Behind the Screen. In it, he devotes chapters to many of the famous silent film actors and directors that he had come to know and work with. I found it a fascinating look at the silent movie world in its peak years. So many careers were taking off. Reading about the actors was kind of eerie, because I knew what happened to these people. And because my own mysteries are set in 1924 and 1925, Goldwyn’s account almost exactly gives the perspective of “my” characters. For example, the chapter on Rudolph Valentino (whose name Goldwyn spells Rodolph) predicts a great future for the young Italian actor, who died two years later at the age of 31. And the many pages about Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks contain no hint of their impending divorce. He shares his experiences with Charlie Chaplin, Norma Talmadge, Wallace Reid (who would soon be dead of a drug habit), Harold Lloyd, Mabel Normand, and many who were everyday names at that time.
Because my Roaring Twenties mystery series features the real-life actors Pickford and Fairbanks and Chaplin, those were the parts I found most useful. He writes: “She never calls him ‘Doug’–indeed, I have an idea she doesn’t much like to hear his name thus shorn by other people–and somehow into her utterance of the ‘Douglas’ you find, no matter how casual the speech, the way she really feels about him.” Also, some of the details about money are priceless: “Eight years ago [1915] the twenty thousand dollars which the Lasky Company expended upon ‘Carmen’ was considered a vast sum. To-day the Goldwyn Company is investing nearly a million in its production of ‘BenHur.'” I can use facts like that in my novels.
However, I must say I don’t believe for a moment that Samuel Goldwyn wrote this book. The man was born in Poland. He didn’t come to American until he was 14 and he always spoke with an accent. He was also famous for malapropisms–that’s no criticism, it’s quite natural for a foreigner. But the man never spoke English like a native and certainly not like an educated native. He grew up poor, with virtually no schooling. I believe he dictated these stories to someone who wrote them up in a flowery way to flatter his vanity. (He was known to be very vain.) The writing style is heavy, pompous, and unnatural, even for the 1920s. Words like therein, whereby, and ergo would not have made their way into the everyday speech of a rough man like Goldwyn. Phrases like “I quote this last as a testimony to the almost unerring acumen which Mary Pickford displays,” and “the figure with which I started falls short of conveying the full effect” don’t sound like they could come from his mouth. The ostentatious name-dropping is, I think, meant to show a familiarity to literature, opera, and other high culture that a poor orphan would never have experienced. “Many screen favorites heave in sight as slowly as Lohengrin’s swan.” “One can as easily imagine De Musset or Verlaine mowing the front lawn of his suburban home . . . ” as if he read the French poets in his spare time.
So who wrote Behind the Screen? I believe it was Miss Corinne Lowe, the woman Goldwyn cites in his “Notes” as having helped him “prepare these articles.”So thank you, Miss Lowe. Your book gives me many contemporary details that I would not have discovered anywhere else.
Because my Roaring Twenties mystery series features the real-life actors Pickford and Fairbanks and Chaplin, those were the parts I found most useful. He writes: “She never calls him ‘Doug’–indeed, I have an idea she doesn’t much like to hear his name thus shorn by other people–and somehow into her utterance of the ‘Douglas’ you find, no matter how casual the speech, the way she really feels about him.” Also, some of the details about money are priceless: “Eight years ago [1915] the twenty thousand dollars which the Lasky Company expended upon ‘Carmen’ was considered a vast sum. To-day the Goldwyn Company is investing nearly a million in its production of ‘BenHur.'” I can use facts like that in my novels.
However, I must say I don’t believe for a moment that Samuel Goldwyn wrote this book. The man was born in Poland. He didn’t come to American until he was 14 and he always spoke with an accent. He was also famous for malapropisms–that’s no criticism, it’s quite natural for a foreigner. But the man never spoke English like a native and certainly not like an educated native. He grew up poor, with virtually no schooling. I believe he dictated these stories to someone who wrote them up in a flowery way to flatter his vanity. (He was known to be very vain.) The writing style is heavy, pompous, and unnatural, even for the 1920s. Words like therein, whereby, and ergo would not have made their way into the everyday speech of a rough man like Goldwyn. Phrases like “I quote this last as a testimony to the almost unerring acumen which Mary Pickford displays,” and “the figure with which I started falls short of conveying the full effect” don’t sound like they could come from his mouth. The ostentatious name-dropping is, I think, meant to show a familiarity to literature, opera, and other high culture that a poor orphan would never have experienced. “Many screen favorites heave in sight as slowly as Lohengrin’s swan.” “One can as easily imagine De Musset or Verlaine mowing the front lawn of his suburban home . . . ” as if he read the French poets in his spare time.
So who wrote Behind the Screen? I believe it was Miss Corinne Lowe, the woman Goldwyn cites in his “Notes” as having helped him “prepare these articles.”So thank you, Miss Lowe. Your book gives me many contemporary details that I would not have discovered anywhere else.
May 11, 2021
This 1923 publication was published the year before Samuel Goldwyn co-founded the famous Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer company.
This has a scrapbook feel to it, in that the narrative is episodic, complemented with photos. To start with, we hear of Mr Goldwyn’s rise from obscurity, followed by his interaction with the stars he worked with, or in some cases second-hand anecdotes that he’s heard from other producers and such like.
According to a couple of other reviewers who are more knowledgeable on the subject than me, Goldwyn didn’t write this, so perhaps he entrusted a ghost writer to do a better job than he felt capable of. Whatever the case, this is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in early cinema.
My main interest was in Mary Pickford. In fact, I only found this book through searching free online sites to see if they had anything about Mary. Goldwyn knew her quite well, and along with having a chapter devoted to Mary, she crops up on and off throughout the book.
Charlie Chaplin is also a “recurring character”. How could he not be? Charlie was good friends with Mary and her then husband Douglas Fairbanks.
Anecdotes on Mabel Normand are also interesting. She comes across as fun-loving and kind-hearted
I was glad that Harold Lloyd puts in an appearance. I used to watch his films/shorts a lot during my childhood, and I’ve recently “rediscovered” him. Turns out he was the quiet one at big social gatherings, though he’d come out of his shell if placed in a small group of people.
Apart from the names already mentioned, only one or two other stars were familiar to me. This did not, however, affect my reading pleasure. I appreciated the anecdotal approach, and I liked the photos.
This has a scrapbook feel to it, in that the narrative is episodic, complemented with photos. To start with, we hear of Mr Goldwyn’s rise from obscurity, followed by his interaction with the stars he worked with, or in some cases second-hand anecdotes that he’s heard from other producers and such like.
According to a couple of other reviewers who are more knowledgeable on the subject than me, Goldwyn didn’t write this, so perhaps he entrusted a ghost writer to do a better job than he felt capable of. Whatever the case, this is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in early cinema.
My main interest was in Mary Pickford. In fact, I only found this book through searching free online sites to see if they had anything about Mary. Goldwyn knew her quite well, and along with having a chapter devoted to Mary, she crops up on and off throughout the book.
Charlie Chaplin is also a “recurring character”. How could he not be? Charlie was good friends with Mary and her then husband Douglas Fairbanks.
Anecdotes on Mabel Normand are also interesting. She comes across as fun-loving and kind-hearted
I was glad that Harold Lloyd puts in an appearance. I used to watch his films/shorts a lot during my childhood, and I’ve recently “rediscovered” him. Turns out he was the quiet one at big social gatherings, though he’d come out of his shell if placed in a small group of people.
Apart from the names already mentioned, only one or two other stars were familiar to me. This did not, however, affect my reading pleasure. I appreciated the anecdotal approach, and I liked the photos.
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October 10, 2019Read this book online for free through Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/59730/...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews