FAIRBANKS' WORK.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 255, 27 October 1928, Page 5 (Supplement)

FAIRBANKS' WORK.

METHODS OF PRODUCING. HIS EARLY (DARKER. "WHY I BECAME A FILM PLAYER." ■ i (Copyright to the "Auckland Star.") " Some people go into ' movies' to make money, others to realise artistic conceptions, and others as a short cut to fame. This was not my case. I was not out for money nor art, but for adventure." So said Douglas Fairbanks, when asked why he became a film player. " Throughout the early part of my life, when I was going through the drudgery of a Wall Street office, or hunting—as a newspaper man—for sensations, my aim was adventure. I looked for it in dark corners of New York, and in what were to me the undiscovered countries of •Europe, and, not finding it, I went on the stage. Here, again, I was disappointed. How could the daily repetition of a role satisfy the thirst for adventure? , " One day a man whom I had never seen before strolled into my dressing room at the theatre. He was D. W. Griffith, whose wonderful film, ' The Birth of a Nation' was breaking all records in American motion picture theatres at that time. I had been to see this film four times, it being quite different from anything else that I had ever seen. " D. W. Griffith did not waste time on preliminaries. "' Why don't you go in for the movies t' he asked. "Not unless you produce the film,' I replied.

"'lt's a go,' he said, and we signed the contract next day.

"I was delighted, because it seemed Ito me that I had found a wonderful field for adventure, and this is still my great interest in film work. It is the only kind of film that can give me a real thrill. Not having enough adventure in my life, I try to find it in films, but not with complete success. Hollywood 6tudk> work often fills me with a longing to get away from it, to make an entirely fresh start in a new country, to lie on the seashore and bask in the sun, or career on horseback, with neither saddle nor bridle, over the boundless prairie, or prowl around in the dark, narrow streets of some old European city, or indulge in sports far away from any studio. But it cannot be done. The public, the idol with millions of faces, wants new films. The magnificent picture palaces in the big cities and the cinema shanties in the backwoods and the outposts of the Far East and wherever civilisation has its way are all hungering for their daily film food. Moreover, when Chaplin, Mary, Griffith and the rest of us formed our United Artists Corporation, each of us accepted the obligation to contribute his or her share of work. They, like myself,, have their weak moments and dark hours in which money and fame seem of no account in comparison with the joy of freedom, but they keep their pledge and so do L Therefore I go on with my films, etill looking for adventure and not finding it. Mary, who has been working ever since she was five years old on the stage or for the films, is trying to find in the films the happy childhood of which she was deprived. "Whenever I produce a film I try to convey an idea or principle—what the poets and story-tellers call a moral. In ' The Thief of Bagdad,' for instance, the idea was that if a young man wants happiness and prosperity he must fight for them, and will eventually get them if he perseveres. Ido not say that life always works out in this way, but the principle is true, and the more a man believes in it the more likely he is to come out on top.

"I do not play my film roles. I live every detail and event? and I must therefore write my own scenarios. I settle nothing in advance except the outline. The details, the local colour and so on, I leave for the inspiration of the moment, because they are the direct outcome of the situation and cannot be figured out beforehand. The whole thing would be spoiled for me if I knew what I was going to do. Therefore, though I buy ideas for scenarios, I have no use for stories all written and made up. I may like a etory when I read it for the first time, and I may even like it when I read it a second time, but in a week or two I should be bored and lose all interest in it. A detailed plan simply clips the wings of my imagination. It would be splendid to work with a man like H. G. Wells, and when I met him not long ago I actually suggested that he should come to Hollywood and co-operate with me in making a film, as I could only work with him if he came to Hollywood. He liked the Idea, but he could not see his way to come."