Evening star., 1940-04-03

who thinks it's not is a sparkling
bore.
The private life of an art director
turns out to be thoroughly cluttered
up with friends and strangers who
want to know what he thinks of
. this or that creation in home design
or decoration. Mr.. Gibbons has two
answers to that. One is to advise
the questioner to look up a good
interior decorator If he wants a
sound. professional criticism of the
nook in point. The other is to reply
Come down to my house if you
want to see something really awful"
That ought to stop them, but it
grieves Mr.. Gibbons to report that
1t has not.
One of the things which Mr..
Gibbons thinks would make the
world a finer place to live in. and
certainly make his burden lighter,
is set of screen writers who could
think in practical terms. After
years and years of vaguely hoping
for such development he has
given up. however. Writers still
start their tales with something to
the effect, The story opens with
the lovers walking in a garden nook
IN the moonlight" leaving it en-
tlrely up to the reader to create the
garden, the moonlight, ETC., regard
less of how he happens to be feeling.
Gardens and moons, of course,
are simple things in comparison
with some OF the items to which
writing fancies roam. Instead of
getting better, indeed, author i'm
aginations are becoming marvel
ously more flexible. Seeing the
miracles which have been created
by the skilled technicians of the
movies, they are encouraged to
believe in. and demand, constantly
bigger and better miracles. Trans
lating the fancies of writer's into
the facts of life, thing accom-
plished with hammers, saws, nails,
etc, is not thing which Mr.. Glib
bons is required to do with the
right of cavil When the type
writer's with which they write get
beyond the scope and capacities
OF the papier-mache and other
instruments Of his writing, the
matter is settled in conference.
Sometimes the writers win, some
times the master builders. Some
times 1t is a tie.
Another respect in which the
handsome. crisply speaking Gibbons,
who has not entirely lost his English
accent, d1sagrees with the arty con-
ception of his job is that it en-
courages temperament. Tempera-
ment is another thing he has no
truck with.
"1nspiration, the temperamental
kind of thing, is the bunk" he says
Il don't believe in this I'm-in-the-
mood or m-not-in-t mood busl-
ness. If you've got a job to do.
you've got a job to do. and the only
thing to do is get it done"
While he viii talk freely on any
angle OF his subject. it is Gibbons
idea that there is such thing as
the public knowing too much about
the mechanics of stage and screen
AS a creator of illusions, ne feels
that too much of a revelation of
how the illusion was created is
likely to destroy or minimize the
drama of it.
His feeling is reflected in one of
the most positive of Metro-Gold-
wyn-Mayer's policies, namely, that
of closing all process stages to
every one not connected with the
company. Process shooting" is that
miracle whereby it is possible to
bring an actor in Hollywood before
the White House with complete
authenticity although the two are
by several thousand miles.
1t is accomplished by shooting a
movie of the background, bringing
it tos Hollywood, playing it on a
screen with the player acting in
front of it.
The method has been developed
into high art we've seen how 1t
is done at other studios) land Mr.
Gibbons thinks it is one OF the
greatest things that ever happend
to the movies.
X X
awe used to have to create back
ground out of. whatever materials
were available" he says. Now we
can go out and shoot the back
ground, and that is that"
1t not orhy makes films more
authentic but whale of lot less
Observation-Disclosures has come
more slowly than almost any other
studio to the use of technicolor,
and one result of that has been to
create the sentiment that Gibbons
is its most infleXible enemy. That
he is not is one of his more spirited
avoWalS. He dislikes the use of