The Man with the Megaphone
- Episode aired Mar 11, 1980
IMDb RATING
8.2/10
59
YOUR RATING
Early Hollywood directors were self-taught and generally became directors by accident.Early Hollywood directors were self-taught and generally became directors by accident.Early Hollywood directors were self-taught and generally became directors by accident.
James Mason
- Self - Narrator
- (voice)
R.L. Hough
- Self
- (as Lefty Hough)
- Directors
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- Quotes
Self - Interviewee: 'First you say "camera" and the camera starts to turn. Then you say "action" and when we get through acting you say "cut." Now you learn that. "Camera, action, cut." So I studied all day and learned it and they said 'Now you're a director.'
Featured review
A comprehensive look at silent directors
There are so many names crammed in here that it is hard to mention them all. Oddly enough it skips the big names like D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille and talks about not the small names - Allan Dwan is hardly an unknown silent director - but about those not lauded that much.
The episode starts with Allan Dwan, one of the first directors starting his career in 1909, and talks about how he just lucked into the job. He showed up at a set full of stranded people whose director was not there. He called the office and they said that he could direct or they were all fired. Thus a career was born. He went on to direct much of Douglas Fairbanks' work. Dwan is actually talking about this and other episodes, and he lived until 1981, so I don't know if this was archival footage or not.
The "director's outfit"is mentioned - the pants, the boots, and then it is mentioned that so many of these films were made in the San Fernando Valley that was just so much under brush at the time, so that the boots and pants were necessary gear unless you wanted to be badly scratched by weeds and bitten by bugs.
Forgotten director John Collins is mentioned, and how he really had a knack for taking old time melodramas and adapting them to the screen. It is mentioned he might have been one of the great directors had he not died in the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 at the age of 28.
I like how, towards the end of the episode, the talk turns to the style of silent films and how by the end of the silent era, there was literally nothing you could feel that could not be expressed on screen through pantomime. Extended excerpts of "The Crowd" are shown as an illustration. Eleanor Boardman, the star of the film, and King VIdor, the director and at that time husband of Boardman, both talk about their experiences, although separately. They had been divorced since 1930.
It's funny when you think about it. The Crowd, one of the most artistic silent films ever made, was released in March 1928. Four months later the first all talking feature film, "Lights of New York" was released to a grind house run and was a big hit, finally causing Hollywood to transition to sound. Lights of New York is a fun film just because it is delightfully bad. The Crowd is still considered one of the all time great silent films, and yet the transition to sound would cause such high art to be lost to film for about four years.
The episode starts with Allan Dwan, one of the first directors starting his career in 1909, and talks about how he just lucked into the job. He showed up at a set full of stranded people whose director was not there. He called the office and they said that he could direct or they were all fired. Thus a career was born. He went on to direct much of Douglas Fairbanks' work. Dwan is actually talking about this and other episodes, and he lived until 1981, so I don't know if this was archival footage or not.
The "director's outfit"is mentioned - the pants, the boots, and then it is mentioned that so many of these films were made in the San Fernando Valley that was just so much under brush at the time, so that the boots and pants were necessary gear unless you wanted to be badly scratched by weeds and bitten by bugs.
Forgotten director John Collins is mentioned, and how he really had a knack for taking old time melodramas and adapting them to the screen. It is mentioned he might have been one of the great directors had he not died in the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 at the age of 28.
I like how, towards the end of the episode, the talk turns to the style of silent films and how by the end of the silent era, there was literally nothing you could feel that could not be expressed on screen through pantomime. Extended excerpts of "The Crowd" are shown as an illustration. Eleanor Boardman, the star of the film, and King VIdor, the director and at that time husband of Boardman, both talk about their experiences, although separately. They had been divorced since 1930.
It's funny when you think about it. The Crowd, one of the most artistic silent films ever made, was released in March 1928. Four months later the first all talking feature film, "Lights of New York" was released to a grind house run and was a big hit, finally causing Hollywood to transition to sound. Lights of New York is a fun film just because it is delightfully bad. The Crowd is still considered one of the all time great silent films, and yet the transition to sound would cause such high art to be lost to film for about four years.
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- AlsExGal
- Oct 16, 2019
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