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FILMAKERS AS GOODWILL AMBASSADORS
Their Conduct On Location Can Have As Good Effects As The Films Themselves
By HENRY KING

For half a century US motion-picture crews have been rendering a service to the cause of world understanding and peace that for the most part has gone unrecognized.

Let me illustrate with a recent occurrence. At the time I took a 20th Century-Fox company into the interior of Mexico to film THE BRAVADOS, the Mexican newspapers were giving a heavy play to incidents involving American tourists in Tijuana. An unpleasant atmosphere had been created, which I was afraid might bear upon my crew’s necessary contact with the Mexican villagers.

So, after we settled down in our base camp at Morelia, my assistant director and I, from long location shooting experience abroad, assumed the role of “consul generals.” We organized sports, amateur theatricals, local tours, etc., for the cast and production workers and invited the Mexican villagers we employed as extras and workmen, who responded with enthusiasm. Whatever the Mexicans or our own company knew of discord in Tijuana, was completely forgotten. I like to think a friendly feeling remained behind after we had left for home.

I was one of the first, if not the first, of American directors to take a major unit to Italy for location shooting. The picture was THE WHITE SISTER, starring Lillian Gish and introducing Ronald Colman. Miss Gish and Mr. Colman formed the most naturally competent team of “ambassadors” ever to set foot in Rome. Their combined charm, gentility and unassumed friendliness broke down barriers for us with Italian customs officials, police, innkeepers, and the plain, everyday Italian citizens involved in our production efforts.

Other troupes in other climes have proved as willing and able to further American prestige, and make picture-making easier, by their good manners and lack of affectation. Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Susan Hayward will always be remembered with affection, I am sure, by the African natives with whom we came into contact while shooting THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO,

The most unlikely people in the far reaches of the earth have been influenced by Hollywood motion pictures, and this fact has been payment ten-fold for whatever small token of American heritage I have attempted to take along with me in the form of tolerance for native customs and traditions. I especially remember a camel driver in the Holy Land who approached our DAVID AND BATHSHEBA company to watch a scene being shot. From his excited exclamations in broken French I gathered he had seen his first American movie only the previous year, in Cairo.

Even the ‘inscrutable Oriental” isn’t as apart from us as some have thought. In Hong Kong, while scouting locations for LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING, I met a personable young bank clerk who, like any aspiring actor in the US “temporarily” tied down to a commercial career, approached me for a bit part in the picture. Months later I mailed him the film clip in which he fleetingly appeared, which, alas, I had recovered, so to speak, from the cutting room floor. I probably didn’t make an actor of him but I certainly made a friend – judging from the letter of profuse thanks I subsequently received.

These may appear small events when viewed from the heights of international diplomacy, but perhaps they aren’t so small from the viewpoint of mankind as the sum-total of millions of individuals like the bank clerk, the camel driver, and the Mexican villagers of Morelia.

The film industry, for purely selfish reasons must never forget that each and every individual is a member of the world movie audience. And the world movie audience, in my observation, is becoming increasingly receptive to US movies – free, as US films are, of Soviet-style propaganda.

People ask me what I think the ‘future” of Hollywood motion pictures will be. I don’t believe the “future” can be separated from the present and the past. Each interpenetrates the other. People the world over need entertainment as much as bread itself. Motion pictures are the most potent means of entertainment ever conceived by man.

People also ask me about the new cinematic techniques. The “new” techniques are mostly limited to such things as faster film, improved camera optical effects, refined color reproduction, high fidelity sound, and the like. All such advances, naturally, have made movies more efficient and increased the camera’s potential.

These new technics have not changed the director’s basic techniques, if we except the performance shadings necessitated by the wide-screen image. The director’s main problem is what it has always been, viz: to keep the actor’s ego unimpaired while conforming it to an over-all interpretation of the story.

That is a simple, if not an easy task, and hasn’t varied from the time when I made TOL’ABLE DAVID with Richard Barthelmess.

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