(5 of 5)
Moon-faced, round-eyed, George Cukor looks like Producer David Selznick in a convex mirror. Irritated by jokes about the resemblance, he recently reduced 40 lb. in 25 weeks. Pictures full of lavender emotion are his specialty. He made Little Women and A Bill of Divorcement for RKO. He dresses to match in blue ensembles, starched linen trousers in shades of mauve and cerise. An excellent craftsman, temperamental to the point of hysterics, he fumes and fusses for perfection. His next picture will be David Copperfield.
King Vidor says: "I can't make a picture unless I have a feeling about it." His slowness in communicating his feelings during story conferences irritates writers and producers. He cannot write dialog or construct a story himself but has a talent for squeezing the last drop of emotion out of any well-written scene. He came to Hollywood with his wife Florence 18 years ago in a rattletrap Ford, stealing gas and tires on the way, bringing with him a camera record of the trip. Since then he has made such silent pictures as The Big Parade (1925), The Crowd (1927), talkies like Cynara (1932), Hallelujah (1929), The Champ (1931). At present his feelings are concerned with Our Daily Bread.
* Above directors in Hollywood's economic, if not in its esthetic, scale are producers who hire directors, assign them to pictures, tell them how much to spend and are, to some extent, respon- sible for their work. Three of the most widely publicized producers in Hollywood: MGM's Irving Thalberg, Twentieth Century's Darryl Zanuck, Universal's Carl Laemmle Jr.