Well, they just don’t know anything else except that one form of their business, acting, and they don’t really want to learn any other part of it, or they would. Directing and producing and putting a show together is very creative, for me.
So I’m in that half-hour business where the most money is, so that eventually I feel like the people that put on the Dupont show, like maybe my artistic effort is going to be a little different.
So whatever I might have started to learn at that age was all undone by the next director and next crew in the next cheap picture, because I was allowed to get away with murder.
The studio didn’t ask them to learn their trade, they just worked them, and when that personality or that gimmick or whatever they had ran dry at the box office, they were dropped and out.
I remember Mr. Mayer very well. He sort of liked to be the father – no, he liked to be treated like you thought he was Daddy, but he didn’t treat you like Daddy at all.