Director
Crisp worked as an assistant to Griffith for several years and learned much during this time from Griffith, an early master of film story telling who was influential in advancing a number of early techniques, such as cross cutting in editing his films. This experience fostered a similar passion in Crisp to become a director in his own right. His first directing credit was Little Country Mouse, made in 1914. Many directors (and actors) would find themselves turning out a dozen or more films in a single year at this time. Over the next fifteen years, Crisp directed some 70 films in all, most notably The Navigator (1924) with Buster Keaton and Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925) with Douglas Fairbanks.
When asked later by an interviewer why he eventually gave up directing and returned full-time to acting, Crisp commented that directing had become extremely wearisome because he was so often called upon, if not forced, to do favours for studio chiefs by agreeing to employ their relatives in his films. His final directorial effort was the 1930 film The Runaway Bride starring Mary Astor.
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Famous quotes containing the word director:
“Your audience gives you everything you need. They tell you. There is no director who can direct you like an audience.”
—Fanny Brice (1891–1951)
“He wrote me sad Mother’s Day stories. He’d always kill me in the stories and tell me how bad he felt about it. It was enough to bring a tear to a mother’s eye.”
—Connie Zastoupil, U.S. mother of Quentin Tarantino, director of film Pulp Fiction. Rolling Stone, p. 76 (December 29, 1994)