It is worth while to note, however, that while the rest of the country acclaims the supporting player, the Hollywood stars take a different slant on the-entire matter. In Hollywood the supporting player is known in the professional ranks as a "scene stealer." The Academy may reward a supporting player, but the stars look upon him suspiciously for many a star has learned to his or her -sorrow that the supporting player of today is the star of tomorrow. So the stars call them scene stealers and attributes grand larceny to their every move on the screen, More than one star, having seen the rushes of a picture (the daily grist of the celluloid mill), has rushed to the head of the studio and demanded that certain scenes be deleted or re shot because in those scenes a supporting player, either through talent or camera tricks, has usurped the dominance and authority of the ness" of the scene so bril-hantly that the audience had eyes for nobody else, These veterans cannot Be described They are in the truest sense of the word supporting players, giving noble support to the stars. John Barrymore, for instance, as the drink-maddened lawyer in "True Confession," leering at Carole Lombard, brought a psycopathic qual ity to the picture that added shadow and form to the entire document.
In "Tovarich" Basil Rathbone, in the dinner table sequence, as the commissar, stale the scene simply by the intense quality of his voice. Everybody else in the picture was shrill and high-pitched.—Rathbone's delivery was a change in pace, and people went out of the theatre with an indelible impression of his expert restraint, In "Wells Fargo" there were two grand supporting performances on ihe part of Bob Burns and Barney Siegal, who played the "ugh-ugh" star.
The Hollywood gag, now trite, about "the face on the cutting room floor," was no joke to the supporting players. Too often had they found themselves scissored out of a picture in which they had only sinned by performing too well A bisrs, protecting themselves against the day of release, watch every member of the cast with hawk-like eyes to see that they are not photographed joo glamorously, that they are not given choice lines, that they are not given scenes that are "fat" in dia-Jogue content.
One may sympathize with the star, while indicting the methods used, Because this is a dog-eat-dog business, to put it in its most unsavoury ligh The star, once he or she is on top, from the experience of others t's a short life and not always a one. So they protect them-24-hour-a-day guard
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.