The star of the stage and the screen, who dominates the play by his ability and person: ity, is still one of those happy discoveries which producers dream about and the public adores. In every form of human endeavour, genius, hard work or aptitude must raise one man over the heads of his fellows and the stage and screen offer an inspiration which makes this pre-eminence so marked. It is not unnatural, however, that there should aríse a new school in revolt against the established convention. They say that too many plays have been wri ten to emphasize a single character and once stardom has been attained to perpetuate it. From Shakeapeare down to the present century, authors have concentrated on one or two Characters who occupy the spotlight while the rest of the cast is merely incidental to their efforts. On the stage this has long been so and on the screen, its celluloid offspring, it has been developed so enormously that there is a feeling that Hollywood no longer produces human beings demonstrating their talents in the art of portrayal and entertainment but exotic theatrical types as diverse and as unreal as any puppet show—a fact which one suspects Walt Disney slyly satiricized in his "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" where cartoons became intensely human beings. Granted, there is a large degree of make-belief in the theatre, but there is also an appearling medium of human expression which reflects what people think their conduct would be in similar circumstances and. emotions This is where the great actor emerges, exercises leadership and succeeds in dimming the rest of the company to just those lights and shadows needed for perspective and contrast. Against this, the new school is writing plays sharing the plot with everybody in the company and emphasizing nobody in particular. Whether this conduces to a greater degree of art than intensification of sole personal effort is an experiment which only time and trial will prove. On the stage the great figures of yesteryear are vanishing and Sir John Martin-Harvey has come to the rescue of the stars by implying that just as authors wrote plays around a single character who could be adequately portrayed by the stars of other years, the present generation is writing other plays because talent is unavailable. It may be so on the stage but box office figures of Hollywood, if these can be used as a measure, indicate that the public pays to see the stars of the screen and talent scouts are ever at work seeking these stars, who may eventually become types. Whatever judgment may be passed, it does seem that although the indivi-
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