A hundred million movie-goers must be right... (1938)

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sociate readily with a singular role in life itself; and eccentric types, which, according to conventional type standards are exaggerations of stock types. In short, stock types are straight dramatic or melodramatic types wThile eccentric types are in the majority outright caricatures of stock types. Regarding support troupers only one conclusion can be drawn: In the main they are master craftsman, each a tested, proven piece of merchandise. Many have served a long gruelling apprenticeship in the theatre, many in the kerosene circuits, and back there in tank-town stock, under canvas, walking the boards, walking the ties, walking the weary round of producers' offices they left the ham in their Hamlets, their intensities, reciting, chest-heaving, scenerygnawing, mugging and declaiming. Out of the crude years they distilled a thing called "living their role," indeed, living a role became a prime necessity. The skimpy roles doled out to support people got no notices unless they were lived to the hilt. As a result they brought to the screen a seasoned equipment, a sensitiveness, a spontaneity and naturalness that makes them as believable in one role as another. Whatever their pose, be it gay or sad, knowing or bewildered, it is rarely forced. Every change of mood, no matter how fleeting or permanent, becomes a thing of immediate reality. In timing, transitions, discovery, take, humor, pointing or any other element of delivery, there is no reaching, striving or straining for effect. What they say and do on the screen comes as close to reality as anything possibly can in the world of make-believe. They are troupers. And we may add, anyone indifferent to smooth trouping does not attend the theatre or their numbers do not count. Now there may be only a million moviegoers or so who like the Mary Boland, Alice Brady or Billie Burke personalities, and an entirely different million who prefer Spring Byington, May Robson or Laura Hope Crewes, as types. In fact support-trouper likes and dislikes are just as pronounced as star likes and dislikes, but when it comes to support trouping, no prejudice is possible. Regardless of type, if a support trouper's role con 154