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A Brand-new Type of Star
The versatile character is to have his day at last.
By Malcolm H. Oettinger
He played one of his many old man roles in "The Dancin' Fool."
OUR really great stars of the stage have always been versatile players ; new, difficult characterizations have always been applauded, and the man who appears in the same type of role year after year has often been harshly criticized. But in motion pictures just the opposite has been the case, and their very popularity has held the screen stars to a repetition of the same sort of role. To be sure, some of them have recently broken away a little — Bert Lytell some time ago refused to play "straight" roles all the time ; Bryant Washburn took to character make-up in a few of the last comedy dramas he made for Famous Players-Lasky, and Wallace Reid applies it whenever he gets a chance, which isn't often. But as a rule, character work has been limited to those less important than the star.
Times are changing rapidly, however — for along comes the announcement that Goldwyn is to feature, and possibly star, Raymond Hatton in character roles. He has been playing them for years, the last five of which he has spent under the Lasky banner "We've had character stars of
Can you recognize him in the man holding Mabel Normand's head?
As Paul Benedict in "Jes' Call Me Jim."
sort — stars like Will Rogers and George Beban and Bill Hart, who always play one certain kind of character role," he told me the' other day, as he 'settled his belongings in his dressing room at the Goldwyn studio. "But I want to go a step further and play types in even picture — different ones each time ; a Yankee farmer in one picture, a French nobleman in the next. I want to avoid repeating myself if I can.
"One of my first star parts will be in William J. Locke's 'Septimus,' " he went on, in the course of a crossexamination as to his plans for the future. "Then I have my eye on a Dickens story with a corking English part for me. And I'd like to make a try at the sort of thing George Beban does, and also play a sympathetic crook role. All my life I've been trained for dramatic characterization, and this will give me an opportunity to run the whole gamut of it."
And any one who has followed his trail in pictures will certainly agree that his screen work has certainly been good preparation. In 191 1, when he was on the coast with a theatrical troupe, he went into the movies under the direction of George Mel ford, then with Kalem.
"My first stunt was to burn my beard in a Russian pogrom scene. Next I was cast as a village postmaster— and then George spotted me Continued on page 92