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Almost without realizing it we are ceasing to be satisfied with scenic people, crowds do not gather before the impersonal glamour of a film star crudely depicted on a poster. As we fall in love with a particular person so we are tending to appreciate people, rather than types, live creations in a play or a film in which the player and the part are one. The players who have lived in their parts survive,, the "actors" are soon forgotten.
4. SHOWING OFF
The theatre and the cinema alike are learning that it is a mistake to "show off", to "talk for effect", showing off used to please, but now it wearies a growing section of the public. Even the fascinating mannerisms of Charlie Chaplin which formed such a large proportion, but not all, of what we used to call his genius have lost their charm.
Lately, however, there have been some unexpected set backs. Poor Cleopatra has had a rough deal. Both in the cinema and in the theatre, people have been showing themselves off under the historical glamour of her name. First there came gaesar and cleopatra, a film that apparently required the outside of the cinema to be redecorated at a time of great labour shortage. Inside it was equally expensive. Surely after henry v it was not necessary for the cinema to have another crowded flare up and so soon, or did the success of henry v invite it? Then there came Anthony and cleopatra on the stage, Edith Evans showing off Edith Evans, no wonder poor Godfrey Tearle lost some of his self-confidence and hardly knew what to do when faced with Edith Evans instead of Cleopatra.
But the crowds in the film and Edith Evans on the stage were to be followed by a new kind of showing off. In "now bar abbas ..." the outward and visible effects of homosexuality were shown off crudely and apparently merely for us to gloat over. It was not that one wanted a moral, obvious morals too often miss their mark, it was something tender, personal, appealing that was lacking. How shattering, how convincing a play might have been that showed a homosexual in which this characteristic was but an aspect of his whole character though possibly an allpervading one. Instead we had a mere one-track exhibitionism, bad enough off the stage but intolerable on it, in striking contrast to the drab realism of boys in brown.
One of the most notable examples of genteel exhibitionism adorned the Haymarket stage for several years, lady Windermere's fan, so over-decorated that any merits of the play peeped out by accident, was sponsored by the C.E.M.A. and apparently deemed to be of educational value. Wilde has become a "classic" and so with official sanction and the help of Cecil Beaton he must be shown off. The historians of the future, however, will find it difficult to understand the long runs of such plays, stagnant backwaters in the midst of so much that is vital on the stage and on the screen.