Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/73

Rh foolish; this to be desired, that to be avoided; all deep blacks or spotless whites and all neatly ticketed and indexed. It is a thought-saving process and few of us like to think. It is so much easier to look into the back of the book and find the answers all worked out for us.

So it is the audiences more than the managers who are at fault for the type system which has grown to be such an evil in the legitimate theater, sentencing this man to play an irascible old man all his life because he once did such a part very well; that woman to a lifetime of slangy chorus girls because she first attracted notice in such a rôle. Hundreds of actors and actresses are confined to-day in such strait-jackets, the most of them competent to play well any part within the limitations of their sex and age.

When Al Jolson, for instance, blacked his face and fixed himself in the public mind as a surpassing minstrel, he forever limited his usefulness. In each of his shows Mr. Jolson is careful to appear once during the performance in white-face, but it is too late. Conceive of the public bewilderment and disgust if he should announce a season of dramatic repertoire. Yet, in my opinion, Mr. Jolson is an actor of infinite possibilities.