Cameo

“ When we were motoring at night and a peremptory challenge would come from out the darkness and the lamps of the car would pick out the cloaked figure of the sentry as the spotlight picks out the figure of an actor on the stage, and I would lean forward and whisper the magic mot d'ordre, I always had the feeling that I was taking part in a play-which was not so very far from the truth, for, though I did not appreciate it at the time, we were all actors, more or less important, in the greatest drama ever staged. ”

“ JUVENILE LEAD. And he takes them seriously!
L'INGÉNUE. Vanity! He fancies himself as an author now.
LEADING MAN. It's absolutely unheard of. If the stage has come to this ... well I'm....
FIFTH ACTOR. It's rather a joke.
THIRD ACTOR. Well, we'll see what's going to happen next.
(Thus talking, the actors leave the stage; some going out by the little door at the back; others retiring to their dressing-rooms.
The curtain remains up.
The action of the play is suspended for twenty minutes) .
ACT II.
The stage call-bells ring to warn the company that the play is about to begin again. ”

“ Consider the devices whereby the stage actor holds the audience as he goes out at the side and back. He sighs, gestures, howls, and strides. With what studious preparation he ripens his quietness, if he goes out that way. In the new contraption, the moving picture, the hero or villain in exit strides past the nose of the camera, growing much bigger than a human being, marching toward us as though he would step on our heads, disappearing when largest. There is an explosive power about the mildest motion picture exit, be the actor skilful or the reverse. ”

“ Why as soon as the Curtain is drawn up you will see the Stage disposed in the Form of a Pit, and that you are to imagine the Prologue, and when they let the Curtain down, why then you must suppose it to be ended.
Smart. I wonder what the Audience will say when it is over.
Snarle. What? Why some will stare and wonder what the Actors have been about, and will still be expecting the Prologue; others will chuckle at their Disappointment, and cry—they knew how it would be; and some will judiciously observe—what better could be expected from a Prologue to be written and spoken by the Pit. ”

“ One evening, during one of my finest moments, when it seemed as if the roof would fall under the explosions of frantic applause, my eyes fell upon a face in a proscenium box almost on the stage, an impassive face, the sight of which made my blood suddenly run cold. You have no idea of the mysterious influences which govern the actor's inspiration, how the expression of certain faces absorbs him, and stimulates or deadens his audacity. ”

“ Hence the match—the harmony—between the words and the personality—though it may exist, is apt not to be nearly so effective in the book as on the stage, and a line that misses its mark as written in the one may triumph in the other, thanks to the man who speaks it—to his skill, to his emotional power, not seldom, and especially in comedy, even to his personal appearance. In a word the independence of dialogue on the stage is qualified by its dependence on the actor. ”

“ The actors have come out of the dressing-room door, some in their everyday clothes, and some with just overcoats on over their circus-dresses, and they lounge about near the band-stand watching the performance in the ring. ”

“ I find that my earliest recollections of the stage are also the keenest, and the acting I saw in my youth seems to have made the most lasting impression. The stage world was, of course, much more limited in its dimensions in those days, and the few representatives of genius were nearer and, perhaps in consequence, seemingly greater than in later years, when of all the ministers of delight it must be acknowledged that the actor gives most pleasure to the greatest number of people. ”

“ Three weeks was not much time for preparation of any sort for such an experiment, but I had no more, to become acquainted with my fellow actors and actresses, not one of whom I had ever spoken with or seen—off the stage—before; to learn all the technical business, as it is called, of the stage; how to carry myself toward the audience, which was not—but was to be—before me; how to concert my movements with the movements [189] of those I was acting with, so as not to impede or intercept their efforts, while giving the greatest effect of which I was capable to my own. ”

“ Prior to the enactment, and for the benefit of those in the audience who might be innocent of French, a British officer gave out the motif in English.
As I sat contentedly in my place—the burden of the wearinesses of the last weeks fallen from my shoulders—it was borne in upon me that much of the success of a play is in the eager and receptive mood of the audience; also that in the naïve freshness [61] of an amateur performance is a charm which has too frequently perished in the more finished production of the professional actor. ”

“ I had felt myself an actor in a drama, and now I had very much the feeling an actor would have who answers to a cue and finds himself in mid-stage with the scenery and the rest of the cast suddenly vanished behind him. ”

“ Therefore, if one should take away from him both his buskins and his mask, and bring him on the stage as a mere shade of an actor, is the tragic actor lost, or does he abide? If he has a voice, he abides. ”

“ Now, the actor on the regular stage is one kind of individual; the actor for the motion picture is quite another. The stage has a limited and well-defined category of beings and shadows, of vessels, so to speak, for the fancy of the poet in words. There is the youthful lover, the sentimental dame of uncertain years, the first hero, the first heroine, the doughty old father, the droll old lady, and so on. ”

“ In those good old days a black-shrouded mute hovered about each actor after dark, holding out a candle at the end of a long stick to illuminate his features, that the audience might see the fine play of expression. ”

“ THE MANAGER (cutting him short and out of patience) . Good heavens! The make-up will remedy all that, man, the make-up....
THE FATHER. Maybe. But the voice, the gestures....
THE MANAGER. Now, look here! On the stage, you as yourself, cannot exist. The actor here acts you, and that's an end to it!
THE FATHER. I understand. And now I think I see why our author who conceived us as we are, all alive, didn't want to put us on the stage after all. I haven't the least desire to offend your actors. Far from it! But when I think that I am to be acted by ... I don't know by whom.... ”

“ Here and there, however, the unthinking globe-trotter, with more or less the vulgar mind, will be inclined to laugh as he sees a richly-clothed actor sweep majestically through the audience to the stage; he will point out the prompter who never attempts to conceal himself, and the little black-robed supers who career about the stage arranging dresses, slipping stools under actors, and bearing away any little article that they don’t happen to want. ”

“ Until then a piece was often nothing more than a star actor planted well in the front of the stage, taking his time and prolonging his effects, and behind him a dozen or so nonentities mumbling mere odds and ends of dialogue and addressing themselves to the back of their more famous colleague. ”

“ From this disposition of the light in our theatres, whenever an actor, whose features are not particularly sharp and pointed, comes near the front of the stage, and turns his face fully to the audience, every feature immediately becomes shortened and snub, and less capable of any expression, unless it be of the ludicrous kind. ”

“ Bearing in mind what the representation of strong emotions can be on the modern stage, where the face and limbs of the actors are free to exhibit the varying moods of a tragic character, it is most difficult, or rather impossible, to understand how passion or pathos could be interpreted by men so encumbered as the actors were on the ancient stage by their masks, their high boots, and their cumbersome robes. ”

“ Another time she talked about her profession as an actress. 'Acting,' she said, 'cannot be otherwise than delightful—but it takes an actor away from himself. When one has been two or three years on the stage nothing is left but the stage and the dressing-room: the company behind the scenes and the audience in front. Nothing is real. Everything that happens is but a scene in a play. ”

“ While any other man would have sunk exhausted in a chair, he stood up and described, with the enthusiasm and captivating animation peculiar to him, the minutest details and intricacies of the plot that he had devoted his whole energy to unravelling; personating every character he brought upon the scene to take part in the strange drama, so that his listener was bewildered and dazzled by his brilliant acting. ”

“ Of scarf and leaf and laughter—ay, it was
The scene for her; she sat, self-mimicking,
The center of her central-whirling world,
And tuned her mood to mockery, and skirled
A showman's lilting flourish on the string. ”

“ They put on their dresses and masks, and rig up something to resemble a town on the stage with hangings, and then so associate the bare scene with their life-like imitation of action that they are a marvel to the spectators—both the actors themselves of the incidents of the play, and the hangings, or rather their imaginary city. ”

“ In the theatre they are careful not to burn blue fire at a love scene. And to-night as I was not to attempt a victorious entry of the Captain’s heart with a pageant of smiles, and a flashing magnificence of eye, the glow must be tempered to the mood of tenderness, and sympathy, and mild solicitude. ”

“ Isn't that your mission, gentlemen: to give life to fantastic characters on the stage?
THE MANAGER (interpreting the rising anger of the Company) . But I would beg you to believe, my dear sir, that the profession of the comedian is a noble one. If today, as things go, the playwrights give us stupid comedies to play and puppets to represent instead of men, remember we are proud to have given life to immortal works here on these very boards! (The actors, satisfied, applaud their Manager) . ”

“ Without being the dupes of each other, but enlightened, the one by the experiences of life, the other by the precocious instinct of combat, the comédienne of the fashionable world and the comédienne of the theatre pressed each other's hands with tender interest and smiled amiably into each other's eyes. ”

“ Sometimes, too, an actor will appear on the stage, or come amongst the audience with a message for one or a group of them, but only the few can see him, and his message is not always intelligible to them. ”

“ We should not really have the actors themselves in our straight line of vision; and yet this image would appear to us equivalent to the actors themselves, because it would contain all the depth of the real stage. The film picture is such a reflected rendering of the actors. ”

“ We'll pick a good staff, select our stories with care, get the best men to write our scenarios, and gather round us a group of actors, like those who have made the Continental cinema what it is today, more interested in their work than in themselves, willing to take their chances of scoring in fine ensemble acting instead of insistent that every story shall be distorted, every scene directed, every picture cut to throw a so-called star into prominence. ”

“ I think the voice of actors when off the stage is peculiar. It is deep and hollow, as if trained to be thrown to a distance. By the drama two of the senses which afford most pleasure are entertained—the eye and the ear. ”

“ The comedy has to be made. (To the Manager) : But if you and your actors are willing, we can soon concert it among ourselves.
THE MANAGER (annoyed) . But what do you want to concert? We don't go in for concerts here. Here we play dramas and comedies!
THE FATHER. Exactly! That is just why we have come to you.
THE MANAGER. And where is the "book"?
THE FATHER. It is in us! (The actors laugh) . The drama is in us, and we are the drama. We are impatient to play it. Our inner passion drives us on to this.
THE STEP-DAUGHTER (disdainful, alluring, treacherous, full of impudence) . My passion, sir! ”

“ But those who meet the members of a squadron in their hours of ease, among gramophones and pictorial works of art suggestive of luxury, forget that an actor in a tragedy, though he play his part nobly on the stage, is not commonly tragic in the green-room. ”

“ In explaining the mysteries of stage representations, and indicating the tricks of ring performances, as well as in speaking of the private lives of performers and giving biographies of the most noted actors and actresses now before the public, an attempt has been made to be perfectly accurate in every detail. ”

“ His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume.
⁠He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." ”

“ The phenomenal unnaturalness of acting is a thing discounted in the minds of most people by early visits to the theatre. They get used to the fantastic gestures, the flamboyant emotions, the weird mouthings, melodious snortings, agonising yelps, lip-gnawings, glaring horrors, and other emotional symbolism of the stage. ”

“ While the audience filed out to supper in the hall, the stage was a scene of dire confusion as gods and goddesses, farmers and barons, maids and carpenters, congratulated one another on the success of their labours. Assuming various costumes, actors and actresses soon joined their guests, to sip bounteous draughts of praise with their coffee, and cool their modest blushes with ice-cream. ”

“ SCENARIOS On the legitimate stage nearly every actor at one time or another writes a play. In the same way, in the movies nearly every actor tries his hand at scenario writing. In fact, many of the most successful playwrights and photodramatists have had stage or screen experience as actors. ”