"BEYOND THE PALE"

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 97, 15 December 1931, Page 2

"BEYOND THE PALE"

TOM WALLS SAYS AN ACTOR CANNOT ALSO BE A GENTLEMAN Can an actor be a gentleman? Tom Walls rather thinks not, and Dame Sybil Thorndike is emphatic that a perfect lady cannot be a very good actress. Here are their opinions. Let us take Walls first. "It is my earnest belief," he says, "that a first-class publie school education, desirable if not altogether necessary to the chap with gentlemanly aspirations, tends more than ariythirig else to hialce a man stereotyped. It makes him a good citizen, but is very harmful to his individuality. "On the stage or screen there must be no iron mould men, no robots; real actor's and actresses, too, for that matter, must have no standards. They must have. the creative sense, which is something w(hich does not come from your mould man. "Actors, to be real actors, should b.e altogether beyond the, jpale; they should be rogues and vagabonds, as they were in the beginning. "For instance, my greatest perspnal diversion is speculating on my own hofses; I enjoy the company of my racing , staff, and. firmly believe they're worth a lift in the Rolls R.oyee that I'm lucky eriough to own." Tom Walls admits quit,e, frankly that he likes good champagne, and, as everyone who has seen him on the stage rnay have guessed, he approves of the opposite sex. Can't Be a Lady? Dame Sybil Thorndike says she doesn't know about actors being gentlemen, "but there is a great deal to be said against actresses being perfect ladies, or perhaps, against ladies being actresses, The perfect lady can sdldom be more than a mediocre actress, for the simple reason that the whole training of the, one is in direct opposition to the other. "The la'dy has been so brought up that she has but little tp express, and has been schooled to show the minimum of that little.