The star system that developed in the early decades of the
film industry prized certain highly photogenic men and
women of great physical beauty and charisma. Yet early
on, the public also took to its heart actors who were not
so much personalities as chameleons capable of creating a
range of characters. In the 1920s, Lon Chaney, ‘‘The
Man with the Thousand Faces,’’ intrigued audiences just
as much as Greta Garbo or Rudolph Valentino. The public also embraced actors who looked like people they
might know in life, especially after the coming of sound
brought scores of stage actors before the cameras and a
more realistic aesthetic to the cinema. The top box-office
star for two years in the early 1930s was Marie Dressler
(1868–1934), an earthy and homely actress in her sixties.
Also during the early talkie era, when acting experience
seemed briefly to matter more than looks, the Academy
Awards for Best Actor went to the elderly thespian
George Arliss (1868–1946) and to such expressive but
physically ungainly talents as Wallace Beery (1885–1949)
and Charles Laughton. Even the matinee idol Fredric
March (1897–1975) tied with Beery for the 1931–1932
Best Actor award by playing leading man and character
actor in a single film: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Therefore, when journalistic accounts of the late
1960s and early 1970s tried to describe such unglamorous lead actors as Dustin Hoffman (b. 1937), Gene
Hackman (b. 1930), and Al Pacino (b. 1940) as examples
of the ‘‘character actor as star,’’ the idea was not new. Yet
it always seems exceptional, especially after several decades of the studio system when glamorous stars were
backed up by platoons of ordinary looking but prodigiously talented actors and actresses. Comparing the
making of a film to the building of a table, director
Frank Capra (1897–1991) said, ‘‘On the top of my table,
which is bright and shiny, I have these lovely dolls that
are my leading actors and actresses. But it is not a table
until I put legs under it, and those are my character
people. That’s what holds my picture up’’ (Davis, The
Glamour Factory, pp. 122–123).
During the studio era, the appearance of certain
character actors was as much a mark of high-quality
moviemaking as lavish production values or prestigious
story properties. Some character players were as identified
with a single studio as the stars were. Peter Lorre (1904–
1964) or Sidney Greenstreet (1879–1954), inevitably
meant that the movie they were in was from Warner
Bros.; the appearance (except when they were loaned
out) of Jane Darwell (1879–1967), Celeste Holm
(b. 1919), or Charles Coburn (1877–1961) meant
Twentieth Century Fox; Frank Morgan (1890–1949) or
Louis Calhern (1895–1956) signaled an MGM picture.
Others showed up in the films of any number of production companies in a single year. These were the actors
like Porter Hall (1888–1953), Beulah Bondi (1888–
1981), Gene Lockhart (1891–1957), and Henry
Travers (1874–1965) who appeared in film after film in
the studio period but were not tied to a particular studio.
Other national cinemas had essential ‘‘character people’’
as well. The French films of the 1930s are as unimaginable without such stalwarts as Jules Berry (1883–1951) or
Marcel Dalio (1900–1983) (who later worked extensively
in Hollywood) as American films would be without Eve
Arden (1908–1990) or Edward Everett Horton (1886–
1970).
Examples of the value of character actors are legion.
In 1939, when Hollywood produced an unparalleled
number of classic films, half of them seemed to feature
Thomas Mitchell (1892–1962), who played prominent
roles that year in Stagecoach, Gone with the Wind, Only
Angels Have Wings, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and
The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Despite his seemingly
ubiquitous presence in films throughout the 1930s and
1940s, Mitchell, like other Hollywood character actors,
returned periodically to the stage; in the 1950s he also
became a fixture of TV drama anthology programs, live
or filmed, leading the parade of actors below the starlevel who streamed from the fading movie studios to the
opportunities offered by the new medium.
As an example of the importance of character actors
to the texture, rhythm, and drama of a film, consider
High Noon (1952), a movie made in the first days of
independent production in the early 1950s but with a
cast seasoned in the studios. Known for its elegance of
design, this suspenseful western told in real time won a
Best Actor Oscar for Gary Cooper as Marshal Will
Kane, and also offered opportunities for a range of character actors to show their stuff. These included not only
Thomas Mitchell and other familiar faces such as Otto
Kruger (1885–1974), Lon Chaney Jr. (1906–1973), and
Harry Morgan (b. 1915), but young actors Lloyd Bridges
(1913–1998) and Lee Van Cleef (1925–1989), who had
been stuck in B movies; the Mexican-born actress Katy
Jurado (1924–2002), typed in ethnic parts; a theningenue, Grace Kelly (1929–1982); and a young Jack
Elam (1918–2003), who would put in a memorable turn
years later in a High Noon pastiche, C’era una volta il
West (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968). The compulsory narrative economy that the film calls attention to
by its very structure requires each of the actors to establish character briskly.
The ensemble of High Noon does what the casts of
all films do, except that the limited place and time
setting—a small frontier town between 10:32 and
12:00 on a Sunday morning in the early 1890s—throws
the ensemble as an ensemble into unusually vivid relief.
The way the characters, one by one, refuse the marshal’s
request for help turns the spotlight onto even the smallest
speaking part. By a slight swagger, Lloyd Bridges establishes his character as brash, ambitious, and essentially
selfish—‘‘too young,’’ as Kane tells him. Jurado needs to
convey strength and intelligence, and she manages to do
so, while not entirely succeeding in throwing off the
‘‘hot-blooded Latina’’ stereotype the film imposes upon
her. In a scene in which she curtly and abruptly dismisses
Harvey (Bridges), her current lover, she has to turn convincingly from mocking but affectionate laughter and
humor to anger and indignation. A movie in which most
of the characters except the hero and heroine become
unsympathetic, High Noon creates a number of types
familiar from westerns, and then works against their
usual meanings. Costuming and makeup have a great
deal to do with the performances. The saloon-keeper
(Lucien Prival, 1900–1994), for instance, is typed as a
dude, with slicked-back hair, a moustache, white shirt
and bowtie, and a corset pulled over his bicep. This
complements the character, who is written as a smooth,
complacent loudmouth.
Authoritative actors like Kruger and Mitchell, as
the judge and the mayor, respectively, play their accustomed roles, only in a place where authority is being
abandoned, replaced by expediency and complacency.
Mitchell, who frequently played bloviating orators and
other long-winded types, is in the background through
most of the film, but emerges at the climax of the long
church scene to give a lengthy, prevaricating speech.
The mayor’s address starts out seemingly in support
of the marshal but ends up naming Kane as the cause
of the impending trouble. He urges Kane to flee in the
hopes that if the killers do not find their target, they will
quietly leave town. Mitchell speaks in a steady, practiced and confident rhythm and cadence that belies the
mayor’s cowardly, head-in-the-sand attitude. Moreover,
Mitchell’s speech enhances Gary Cooper’s performance
and increases the audience’s identification with the
character Cooper plays. Kane is waiting for his friend
the mayor to begin urging the men to join him in
confronting the threat to their town; reaction shots to
Cooper emphasize his dismay at the failure of people he
trusts to do what he, Kane, sees as obviously right.
When Mitchell gets to the payoff of his speech, he
intones the lines, ‘‘You better get out of town, Will, while there’s still time,’’ with a ‘‘we care about you’’
empathy that proves false when he reaches the end:
‘‘It’s better for you’’—pause—‘‘and it’s better for us,’’
the hardness and quickness of his delivery of the last
line leaving no doubt as to the betrayal it signifies.
Mitchell usually played weary authority figures,
flawed and alcoholic, like Doc Boone in Stagecoach or
Diz, the hard-bitten newspaperman in Mr. Smith, or
beloved and benign like Pa O’Hara in Gone with the
Wind or the ineffectual Uncle Billy in It’s a Wonderful
Life (1946). While Mitchell could also infuse competent,
efficient functionaries like Tumulty, Wilson’s political
aide and White House Chief of Staff in Wilson (1944),
Darryl Zanuck’s gargantuan biopic of Woodrow Wilson,
with an air of blarney and drunken Irish charm, a stereotype was never far from any of Mitchell’s portrayals. Like
most character actors of his era, Mitchell played types,
but in a system that counted on actors to invest their types with individuality and humanity, making them into
differentiated characters.