The committee which has reported on the conditions of employ-
ment of child actors seems to have done its job in a very sound and sensible way. The thing that interests me is the sudden rise, in recent years, of the standard of juvenile acting. In my early days as a theatre-goer I seem to remember that dramatists were careful to avoid writing parts of any consequence for children and, when a child did briefly appear upon the stage, one saw how right the dramatists were. When Jackie Coogan and Shirley Temple emerged one thought of them not as talented, well-trained actors, but as prodigies, almost as unique and abnormal as bearded ladies or horses who could do mathematics. Yet now it is quite a common thing for a child to have the most important part in a film, and on the stage—which is a sterner test of their abilities—they often play exacting roles very well. In The Innocents, a dramatisation of The Turn of the Screw now running in New York and later to be brought to London, two of the four characters are children who are at least as important to the play as the grown-ups. I suppose the successful exploitation of children's natural talents is a by- product of the growing influence of the producer.
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