At the outset of his career as an actor Wynne found much to disappoint him. He learnt that brains and application do not necessarily result in stage success.
Among all the actors he met it was all too often the case that the most intelligent were the least successful. Personality and notoriety outweighed intellect. Even the most egregious ass, provided he was representative of a certain type, prospered exceedingly, while the really clever ones languished in the understudy room or formed unspeaking props to hang clothes upon.
A man needs to be on the stage some while before he can appreciate that casting and the box office are the chief considerations in a producer’s mind. It is easier and more satisfactory to engage a fool to play a fool than to ask a wise man to turn his wisdom to folly. Also it is a shrewd business stroke to give the public some very rapturous feminine vision to behold rather than give the part to some lady whose brain has a greater claim to admiration than her features. The world forgives stupidity when offset by loveliness—or even by a hint of subtle scandal—but a very high standard of intellectual perfection is required before the world will ignore a youth which has passed.
Taking these matters into consideration, Wynne was constrained to believe that if theatre-goers were blind, and men gave up talking of matters which concerned them not, there would be an immediate demand for a class of actors, and particularly actresses, of a far higher mental quality than heretofore.
Regarding acting as an Art he had more admiration for the surviving members of the old school, who handed over their lines with an assumption of great importance, than he entertained for the scions of the new.
“You, at least, do something,” he observed to one old fellow, in a drama company of which he had become a member. “You do something, and do it deliberately.”
“That’s so, my boy—that’s so,” came the mightily satisfied endorsement.
“These moderns do nothing but realize their own ineffability.”
“It’s true—it’s too true!”
“And of course the worst of it is what you do is utterly useless—utterly false—and utterly wrong—”