In ancient Greece, actors wore masks, the two most famous of which — those representing comedy (the smile) and tragedy (the scream) — live on to this day on the SAG Awards’ statuette, “The Actor.” Those masks are equally sized, but, in the present time, not necessarily equally valued. For as long as there have been movies, comedies have tended to draw big audiences, but tragedies — or dramas — have received more, as Rodney Dangerfield would put it, respect.
Probably for this reason, many who achieved their first success in comedy — actors, as well as writers and directors — have at some point sought to transition into drama. This was a cliche as far back as 1941, when the great comedy writer-director Preston Sturges made Sullivan’s Travels, a…
