ABSTRACT
The hundreds of American types show a striking variety of role models compared with simpler and more traditional societies, and perhaps even with some modern European ones. Some characteristic adjustment problems of America seem directly connected with freedom in hero types. Offsetting the picture somewhat is a perceptible drawing-away from some of the crasser models of success, physique, and sex-appeal, for example, demands for more censorship, "spiritual'" best-sellers, popular evangelists like Billy Graham, Fulton J. Sheen, and Norman Vincent Peale. The hero of surfaces might be a name for leaders and celebrities who are basically showmen who play to the crowd, specialize in impression, and never muff their parts. An audience-directed performer makes the theatre his life in the broad sense, lives "for his public," "his art." Consistent with the picture of pseudo-integration, it seems that "do-gooder" is more or less a mocking term in American society.
