The Image (23 page)

Many producers—not only Laemmle, but also Adolf Zukor, with his Famous Players (1912), and Cecil B. De Mille—helped develop the star system. The keynote of the new era was set when Zukor imported Sarah Bernhardt, who had been world-famous for her voice, to act in the silent film of Queen Elizabeth. The film-star legend of the accidentally discovered soda-fountain girl who was quickly elevated to stardom soon took its place alongside the log-cabin-to-White-House
legend as a leitmotif of American democratic folklore. And the legend could reflect reality precisely because there really was so much chance and whimsy in the star-selecting process. A former prison guard, a hat-check girl—or anyone else who happened to have “what it takes” (which included a distinctive commonplaceness of personality, but seldom much acting talent)—might get the “breaks” and make it to the top. This helped make the movies a democratic art and made Hollywood the American dream factory in an age when dream and illusion were hardly distinguished.

By about 1920 the star system was well established. It has dominated the screen and much else ever since. Mary Pickford—“America’s Sweetheart”—was among the first stars. There followed many others: John Barrymore, Minnie Maddern Fiske, James K. Hackett, William S. Hart, Pola Negri, Dorothy Gish, Clara Bow, Greta Garbo, Rudolph Valentino, etc., etc., etc. This great innovation has sometimes been described as a movement from the “star film” (the movie which included a famous actor) to the “film star” (the personality whose mere presence made a film). Producers quickly found that the star system paid. Even if they had no new drama to sell, they could do well by displaying the same star in turn in a variety of new vehicles. The more money the film stars made for their producers, the more money producers were in turn willing to invest in “making” particular stars. Of course producers had to pay well and invest heavily in order to protect their investment and to meet competition. The high cost of making new stars led the producer who had a star with proved box-office appeal to exploit him in every conceivable way before his appeal wore out. Despite spectacular exceptions like Marlene Dietrich, the artificial celebrity life of a star was apt to be brief. For this very reason some actors were said to prefer to play supporting roles in order to make their careers less ephemeral.

High salaries became news and themselves helped make stars into celebrities. These salaries in turn re-enforced the star system. Producers could not afford to abandon it.

The great significance of the star system for literary and dramatic form was simply that the star came to dominate the form and make it irrelevant. Of course the star had first appeared as an actor—a person skilled at playing assigned roles. Originally it was the play that gave form to the product. But when the system became established, the relation between play and player was reversed. The sign of a true star was in fact that whatever he appeared in was only a “vehicle.” The actor himself was no longer tested by his ability to interpret the play. Instead, the play was tested by its ability to display the actor. But the actor himself was an empty vessel. He was no true hero; usually he was a mere celebrity—a human pseudo-event, “the greatest.” To exploit a star meant only to show his familiar face and figure and gestures, and always as much as possible in his familiar role. It was less what he could do than how widely he was known, how “popular” he was, that made him, and kept him, a star. Again the self-fulfilling prophecy of the true pseudo-event. Every time an actor appeared in a starring role, that fact itself made him more of a star, and, of course, more of a celebrity.

Each star soon became type-cast. This meant that every one of his appearances had to be more of the same. By definition, then, the star could not offer anything strikingly new. The vehicle would be unacceptable to him unless it re-enforced his desired image. A sign of the rise of the star system, noted by historians of the film, was that about 1914 Febo Mari refused to wear a beard as Attila and Alberto Capozzi rejected the role of St. Paul because it would require him to wear a beard. Stars commonly refused roles or costumes which seemed inappropriate to their star personality, or which concealed the face already well known to millions. Occasionally before, a stage play had been written for a particular actor. Now it became standard practice for a screen play to be modified, a new character to be inserted, or a whole plot developed, to meet the box-office proved specifications of the stars.

As the star rose, he became one with his roles. Francis X.
Bushman and Beverly Bayne, who were the first starring movie “love team” (
Romeo and Juliet
, 1916), kept their marriage a secret for fear it would tarnish their romantic appeal. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were married (1920; divorced, 1935) by the logic of a world which, as one writer has observed, “existed, really, more through the screen than on the screen.” “People say,” Jean Gabin once remarked, “I’m the same in real life as I am in my movies, and that’s why they like me.” Charles Boyer received a letter addressed to him c/o Mayerling, Hollywood, U.S.A. In 1936 the Gary Cooper Fan Club of San Antonio boomed him for President of the United States: they said he had already demonstrated his political acumen in
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
.

Everyone knows, of course, that a star is not born, but made. The familiar process was well described by Edgar Morin:

Plainly the star is a pseudo-event. He proves it by spawning other pseudo-events. The Fan Club, for example. Although these clubs are generally not fomented by a press agent, they are encouraged by press agents and by the star himself. When the star visits a city, the local fan club becomes a body guard, following the fan about, attracting attention, asking for autographs, and encouraging non-members to do the same. The star sometimes has a series of photographs of himself—posing in his “real” costume in character—with some token of the season, holding lilies or bunnies or holly berries or turkeys, to send to his fan clubs. Nelson Eddy, for example, once sent a Christmas box of chocolates to each of the presidents of his fan clubs in different cities. The Bing Crosby Club of Ramseur, North Carolina (including 40 per cent of the population) once persuaded the city government to rename a thoroughfare Crosby Street. In 1960 Ricky Nelson alone had some 9,000 fan clubs. Early in that year the national secretary of the fan club for the Ozzie Nelson family was receiving every week about 10,000 letters and between 120 and 150 requests to start “official” fan clubs for some member of the family (mostly for Ricky). The Deanna Durbin Club, with higher standards than others, had limited membership to fans who: (1) had seen each of Deanna’s movies at least twice, (2) presented an important collection of documents about Deanna, and (3) subscribed to the
Deanna Journal
. Dues of fan clubs are commonly about fifty cents a year.

Fan magazines have been both the products and the multipliers of the fan clubs. About a quarter of all magazine titles on most newsstands were in the fan-romance category, according to a survey reported in
Newsdealer
, a trade publication,
in April 1960. Their combined sales then ran to thirty-three million a month, almost 400 million copies a year. In addition there are the so-called “one-shots,” which are not serial publications, but each of which usually centers around an entertainer-celebrity. Dick Clark once sold 180,000 copies of one such dollar one-shot by displaying it over his “American Bandstand.” An Elvis Presley one-shot sold nearly a million copies.

A pseudo-eventful by-product of the star system is what
Time
magazine has accurately described as “non-books.” These are printed matter between covers, usually put together by someone other than the ostensible autobiographer. An energetic new “non-publisher,” Bernard Geis Associates (distributing their works through Random House), has specialized in the pseudo-products of the entertainment world. A typical example is
Ustinov’s Diplomats
, in which Peter Ustinov, taking advantage of his beard, mimics United Nations representatives; the volume is prefaced by Kirk Douglas’ introduction reminding readers that Ustinov appears with him in the movie
Spartacus
. Another is
Zsa Zsa Gabor: My Story Written for Me by Gerold Frank
(World Publishers), which with disarming profundity concludes, “Who knows, in this life of ours, what is really true and what is enchanting make-believe?”

The star is the ultimate American verification of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s
Émile
. His mere existence proves the perfectibility of any man or woman. Oh wonderful pliability of human nature, in a society where anyone can become a celebrity! And where any celebrity (boxer “Sugar Ray” Robinson, singer Elvis Presley, lawyer Joseph L. Welch) may become a star! Once the star has been established as a celebrity, or the celebrity established as a star, he can “perform” in almost any kind of piece—a war movie, a musical spectacular, a murder mystery, or a gangster story—provided he is paid enough and he can preserve his “real” personality. The star-celebrity is an undifferentiated entertainer.

T
HE STAR
system has reached far beyond the movies. Wherever it reaches it confuses traditional forms of achievement. It focuses on the personality rather than on the work. It puts a premium on well-knownness for its own sake. It is a generalized process for transforming hero into celebrity. It leads institutions to employ pseudo-events to “build up” big names. In the United States it has come to dominate even the world of fiction-writing itself. By contrast, in England, for example (where aristocratic survivals and a lower standard of living have retarded the effects of the Graphic Revolution), a good novelist can without difficulty secure publication of a work of high literary quality which promises a sale of only a few thousand—barely enough to cover production costs and a small profit margin. But, as Harvey Swados has observed, the American publishing scene has been dominated by a few stars—Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, J. D. Salinger—who have prospered as authors partly because they could be touted as “personalities.”

Columnists for our popular literary reviews and weekly book sections discuss star-authors less in the spirit of a Dr. Samuel Johnson than in that of a Louella Parsons. They gossip simultaneously about the star’s private life, his work, and his roles. Perhaps as Swados suggests, J. D. Salinger is the Greta Garbo of American letters, and Ernest Hemingway was a kind of Douglas Fairbanks. The host of other good writers who have not achieved star status, whose personalities have not yet become publicly mixed with their works—these writers suffer literary and personal obscurity. Here we see “massive concentration on a handful of writers (for reasons all too often nonliterary).” Publishers then, are less the midwives of literary culture than “drumbeaters for an arbitrarily limited galaxy of stars.” The star system prevails, as Norman Mailer explains, because American audiences are “incapable of confronting a book unless it is successful.”
Mailer might have added that while the star system may have begun for this reason, it has in turn made its own reasons. American bigotry in favor of success (and intolerance of failure) itself expresses a star-dominated world.

Best-sellerism is the star system of the book world. A “best seller” is a celebrity among books. It is a book known primarily (sometimes exclusively) for its well-knownness. And it is a relatively new phenomenon. Until the present century no one would have thought of revering the Bible for being the World’s Best Seller. On the contrary, in pre-democratic ages, before the invention of movable type, the text viewed with awe was not popular but esoteric. Much of the sacredness of holy texts doubtless used to come from their scarcity and inaccessibility, from the fact that the few existing copies were in the custody of holy priests. To this day the Torah (the Pentateuch, or first five books of the Bible, the sacred texts of Judaism) enshrined in the ark of synagogues is a text laboriously hand-written on parchment. The Holy Book, the revered book, which had been slowly and reverently written down and handed as an heirloom from generation to generation, was guarded from the vulgar eye, to be shown to the populace only on the sanctified occasions of prayer, of the Sabbath, of religious holidays, etc. It was in almost every way the antithesis of our distinctive writings, our newspapers, our mass-circulation magazines, and our best sellers. The popular book, the best seller, which holds the highest status among contemporary texts, is that which is universally in the public eye. Everybody has it on his living room table, the commuter carries it on the train, the secretary reads it at her typewriter, it is featured in the windows of department stores, bookstores, now even in drugstores and on newsstands.