The Star Machine Page 12

  Once upon a time, Edward Arnold was a leading man billed over Cary Grant, even though Arnold was short, heavyset, middle-aged, and Grant was tall, slim, very handsome, and full of youth. Grant had not found “Cary Grant” yet. The movie was The Toast of New York (1937). Grant is present to play the romantic lead opposite Frances Farmer, but Arnold, nobody’s idea of a dashing hero, is the star; Grant just gets the girl. Arnold had played a similar role in a successful 1936 movie, Come and Get It, in which the Cary Grant role was played by Joel McCrea, also opposite Frances Farmer. That movie led to the creation of a similar story the following year. Farmer and Arnold were needed to repeat their roles, but McCrea could easily be replaced by Grant. Neither McCrea nor Grant had yet found the type he would eventually become, and thus both were interchangeable as the “love interest” to play with Farmer in a movie starring Edward Arnold. (Immediately following The Toast of New York’s July release, Grant emerged as the Cary Grant we know today by appearing in the two other 1937 movies that would define his breakthrough: Topper [August 1937] and The Awful Truth [November 1937].)

  Many successful movie stars in the studio system never located what we would now see as “a strong persona.” They did, however, find a casting type and were stars, just less distinct, less personalized than a Garbo or a Cary Grant. They are the difference between machine-made product and legend. Like Eleanor Powell, they were products of a system that capitalized on their one basic talent. Take, for example, the short career of Mario Lanza. When Lanza, a load of egomaniacal blubber, turned up on MGM’s doorstep in 1949, no one had seen or heard anything like him since Nelson Eddy supplied the voice for a singing whale. But Lanza was young (twenty-eight), nice looking, lively, and he had an amazing tenor voice. What’s more, the studio was looking for a male star who could sing opposite their freshly developed “operatic” singer, Kathryn Grayson. MGM saw right away that Lanza could be perfect, even though he had no acting experience and was too rough-edged to appear in movies directly based on real operas. MGM knew that he would, of course, sing—but what type was he going to be? He looked like a truck driver. Voilà! Mario Lanza debuted in movies playing the starring role opposite Kathryn Grayson in That Midnight Kiss (1949)—and he was a singing truck driver! Then he was a singing fisherman, and then a singing buck private, and pretty soon he was on the cover of Time magazine and playing Enrico Caruso in one of the biggest box office hits of the year, The Great Caruso (1951). Lanza’s stardom soared. (Later, it crashed. He made eight hit movies in ten years, but was dead by age thirty-eight.)

  Lanza’s career came straight out of “Movie Types for Dummies.” The studio solved the Lanza problem by realizing his “type” was never going to be anything but “great loud singer.” They did not need to look any further. There was not going to be any nuance. The studio was smart enough to accept this and market him that way. A Lanza role could be anything or nothing, because all he really had to do was sing. Like Eleanor Powell, Mario Lanza was predefined by nature; all the machine had to do was find him, recognize his type, and use it.*

  Many of these vaguely typed stars, who were very popular in their day but are less known now, explain the studio system and its star machine better than the legends, who are unique. Year by year, Hollywood turned out great numbers of movies. In 1946, there were 477 American-made titles released, and in 1934 there had been 678. Hollywood needed many movie stars to populate them all! It needed its Priscilla Lanes and its George Brents. They aren’t the glory brigade, the first team, but they were movie stars with their own loyal fans, their own starring vehicles, their own types. They were serviceable. Without dismissing their beauty or talent, it is possible to label them as true “machine product.”

  Two popular stars under contract at the tough-minded Warners studio are examples of how a minor star could flourish by developing a less-than-dynamic type that could move easily from genre to genre. They are Dennis Morgan and Ann Sheridan. Morgan and Sheridan were stars at Warner Bros. in the late 1930s and 1940s and into the 1950s. Morgan was a very successful property for the studio, yet he isn’t the kind of actor that today is associated with the studio. (He isn’t a “tough guy.”) Sheridan was a true glamour girl and a very distinctive presence. She was called “the oomph girl” (a nickname she hated), and her name once appeared alongside those of the most famous 1940s pinup girls, the Grables, the Lamours, and the Hayworths.* (Both Morgan and Sheridan are largely forgotten, although their remaining fans are loyal.)

  Dennis Morgan began to emerge in movies around 1936. His first big moment came that year in the MGM hit The Great Ziegfeld. Billed under his own name, Stanley Morner, Morgan was the “singer” for the big “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody” number, which featured a revolving cake and hundreds of beautiful females in a series of stunning costumes. Ironically, Morgan/Morner was dubbed! (This is an example of why people think Hollywood is insane: Hire a guy because he can sing, put him in a musical—and then dub him.) After his name was changed (because “Stanley” seemed effeminate and “Morner” had the dubious homonym “mourner”), Morgan appeared in a run of movies from 1937 to 1940 before his breakthrough A-level role came opposite Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle (1941).

  Morgan seemed inherently modern, which made him suitable as a Warner Bros. leading man. He was good-looking, with an easy style and a beautiful “Irish” tenor† perfect for musicals, although Warners liked to develop musical stars who could perform in other genres. Morgan looked as if he might be perfect in women’s films as a handsome co-star for their leading actresses. He might also do comedies, because of his amiable naturalness, and maybe even adventure dramas or westerns if he weren’t called on to duel or be too active. Warner Bros. cleverly tried Morgan out in all these forms and learned a valuable lesson: He could be an all-purpose roster star whenever a good-looking leading man with an easy charm was needed. That very simple concept—“handsome lead”—could be his type in a world of more uniquely delineated male stars. If you had Cagney, Bogart, and Robinson on your payroll, you needed a Dennis Morgan, an “ordinary” guy, to complement them. By 1941, when Morgan was loaned to RKO for Kitty Foyle, his home studio had no need to worry about his being cast unsympathetically as a society snob who would let poor Kitty down in the romance department. It would be okay for him to play a heel as long as it was dubbed “leading man.” Morgan’s most popular years were the 1940s, particularly the war years, when actors were scarce, and his twinkling eyes, musical ability, warm smile, and solid masculinity made him extremely valuable.

  Kisses for Breakfast (1941) represents Morgan on the rise and illustrates how his star type was built. He is absolutely the male star (under the title) of this low-budget programmer, which doesn’t look low-budget owing to effective use of standing sets, furniture, props, and well-designed costumes. The movie is a silly screwball comedy with a plot concerning an amnesiac (Morgan) who gets caught in a double marriage to cousins (Jane Wyatt and Shirley Ross). He’s the center of the story, but more experienced players (Lee Patrick, Jerome Cowan, Una O’Connor, Louise Beavers, and Willie Best) are used to support him. The movie gets by on secondhand glamour and lots of sexual innuendo. Morgan, a handsome young man, has not one but two beautiful young wives who are, as W. C. Fields said of his bride, Mae West, in My Little Chickadee (1940), “so new that they’re not unwrapped yet.” Women swoon, maids consult Ouija boards, and butlers slurp down the drinks they are supposed to be serving. It’s that kind of movie. But the point is that Morgan takes center frame and emerges as an easygoing, likable “Irish-type,” loaded with charm and sex appeal, who could sing. And Morgan does sing in Kisses. This makes no sense for the character he plays, except that since he has a beautiful voice and Warners is selling him to the public, he sings.* Dennis Morgan paid off for Warners for nearly three decades, becoming successful in musicals, comedies, women’s films and melodramas, adventure movies—even westerns. He was generically flexible, and his type filled a basic need by being basic studio male product.

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nbsp; Although Morgan wasn’t a typical Warners tough guy, Ann Sheridan ironically was. She was the Warners’ resident glamour girl tough guy. Since she was under contract at the “tough guy” studio, she was often used to play the leading lady opposite a roster of male actors whom she matched up with in a kind of telepathically transmitted sense of “I can take it.” The men dished it out; she took it—and gave it back. Watching her sparring with Cagney in Torrid Zone (1940) is like being in a front-row seat at an Ali-Frazier fight. And watching her match up to Cary Grant—the acid test for female co-stars in comedy—in their 1949 hit I Was a Male War Bride often startles audiences who aren’t familiar with her consummate skill at telling off a man who’s trying to get in her pants. (Grant and Sheridan were a marvelous match and should have been paired again. She was an excellent foil for the older Grant in the world of changing women’s roles.) Warners worked Sheridan’s stardom the same way they did Morgan’s. They cast her in all kinds of movies, and she maintained her down-to-earth nature across genres just as Morgan kept his “easy Irish guy” in many different movies. Sheridan is musically a tough guy in Shine On Harvest Moon (1944), a waitress tough guy in They Drive by Night (1940), a women’s film tragic tough guy in Nora Prentiss (1947), a comically tough guy in George Washington Slept Here (1942), a glamorously tough guy in The Doughgirls (1944), a noirishly tough guy in The Unfaithful (1947), and a westernly tough guy in Silver River (1948).

  Sheridan was born as Clara Lou Sheridan in a small Texas town. She was redheaded, strong-minded, and uncommonly pretty. She was making her own living in Hollywood in 1933 by the age of eighteen. She was that classic staple of the business, the beauty contest winner. One of her sisters had submitted her photo to the “Search for Beauty” contest conducted by Paramount in late 1932. (“I was a ‘Search for Beauty’ girl,” she once told John Kobal. “They’re still searching, mind you.”) She was one of thirty winners who were given a trip to Hollywood, out of whom an elite six were given Paramount contracts. Slender and lovely, Sheridan nevertheless conveyed a kind of heaviness to audiences—the heaviness that comes with having had to fight through all kinds of situations. She seemed confident, unhesitant, and she wore the experience of having fought off men as if it were a Girl Scout badge. Delivered in a low, somewhat masculine voice, her “Oh, yeah, buster?” was tough but also kindhearted and warm. She never seemed genuinely hard, only cheerfully realistic. She had a sense of humor about herself, a permanently amused quality. Though she was tough, she was never mean.

  Sheridan could dance a little and sing well enough to get by. This broadened her castability. She could play in musicals as well as comedies and dramas, and she was built to wear the insane clothes of the 1940s. She was one gal who could carry off any crazy getup, no matter what was stuck on her—feathers, chunky jewelry, or portfolio-sized purses. As with Eleanor Powell, no outfit ever wore Ann Sheridan.

  Dennis Morgan, all-purpose star.

  Ann Sheridan, his female counterpart.

  Morgan and Sheridan together in a successful period musical, Shine On Harvest Moon, meant the studio got twice as much for its money.

  Today, Sheridan doesn’t get the credit she deserves. Actresses who had a hard edge to them or a hint of the backroom experience were seldom leading ladies unless they were Mae West or Jean Harlow. (And both West’s and Harlow’s approach to this backroom aura was comic.) Female stars like Sheridan were usually sidekicks—Una Merkel, Eve Arden—or chippies like Veda Ann Borg or brainless blondes like Toby Wing. Sheridan elevated the type, moving it above the title. She represented something real, and the Warners roster needed her to match its very grounded leading men. Like them, she seemed to have been there and back and lived to laugh about it. Sheridan had a limited talent, but the combination of her singing, her glamorous looks, and her ability to deliver a tough line with humor made her a perfect studio contract player. In an obituary tribute, the Times of London said of Sheridan: “Without ever quite achieving the mythic status of a superstar, she was always a pleasure to watch, and, as with all true stars, was never quite like anyone else.”

  Walter Pidgeon is another example of the low-key movie star type. He was timeless, a universal presence to be plugged into any kind of movie. Like a Dennis Morgan or an Ann Sheridan, he had generic flexibility. He could be the romantic lead, the villain, the father, the best friend, the husband, the romantic rival, a historical figure, a sage older counselor—Pidgeon could even sing. His age seemed to remain the same for more than twenty-five years. He was utterly reliable, very popular, and he had his type: dignified but not stuffy handsome older man. He’s not particularly well known today, perhaps because he’s not edgy enough, or perhaps because he has become thought of as an appendage to Greer Garson, having been successfully co-starred with her in eight films.*

  The difference between a successfully typecast actor like Pidgeon and a legendary star can be grasped by comparing Pidgeon and Cary Grant. They appear together in MGM’s 1953 Dream Wife, with Deborah Kerr. At this point, neither Pidgeon nor Grant is a young man. Both are solidly established. Grant started in movies in 1932 and Pidgeon in 1926. Both of them look fabulous: trim, elegant, confident, sexy. They are relaxed and humorous about themselves. They are both the absolute epitome of the movie-made desirable older man, but Grant leans toward the youthful side of the coin, Pidgeon the older. Grant makes a charming mockery of the idea of the eligible older man, putting a little body English on it. He’s casual, slightly iconoclastic, even a bit naughty in his attitude. He’s established a second self within the frame, and he stands aside, creating a special ironic relationship with the viewer, as if it’s all a game being played between him and the audience. Pidgeon leans more toward the rules of proper behavior, always maintaining his dignity, or at least the outward semblance of it. There is no postmodern irony in his performance. Either one could be the perfect elegant man that women dream of, but Grant brings something extra to the table. That’s why he’s a legend and Pidgeon is only a movie star.

  There are a great many examples of the Pidgeon-Morgan-Sheridan kind of popular players who kept the factory humming. In their day they were the equals of—or even superior in fan response to—some of the legends we recognize today. One can find in any fan magazine of the 1940s stars whom no one talks about now—for instance, Priscilla Lane, of the Lane Sisters. Her sisters Rosemary and Lola also had solid careers, but Priscilla (like Patti of the Andrews Sisters) stood out and carried the family standard. Today her career seems hard to explain. She’s not that good and not that pretty. She can sing and dance a bit, but her chief attraction seems to be her ordinariness. The contrast between her and June Allyson, also known for her “ordinariness,” is huge. Allyson was never really ordinary; she just knew how to pretend she was. Lane, who is never fully at ease in front of the camera, truly was ordinary. What she had going for her was that blond, softly rounded face that was popular in the late 1930s and that can be seen in Cecelia Parker, Mary Beth Hughes, and even Lana Turner. It was a look that also worked for the early 1940s. Many stars rode to the top on that horse: They were right for their times. Lane had an unpretentious, natural quality. Hers was a particular 1940s wartime America look—thick hair, a clear and radiant complexion, a natural smile, a good figure, a decent rather than sensuous quality.* Lane was a star who was right not only for her times, but also for her studio, Warners, which cast her successfully as an “ordinary” decent girl opposite John Garfield, Bogart, and Cagney.

  All the studios were adept at building useful stars like Sheridan, Morgan, Pidgeon, and Lane. Twentieth Century–Fox had one of the most spectacular, the gorgeous Linda Darnell. She was dreamy-looking as a young girl, softly beautiful, almost ethereal. (It was her face that was used to represent the Virgin Mary in The Song of Bernadette [1943].) Darnell had a lovely voice with a trembling quality somewhat like Marilyn Monroe’s, although hers was lower and huskier. Unfortunately, she was not a great actress, and her exceptional beauty both gave her a career and limited he
r possibilities. She might have been bigger had she not been so angelic looking. Her beauty stimulated Fox to cast her generically—as a beauty for any time, any place—rather than as a flesh-and-blood character. Her type was simply “beauty.” She could be a contemporary beauty, as in 1948’s Unfaithfully Yours (she’s the mirror in which Rex Harrison’s jealous composer sees his own insecurities reflected); a fantasy-ethnic beauty, as in 1946’s Anna and the King of Siam (in which she played the Siamese beauty Tuptim); and even, most successfully, a low-down and cheap beauty. In fact, she turned out to be a positively brilliant low-down and cheap beauty. I’m not talking about her leading role in the celebrated sex fling of its day, Forever Amber (1947), because the movie Amber wasn’t all that naughty. (Amber was presented as being much better than her betters, another girl with a heart of gold.) Darnell could shine when she was cast as a truly low-class, down-and-out babe who knew that her looks were her only bargaining chip. In A Letter to Three Wives (1949), while sexing up Paul Douglas and luring him into marriage through a holdout, Darnell explains it all: “What I got don’t need beads.” And in Fallen Angel (1945), she’s perfect as a hard-luck waitress in a small-town diner looking for the right man, any man, to be her ticket out of town. She saunters up behind the counter, chewing gum, pencil behind her ear, and sets down a cup of coffee as if it were a Sherman tank. Her bored, “I’ve heard it all, buster” attitude sums up a lifetime’s experience of aching feet and gnawing dreams.

  But in all these incarnations, whether cheap or sweet, Linda Darnell is—and is no more than—exactly what she seems. The lifetime experience of aching feet and gnawing dreams, the beautiful Siamese ingenue, both are exactly that, and no more. Like Mario Lanza, Dennis Morgan, Ann Sheridan, and Walter Pidgeon, she is a general type.