The Star Machine Read online

  The name change, the star bio, and the distribution of photos were the easiest parts of a studio buildup. They were in-house manipulations over which the studio had control. The next steps—the plants and the interviews—could be riskier. The publicity department went into a more careful mode when it began to market the commodity through “plants,” “dates,” and introductions around town, which meant stepping outside the safe walls of the studio lot and trusting that the newcomer would be able to hold up under press scrutiny. It was the first “baby step” outward, safe enough, since no one out there in the media, of course, believed anything the studio said about the new star. It wasn’t a question of truth, only credibility, glamour, and sales potential.‡ Joan Crawford said, “I really knew I was a star when Mayer ordered the publicity department to…accompany my every personal appearance and make sure I said the right things…make sure I dated the right men.”

  Plants included photos of actors dressed up and partying at nightclubs like Mocambo’s or Ciro’s. Sometimes these photos were real, but often, as actress Bonita Granville told me, they were faked. The two dates would be driven by the studio publicity people to the nightclub. A “wardrobe,” which had been brought along, would be handed out, so the boy and girl could go into the men’s and ladies’ rooms to get dressed. After they were suitably gowned, they would come out, pose at a table, then return to the bathrooms, change back into their own clothes, return the finery to the studio rep, and be driven home. (Maureen O’Hara commented: “If they wanted me at a charity event or a premiere—I went.”)

  My favorite plants are the whimsical ones that would run in the movie magazines’ gossip columns just to get the name in print. For instance, according to these questionable sources, George Brent left the Abbey Players in Dublin to become a secret agent in the Irish Republican Army. Olivia de Havilland could perfectly imitate a dog’s bark, and frequently did so just to startle people (a no doubt successful maneuver). Ginger Rogers slept on her stomach and wouldn’t be caught dead at a bridge table. Hedy Lamarr consulted the stars before making any decisions, and Errol Flynn “likes pretty girls and they like him.” (That one, obviously, was true.)

  “Plants” were fun—probably the high point of the publicity team’s day—but introductions to movie magazine personnel and teas with Louella “Lolly” Parsons and Hedda Hopper could be dangerous. Lolly and Hedda were crucial to star arrival—and survival. (It wasn’t a joke that these two women could harm a career—both by giving you no publicity and by giving you bad publicity.) For the most part, however, the movie studios found a useful partnership with the gossip columnists and movie magazines. MGM publicist Esmee Chandlee was quoted in Scott Eyman’s book on Louis B. Mayer, Lion of Hollywood, as saying, “We controlled the fan magazines. When a star did an interview with a fan magazine, the story was submitted to us, and we took out whatever we wanted.” Hiding problems was part of the game. There was a gentleman’s agreement between the Hollywood press and the studios that many things would be hushed up. The newspapers back then didn’t want to tell us more than we wanted to know. They weren’t going to run hideous personal details that weren’t considered “fit to print,” although sometimes the mags got uppity and turned the bad things stars had done into “blind” items. (“What married star was dallying with what blond newcomer on the set of their new movie?”) Insiders knew how to read these euphemisms. A star “having a high old time” at a premiere was sloshed, and an unexpected case of “appendicitis” was sometimes an abortion. People having affairs and denying it were always referred to as “just good friends.”

  Interviews, a kind of live performance, were an important form of building confidence, further planting of the star’s name and face, and making connections for the future when they might really be needed. According to the records of most studios, stars were coached in interviewing techniques. Although some very young and uneducated stars would have dialogue written out for them to memorize, mostly they were told simply, “Be nice and be careful what you say.” Better safe than sorry. Stars were admonished always to promote their new film or to say that the studio’s biggest star was “their idol.”* They were also tutored on the various columnists and writers—who might be jealous or mean, who always needed to be sent a thank-you note, who might try to lure them into bed. Many hopeful stars needed no such teaching, since it was a form of preparation that was about charm as much as it was about chicanery. If they weren’t already past masters at charming their way forward, they wouldn’t be on the star roster.

  The fan mags cooperated with the studios because movies were their main source of advertising. Studios spent big bucks promoting upcoming releases in their pages. Movie magazines reviewed almost every film released and announced all coming attractions. Unlike the unattractive and destructive tabloids of today, these magazines specialized in beautiful layouts, color portraits, and sumptuous ads. Although published on cheap paper, magazines such as Photoplay, Modern Screen, Screenland, Movie Stories, and Screen Album existed to feed the public’s appetite for photographs and stories on their film favorites and to help create new stars. The mags wrote articles that cleverly compensated for star flaws or skillfully apologized for star mistakes. Strategically placed articles also headed off trouble (“Don’t Worry About Van Johnson’s Marriage to His Best Friend’s Wife”) or told fans how to view things (“Ty Power Needed to Move On from Annabella—His War Service Changed Him”).

  These magazines told fans everything—that is, everything the studio wanted them to know. Modern Screen of April 1940 began a monthly column known as “Charting the Stars.” In alphabetical order, 350 star names are given, with facts on each individual’s previous occupation, first feature movie, its year, the star’s favorite sport, hobby, current studio, and, surprisingly, actual current address. (Times were more innocent, and stalkers couldn’t necessarily afford tickets to drop in unexpectedly on someone.) This chart tells readers that Jean Arthur used to be a fashion model, Don Ameche a ditchdigger, Lew Ayres a banjo player, and Fred Astaire—surprise!—a dancer. Binnie Barnes says her sport is “motoring” and Gene Autry’s is “baseball.” (Later in life he was so successful he bought a baseball team of his own.) Hobbies range from “raising dogs” (Mary Astor) to “collecting first editions” (Edward Arnold). And Fred Astaire lived at 1121 Summit Drive in Beverly Hills, in case anyone wanted to stop by.

  Fan mags also carried Ann Landers–type advice columns, beauty tips, fashion features, letters to the editors, gossip of a harmless sort, even “recipes from the stars.” The recipes featured male stars as often as female. Mickey Rooney allegedly raised his own chickens and therefore, according to a 1940 Modern Screen, went every day to his henhouse to gather his own fresh eggs. Ergo, he shared his egg recipes with readers: Mickey’s instructions for Creamy Scrambled Eggs, Shirred Eggs Andy, and Devilled Dinner Eggs. In 1946, the magazine reviewed Preston Sturges’s celebrated restaurant, the Players, featuring a photograph of a fur-clad Deanna Durbin sitting alone at a table. Recipes were included, my favorite being Lamb Kidneys Sauté Turbigo, a title worthy of something in a Sturges movie. (It serves three and involves canned mushrooms and six optional pork sausages.)

  The magazines were also used for an even subtler form of showcasing: using a star to sell a non-movie product.* Beautiful color portraits, specially photographed for the ad, showed the star hawking the item.† Studios encouraged this, cleverly garnering a form of publicity that the product companies had to pay them to do. (The money did not go to the star, but to the studio.) In the August 1944 issue of Modern Screen can be seen Gene Tierney (“Laura, forthcoming from 20th Century–Fox”) promoting Woodbury Sun Peach makeup (“It gives a vivid summer glow”); Virginia Mayo (“See her with Bob Hope in The Princess and the Pirate”) hustling “Tayglo, the new miracle makeup in four enchanting shades (You’ll positively radiate glamour)!”; Diana Lynn (“in And the Angels Sing at a theatre near you”) giving her “design for decorating” with Bates Bedspreads and Matching
Curtains; Shirley Temple (“one of seven stars in Since You Went Away”) pushing Royal Crown Cola (“Simply super!”); and Lana Turner (“now in Marriage Is a Private Affair”) celebrated as that month’s current fashion guide (“I’d clean forgotten how wonderful pin-checks were, and then, smacko, there was gorgeous Lana wearing one”).*

  No matter how big or how dignified the star, endorsements were a fact of life: Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer, promoting Rheingold Beer.

  You can trace a star’s progress by tracking his or her plants, interviews, and photographs through these fan magazines. The first time an actor’s name or face appears it is usually in candid snapshots in the gossip section. For instance, in 1938 Betty Grable, who became the leading female box office star of all time, is seen “dancing at Mocambo” or “cheering her favorite horse at Santa Anita” in the gossip-column section of Modern Screen. Grable is in the company of her then-husband, Jackie Coogan. Although she is beginning to move up the ladder, she is not yet a star. In the back of the magazine she is shown dancing in a still from her current film, College Swing. Her skirt is flying high to reveal her famous legs (an amazing number of such “cheesecake” photos of Grable would appear in the 1940s).

  By the October 1940 issue Grable has advanced to the front of the magazine. She appears in an article entitled “Lovely to Look At.” She is modeling hand-knit sweaters for a column that uses her as a hook to draw the reader’s eye, since the article is really little more than an ad for knitting directions, not a story on Grable. (“Betty Grable’s Bermuda blue slip-on with diamond pattern and tucked shoulders has that elegant imported look.”) The reader can write to Modern Screen and, “at no cost,” be sent the knitting instructions as long as a self-addressed stamped envelope is enclosed.

  Grable is also seen brushing her teeth, in an article called “Brighten Your Smile,” which tells readers that clothes may make the man, but a beautiful smile will hold him. Grable, the story tells us, “has the gay, flashing smile that goes with her dancing talent.” She is shown at the Jitterbug Jamboree at the Hollywood Legion Stadium in the company of George Raft. Her picture appears in an article on “Color Your Fingertips.” Grable, the caption says, “can well be proud of those pretty nails she displays in her latest hit, Coney Island.” Her two latest films are rated: Footlight Serenade is given a three-star rating and Springtime in the Rockies, three and a half stars. A gossip item under “Good News” tells us that “Betty Grable, who is practically Mama of the Morale Department, came into the commissary from the Coney Island set wearing a skintight cerise jacket, a hip-swathing plaid skirt, superdark suntan makeup, a perky pillbox hat and a gorgeous blue black wig.” (This actually is one of her Coney Island costumes.)

  By March 1943 Grable is the sole subject of one of the magazine’s leading articles. Called “Miss Terrific!”, it defines its title as “alias Betty Grable, the gal who out-hollers lusty Dodger fans, bowls a mighty 230 and reaps 14,000 fan letters each month.” By this point, Betty Grable has been successfully built up into a real star. From then on, full-page color photographs of her appeared in several fan mags every month, and her face was on the cover at least once a year for every single movie magazine published, the prime recognition of star power. She also appeared on the cover of Time magazine, the ultimate proof of her status.

  While the publicity department was planting magazine items, dragging the star around town to be seen, taking endless photos, and setting up stories and interviews, the studio continued giving potential stars the training needed for them to take their place in the star hierarchy: manners, diction, acting, riding, walking, dancing, singing, fencing, and lessons on how to meet fans and dignitaries (two different procedures).* Debbie Reynolds said, “If you didn’t learn from it, you were a moron.” If the “star” was underage or a child, the law required school lessons at the little schoolhouse on the lot, or with a tutor. No matter how old an MGM female star became, she could be recognized by her “Metro walk,” learned in the studio’s grooming class: Suck in the stomach, square the shoulders, take a deep breath, and step off on the right foot. It was a “best foot forward” lesson that lasted for life. (On the other hand, no apparent lessons from Metro’s “little red schoolhouse” for kids lasted even a day.) The most important lessons, however, were those in which the star was taught a new kind of acting—acting for the camera in a motion picture.*

  During the late 1930s, when Betty Grable was under contract to Paramount, she posed for countless publicity stills: here she arches, she golfs, she salts, and she travels. It was all news to America.

  This was accomplished largely by working the star to death. (Between 1932 and 1936, Cary Grant was under contract to Paramount Pictures, and he made twenty-four movies, an average of six per year. By 1937, he had become a star.) Clark Gable was under contract to MGM from 1931 to 1954 (with three years off for war service), and in his first three years he made seventeen films, including one loan-out to Paramount.† Casting Clark Gable in seventeen movies in a little over two years reveals the efficiency of the Hollywood factory. While Gable was being “fixed up” by the studio, sold out on the streets, publicized by studio flacks, written about and photographed and shown off, he was also working at his craft, learning his trade. Since the old system could turn out a great many movies in a single year, Gable could be filming all day, six days a week, mastering the business of movie stardom. For him, the idea of “movie star” was thus not a mystery. It was his job. MGM taught him that if he worked hard, he could get better at it. He was shown that, despite all the hoopla, it wasn’t really glamorous and not about words like “zing,” “pizzazz,” “oomph,” or “va-va-voom” however much they pretended it was. It was about learning to be photographed well by both moving and still cameras, about developing a three-dimensional quality to make himself look “real” inside the frame, about not being afraid of the camera, about keeping still and letting it allegedly observe him “thinking,” about projecting a touch of ironic distance from whatever was going on in the movie plot, a distance that could establish a relationship with viewers to make them partners in the storytelling process and above all, partners in feeling how the character was supposed to feel.

  Finally, the business knew to teach a Gable that while these things sounded esoteric, vague, highly subjective, or imaginary, in moviemaking they were technical. They involved the camera, the editing process, and all the storytelling machinery of moviemaking. So Clark Gable, in seventeen movies, learned how to be a movie star by learning about movie acting and about how it was different from any other kind of acting. Director William K. Howard explained that difference: “In the theatre you must act…in motion pictures you don’t dare act. You have to do every scene as if it were actually happening the way it should happen.”

  To be a movie star required an actor to understand the filmmaking process because it was a part of his characterization. Movie actors were not acting for a large audience that was out there in front of them. They were acting for the camera, which stood in for the audience, and the camera was a singular presence, watching them closely. A movie actor had to learn to let the camera represent each individual sitting in the movie house, as if he or she were alone in the dark with the actor. Movie acting was a one-on-one performance relationship communicated directly through a camera. Those who could understand that—the Clark Gables—became movie stars.

  Potential stars needed to understand the requirements of movie technology, which redefined the theatrical idea of acting. A filmed performance has lines of dialogue, bits of business to perform, and action to carry out in the same way as in the theatre, but movie stars have to hit marks drawn on the floor for the convenience of camera movement, be aware of intimate lighting, look into the camera on cue, and understand framing, composition, editing, sound-track narrations, voice-overs, and the use of the close-up. Scenes are shot out of order, sometimes without the other actor you’re supposed to be talking to even physically present. The great stars, especially the wome
n, were helped in the studio system to develop skills regarding lighting and camera position that were partly to ensure they would look good, but also to be better actors, more pleasing to their audiences. Claudette Colbert was legendary for wanting to be photographed from her “good side,” which she had determined early in her career, but she was equally astute about the placement of all the actors in any scene in which she appeared.* She learned to ask how tall each actor was, where the shadows were going to fall, and how close an angle she would have in any performance moment, even if she were only standing and listening in the shot. Joan Crawford, according to George Cukor, “had no fear of the camera. You could dolly right up onto her and she would never even blink.” Crawford was always willing to do screen tests with co-stars. “I wanted to know how we would look together in the frame,” Crawford said. “How tall was my partner? Could he act? Would he be comfortable with me? Could I hold my own?” Dietrich could tell by the heat on her face where the camera was, and whether she should move herself as little as an inch to look better.

  Finding the movies in which to let newcomers learn about acting in movies was seldom a problem for the studios. They had no shortage of roles. (Finding the right ones was the issue.) Although the studios used newcomers in all their films, they also targeted specific outlets in which to “try out” young actors and actresses. In his autobiography, Mickey Rooney confirmed the star machine by describing how his Andy Hardy films were constantly used in the development process: “There was, in fact, a standard studio recipe. Take one young actress, pluck her eyebrows, cap her teeth, shape her hairline, pad as required, and throw her into the ring with Andy Hardy. Then wait and see.” (This usually worked. Lana Turner, Esther Williams, Judy Garland, Donna Reed, and Kathryn Grayson became stars, although June Preisser and Helen Gilbert didn’t.)