The Star Machine

by Jeanine Basinger

  When a studio was releasing nearly fifty features and all kinds of short subjects, however, there were many outlets for casting besides these targeted series like the Andy Hardy films. Anything could happen to newcomers. Sometimes they were given small but significant roles in showcase movies with big-name stars headlining: Rita Hayworth in MGM’s Susan and God, starring Joan Crawford and Fredric March in 1940, or in Columbia’s Only Angels Have Wings, with Cary Grant and Jean Arthur in 1939.

  Sometimes newcomers were hard-tested against competition just as they were emerging toward fame. Could a new star hold up beside a proven one? As Louis B. Mayer shepherded his protegée Greer Garson carefully forward, he showcased her in a remake of Rachel Crothers’s hit stage play When Ladies Meet, which had originally been filmed in 1933 with Ann Harding and Myrna Loy. He felt Garson, already solidly established with two Oscar nominations in period films, should be tested in “modern” roles. He decided to pair her with Joan Crawford, the star who had epitomized the modern female by adjusting her looks from 1925 onward to always appear “right now.” In 1940 Crawford’s and Garson’s careers were going in opposite directions. Crawford had been a megastar for over a decade, but MGM was beginning to turn away from her and toward Garson. (When Garson was taken off Susan and God, a weak Broadway adaptation, to star in the elegant and posh Pride and Prejudice, Crawford, despite her seniority, was forced to step in and take Garson’s leftovers. But Crawford was always a pro and willing. “I’ll play Wally Beery’s grandmother if it’s a good part,” she said.) Crawford was on the brink of leaving Metro, the studio where she grew up, the first studio to put her under contract. She feared that her time as a star was slipping away, and she feared newcomers like Garson. (Her greater stardom, including her Oscar-winning role in Mildred Pierce [1945], lay ahead of her. She would outlast Garson and become the more legendary figure of the two.) But in 1941, things looked dire for Joan Crawford. She must have known the handwriting was on the wall when she was asked to support Greer Garson. She was playing the traditional role of “give the new girl a boost—and a test—by putting her in a film with a big name.”*

  Garson and Crawford are a strange pairing, but that’s the point of When Ladies Meet. The movie pits two different women against each other: wife and mistress. Garson, ladylike and quietly refined, is perfectly cast as the wife, and Crawford, the tough, independent career woman, is perfect as the other woman. In one key scene, Garson plays the piano. Crawford wanders toward her and begins to sing. Finally, she, too, sits down. The two women sing together and enjoy an easy comradeship. Their profiles, two actresses wrapped up in their performed moment, are worth about $50 million, yet neither of them blinks. Each is intent on playing correctly, in the moment, and as a unit without rivalry. What happens on-screen is a lesson in star making (but not a very good movie). It’s the studio star system at work, demonstrating the rules of its game. Crawford mutes her performance, playing down her power. Garson is able to play up to Crawford’s wattage, although the production team clearly favors her, since she is a star being groomed. Often Crawford sits at Garson’s feet, in half shadow, and Garson gets the key light. Garson has more close-ups. Her clothes are dramatic, especially a simple, long black velvet dressing gown trimmed in a white ruffle from throat to mid-chest, with matching ruffled sleeves. Crawford knew her own stardom depended on being professional rather than on always getting the key light. She was smart about her career—and cooperative. Garson was also intelligent and understood it was important to work well with Crawford. It’s safe to say they didn’t much like each other, but it doesn’t show on film. What shows on-screen is a perfect female star harmony. What showed offscreen was the star machine at work.

  A reliable studio practice in casting newcomers was the creation of a movie to feature more than one newcomer to see what would happen. Would the public take to one of them, and if so, which one? Such a movie would be made cheaply, with other contract players surrounding the neophytes to carry them forward. Two classic “try out the newcomers” movies, both designed to showcase young talent under contract, are the 1932 Warner Bros. movie Three on a Match and the MGM hit Two Girls and a Sailor, from 1944. The first film is very inexpensive, a typical Warners product of the era. Not a star-driven studio, Warners was always looking for capable workhorse actors who could fit more than one genre. Definitely a star studio, Metro was willing to spend a lot of money to test hopefuls, because for MGM, developing stars was basic. The Warners picture is a product of the early talkies, where the ability to speak well and deliver dialogue was important, and the MGM movie comes during the early 1940s, when some actors had gone to the war and many of the big-name female Metro stars were beginning to age, so star wattage mattered.

  Studios used one film to showcase multiple newcomers, to see which one would catch on. Warner’s Three on a Match had Bette Davis, Joan Blondell, and Ann Dvorak; MGM’s Two Girls and a Sailor bottom had Gloria DeHaven, Van Johnson, and June Allyson, backed by bandleaders Xavier Cugat and Harry James.

  Three on a Match has an efficient running time of sixty-four minutes, but it manages to tell three stories about what happens to three girls all the way from their 1919 childhoods to the settling of all their problems by 1932. Mary (Joan Blondell), Ruth (Bette Davis in her peroxide blond period), and Vivian (Ann Dvorak) go to Public School Number 62 together. Mary is out smoking with the boys in the school yard, Ruth is a great student, and Vivian is the classy one with “pink pants.” (Each of these characters is played by a child star during the opening scenes.) After eighth grade, Ruth will go to secretarial school, Vivian will go to an exclusive boarding school, and Mary—well, as Vivian puts it, “She’ll probably go to reform school.” (And she does.) Over the next years, their lives entwine until the dramatic moment when they share a single match to light their cigarettes (superstition contends that one of them will die soon).

  The newcomer testing system is at work in Three on a Match in the following way: solid workhorse star to draw fans; a hot newly emerging star showcased; a newcomer potential star who can get noticed because she’s with the other two. Joan Blondell, already established as a Warner Bros. gal, is used to play a good-hearted showgirl. She was popular, a guaranteed draw with a solid fan following. This meant her role could be small. She could shoot her few scenes and still be working on another film at the same time. In fact, Joan Blondell made ten movies in 1932! And none were bit parts. She was in Union Depot, The Greeks Had a Word for Them, The Crowd Roars, The Famous Ferguson Case, Make Me a Star, Miss Pinkerton, Big City Blues, Central Park, and Lawyer Man that year, as well as Three on a Match. Blondell was a Warner Bros. working professional, and she was cast to earn her salary and also to help introduce a newcomer (Davis) and support an emerging star (Dvorak).

  Bette Davis was just beginning her career, and it’s obvious no one quite knows what to do with her yet. She has something, but what is it? Big-eyed and arresting, she draws attention, but who’s she supposed to be? Would viewers notice her? Take to her? Her role is small, and contrary to what she’s more known for today, she’s playing the nice quiet little girl role. Her character is obedient and studious. The studio people who are trying to figure her out have tarted her up, giving her peroxide hair, but she’s no Harlow. And yet the eye somehow still goes to her. The star system is trying to work, but it’s spinning its wheels on Davis, who is rattling around in the star machine.

  The center of the movie is held by the leading story character, Ann Dvorak’s Vivian. Dvorak gets to play the girl who wears the furs and jewels, and she has all the big scenes, especially the women’s film moment where she admits to her friends, and later to her husband, that “I have it all, but I’m not fulfilled. Something’s missing.” Dvorak had already been successful in the early 1930s, but she was being given every chance to star at Warners. Sadly, she climbed up but couldn’t stay on top and soon fell back into supporting roles. (She was a fine actress and a beauty. However, she’s an uneasy cross between Joan Crawford and
Loretta Young in looks. In fact, she was a stand-in for both in her early days.)

  Three on a Match: three actresses with Warner Bros. contracts. Three girls in the story. Three careers on the line. Warner Bros. efficiently testing, using, and yet seeming only to be making an entertainment movie that is going to more than recoup its money. What a business! In sixty-four minutes you get a dozen years of story for each girl, with careers, marriage, failed romance, nannyhood, kidnapping, drug addiction, martyrdom, motherhood, suicide, and disaster…and two men (only two, because Davis doesn’t get one). A lot for your money, plus each section of the stories is introduced with popular sheet music of its era, newspaper headlines, songs, current events, and trivia (“In 1917, only two beauty shops paid taxes, but in 1930, it’s a two-billion-dollar business.”)

  MGM’s example, Two Girls and a Sailor, put four young possibilities before the public: June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven, Tom Drake, and Van Johnson. Each was being given a top shot because all of them had already experienced a significant early success, and because the studio was retooling its star roster in response to World War II.* Studio opinion was that Allyson was probably going to make a wonderfully quirky sidekick character for musicals and comedies as well as a lead in B films and programmers. Drake and Johnson might become teenaged heartthrobs, a type that was becoming an increasingly important economic category.† Of the four, DeHaven and Johnson appeared to studio bosses to have the most potential. Johnson was already at the top of Metro’s list, having found solid success playing Dr. Gillespie’s new assistant in their popular Dr. Kildare series, and DeHaven looked as if she might be a musical version of Lana Turner.

  To take out box office insurance, Metro dropped several big-time performers they had under contract into the mix (José Iturbi, Lena Horne, Ben Blue, Virginia O’Brien, Gracie Allen) and added two of the hottest big bands of the day (Xavier Cugat and Harry James). They also backed their fledglings with character actors like Henry Stephenson and Donald Meek. And not being the kind of guys who’d take any chances if they didn’t have to, MGM topped it all off by rolling in Jimmy Durante to play an old vaudevillian. Durante was an MGM blue chip. He was enormously popular with audiences during the 1940s, and the studio decided to have him perform his famous “Inka Dinka Doo” number in the movie, making sure the previews excerpted it for audiences so they’d know. At a time when most musicals would be in costly Technicolor, the movie was shot in black-and-white. The plot was kept simple: It’s a pleasant little story with no real acting challenges.

  All this was to showcase some new talent, but it paid off. Gloria DeHaven said the film was “the breakthrough for all of us.” Two Girls and a Sailor was a big box office hit. Johnson’s stardom was completely confirmed, and Drake made fifteen movies for MGM that all did well. For a few short years (1944 to 1950) he was a lovely young “boy next door,” perfect for Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and an effective lead in The Green Years in 1946. Producer Joe Pasternak assessed Drake at that time: “He has the same quality June Allyson has—he’s just nice and average enough for the average girl to find a facsimile…in her own hometown.” But here Johnson and Drake are showcased together, and the comparison hurts Drake. Beside Johnson, he is bland. Drake has an unusual voice, which helps draw viewers to him, but Johnson is much more distinctive, a large presence cramming the frame, while Drake seems to be receding out of it. Johnson also has a distinctive voice, and he can sing, dance, and do serious drama. Drake’s range is smaller. As Johnson’s star rose higher, Tom Drake slowly bottomed out. MGM more than got their money out of him, however.* What was unexpected was the DeHaven/Allyson story. Legend has it that originally Allyson was scheduled to play the prettier of the two sisters, and that her husband-to-be, Dick Powell, told MGM that this would be crazy—DeHaven was clearly the prettier girl. (This would mean that Powell either slyly conned MGM into giving Allyson the better part, or that he didn’t really think she was pretty enough to be a star.) Not everyone believes this story, but everyone does agree that Allyson’s part was built up as the movie progressed because the studio saw that she was going to become a major property. Not only could she sing, dance, and play comedy, but she was discovered to have a poignant, touching quality that would work in dramas. She could handle scenes of great sentiment with ease and naturalism.

  DeHaven, for many reasons a solid choice for stardom, didn’t exactly lose out. She came from a successful show business family and had played in Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) as a child. She was a pro and accepted the ways of the business. She had already gone through MGM’s buildup process, with small roles in Susan and God, Two-Faced Woman, Keeping Company, and The Penalty between 1940 and 1941, and she had been featured in Best Foot Forward and Thousands Cheer in 1943 and in Broadway Rhythm in 1944. After Two Girls, she continued to have success at MGM, playing the lead in musicals (Summer Holiday [1948]) and dramas. (DeHaven had a long and solid career and is still working today, although she never became a top-ranked movie star like June Allyson.) Two Girls and a Sailor illustrates MGM’s star machine working at full power. It created two major movie stars—Johnson and Allyson—and added two solid A-list players who could give good value when cast: Drake and DeHaven. And the film made money, a trial balloon that more than paid for itself: an MGM success story.

  When newcomers had successfully come through all their buildup and initial casting, they were seriously evaluated not only inside the studio, but outside. At some point during the hoopla, while the studios were setting out stars as bait, the Hollywood newspapers and trades and columnists began assessing players on their own. (“I am something in a zoo,” said Hedy Lamarr about this when it happened to her.) The studios paid close attention to this first circle of evaluation, coming as it did from their own town. An example of such insider evaluations can be found in the Los Angeles Examiner, which listed its “ten greatest discoveries of 1936: Deanna Durbin, Robert Taylor, Sonja Henie, Jane Wyman, Tyrone Power Jr. [sic], the Ritz Brothers, Simone Simon, Mischa Auer, Reginald Gardiner, and Martha Raye.” In response, Elizabeth Yeaman, a columnist for the Hollywood Citizen news and a shrewd observer of the Hollywood scene, wrote an article that pooh-poohed the idea that there were ten great discoveries in 1936. She says there were possibly six new stars who actually rose from obscurity, and she identifies them as: Bobby Breen, Simone Simon, Errol Flynn, Deanna Durbin, Robert Taylor, and Olivia de Havilland. Yeaman’s hard-nosed article analyzes Simon, Flynn, and de Havilland coldly. Simon, a name unknown today, is, Yeaman says, “a publicity-made star.” A baby-faced French girl, Simon was launched with a large exploitation campaign in the movie Girls’ Dormitory (1936), but, warns Yeaman, “public reaction to Simon has not yet crystallized.” Yeaman further warns that she has heard the dreadful word “temperament” associated with Simon’s behavior. Her ruthless conclusion was “Personally, I’m not very hopeful about her career.” (Yeaman was right.)

  Flynn is assessed as having won his opportunity because of his extraordinary looks and unusually good speaking voice. Flynn, she says, “is learning to act” and has enough “beauty” to hold the public. She feels Warners took a big gamble when they starred him in Captain Blood, but that Flynn’s romantic on-screen personality helped him emerge as a real star. De Havilland, she writes, has been presented in “superb pictures at Warners, but she cannot yet be strictly ‘classified as a star’ because so far she has not yet had to carry a movie by herself although she was ‘unknown a year ago’ and ‘has gone very far in 1936.’”

  Newspaper articles such as Yeaman’s prove that everyone in and around the business knew there was a star machine and understood how it worked. Yeaman refuses to endorse de Havilland fully because she knows the process has not yet put the actress to the full test—carrying a big-budget film on her own. (In fact, as a Warner Bros. contract player, de Havilland was a classic example of a beautiful young actress with an amazing level of talent who was worked like a circus pony and held back too long.)

  The
star machine was never a secret. Hollywood wasn’t concerned about the public “discovering” that their favorite darlings were “manufactured.” With their usual “heigh-ho, here we go” ability to turn anything that came along into a publicity plus, the studios took firm ownership of their practical machine concept and told the public all about it, glamorizing it in the process. For example, a late 1930s issue of Photoplay describes in detail how the “department” that “makes the stars” really works:

  You have heard of talent scouts, and you’ve been led to believe that these legendary shadows slip incognito down the streets, reach into the crowds, and toss the best-looking specimens onto the screen from the pavement. You’ve been led to believe that’s all there is. There are talent scouts…but they’re only the first pawns in a game that in the last few years has become systematized, scientific. They bring in the raw material, and [the studio] does the rest.

  The article explains clearly how potential star “students” were trained, groomed, and featured in different roles in order to find the type the public most liked to see them play. The magazine maintains the magic of stardom by also reminding readers that, ultimately, it depends on talent, intelligence, vitality, poise, a natural dramatic spark, but, as always, the unknown key ingredient: “something.”

  Understanding the audience’s desire to possess the mystery of stardom by having it demystified, Hollywood also made movies about the process. These movies brought the dream of stardom right down to its most democratic level (Esther Blodgett arrives in Hollywood, fresh off the farm) while still maintaining its greatest romantic illusions (Esther becomes Vicki Lester and A Star Is Born). Movies about becoming a movie star (among them all three versions of A Star Is Born [1936, 1954, and 1974], as well as What Price Hollywood? [1932] and The Bad and the Beautiful [1952]) gave the public the basic hoo-hah of star hype: Only someone really special can become your dream persona, but that person could actually be you. Movie stars were gods, but they were the gods running your elevator or selling your groceries.