The Star Machine

by Jeanine Basinger

  Ironically, stars were often very clear regarding their selves and their “selves.” Henry Fonda, when asked to play “himself” in Billy Wilder’s Fedora (1978), said, “How do I do that? I don’t know that character.”* As reported by Charlotte Chandler in her book on Wilder, Fonda added, “He wanted me to play Henry Fonda! I ain’t really Henry Fonda…nobody could have that much integrity.” Fonda, of course, knew how to play Henry Fonda. He’d been doing it for years, but always under the cover provided by his character’s name. He refused to step out from under that cover and mix up “Henry Fonda” with Henry Fonda. The final word on the understanding of the self, the role, and the type was uttered by Cary Grant in his famous statement “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.”†

  Once established, a star’s image never seemed to go away. An image could crash in flames—the fifty-year-old Errol Flynn looking seventy, a joke of his former self, playing his established type in Cuban Rebel Girls (1959). And it could be spoofed—Victor Mature, a flamboyant former star, portrays a flamboyant former star in Vittorio de Sica’s comedy After the Fox (1966). Image/type could be seriously questioned and reformed, as by Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven (1992), or cheerfully played with, as when Sean Connery played Indiana Jones’s father, or when James Garner, the original Maverick on TV, played the movie Maverick’s (Mel Gibson’s) father. It can even be trotted out on waxworks display, as with Mae West in Myra Breckinridge (1970).

  Typecasting was not considered a negative or even limiting thing by the business that was doing everything it could to make it happen. For the studios, it guaranteed factory efficiency. It meant a star’s character was in place and movies called “vehicles” could be quickly assembled, made, and released by the factory. The star machine—from discovery through buildup to successful typecasting—worked like a charm. Usually.

  The machine, however, was only a machine. It could locate, shape, cut, paste, and sell an actor as a star with great success. It could respond to the public’s own discoveries—“Who’s that guy in the tuxedo, let me see more of him, please”—with great alacrity. It could change direction and drop someone who wasn’t working out or rush to elevate someone who suddenly seemed right for the changing times. It could do a lot of things. Sometimes it worked perfectly, but other times it malfunctioned. A star would not be made.

  * Today we use the word casually, and claim it for an actor who has played a role—even one role—so strongly that we are impressed. The term is cheapened. As critic Stephanie Zacharek observes, “Sometimes it’s easier to grapple with what characters mean than with what they [stars] do: James Dean stands for youthful rebellion; Natalie Wood for the adolescent’s seemingly disparate appetites for wildness and tenderness, etc.” Film historians also see another problem with the labeling in that those who use it have often seen only a small number of the actor’s movies, the most popular and regularly revived ones. Thus, they are providing “definitions” of persona that do not address changes, growths, variations, and violations of the concept. In that regard, these star definitions are often more about the definer than they are about the star. (What you see is who you are.) It is increasingly noted in academic star studies that the way we see and define stars today is often not how they were perceived in their own era.

  † This is one step away from something modern thinkers know would be silly—believing “that guy” is who Gable really was offscreen.

  * For forty years, on land and on sea, in youth and old age, John Wayne did it. He was the all-time box office champion, with twenty-five years on top. A remarkable sight captured on television occurred when Wayne, seriously ill with cancer, came to the Oscar ceremony to present the 1978 Best Picture award in spring of 1979. His peers in the audience knew he was dying. The entire audience leapt to its feet to give him a heartfelt standing ovation—not the obligatory “Here’s an old star, let’s stand up and applaud” routine we sometimes see. As affection poured forth, a cut to the audience revealed Sir Laurence Olivier getting to his feet, clapping slowly, with a thoughtful look on his face. It was the look of an actor who was perhaps realizing that there are different types of performing, and that while Wayne’s was not his, it was valid.

  * Muni’s co-stars always complained about him. Cornel Wilde played Chopin in A Song to Remember (1945), and Muni portrayed his old teacher. Wilde described Muni as “insecure, confused, constantly upset, jealous.” He described Muni’s working habits: “He never looked me in the eyes…he would look between my brows or at my forehead…he played…very high and full of all kinds of tricks…blowing his nose, taking out his glasses and breathing on them, constantly moving.”

  * This arrival at the top, or the brink of typing, was a dangerous moment for the “product.” Fred Astaire explained it to the young Jack Lemmon: “You’re now at a level where you can afford only one mistake. The higher up you go, the more mistakes you’re allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it’s considered to be your style.” In other words, once you were successfully typed, you were safe.

  * Bogart had begun to play leading roles in such films as High Sierra (1941), but still as a gangster. Following the pattern of the “three roles to glory,” he became the world-weary cynical romantic with The Maltese Falcon (1941), where the public really endorsed him as a lead; confirmed his stardom in Across the Pacific in 1942; and rose forever to his “persona” in Casablanca (1943).

  * The studio files defined Eleanor Powell’s talent category as “tap dancer” and her type as “all-American girl.”

  * Sheridan was given this publicity tag in March 1939, shortly before she was featured on the cover of Life in July. “Oomph” was defined as “to a girl what a pearl is to an oyster” and “a feminine desirability which can be observed with pleasure but cannot be discussed with respectability.”

  † Ironically, Morgan was actually of Swedish descent. His “Irish” association always amused him.

  * This is the movie that contains the immortal line “Amnesia. That’s an alibi, not an ailment.” There are some other wonderful lines, superbly tossed off by Patrick and Ross. The latter, hearing that her groom has just run off with another woman and what’s more, his car went over a cliff and all that’s left is his overcoat, a hat with his initials in it, and a woman’s pink hat with a feather, pulls herself up straight and informs the cops grandly, “My husband never wore pink.” When they were promoting a potential above-the-title star, Warners could be cheap in reusing sets and furniture, but they didn’t forget to make the movie fun for Morgan’s audience.

  * They also both appeared in cameos in a ninth film—playing themselves—The Youngest Profession.

  * She was in contrast to the sexy pinups of the era, like Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable, or the exotics like Veronica Lake and Lauren Bacall. Girls like Lane—and Donna Reed and Jeanne Crain and Joan Leslie—really existed. We had them in my hometown: exceptionally pretty, with all the bloom of youth and innocence on them. Study any high school yearbook from 1939 to 1945 and you’ll see these faces. To pick out a few, put them up on-screen, and mark them “the girl next door” was smart business.

  * Marlon Brando, on the other hand, either didn’t get it or refused to get it. “I continue to be an enigma to myself,” was his take on his type. Since the advertising trailer for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) carried a voice-over saying his character is “Fighting! Loving! Lusting!”, it’s no wonder he was confused. Perhaps the toughest self-assessment of them all came from John Lund, who was briefly a heartthrob in the 1940s: “I look best from a great distance and in a bad light. I have a peculiar face, an odd walk, and about as much sex appeal as a goat. I was the worst peril Betty Hutton encountered in The Perils of Pauline (1947). I portrayed a ham actor. A natural. My finest performance.”

  * Although Gable bombed badly in Parnell, he went right on to success in Saratoga (1937) and Test Pilot (1938). The studio restored his macho image, and all was forgiven. This same thing can happen toda
y. When Harrison Ford was cast as a rigid, by-the-book Russian submarine captain in K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), he was denying his fundamental American, mock-the-authorities maverick character. Audiences didn’t forgive him as quickly as they did Gable.

  † To be fair, Gable had very few flops because he stuck closely to his image as “Gable.” He knew his type—and every studio wanted one. The movie world of the 1930s was heavily populated with shortish, mustachioed men running around wearing their pants under their armpits, trying to be Gable. The type continued in Tom Selleck. He had the grin, the mustache, and the moves. In the 1980s, Selleck was the man women wanted to have and the man men wanted to be. His Magnum character was an updated Gable role.

  * This quality of Milland’s was used brilliantly by Alfred Hitchcock, who cast him as the murderer who coldbloodedly plans his wife’s demise in Dial M for Murder (1954).

  † Milland followed The Lost Weekend with a return to “type” in The Well-Groomed Bride (1946), with Olivia de Havilland. Milland later said, “Right after Lost Weekend, I made three of the worst pictures, one right after another, because they shove you into everything they can after a hit.”

  ‡ In his day, the six-foot-three Payne was considered a close rival to Tyrone Power as a hunk. Although his looks were not as lush as Power’s—Payne was clean-cut, not exotic—he was exceptionally good-looking and well-built. In one of his early films, Kid Nightingale, a character says of him, “Dames go for him. He’s got looks, personality—and rosy cheeks.” It was a line right out of his publicity kit. Payne, billed as John Howard Payne, made his movie debut in 1936’s Dodsworth.

  * This type of star definition still goes on today, only it’s done by fancy journals with loftier goals. Gentlemen’s Quarterly of March 2005 put Russell Crowe on its cover and announced that “The Ten Greatest Actors of Our Generation” could be found inside. Each had his “persona” defined. Crowe was given what would have been a standard 1940s spin job. “If the world pegs you as boorish, cocky, and self-righteous, perhaps that’s just the price for keeping up your standards in a world where fewer and fewer people seem to care about doing good work.” The writer (Chris Heath) gushingly tells readers that “beneath [Crowe’s] tabloid tough-guy exterior beats a punk-rock heart.” He’s really a nice guy after all. (This was, of course, before he threw a telephone in the face of a hotel concierge in June 2005 and was charged with second-degree assault.) Crowe, Heath tells us, passed him a meat pie and showed him “how to slather tomato sauce over its crust,” a useful skill to be sure, and an obvious act of great generosity.

  The other nine “greats” are Nicolas Cage (“a jazz actor whose bizarre choices…are almost always the best thing in the movie”); Clive Owen (“steely, charming”); Benicio Del Toro (“has never pimped himself out to the romantic comedy”); John C. Reilly (“the gut-level sympathy Reilly quietly musters for his sidekicks…”); Don Cheadle (“a tenderness and vulnerability we never expected”); Gael García Bernal (“a mix of terror and tenderness that feels both brave and utterly genuine”); Leonardo DiCaprio (“swaggering and fragile”); Jim Carrey (“uncanny timing, pitch-perfect delivery, and full-body commitment…our greatest clown of both the exuberant and sad varieties”); and Johnny Depp (“In Johnny’s hands, it all makes sense”).

  † Carson and Morgan were paired at Warner Bros. as rivals for the successful pairings of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby at Paramount in the Road pictures. Carson and Morgan did Two Guys from Texas (1948) and Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946).

  * A similar thing was done on the TV show Friends with Jennifer Aniston. They had her real-life husband at the time appear as a guest on the show, playing an old high school friend of the gang who is invited over by someone who doesn’t realize that he used to hate Aniston’s character. Which would have been totally pointless if everybody hadn’t known it was Brad Pitt, Aniston’s then husband. His presence turns the episode into an international in-joke. It is essentially an appearance as himself, although everyone kept a straight face and officially pretended he was in character.

  * She was nearly twelve years his senior.

  * Fonda refused the role, and it was Michael York who ended up playing “himself.”

  † In the 1980s, decades after she had won the Oscar for portraying a nun in The Song of Bernadette in 1943, Jennifer Jones complained, “People who remember Bernadette expect me to be wan and spiritual. Not only on the screen, but in my private life.” The ultimate in such quotes was the sweetly sad observation once made by the disillusioned Rita Hayworth: “Every man I knew fell in love with Gilda and woke up with me.”

  MALFUNCTIONS

  Anna Sten, film history’s definition of the term malfunction.

  Any business that manufactures a product and puts it on the market accepts the one unpredictable factor: Will anyone buy it? (In the auto business, it would be called “the Edsel issue.”) The movie factory moguls knew that inevitably, some of the actors they groomed would not become stars. As Louis B. Mayer once said, “Business is not an exact science.” They were as prepared for product malfunction as any business could be. They controlled the objective part of their own process—the star machine—and did the best they could to cope with the subjective part outside their total control, the part that happened after the audience became fully involved.

  “Product malfunction” was a rule of the game. Because the studios had so much product in development, they could be sanguine about the end result. Were they happy if they invested in a star who never made it? Of course not. Did they waste much time trying to figure it out? No. Why should they? Each and every property was given enough of a chance—or so the studios believed—to have made it. If the machine somehow malfunctioned in the washing, nipping, tucking, and creating process, everyone simply turned toward the next prospect. The “whys” were absorbed and perhaps speculated on a bit, but one thing about the movie business was (and is) true: Nothing there ever lasted, so optimism was the order of the day. They concentrated only on success and didn’t waste much time trying to explain or analyze failure.

  Looking back, however, one finds the star machine malfunctions morbidly fascinating. Sometimes a star who doesn’t make it is gloriously beautiful (Sigrid Gurie) or truly talented (Karen Morley) or has a special skill (singers Miliza Korjus of The Great Waltz [1938] and Douglas McPhail of Babes in Arms [1939]). It doesn’t always make sense that one star makes it and another doesn’t, or that the public would select one actor and not another. The famous dancer Paul Draper appeared in a supporting role in the 1936 Ruby Keeler–Dick Powell musical, Colleen. Draper was extremely handsome, much better looking in the conventional sense than Fred Astaire, and he certainly could dance. But Draper had no personality on film. He was dropped into the star machine—and it spat him back out. Sometimes a big-name influence (Howard Hughes, for instance) put everything he had into developing a star (the lackluster Faith Domergue) and still couldn’t make it happen.

  “Malfunction” doesn’t mean miscasting or casting against established type. Miscasting could happen to anyone. It wasn’t only Clark Gable in Parnell. Try Spencer Tracy as a Portuguese fisherman in Captains Courageous (1937), and he even won an Oscar for the effort! And “malfunction” doesn’t mean big stars having the failure of movies blamed on them. Joan Crawford had Rain (1932), Frank Sinatra had The Kissing Bandit (1948), and in later years, Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman had Ishtar (1987).* Malfunction can never mean a case in which genuine tragedy removes an up-and-coming star from the ladder of success. In this category was the wonderfully charming and easygoing comedy star Robert Williams, a Bing Crosby type who played the lead in Frank Capra’s Platinum Blonde in 1931. Williams died of a burst appendix before the film was released, but he had everything it took to be a star. Richard Hart, a more dubious case, was developed at MGM as the very highest level of investment in the late 1940s. Hart looked somewhat like a younger version of Walter Pidgeon, especially in profile or when he was wearing a mustache. He made only four movi
es, but each was a key role: Desire Me (1947), with Robert Mitchum and Greer Garson; Green Dolphin Street (1947), with Lana Turner and Donna Reed; B.F.’s Daughter (1948), with Barbara Stanwyck; and Anthony Mann’s delightful Reign of Terror (1949), with Robert Cummings and Arlene Dahl. Hart died tragically of a heart attack at the age of thirty-five, cutting short a star machine development process that showed that MGM had the utmost confidence in him. Actresses with tragedies that blocked stardom include the beautiful Frances Gifford, who disappeared in 1953, spending two decades in a mental institution for acute depression, and Susan Peters, who was paralyzed from the waist down when she was accidentally shot during a hunting trip.

  Malfunction is also not about someone who was successful in his own time who does not come across today,* such as Robert Montgomery, one of the most successful and intelligent of the MGM male stars of the 1930s. (He left the movies to serve his country during World War II as commander of a PT boat. After the war, he became a TV director and producer and served in the Eisenhower administration.) Montgomery provided the perfect male balance to female stars such as Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, and others. He was very handsome in the drawing-room-manners mode. Loaded with charm, he knew his way around smart, sassy dialogue. Today, however, audiences find him cold. There is about him a distinct edge of disdain. His projection of smug superiority, meant to be amusing, climbs down off the screen and irritates a modern audience. He’s slumming. This quality was right for his times, but now he denies the audience entrance.†