The Star Machine

by Jeanine Basinger

  The movie business made a product that cost a great deal of money to produce—and no one took the time to care for an individual’s problems. The star had to keep up, and if not, the studios could be callous. The tragic death of Jean Harlow, and the studio’s response to it, illustrates both her high value as a star and the ruthlessness with which her studio quickly devalued her. Harlow’s death (at age twenty-six) came before she had completed her final movie, Saratoga (a 1937 release). MGM knew her fans would want to see her more than ever after she died so young and tragically. Having shot more than 70 percent of the film, the studio protected its investment by simply finishing it without her and releasing it immediately to exploit her death.* Harlow’s stand-in stood in. The audience sees cast members chatting at the races, while “Harlow,” in a big hat with binoculars glued to her face, watches the horses run. Or “Harlow” (her stand-in, of course) sits with her back to the camera, while someone offers her tea, or she sits in shadows. Lines of dialogue that she had prerecorded were dubbed in. As a live star, Harlow’s worth was unlimited. As a dead star, she was still worth a bundle. Dead? What movie star was ever really dead? Harlow could be faked; she herself didn’t matter all that much. (This issue is compounded today, with digital imaging. As Isabella Rossellini said about a filmed image of her mother, Ingrid Bergman, being marketed in television ads: “Poor Mother. Dead nearly twenty-five years and still working.”)

  Considering the long hours, the hard work, the restrictions, and the slavery involved, why would anyone want to be a movie star? (Ava Gardner said, “Stardom gave me everything I never wanted,” and Judy Garland commented, “If I’m such a legend, why am I so lonely?”†) Individual stars would give individual answers, but in the 1930s and ’40s, movie stardom was the most glamorous, desirable, respected, beloved profession in the world that uneducated and sometimes untalented people could enter. And it was glamorous, desirable, respected, and beloved for the educated and the talented also. Los Angeles was a beautiful little city, clean and efficient, and the surrounding areas were lush with flowers, trees, and the smell of orange blossoms. Acting was a profession that promised a lifestyle that could only be dreamed about, and there was the added allure of “We’ll take care of things for you.” The studios “took care of things.” “We were princes and princesses,” said Lana Turner, “protected and cherished.” Need a loan to buy a house? The studio would give you one, never mind those nasty old banks. The studio would provide, as long as it wasn’t a vacation or time off, more money than they thought you were worth, or roles they didn’t want you to play. In those days, being a movie star was a kind of royalty, and the livin’ was easy. It was the work that was hard. Even so, most of Hollywood’s golden-era movie stars in their later years talked about how much fun they had on the sets, playing jokes on one another, or they talked about how much their careers meant to them, and how willing they were to do the work, or how loved and appreciated by their fans they felt. They felt secure and beloved in a time when that really meant something. Despite all the restrictions, they were doing something they wanted to be doing, and the final plus was the obvious one: money. They made lots of money. They didn’t always have time to spend it or enjoy it—but they had money. Mickey Rooney nailed it down, explaining the deal MGM had first offered him: “I’d start at $150 per week … I’d be guaranteed forty weeks a year. To a fourteen-year-old who had been selling newspapers on the corner … only a few weeks before … it didn’t matter to me that MGM would have total artistic control over everything I did. I was now part of the MGM family … and as one of those stars, I’d find fame and fortune. I’d be rich.”

  In fact, stardom could be a good life. In contrast to the tragedy of a sensitive Gail Russell is the born-in-a-trunk story of Joan Blondell. Blondell was sensitive, and she had her own troubles, but she could survive them. Her parents were in vaudeville, and by the age of three, Blondell (born in 1906) was already a working member of her family troupe. About the time movies started to put vaudeville out of business, Blondell had become a luscious teenager with solid acting experience, and she was prepared to become a breadwinner. She had already helped her family through some lean years by winning a beauty contest with a cash prize of $2,000 (“The family needed whatever I could earn,” she said), and she had made a name for herself on Broadway opposite James Cagney in Penny Arcade in 1929. Like everyone else in America, she headed for Hollywood, but out of necessity, not choice. She wasn’t one of the starstruck small-town girls who came to Tinseltown to become a movie star. “My ambition,” she said, “was to make a buck.” Warners had bought the rights to Penny Arcade, changed the title to the sexier Sinner’s Holiday, and considered Cagney and Blondell for their original roles but decided that they were too inexperienced in movies to carry the leads. (They cast Grant Withers and Evelyn Knapp instead.) Cagney and Blondell, however, were given small parts as compensation.

  Blondell was never naïve. When Warners tried to begin her buildup by changing her name, she balked. Always thinking of her family, she told the studio that her name was an established show business entity. (Blondell said Warners wanted to change her name to “hold everything—Inez Holmes.”) Knowing they were dealing with a professional who’d been around, Warners gave her some latitude.

  Blondell’s statements about her roles and her attitude are in sharp contrast to Gail Russell’s. “I just sailed through things, took the scripts I was given, did what I was told. I couldn’t afford to go on suspension. I was what they called a studio dame … I just showed my big boobs and tiny waist and acted glib and flirty. I was the fizz on the soda.” In Hollywood, that was enough to earn her stardom. Blondell was a recognizable—and welcome—face in movies for more than five decades, and not once was she anything less than professional and utterly entertaining. Because Blondell saw stardom as simply a job, and she had never pushed herself as a glamour queen (or even as a Movie Star), she never faced the kinds of problems that many other aging beauties of her era faced. Blondell endured. Even when she became heavy and, frankly, older, there were good roles for her because she was willing to be dropped to the supporting player level.* The zesty, smart-talking babes she had played in her prime became zesty, smart-talking older babes. She was still the fizz on the soda. Hers was a movie stardom to envy.

  Two actresses whose response to the demands of the system were totally opposite … Gail Russell was destroyed by it, but Joan Blondell never let it get her down.

  Blondell and Russell are the yin and yang of star stories, with more people on the Blondell side. However, given the control over their lives the studios exercised and the hard work involved, it was inevitable that some successful movie stars would do more than gripe behind the scenes. Some began to fight with their studios. For the most part, these quarrels weren’t trivial complaints about wanting a larger dressing room; they were serious fights over being assigned movies without any choice in the matter. Some of these studio assignments were, in fact, horrible. If anyone doubts that even the very top movie stars had to do what they were told back then, take a look at the career of Bette Davis. In late 1941 and early 1942, she was a two-time Oscar winner at her peak, one of the biggest names in town. During this period, she played two of what many feel are her greatest roles—that of the unfaithful wife Leslie in The Letter (1940) and the sensitive Aunt Charlotte of Now, Voyager (1942). In both films, Davis is every inch the confident actress as well as the consummate movie star, and it would seem logical that Warner Bros., her home studio, would respect her and cast her only in other good roles. At the very least, one would assume the studio wouldn’t want to cast her in dreck. Yet in this same time frame, Davis had to play an almost demeaning (and thoroughly unsuitable) role as the secretary in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941), a part that could have been played by anyone and in which she badly misfired. Even more hideous was her part in The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941), an alleged comedy in which she’s an heiress kidnapped by aviator James Cagney. It’s a dismal farce that even these tw
o giants can’t lift off the ground. The sight of Bette Davis parachuting out of an airplane in a fur-trimmed coat and high heels—and landing in a cactus—shows why she fought the Brothers Warner. Davis said, “I could be forced to do anything the studio told me to do. They could even ask for a contract player to appear in a burlesque house. The only recourse was to refuse, and then you were suspended without pay. When you were under suspension from your contract, with no salary, you couldn’t even work in a five-and-dime store. You could only starve, which of necessity often made you give in to the demands of the studio.”*

  Davis wasn’t alone in having to jump into cacti, as it were. When MGM wanted to make a movie to feature the famous ice-skating show Shipstad & Johnson’s, they came up with a doozy called The Ice Follies of 1939—and put top stars Joan Crawford and Jimmy Stewart in it. The two are an odd matchup to begin with, but the sight of them smiling grimly and teetering around on ice skates is a real showstopper, though not the kind intended. All the top stars fully understood the situation they were in, whether they complained openly about it or not. Clark Gable said, “I am paid not to think … and to be obedient.”

  Supporting players were also subjected to varying assignments that could include both the top movies of the day as well as garbage. A case in point is Anne Revere, who, until she was blacklisted in the late 1940s, was practically de rigueur as the serious older woman actress whose presence signaled a prestige movie. She had a distinctive voice, serious talent, and a big, plain face that spoke of simple proletarian values—presumably because she didn’t wear lipstick.† She appeared in such award-winning movies as Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), The Song of Bernadette, and A Place in the Sun (1951). She won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress in 1944 for her role as Elizabeth Taylor’s mother in National Velvet. And yet that very same year, she was cast as the queen of a South Seas island in Rainbow Island (1944), a Paramount musical comedy starring Dorothy Lamour. Revere is photographed standing around in a sarong, wearing lotus blossoms in her hair, and yards of bangles on her arms. She strides through the jungle carrying a decorative spear and delivering such lines as, “Bring them to the temple of Moh-Moh.” In fact, during the years she was appearing in the aforementioned prestige pictures, she also was cast in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Standing Room Only (1944), Carnival in Costa Rica (1947), and The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947).

  James Cagney and Bette Davis were two of the biggest stars to fight their home studio (Warner Bros.) for their freedom, and here is one of the reasons: Davis lands in a cactus and Cagney has to pretend he cares in The Bride Came C.O.D.

  It’s surprising in retrospect that more movie stars didn’t make some sort of official fight against the studios at that time. Although many complained privately about the long hours, pressure, and hard work, most chose not to make a public fight. The studios were vindictive, and although in competition with one another for the box office dollar, they pulled together when a star got uppity. The real battles were fought by Davis, James Cagney, and Olivia de Havilland. Significantly, all were under contract to Warner Bros., a studio famous for its cheap and controlling atmosphere. (Cagney said, “If you could survive seven years at Warner Bros., you could conquer the world.”) Cagney sued Warners in 1936 over breach of contract and won, walking out on the studio. He re-signed with Warners in 1938, but for two years he left them in the dust. Also in 1936, Davis, angry at her silly roles, tried to break the hold the studio had on her by traveling to England to make movies outside of studio control. Davis lost her fight, but Olivia de Havilland did not.*

  De Havilland was stuck in movie after movie between 1935 and 1943 until she challenged the system on behalf of all her fellow movie actors. As her seven-year Warner Bros. contract expired, she prepared to leave the studio but was told that, having taken a suspension for refusing a role, she had incurred the standard additional six-month penalty. According to the studio, this beautiful young actress, who had faithfully labored on their behalf and enhanced many weak movies for them, now owed them an additional six months of bondage. De Havilland sued, and unlike Davis, was not overcome by the process. She won her case. This legal act, now known as the De Havilland Decision, had a positive effect on the profession that still stands today.

  The studios themselves saw no problem with what they were doing. They were turning nobodies into somebodies, and they were spending a great deal of time, energy, and money to do it. They were taking all the financial risks, and it was their experience and understanding that could transform an unknown into a star. They had used the star machine to create a successful product. The product only needed to accept that simple fact and do what it was told. And the studios could get tough. Louis B. Mayer was said to have always been patient if he believed in a property. On the other hand, he could let a difficult star have it. He was alleged to have shouted at Luise Rainer, who often faked fainting in an attempt to get her way, “Luise, we’ve made you and we’re going to kill you!”† And when Mickey Rooney (in his Andy Hardy prime) wanted to marry Ava Gardner, he shouted, “How dare you destroy the studio’s best investment! It’s not your life, not as long as you’re working for me. MGM has made your life.” (Rooney was often the brunt of mogul rage. When he broke his leg on the set of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1935, Jack Warner, according to Rooney, “went insane” and said he was going to kill him and then “after I kill him, I’m gonna break his other leg.”) When Clark Gable, MGM’s most popular and famous leading man, asked for a percentage of the profits from his films, he was flatly refused. A top executive was reported to have said, “He’s nobody. We took him from nobody. We lavished him with lessons and publicity, and now he’s the most desired man in the world. Who taught him how to walk? We straightened his teeth and capped them into that smile … We taught this dumb cluck how to depict great emotions. And now he wants a piece of the action? Never!”* Commenting on any star who wanted to have more control, Nicholas Schenck, president of the Loews-MGM empire, ruthlessly said, “Did they finance the production? Did they take the risk if there is a loss? Did they concern themselves with the huge overhead of the studio? Did they develop the Metro trademark?”

  It was ironic that behind the scenes, seemingly powerful movie stars were not in a position to make any decisions about how they were cast or used. As Alexander Walker wrote in Stardom: The Hollywood Phenomenon, “The star system … gradually took on the reality, if not the appearance, of a star serfdom. Glamour was its camouflage and fame its dazzling illusion. Behind the grandeur of being a movie star in those years lay all the gradations of servitude … The movie actor, like the sacred king of primitive tribes, is a god in captivity.” The public didn’t realize that stars were front men and women, faces to be sold, talents to be exploited. A star’s only power lay outside the system, in the minds of the public and in the fans’ response to their images. Being a movie star was not a glorification. It was a job. What’s more, the business saw it as a machine-made job. Their “labor force” of movie stars fought their little human battles, but the studios almost always won during the heyday of the Hollywood star system.

  * The “seven ages” of star product have comically been defined as (using a modern standard): “Who is Ben Affleck?” “Get me Ben Affleck!” “Get me a young Ben Affleck!” “Who is Ben Affleck?” (The fact that there are four, not seven, is what can be called “Hollywood math.”) Actually, the only one that truly mattered in the old system was “Get me Ben Affleck!” If no one knew who he was, or if his time had passed, no one would bother to ask about him.

  * There were always exceptions. Greta Garbo negotiated a contract that allowed her approval of her cameraman, director, co-stars, and scripts. But how many Garbos were there in the sound era? Although the great stars of the silent era—Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford, et al.—could own their own production companies and make such choices for themselves, that was not how the business worked in the sound era. Not all movie stars submitted to the studio
contract, of course. Once established, some became freelancers. However, their long working day remained the same because most movies were made by the studios. The most typical “star story” involves the machine and the seven-year contract.

  * And that was the norm, not the exception. Betty Hutton described her working day for the costume musical Incendiary Blonde (1945): “I’d get to the studio at six a.m. To have my hair dressed in period styles. I’d stay until nine or ten p.m. To have fittings for my period clothes. I’d give up lunches to rehearse new songs, and I’d work every single Sunday on dance routines. The picture was shooting for four months … I began to crack and if anyone looked at me, I cried.”

  † One of the reasons Marilyn Monroe received so much negative publicity for her unreliability was that it was anathema to the profession. After the studio system collapsed, the cost efficiency of the business was lost and stars, directors, co-stars, even the ever-reliable cinematographers began to be late sometimes. Nevertheless, punctuality remains the key to the film business.