The Star Machine

by Jeanine Basinger

  After her marriage, Shearer’s career rose to new heights. She had married the machine. In a tribute retrospective at Eastman House in 1970, curator James Card wrote that in twenty-two years, Shearer had played the leading role in forty-seven of her fifty movies. He wrote that “until her retirement in 1942 she held her place as one of the foremost stars through a time when film stardom provided America’s equivalent of nineteenth-century European royalty.” Clearly a fan, Card nevertheless nailed down an honest definition of Shearer’s fame: “The more one tries to isolate the qualities that made Norma Shearer unique the more one heads into an area of a kind of gracious dignity—a serene purity of bearing and attitude that eludes sensible definition. For certainly she played a good share of audacious, sometimes even wicked, and often declassé women—but never without that special Shearer aura of wholesome probity—along with most of the other positive attributes that have vanished wholly from a morally dismal world.” While speaking glowingly of her talent, he inadvertently reveals her problem today: She belongs to another era.

  Shearer’s film career can be easily organized: from 1920 to 1929, in which she rose to stardom and married Thalberg; 1929 to 1931, in which she moved successfully into sound, won an Oscar, and defined Hollywood’s idea of the sophisticated, glamorous modern woman; 1932 to 1939, in which every role she played was designed to be “important”; and 1940 to 1942, her fairly sad swan song in which she struggled to deal with a world that had changed but her roles hadn’t.

  In her silent years, Shearer appeared in approximately thirty-four feature films,* working steadily. It was during this time that she met Irving Thalberg. Being smart about how the business worked, she was soon sitting in his office (and probably in his lap), discussing her career, begging his advice—and getting his help in obtaining better roles. Which she got. It was Thalberg who arranged for Shearer’s big break in Chaney’s He Who Gets Slapped in 1924, in which she played a beautiful bareback rider who falls in love with John Gilbert. But Thalberg was tough with her, loaning her out to other companies for indifferent properties, making her work hard to learn her craft. She was willing, and it was her own talent that made his support bear fruit. By the time she made her last silent film (Lady of Chance in 1929), Norma Shearer had become a big star.

  Thoroughly established, she moved easily into sound, having a pleasing voice (and a brother who was there to make sure it was properly recorded). Her “talkie” debut, The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929), was very successful, and she earned excellent reviews for her role as a showgirl being tried for a murder she didn’t commit. She then embarked on a remarkable three-year period in which she was the glamour girl in the MGM hothouse of stars.* She made an astonishing run of movies: The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929); Their Own Desire, The Divorcée (her Oscar role), and Let Us Be Gay in 1930; and Strangers May Kiss, A Free Soul, and Private Lives in 1931. In each she was afloat in high society, superbly dressed, and remarkably liberated. These were pre-code films in which, like Loretta Young, Shearer was hot as a pistol. One has only to see her in A Free Soul—leaning back on a velvet couch, her breasts shifting around enticingly in her low-cut gown, as she holds out her arms to Clark Gable and boldly intones, “Come on … put ’em around me”—to get a real shock about what her screen appeal was in those days. (It also puts Thalberg into perspective. He surely got his half of their bargain.)

  Norma Shearer in her Oscar-winning performance as The Divorcée, shocking the masses with curls, cleavage, and cocktails.

  Norma Shearer in the 1930s was the movie explanation about what had happened to the woman’s world during the 1920s. The first thing to be observed is that she’s astonishingly vivacious. And versatile. It’s not she herself, but the roles she plays that are out of date. Fed up with a philandering husband in Divorcée, she decides to give him a taste of his own medicine—if he isn’t faithful, why should she be? In A Free Soul she’s a rule-breaking daughter of a successful lawyer, and she takes up with a low-down gangster (Clark Gable, making his mark) in an explicitly low-down manner. And in Private Lives she enacts the leading role in Noël Coward’s comedy of modern manners in which people change mates as easily as they change their hats.

  In these movies, Shearer is brilliant at making cool, sophisticated ladies seem sympathetic. She could do the comedy version or she could do the tragic women’s film version. She could work in any direction—play someone willing to step down into the gutter for a little hey-hey, or someone stepping up from the gutter because she was experienced at a lot of hey-hey. Shearer knew how to go all ritzy and high class in a democratic way. Beneath her silks there seemed to be a potential bad girl. She was intriguing: proper on the one hand, naughty on the other. (People today simply don’t know what to make of such characters. They might as well be from another planet. The rules of proper sexual behavior Shearer plays off don’t exist in today’s universe, so contemporary viewers can’t find a way to take hold of her performances.)

  Offscreen, Norma Shearer grasped as well as any female star—including Joan Crawford and Lana Turner—that she had to play the role of Movie Queen in her private life and play it to the hilt. She embraced glamour, appearing at premieres and nightclubs and parties dressed as lavishly as any of her on-screen sophisticates. She also embraced her role as First Lady, assuming a lighthearted, charming, yet deadly serious mien as Hollywood’s resident queen. She became adept at shaping opinions about her performances. In a 1932 interview for the Los Angeles Times, she cleverly compared herself unfavorably with other actresses playing sophisticated roles: “I can’t do the Garbo or Dietrich thing. I admire them both greatly and wish I could play the kind of character they interpret. But I have to go through a transition to be worldly. Every actress can’t be a Garbo or a Dietrich, but many can be sophisticated—and it pays!” Shearer’s “little old me in my secondhand lamé” routine worked the room, establishing her as Garbo and Dietrich’s equal, disarming any criticisms about her not being as good as they were, and connecting her “unworldly” democracy directly to her fans.

  As early as 1931, Shearer can be seen shaping her offscreen self in a short called The Christmas Party. It was MGM’s fake little story about how Jackie Cooper has to go to Shearer for help in planning a studio holiday party, and she, gaily trilling with light laughter and graceful flips of her wrist, jumps right in. Shearer, playing Norma Shearer, overacts in a way she never does when she’s playing a role. (It’s interesting to see that “Norma Shearer” was Norma Shearer’s worst performance. She can’t sit still, even though she understands it’s important for her to let her fans believe she is who they think she is.)

  After her run of modern heroines, her Oscar win, and the establishment of herself as the social queen of Hollywood, Norma Shearer was on top of the world.* She was utterly free from studio politics, well protected from the daily machine maneuvers. She had placed herself where she wanted to be—playing the gay, sophisticated woman, the one with the wardrobe, the jewels, and the cigarette holder. During this period, movie glamour was her thing. She swanned around in satin off-the-shoulder lounging pajamas, swished past a hoped-for suitor, and dropped her napkin (“my serviette”) and flirted and laughed and postured with the best of them. This was the style of her times, and Shearer mastered it, giving it just a touch of her own. She kept her hairstyle always simple, usually shaped around her lovely ears and set close to her head. She knew she was a small woman who couldn’t carry off pounds of hairdo unless it was a period wig, as in Marie Antoinette, where she wears one confidently, but as a wig. (Even the most beautiful and fashionably turned-out stars of Shearer’s day were often seen in silly hairdos. Crawford, Loy, Russell, even Garbo, appeared on-screen wearing hairstyles that compete with their looks and that are hideously dated.) Shearer’s hair is never distracting; no one spends an entire scene looking at doodads in her hair. Shearer also wears clothes brilliantly. Like Crawford, who could wear weird architectural structures on her head and her body, Shearer wore whatever was put on her
in a way that made strange duds look not only comfortable but as if they were grown on her, like skin. Given the fact that she has no height with which to carry off elaborate long trains, it’s a miracle how she wears them and makes it all work. (Her physical proportions are perfect.) She comfortably wears the unwearable styles of her time: cloche hats, pleated skirts, gowns cut on the bias without an ounce of room underneath them, with great gobs of fur trim. As a result, her comfort and ease lift her out of her limited fashion frame. She becomes classic.

  By 1932, Shearer had the money, the fame, the Oscar, and the box office success. Now she wanted the “prestige,” one of Hollywood’s favorite words, its holy grail. She clearly wanted to be more than a vague MGM’s “First Lady.” She aspired to be a specific First Lady of the American Screen. Of her next eight films, six were based on celebrated stage plays: Smilin’ Through (1932), in which she played the Jane Cowl role; The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) with Shearer in the Katharine Cornell part; Romeo and Juliet in 1936; The Women in 1939; and also in 1939, Idiot’s Delight, where she did the Lynn Fontanne part opposite Clark Gable’s Alfred Lunt. (She had already appeared in the Gertrude Lawrence role in the movie version of Noël Coward’s Private Lives.)

  Shearer released two of her new “prestige” films in 1932. The first was Strange Interlude, starring her with Clark Gable, Robert Young, Maureen O’Sullivan, and a roster of first-rate character actors. It is the celebrated clinker Metro made out of Eugene O’Neill’s pretentious stage play in which all the characters “talked” their inner thoughts while everyone else stood around and waited for them to finish. (Groucho Marx dubbed it “Strange Inner Tube.”) Her other 1932 release, Smilin’ Through, had already been made with Norma Talmadge in 1922. Shearer’s remake became a beloved movie, so successful that it was again remade less than a decade later (in 1941) in a Technicolor musical version for Jeanette MacDonald. Shearer’s “generational” dual role is the beginning of her moving away from her sexy, somewhat racy modern women, on to the grande dame roles she felt were suitable for MGM’s First Lady. The story concerns a young bride struck down on her wedding day, only to be “reborn” in another generation (as an identical “orphaned niece”). It’s the kind of movie that people think doesn’t get made anymore because audiences are too sophisticated. Shearer’s original lover, now a bitter old man, envisions his original sweetheart. Are we talking Ghost (1990) here, or Always (1989)? Or even Kiss Me Goodbye (1982)? We do make these movies today. The supernatural return of a love lost through death has always been a topic for motion pictures, and Shearer’s version of Smilin’ Through became a memorable one for moviegoers of the early ’30s.

  After these prestige movies, between 1932 and 1939 Shearer would make only eight more films. She took time off to have her children and to travel to Europe with her family, ultimately releasing no films in 1933 or 1935. She didn’t appear in a single movie in 1937, the year following her husband’s untimely death at the age of thirty-seven. The films she did make in this period carried on her established tradition. She briefly returned to her modern ladies mode for Riptide, in 1934, which was followed by her version of Elizabeth Barrett in the “prestigious” The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), a sensitive performance in an excellent film. Next was her Romeo and Juliet (1936), a storied film, and mostly ridiculed for the fact that Shearer and her co-star, Leslie Howard, were deemed to be too old to play the young lovers, not to mention that they were thought not to be up to the demands of Shakespeare, being but humble movie stars of international glory. Few films that cost as much as Romeo and Juliet have a worse reputation, but in truth it’s a beautiful film, magnificently designed by Cedric Gibbons and Oliver Messel, costumed by Messel and Adrian, directed with pace and style by George Cukor, and featuring dances created by Agnes de Mille. Shearer and Howard are supported by an amazing cast: John Barrymore as Mercutio, Edna May Oliver as the nurse, Basil Rathbone as Tybalt, with C. Aubrey Smith, Reginald Denny, Ralph Forbes, and Andy Devine rounding out the cast. The stark black-and-white patterns of the costumes, the polished floors, the hanging banners, and the magnificent sets are a feast for the eyes, but best of all, Howard and Shearer actually are a very touching Romeo and Juliet. Clearly, they are not teenagers, but they don’t look that old. They play with delicacy, a sweet kind of passion that is nevertheless palpable. They are old enough to understand the emotions of the play but not too old to feel its pulse. It’s an underrated movie and an excellent example of what MGM could do when Irving Thalberg was carrying out his wife’s desires.

  Shearer’s first big movie following her husband’s death was a film he had helped plan for her, Marie Antoinette, one of the most lavish MGM movies of any decade. Shearer is magnificent. Although surrounded by enough opulence to swamp a lesser light, she carries off the role of the doomed French queen brilliantly … not an easy thing to do given the overlong and somewhat turgid script. A tiny woman, she’s required to move about the cavernous sets wearing a huge powdered wig that gives her a good two feet extra in height, dragging satin dresses (by Adrian) that are about four feet wide, loaded with feathers and jewels and ribbons. Shearer flies along in these getups as if she’s roller-skating in a bathing suit.

  Marie Antoinette is one of Shearer’s most revealing performances. She aspired to “the theatre,” and her role models were clearly the great dames of her day, the Lynn Fontannes and the Katharine Cornells. Her performance style emulates what would be great theatrical playing of the day—graceful arm movements, little twirls about, delightful little laughs, and head movements that telegraphed emotions. Her line delivery was light and arch, from an era that is gone. Yet Shearer is clever. She knows how to tap into this theatrical tradition but tamp it down low to disarm the ruthless eye of the camera. She controls it, fits it into the frame, and tempers it for a mass audience. She perfectly modulates her acting style, blending theatre and film as almost no other actress of those years could do, yet her respect for the theatrical performing of the great actresses of her time is another thing that has caused her to be labeled “dated” today.

  In Idiot’s Delight and The Women (in 1939), Shearer was without her husband’s guidance for the first time in over a decade. She suddenly seems off base, being too arch in the former, and not as arch as audiences were used to in the latter. Those who dislike her performance in The Women might consider the fact that she’s been given the most difficult role, that of the loving, betrayed wife. And who else could stand up to Joan Crawford, who nearly eats her alive? (After years of resentment, Crawford at last gets to blow Shearer out the door, although Shearer does manage to match Crawford in their big confrontation scene, maintaining her ladylike stance in the face of Crawford’s animal intensity.)

  Norma Shearer portrayed the way her husband, Irving Thalberg, liked to picture her: as a queen, bejeweled, gowned, and properly bewigged, surrounded by an admiring public (Joseph Schildkraut, left) in Marie Antoinette.

  Shearer, like Young and Dunne before her, arrived at full career maturity in 1940, but while the other two took steps to ensure their longevity, Shearer didn’t. She didn’t go independent. She didn’t leave her home studio of MGM, where she owned large quantities of stock and was the Widow Thalberg. She didn’t find new roles, new directions. Having had a mentor and guide in her husband, she seemed unwilling or unable to provide such help for herself, even though she was always known to be a tough fighter for roles and a shrewd manipulator of her situation as star and “first lady.” She didn’t try to update her image.

  Shearer’s last really serious movie was an adaptation of a popular novel, Escape (1940). It’s a brink-of-war story about Nazis and concentration camps, with an intricate plot and a strong supporting cast that includes stalwarts like Albert Basserman, Conrad Veidt, Bonita Granville, Philip Dorn, Blanche Yurka, Felix Bressart, and the legendary Alla Nazimova, who almost always turns out to be less than you expect. Shearer is paired with Robert Taylor, Metro’s most beautiful male hero and their answer to Fox’s
Tyrone Power. No real romance takes place between them—the mark of the deadly serious movie. Shearer, in a tiny salute to her advancing age, plays a widowed countess whose husband was Austrian. She’s an American who, when she tried to return to her native country after her husband’s death, found that his country had become hers emotionally. She now runs a finishing school for girls out of her mansion in Austria and is secretly the mistress of a very, very civilized Nazi officer (Veidt). (Their relationship is one of the most mature seen on screen in this period. They’re comfortable and respectful of each other, having been together for ten years.)

  Three of Clare Boothe Luce’s women from The Women: Joan Crawford (left), Norma Shearer (center), and Rosalind Russell (right), dressed in gowns by Adrian.

  At this point, Shearer had been a top star since the late 1920s. She was thirty-six years old, no longer a girl. In those days, mature women were dressed like mature women, and unlike what happens today, she’s not on-screen hopping around in a T-shirt and sneakers as if she were a teenager. The Norma Shearer of Escape is dressed. When Taylor first encounters her at an outdoor skating area, she’s wearing a white nubby coat that is whiter than the snow around her. She later meets him in the lobby of his hotel, wearing standard 1940s female armor: fur hat, fur muff, high-heeled shoes, white gloves, elegantly cut black suit with a gigantic sparkling pin on the shoulder and, underneath, a white lacy blouse showing at the throat and the edge of the sleeves. Shearer in Escape stands as an example of echt glamour at the end of the 1930s just as the calendar turns over to what will be a very different world, where she and her outfits will be dated. In her close-ups, Shearer doesn’t look a day older than she did back with Lon Chaney in He Who Gets Slapped, being one of those small women who never take on fat. (This woman didn’t age, and if it was her goal to get off the screen before it finally happened, she more than accomplished it.)