The Star Machine

by Jeanine Basinger

  * The role of the agent in the star’s life has changed dramatically from the old system in which an agent referred his/her client to studio executives who then decided whether or not to offer a contract. The agent’s duty ended there. Today the agent has become the entity who manages the talent, often having a large control of the star’s future but presumably acting specifically on the star’s behalf.

  * Affleck, once an A-list star and former Oscar winner for co-authoring the screenplay of 1997’s Good Will Hunting (with Matt Damon), said of modern celebrity: “There’s no guide to it. That’s why you see so many train wrecks.”

  † Without an efficient studio system turning out movies rapidly, it now takes longer and longer to make a movie. This can tie an actor up for an inordinate amount of time, and if that movie fails, the actor has wasted time. Thus, a single film can destroy a career, especially a beginning one, more than ever before.

  ‡ McConaughey has not yet reached the Newman legend level, and the irony is that Newman himself is still working. (Even more ironic is the fact that Newman was never hailed as the “new” anybody, although he was royally panned in his film debut, The Silver Chalice, 1954, and dubbed “a fake Marlon Brando.” Adding to this progression of mistaken understandings, after Brando became fat and risky, Newman surpassed him in longevity.)

  * People’s “Sexiest Man Alive” awards are the Oscars of physical appeal. Beginning in 1985, the winners have been Mel Gibson; 1986, Mark Harmon; 1987, Harry Hamlin; 1988, John F. Kennedy Jr. (the only non-film winner); 1989, Sean Connery; 1990, Tom Cruise; 1991, Patrick Swayze; 1992, Nick Nolte; 1993, Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford as sexiest couple; 1994, no winner; 1995, Brad Pitt; 1996, Denzel Washington; 1997, George Clooney; 1998, Harrison Ford; 1999, Richard Gere; 2000, Brad Pitt; 2001, Pierce Brosnan; 2002, Ben Affleck; 2003, Johnny Depp; 2004, Jude Law; 2005, Matthew McConaughey; 2006, George Clooney.

  † In mid-2006, Entertainment Weekly relabeled McConaughey as “the Tom Hanks of the aughties.” He’d progressed but was still a star being defined by other stars.

  * This “I am an actor not a type” stance can become absurd. Witness Renée Zellweger proving her versatility by tapping her guts out in a musical (Chicago), then playing a “backwoods gal” in Cold Mountain (2003) right before she reprises her screwball comedy identity as Bridget Jones—all to prove there’s no “Renée Zellweger type”—which we all knew anyway. (And we call this progress.)

  * Other things have stayed the same, too. Meryl Streep commented, “People want to put you in a box,” and Dustin Hoffman pointed out that “at a certain point your life becomes a fiction…When you get famous, people change, you change, your family changes…” Nicole Kidman complained, “I think it’s very hard to be an actor or actress. It’s very easy to get corrupted.” Any of these comments could have been made during the years of the studio system.

  † This accessibility is further complicated by college film classes, which are creating a skewed, revisionist sense of stardom among the young. Because many of these courses are about westerns or film noirs, students see actors such as Dana Andrews and Victor Mature more often than they do Ronald Colman or Charles Boyer or even Clark Gable. An actress like Maureen O’Hara, popular but not top tier in her own day, is highly recognizable to college students because she was John Wayne’s leading lady and appeared in movies directed by masters such as John Ford. She also is the star of the perennial Christmas favorite Miracle on Thirty-fourth Street (1947), as well as Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn (1939), the Dorothy Arzner feminist favorite, Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), Sam Peckinpah’s early cult film The Deadly Companions (1961), Renoir’s American wartime This Land Is Mine (1943), and auteurist favorites such as Buffalo Bill (1944, William Wellman), The Spanish Main (1945, Frank Borzage), A Woman’s Secret (1949, Nicholas Ray), and The Magnificent Matador (1955, Budd Boetticher). She was also the mature star of the Hayley Mills Disney classic The Parent Trap (1961) and the leading lady for an older Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962) and Henry Fonda in Spencer’s Mountain (1963). As if that weren’t enough she has also appeared opposite John Candy in Only the Lonely (1991) and as the star of two TV movies. O’Hara has outlived everyone, and her career in retrospect is an amazing one that has guaranteed her a more solid place in movie history than anyone ever thought she’d earned. Time has its own way of dealing with movie stardom.

  * In old Hollywood, Jeremy Irons could never have turned into a Cary Grant once he had played von Bülow. Irons would have become typed forever as a ritzy villain. He would have become George Sanders—or maybe Clifton Webb.

  * He can also sing and dance, and no doubt the old Hollywood system would have been happy to put him under contract as an all-purpose Cesar Romero. (If they were going to try to turn him into a leading man, they probably would have changed his name.)

  * Brando and Depp appeared together in a wonderfully roguish movie called Don Juan de Marco in 1995.

  * Brendan Fraser’s problem is that he has not yet nailed down his “role” half of stardom.

  * The names mentioned here are only some of the possibilities: Will Smith (thought by many to be the biggest superstar for the future), Richard Gere (moving into a new area of respect from critics), Jim Carrey (the Danny Kaye of today), Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Vince Vaughn, the Wilson brothers; for the women, Gwyneth Paltrow (Miss Quality Player of 1998, although the public never really bought into her), Goldie Hawn, Meg Ryan, Renée Zellweger, Reese Witherspoon, and on and on. The ones discussed are samples. Others could have been chosen. Many star names came and went—and came and went again—over the 1960–1980 time period: Sally Field, Bette Midler, Jane Fonda, Sissy Spacek, Cher, Liza Minnelli, Shirley MacLaine, John Travolta, Eddie Murphy, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Douglas, Robin Williams, Tom Hanks, Michael J. Fox, Sidney Poitier, Charles Bronson, Denzel Washington, Kevin Costner, and many others.

  * Ford is now scheduled for a new Indiana Jones feature, which could put him back at the top of the box office.

  * He won Best Supporting Actor.

  * By the end of 2006, in January 2007, the final rankings (from Hollywood Reporter) were Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Halle Berry, Charlize Theron, Angelina Jolie, Kirsten Dunst, and Jennifer Aniston. Roberts, Zellweger, and Foster were off; Berry, who had been bumped from the 2005 list, was back on; Dunst had turned up.

  † Other contenders might be Sandra Bullock (who had been on the list in 2005) and Jennifer Lopez (also a 2005 entry), or possibly Scarlett Johansson (a throwback to a Lana Turner type, but with an edge), or the versatile Naomi Watts.

  ‡ Cruise’s having won the number-one spot for seven years is huge. The number-one spot was won five times each by Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, and Bing Crosby, his runners-up in this honor.

  * At the current point, Roberts has opted to remove herself from the competition in order to focus on marriage and motherhood, as well as an attempt at a New York stage career. She remains, however, a big name in the tabloids and is still considered a big box office draw anytime she chooses to make a film. Time will tell what direction her career will take her.

  * She has continued to work in the relationship dramas (Closer [2004]) and light comedies (Notting Hill, America’s Sweethearts) that brought her success throughout the 1990s.

  * In the trifecta of woman’s film misery sweepstakes, The Human Stain (2003), Kidman’s character has run away from a sexually abusive stepfather, married a crazy Vietnam veteran, and watched her children burn up in a fire.

  † Bullock really tries to stretch. It has recently come to light that she initially wanted to make Clint Eastwood’s 2004 triumph Million Dollar Baby herself and play the role of boxer Maggie Fitzgerald.

  * Michael Mann, who directed Cruise in Collateral (2004), said of him: “I never worked with a bigger star who was more up for subverting what people think about him.”

  * The backlash also hit Holmes. One newspaper featured an ugly close-up photo of h
er that revealed a skin rash around her mouth. “Katie’s Lip Malfunction!” screamed the headlines.

  * From his arrival at the top after Risky Business, Cruise starred in ten movies that went over the top in box office receipts, frequently despite bad reviews: Top Gun ($176.8 million), Rain Man ($172.8 million), A Few Good Men ($141.3 million), The Firm ($158.3 million), Interview with the Vampire ($105.3 million), Mission: Impossible ($181 million), Jerry Maguire ($154 million), Mission Impossible: II ($215.4 million), Minority Report ($132 million), The Last Samurai ($111.1 million), and War of the Worlds ($234.3 million). Even a movie that the critics roasted, Vanilla Sky, in 2001, made $100.6 million—and in it Cruise was playing a fundamentally unlikable character. However, Mission Impossible III underperformed, earning $82 million less than its predecessor, but still pulling in triple digits. Cruise’s box office power was questioned over figures that were huge by comparison to others’.

  † At that time, some new names on the star maps journey were those of Dr. Phil and musician Axl Rose. Names that had long since been eliminated were Don Ameche, Nancy Sina- tra, and Fred MacMurray, and—shockingly—names that had been recently eliminated included Loretta Young and Cary Grant. It’s a hard-knocks map universe, although comfort can be taken that Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra, and Walt Disney seem to be enduring no matter what.

  * The debate is ongoing. One week, Stephen King’s Entertainment Weekly column can state flatly, “Star power is a myth,…statistics prove it is nothing but a lie.” In a subsequent issue, the same magazine quotes producer Brian Grazer as saying, “We’re in a world where stars appear to not have the same power they once had…and then something like this [the star-driven 2006 movie Inside Man] proves that they [can still do it]. It’s a validation of their bankability.”

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  BOOKS

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  ARTICLES

  I have not cited specific issues of the magazines Photoplay and Modern Screen, although I carefully read the entire set of both for the years 1930–1953. I also re-read issues of Films in Review, Focus on Film, Classic Images, Screen Album, Screen Greats, and Films of the Golden Age. I did not cite them except as indicated below. These magazines often contain more information—and more accurate information—than other sources. For anyone interested in the star phenomenon, the history of fan response, and the loyalty of fans, I recommend these magazines.

  “Ann Sheridan.” Life, July 24, 1939.

  “A
nn Sheridan.” The Times (London) obituary.

  “Conrad Lane.” Classic Images, August 1995.

  “Deanna Durbin.” Fortune, October 1939.

  “Interview with Jimmy Lydon.” Movie Crazy #13, ed. Leonard Maltin, summer 2005.

  “I, Veronica Lake.” Life, May 17, 1943.

  “June Allyson.” FGA #32, spring 2003.

  “Maria Montez.” Classic Images, December 2001.

  “Margaret O’Brien at 8.” Look, April 17, 1945.

  “Marsha Hunt.” Classic Images, April 1997.

  “Myrna Loy.” Films in Review, October 1982.

  “Rita Hayworth.” Modern Screen, December 1941.

  “Van Johnson.” Life, November 5, 1945.

  Adams, Cindy. “On Brad Pitt.” New York Post, February 18, 2005.

  Bacon, James. “Howard Strickling, MGM Publicist, Dies at 82.” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, July 16, 1982.

  Busch, Noel. “On Margaret O’Brien.” Life, December 10, 1945.

  Grobel, Lawrence. “Angelina Jolie.” Hollywood Life, July/August 2003.

  Jacobs, Jack. “Ronald Colman.” Films in Review, April 1958.

  King, Stephen. “The Pop of King: No Stars, Sorry.” Entertainment Weekly, March 25, 2005.

  McNamara, Mary. “Dustin Hoffman.” Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2005.

  Munter, Pam. “The Secret Keepers: Russell Birdwell, Harry Brandt, and Howard Strickling.” Classic Images, July 2005.

  Navarro, Mireya. “I Love You with All My Hype.” The New York Times, May 22, 2005.