sobre los star studies

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS VIINTRODUCTION 1

1 STAR STUDIES: MAPPING OUT THE FIELD OF STARSCHOLARSHIP WITHIN FILM STUDIES 8

2 METHODS: WAYS OF ANALYSING SCREEN PERFORMANCE 373 STAR QUALITY: IN SEARCH OF THE PREREQUISITES FOR

STARDOM 654 STAR SYSTEMS: THE MECHANICS OF STAR PRODUCTION 925 STAR IDENTITIES: FROM IMAGE TO PERSONA AND

PUBLICITY TO GOSSIP 1216 UNSTABLE SYMBOLS: ON THE REPRESENTATIVENESS

OF FILM STARS 149

CONCLUSION 181NOTES 186REFERENCES 202INDEX 220

CONTENTS

8 S T A R S T U D I E S : A C R I T I C A L G U I D E

1 STAR STUDIES: MAPPING OUT THE FIELD OFSTAR SCHOLARSHIP WITHIN FILM STUDIES

Introduction

Film stars attract attention. They also play a seminal role in theproduction and marketing of movies, often accounting for a largeproportion of a film’s budget. Stars are used to secure funding for films due to the belief that they make a significant contributionto the potential profitability of movies in an otherwiseunpredictable market. Many films are produced as ‘star vehicles’,showcasing the star’s talent, capitalising on both their acting skillsand their public persona. Stars are so vital to the overall operationand success of the film industry that their popularity is closely andsystematically monitored. ‘Bankable’ stars are highly sought afterand excessively well remunerated. Many of the world’s top starshave a large international fan-base, while most of the major film-making countries have produced stars of internationalstanding. Some stars have even been used to represent nationalcharacteristics within the global economy of the mass media, their fame extending well beyond the confines of the cinema vianewspaper and magazine journalism, the internet, and televisionand radio appearances. Tabloid newspapers and lifestyle magazines are heavily dominated by images, stories andspeculation about film stars, as are television chat shows andinternet websites.

S T A R S T U D I E S 9

Susan and God (1940), starring Joan Crawford(on right) with Rose Hobart (on left) in gownsby Adrian

S T A R S T U D I E S : A C R I T I C A L G U I D E

Given the importance of stardom within the film industry andpopular culture generally, it is not surprising that the academicstudy of stars has become one of the most important branches offilm studies. This area of film scholarship has proliferated since thepublication of Richard Dyer’s Stars in 1979, this book precipitatinga ‘seismic shift in the way in which star studies were perceived’(Hollinger 2006: 35). Dyer’s combination of semiotics andsociology produced the ‘star text’ and stimulated considerableinterest in star images across films, publicity and promotionalmaterials. Meanwhile, Dyer’s Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society(1987) drew increasing attention to the interpretive activities ofaudiences, mainstream and marginal (e.g., the black and gaycommunities), with its illuminating case studies of MarilynMonroe, Paul Robeson and Judy Garland. The first anthologies ofstar studies appeared in 1991 in Britain and the United States,Christine Gledhill’s Stardom and Jeremy Butler’s Star Texts, bothcontaining extracts of Dyer’s work as well as essays inspired by hisapproach. These collections promoted high-level scholarship onstars, demonstrating that star studies had become a legitimate areaof academic enquiry.

This chapter provides an overview of the key works within starstudies, highlighting the major trends within this branch of filmstudies, charting the way in which it became increasinglyinternational, moving from theory to history and from the general(i.e., stardom as an industrial and cultural phenomenon) to thespecific (i.e., case studies of particular stars). The focus here is lesson stars and more on the academic literature about stars andstardom. While outlining the key themes and methodology ofRichard Dyer’s ground-breaking book, this chapter also considersthe work of scholars that preceded and influenced Stars, as well asdiscussing the contribution of scholars that have subsequentlyadvanced research on stardom.

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S T A R S T U D I E S

Star studies

While the origins of star studies as a distinctive branch of film studiescan be traced back to the late 1970s, the following decadesrepresented a rich and volatile period of growth and development,one that finally settled into a period of consolidation at the end of the90s. Prior to this consolidation, star studies was fragmented, itsmethods and terminology being contested, as numerous leadingexponents sought to stake out their own territory.1 Writing in 1998,Jeremy Butler stated that star studies was ‘still in a rather embryonicstate’ (Butler 1998: 352). This was the year that a new edition ofDyer’s Stars was published, while a section on stardom was includedin The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (edited by John Hill and PamelaChurch Gibson, 1998). Star studies really came of age, however, atthe start of the twenty-first century. In 2000, a section on stars wasincluded in The Film Studies Reader (edited by Joanne Hollows, PeterHutchings and Mark Jancovich), while Paul McDonald’s The StarSystem, Ginette Vincendeau’s Stars and Stardom in French Cinemaand Ulrike Sieglohr’s edited collection Heroines without Heroesaugmented an expanding body of literature on stars and stardom.The latter two publications, along with Bruce Babington’s editedcollection British Stars and Stardom (2001), were instrumental inbroadening the international scope of star studies by raising theprofile of European stars and identifying the distinguishingcharacteristics of stardom in specific national contexts. Indeed,Babington’s book set its face squarely against the ‘Hollywoodcentricfilm theorists’ in an effort to undermine the orthodox accounts thathad assumed that the characteristics of the Hollywood star systempertained equally in other national contexts (Babington 2001: 3).

In the twenty-first century the ‘Hollywoodcentric’ approach tostar studies has slowly broken down, with some of the most originalwork being produced by European scholars on European stars, fromErica Carter’s Dietrich’s Ghosts (2004) to Tytti Soila’s edited

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collection Stellar Encounters (2009).2 The latter, in particular, drawstogether a diverse selection of essays on European film stars,including those of Greece, Finland and Scandinavia, in a bid toredress the Anglo-American bias. In addition to challenging thenotion of Hollywood as the originator of the star system, this bookfocuses largely on the relationship between stars and nationhood, theways in which stars embody national characteristics and representspecific moments within a nation’s history. Meanwhile, research onnon-western stars has appeared in published collections,3

culminating in the first major publications in English devotedexclusively to non-western stars: most notably, Neepa Majumdar’sWanted Cultured Ladies Only! Female Stardom and Cinema in India,1930s–1950s (2009) and Chinese Film Stars (edited by MaryFarquhar and Yingjin Zhang, 2010). While the former extends thework of Richard Dyer with a detailed and authoritative examinationof female stardom in Indian sound cinema prior to 1960, the latterprovides an historical account of stars from various Chineseterritories (including Taiwan and Hong Kong), from the silent erathrough to the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, withmany of its contributors subjecting the images of Chinese stars to aDyerian analysis.

In order to be selective and focused, a number of star studieshave used case studies as the basis for exploring various aspects ofstardom, such as Karen Hollinger’s The Actress (2006), JeanineBasinger’s The Star Machine (2007) and Mia Mask’s Divas on Screen(2009). The increasing amount of material available on stars by theend of the 1990s gave star scholars greater scope to focus theirresearch on more detailed investigation into the work, image andappeal of a single star. This is certainly part of the rationale behindthe Star Decades: American Culture/American Cinema series edited byAdrienne L. McLean and Murray Pomerance for Rutgers UniversityPress.4 These books consist of between ten and twelve chapterswritten by different authors, each examining the work of a star or

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combination of stars within a particular decade. The stars includedhere are taken to be representative of Hollywood cinema andAmerican culture of the time, with each volume offering a wide-ranging look at various types of star for a specific era. Within a shortspace of time, this series of books has dramatically expanded therange of scholarship on Hollywood stars from the silent, classical,post-studio and contemporary periods.

Academic books devoted to the examination of the work, imageand appeal of an individual star, however, still remain something of ararity in film studies. Adrienne L. McLean’s Being Rita Hayworth:Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom (2005) is a notable exception,one that has been highly influential in various ways, paving the way forthe gradual expansion of the single star study within academicpublishing. This investigation into the discursive nature of the films,image, publicity, performances and business interests of the popularstar of Hollywood musicals and crime melodramas of the 1940s and50s, Rita Hayworth, expanded Richard Dyer’s work on star images,publicity and promotion, making more extensive use of archivalmaterials than previous studies of the star (i.e., using scrapbooks, pressbooks, fan magazines and newspaper reviews from various archivesand libraries). A significant part of the project was the re-evaluation ofHayworth’s talents as a performer (i.e., as an actress, singer anddancer) through detailed scrutiny of her screen performances but alsoby investigating her working relationships with choreographers. Thisprovided detailed examination of female stardom in classicalHollywood that challenged many of the established claims aboutHayworth, establishing her professionalism and autonomy.

In 2007, Lisa Downing and Sue Harris stated that, ‘very fewsingle case studies existed in the field of academic publishing’(Downing and Harris 2007: 11).5 They suggested that one of themain reasons for this was the widespread publication of non-academic books on film stars, noting that many film academics wereconcerned to distinguish their work from industry-based, fan-based

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and biographical material. Nevertheless, they insisted that studiesdevoted to the work of a single star provide a useful way of readingstar images. A single star case study, they point out, enables one toexamine the work of a star both in and beyond their own nationalcinema, in relation to a variety of directors, and across a body ofwork that appeals to a range of audiences. It also enables a scholar todetect and explore ‘the developments, breaks and lines of continuitythat constitute her image over the course of a career’ (Downing andHarris 2007: 8). Thus, in their own book, they note that a ‘carefullook at [Catherine] Deneuve as star image, both on-screen and off-screen, over a period of forty years, reveals previously undiscussedinstances of prescience, lines of continuity and ignored fractures inher trajectory’ (ibid.). Since the publication of their book, othersingle star studies have been published (e.g., Amy Lawrence’s ThePassion of Montgomery Clift, 2010a), while many more are anticipatedas part of the British Film Institute’s Film Star series.

Star studies before Stars

Richard Dyer’s Stars brought together numerous studies of filmstardom, along with work on gender and film, synthesising andadvancing existing claims, while introducing his own ideas.6 Anumber of the key studies upon which he drew had emerged inEurope (most notably, France) in the late 1950s and early 60s,including Roland Barthes’s Mythologies and Edgar Morin’s Les Stars,both published originally in French in 1957. Susan Werner hasobserved that Morin’s study initially generated little interest fromscholars in contrast to Roland Barthes’s, although it received newattention and admiration in the 1990s (Werner 2007: 27). Morinborrowed freely from anthropology as well as Marxist theory in orderto understand how film stars operated as myths within moderntechnological and urban societies, and his work on stars has been

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seen as a response to massive and rapid cultural changes in postwarFrance, a situation in which French stars played a major social role inthe popular negotiation of the various contradictions resulting fromthe clash and co-existence of modernity and tradition (Gaffney andHolmes 2007b: 8). The major theme resonating throughout Les Starsis the mythic nature of stardom. For Morin, stardom is a mythproduced by the reality of twentieth-century human history but ‘it isalso because human reality nourishes itself on the imaginary to thepoint of being semi-imaginary itself ’, hence his claim that ‘stars liveon our substance and we on theirs’ (Morin 2005: 148). ‘Ectoplasmicsecretions of our own being, they are immediately passed down theproduction lines of the great manufacturers who deploy them ingalaxies stamped with the most distinguished trademarks’ (ibid.).

Morin describes stars as monstres sacrés (sacred monsters),venerated public individuals above or beyond criticism by ordinarymortals. For him, the star is both real and imaginary, of life anddream, born from a conjunction of capitalism, modernity and themythology of love, all three factors determining ‘sacred monstrosity:the star’ (ibid.: 135). Existing simultaneously in two worlds, theordinary and extraordinary, ‘the star straddles both sacred andprofane, divine and real, aesthetic and magic’ (ibid.: 84). To describethe combination of a star’s extraordinary qualities and ordinariness,Morin employs the notion of the ‘superpersonality’, one thatcombines beauty and spirituality, one that ‘must unceasingly proveitself by appearances: elegance, clothes, possessions, pets, travels,caprices, sublime loves, luxury, wealth, grandeur, refinement’ (ibid.:38). Morin also uses the term ‘marvellous’ to describe this state,arguing that ‘the stars bluff, exaggerate, spontaneously divinizethemselves’ not just to attract publicity but also to be more like theirideal self, their double (ibid.: 55). The star’s mythic identity is builtfrom a mixture of belief and doubt, while their power for audienceslies in their search for coherent identity, adult personalities beingformed out of playful mimesis (e.g., games and role-play). For the

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public at large, stars offer ‘patterns of culture’ that ‘give shape to thetotal human process that has produced them’ (ibid.: 147). Whatevertheir precise role within the film industry, their importance, Morininsists, lies beyond that industry, in the wider culture in which starsare consumed and adopted as role models by all kinds of people:although chiefly, he claims, women and adolescents.

In many ways Morin’s book sowed the seeds of some of themost important debates within star studies: the quasi-religious natureof star worship, the importance of publicity and merchandising, theprominence of the star’s face and the importance of beauty andyouth, the various levels of identification, the historicaltransformations in attitudes towards stars, and the distinctionsbetween stars and characters, stars and lead actors, also betweenstars, pin-ups and starlets. While many of these points havesubsequently been taken up by scholars (e.g., Jackie Stacey and BarryKing), often little acknowledgment has been made regarding Morin’sorigination of these topics, in part perhaps due to the hyperbolicnature of his writings that, for some considerable time, may haveappeared to invalidate the academic credibility of his research.

Charles Affron’s writing on stars appears to have suffered asimilar fate. When compared to academic writing on stars publishedafter 1978, Star Acting (1977) seems allusive, hyperbolic and camp.This book contains many ideas that are worthy of academicconsideration, particularly in terms of his interest in the dialectics ofrevelation and ambiguity, verisimilitude and abstraction, whichprovide a very useful starting point to a consideration of how starsact and how their performances are distinguished from those of othertypes of screen performer. Like Morin, he notes the celestial andreligious vocabulary used to discuss film stars and also considers therole of fans in creating and sustaining stars.

The reverential and celestial vocabulary has been consecrated by decades of

usage and press agency. The clichés’ first connotations effectively separate

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public from performer by an expanse of astral geography. The gods reign on

high, the stars blink in the solar systems light-years away, and we mere

mortals, worshipping at their shrines in blissful ignorance, celebrate the

distance. (Affron 1977: 2)

Affron uses hyperbole here to convey the extraordinaryemotions of being under a star’s spell, while simultaneously mockingand caricaturing the extremes of this situation in recognition of thefact that much of this is stimulated by publicists on behalf of a hugeand powerful industry. When he writes that we ‘mortals are leftclutching our wonder, and victims of that very wonder, overwhelmedby our enthusiasm and blinded by the light of the star’s emanation’,he evokes the various familiar, even hackneyed, tropes of melodrama(i.e., clutching, victims, overwhelmed, blinded), thereby creatingsome critical distance for himself as a scholar by using an obviouslyhyperbolic discourse (ibid.: 3). This is academic writing that isplayful and daring but also, perhaps, rather fearful of attempting tomake serious intellectual claims for film stars given that they couldhave been considered trivial within the context of academia in thelate 1970s. Not surprisingly, therefore, Affron strays into camp, adiscourse designed to take the trivial seriously, while rendering theserious trivial: for instance, when he writes that, films ‘arebreathtakingly perched between the unequivocal reality of thephotographic process and a style that is by definition magnifying,hyperbolic, and utterly frivolous in its relationship to everyday modesof perception’ (ibid.). It is camp that makes film’s provisionaloccupation of a space between reality and style breathtaking, just as itis camp that makes film’s relationship to everyday reality utterlyfrivolous.

The use of camp was both a radical and dangerous strategy inthe 1970s, having the potential to invalidate scholarship, rob it ofcredibility, objectivity and authority. Imagine the reactions ofscholars reading the following in 1977:

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Coated with layers of makeup that obliterate blemish and dissymmetry,

modelled by a miraculous array of lights, located and relocated by the giddy

succession of frames, the stars capriciously play with life and subject it to a

range of fictions from preposterous to profound. (Ibid.: 2)

How preposterous would scholars have found Affron’s elegantdescription of the allure of such classic Hollywood stars as Garboand Dietrich, with his ‘giddy succession of frames’ and his‘capriciously’ playful stars, particularly those most concerned withenhancing film’s reputation as a serious, intellectually demandingacademic discipline within the humanities? It is perhaps only sincefilm studies established itself as an academic subject more solidly inthe 1980s that the merits of such writing can be appreciated. It isperhaps only in the wake of the influence of queer theory in mediaand cultural studies that Affron’s work can be taken seriously. Itwould seem to be much easier now to appreciate and acknowledgethe value of his detailed analyses (even his ecstatic appreciations) ofthe film performances of such Hollywood stars as Lillian Gish, GretaGarbo and Bette Davis, which fill the pages of Star Acting.

Francesco Alberoni’s essay ‘The Powerless Elite: Theory andSociological Research on the Phenomenon of Stars’ has neverneeded any apology or justification on the grounds of academicintegrity.7 This was one of the first major sociological studies ofstardom, written in a very different tone to the aforementioned worksof Morin and Affron, and it had a profound influence on RichardDyer’s work on stars as well as on many other scholars of stardomand celebrity (e.g., P. David Marshall). Here Alberoni argued thatstardom was a phenomenon directly linked to the development oflarge-scale industrial and urbanised societies, particularly in the earlystages of nationhood, in order to fulfil various functions within thesocio-political configuration of society: most notably, to distractpublic scrutiny away from the power elite (e.g., governmentministers, aristocracy, monarchy, religious leaders and business

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tycoons, etc.), as a focus for public debates about morality, as objectsof identification and as symbols of social mobility. Within thisconfiguration, stars represent an elite group in society that has noreal power over the public but nevertheless enjoys unprecedentedattention, wealth and freedom: in other words, exerting minimalsocial influence but generating maximum social interest.

Drawing upon Max Weber’s work on charisma in his bookEconomy and Society (1968), Alberoni perceived of stars as those‘members of the community whom all can evaluate, love or criticize’(Alberoni 1972: 85, emphasis in original). As such, they are subjectedto high levels of public scrutiny, operating as objects of gossip andscandal. In other words, they are continually evaluated. Evaluationtakes a variety of forms but, most notably, in terms of the deviance ormoral value of their character and behaviour in comparison to socialnorms. Alberoni notes that the conduct of stars is rarely judged inrelation to general social norms but rather according to the perceivednorms of the elite group or community. This necessarily entails theexistence and maintenance of a gap between the society at large andthe elite, divorcing their world (one of privilege) from that of theeveryday, a world in which stars are placed by the will of the public.Their retention within the elite group requires careful management(just as the politician’s does), so that the ‘whole life of stars is thusastutely orchestrated and arranged’, stars remaining under publicscrutiny, being constantly evaluated and re-evaluated in order toensure their place within the (powerless) elite, as representatives of awider community (ibid.: 96). As part of this process, stars ‘becomean object of identification or a projection of the needs of the mass ofthe population’ (ibid.: 92). Consequently, in his relatively short essay,Alberoni lay down many of the foundations of star theory, uponwhich Dyer and others would construct more detailed and elaboratetheories of stardom and histories of the star system: namely, thenature of star power (and autonomy), media scrutiny of stars (i.e.,the role of publicity), the exposure and control of scandal and gossip,

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stars as symbols of morality (involving ideological contradictionsbeing negotiated and resolved), the role of the audience in anindividual’s attainment and retention of star status, the relationsbetween stars and fans (including the role of identification), and thesignificance of charisma. Each of these would resonate throughoutDyer’s Stars and, subsequently, throughout star studies as itdeveloped during the 1980s.

Dyer’s Stars

While Richard Dyer’s Stars was in part a survey of what had beendone in the study of stars by 1978, it also broke new ground inproviding a methodology for studying stars through a combination ofsemiotics and sociology, and by introducing three key concepts: (i)stars as ‘images’, (ii) star images having ‘structured polysemy’ thatenable multiple interpretations (i.e., offering numerous meaningsand pleasures) and (iii) stars as embodiments of ideologicalcontradiction, through which social conflicts and crises arenegotiated and resolved at a symbolic level. In terms of methodology,the book advocated the analysis of extra-filmic materials (e.g., pressarticles, previews, promotional materials and publicity) as a key partof film scholarship in addition to textual analysis of film sequences.The main task here was not to determine the correct meaning ofstars but rather to expose the variety of meanings that a star has fordifferent types of audience, different in terms of race, class, gender,etc. Understanding textual analysis to be grounded in ideology, Dyerfirst set out the social, institutional and economic conditions ofstardom, while noting that the importance of stars goes beyond theirindustrial function. Dyer insisted that, since stars have wider culturalsignificance, film scholars need to explore the relationships betweenstars and audiences, including various aspects of identification (Dyer1979: 17).

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At the heart of this book is the way that stars represent modelsof human subjectivity and social types (i.e., operating as stereotypes),combining both ordinary (or typical) and extraordinary qualities.Dyer identifies this as one of the major contradictions of stardom, theparadox of stars being special but also like people in real life. Theother major paradox lies in the way that stars are taken to berepresentative of social groups (racial, ethnic, national, regional,sexual, etc.), while being regarded as unique individuals (differentfrom everyone else, more talented or beautiful, etc.). Consequently,the ‘star both fulfils/incarnates the type and, by virtue of her/hisidiosyncrasies, individuates it’ (ibid.: 47). Much of Dyer’s workinvolves exploring the nature, functions and ambiguities (i.e., theinstabilities) of star images. The notion of the ‘star image’ is central tohis study. He writes, for instance, that, a ‘star image is made out ofmedia texts that can be grouped together as promotion, publicity,films and criticisms and commentaries’ (ibid.: 60). He also makes aclear distinction between publicity and promotion, noting the way inwhich publicity goes beyond studio-produced material to includepress and broadcast interviews, gossip columns and magazinearticles, their value being that they appear to grant audiencesprivileged access to information about stars and, consequently,lending these some degree of authenticity that promotional materials(e.g., posters, trailers and advertisements) otherwise lack (ibid.: 61).In so doing, Dyer promoted the analysis of publicity and promotionalmaterial as one of the principal means of understanding a star’simage. This revealed that textual analysis of film sequences alone wasinsufficient to fully comprehend the meanings and values of stardom.After Stars, the analysis of critical commentaries and reviews becamea significant feature of film studies, with many scholars exploring thenewspaper and magazine holdings of libraries and archives aroundthe world, making increasing use of these for understanding whatfilms have meant for audiences, often different kinds of audience indifferent locations and historical periods (Staiger 1992).

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During the 1970s, detailed and highly elaborated scrutiny offilm sequences (often in combination with highly elaborated andsophisticated theorising) had become a distinguishing feature of thediscipline. Dyer’s advocacy of a more systematic examination ofpublicity and promotional matter in addition to film analysisrepresented one of several challenges to orthodox film studies at thetime. Another challenge that Dyer posed was in regard to authorship(or auteur theory) by undermining the authority of the director asthe main controlling force of a film, suggesting that (certainly in thecase of star vehicles) actors were often the main determinants ofnarrative, iconography and style (Dyer 1979: 62). He also challengedsome long-held assumptions regarding stars and actors as inertmatter to be controlled by directors and editors. In a section onmontage and mise en scène, for instance, he noted that, ‘an importanttradition in film theory has tended to deny that performance has anyexpressive value: what you read into the performer, you read in byvirtue of signs other than performance signs’ (ibid.).

Dyer’s chief concern, however, is not how actors act but howaudiences interpret an actor’s performance, suggesting thatelaborated notation systems for performance (e.g., Laban) may beuseful for describing movements and gestures but have little value interms of interpretation of a particular performance (i.e., for what itmeans for audiences) arguing that, ‘any attempt to analyseperformance runs up against the extreme complexity and ambiguityof performance signs’ (ibid.: 133). Nevertheless, Dyer outlines theseperformance signs (including facial expression, voice, gesture,posture, movement, etc.) with some precision (ibid.: 134–6). Ofparticular significance for Dyer was the fundamental ambiguityperformance plays in the relationship between star and audience,arguing that this ‘ambiguity needs to be understood in terms of therelation between the performer and the audience in the film’, notingthat interpretation requires a general knowledge of such things as‘intonation, gesture, eye dilations’, which invariably is culturally and

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historically specific (ibid.: 134). Furthermore, the specificvocabularies of movement and gesture are also determined bygeneric conventions as well as the context in which they appear inindividual films, being part of a larger system of meaning operatingthroughout the film’s mise en scène (ibid.: 136). They are also part oflong and established acting traditions, Hollywood acting beinginfluenced by a conflicting set of performance methods drawn fromvaudeville and music hall, stage melodrama, radio, repertory theatreand Broadway, in addition to the ‘Method’ (ibid.: 140). As part of hisdiscussion of acting, Dyer noted that what often distinguishes starsfrom other actors is their idiosyncratic style of performance. Hewrites that, ‘a star will have a particular performance style thatthrough its familiarity will inform the performance s/he gives in anyparticular film’ (ibid.: 142). Consequently, he insists that a majorpart of ‘the business of studying stars is to establish what theserecurrent features of performance are and what they signify in termsof the star’s image’ (ibid.: 143).

Star studies after Stars

Richard Dyer’s contribution to star studies cannot be over-estimated.His works have inspired successive generations of film, media andcultural studies scholars. In 2010, in the introduction to Chinese FilmStars, the editors note that ‘many of the contributors to this volumerefer to Dyer’s scholarship’, the book’s title having been chosen as atribute to his ‘seminal work in the field’ (Farquhar and Zhang 2010:3). However, while ‘Dyerian’ studies of stars have proliferatedbetween 1979 and the time of writing, two alternative approacheshave also emerged: the first involving a more in-depth investigationinto the part played by audiences in terms of how they engage withstars and the second in terms of a more detailed examination ofstardom as an industrial process. Both approaches are represented in

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one of the first star studies anthologies, Christine Gledhill’s Stardom:Industry of Desire (1991a), which both synthesised and put into adynamic relationship different academic approaches to stardom. Inso doing, this eclectic collection sought to promote the diversity offilm scholarship on stars in an inclusive and open-mindedframework.

Stardom was published after an impasse in film scholarshipcreated largely by a rift between two major factions – what Gledhillrefers to as the proponents of ‘cine-psychoanalysis’, on the one hand,and more cultural studies-based scholars, on the other. Thesefactions had emerged partly as a response to Laura Mulvey’s highlyinfluential essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975),which had set out to reveal the extent to which patriarchal ideologiesof sexual difference pervaded mainstream narrative cinema at thelevel of film style as well as content. In a compelling argument, sheexposed the extent to which male characters typically assume moredominant narrative roles than females in Hollywood films, with malestars ordinarily positioned as subjects of a controlling gaze thatsimultaneously objectified their female co-stars. While female starstend to be fragmented, frozen and fetishised as images, male stars aremore often granted subjectivity and point of view, inviting thespectator’s identification.

Utilising psychoanalytic concepts, Mulvey elaborated her thesisby distinguishing between two kinds of ‘scopophilia’ (visualpleasure): fetishism, involving the female body being transformed intoa fetish, producing pleasure by denying the unconscious threat (i.e.,castration) posed by her body with a display of excessive spectacleand costume; and voyeurism, providing a more sadistic form ofpleasure by punishing the woman at the level of the narrative. In thisaccount of the visual pleasures of mainstream narrative cinema,female spectators were forced to occupy masculine positions byidentifying with male protagonists and sharing the male gaze(thereby denying a female gaze), while male stars were deemed

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unable (or, at least, unlikely) to bear objectification by an erotic look.Hollywood, with its system of continuity editing (i.e., shot/reverse-shot, eye-line matches, etc.), was condemned as intrinsically sexist,with avant-garde (or non-narrative) cinema representing the onlyviable alternative. The very pleasures of Hollywood cinema that haddrawn so many people to film studies as an alternative to studyingliterature or fine art were now rendered abject, provoking manycounter-arguments designed to salvage mainstream movies and thepleasures of popular cinemagoing. Not surprisingly, a wealth of suchcounter-arguments emerged in film journals and books over the nextdecades, along with a series of counter-counter-arguments, bothfrom within feminist film theory and elsewhere, culminating in thecritical impasse noted by Christine Gledhill in her introduction toStardom.

Partly in response to the impasse in film theory, from the mid-1980s film scholarship veered increasingly towards history,culminating in the early 90s with the publication of Janet Staiger’sInterpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of AmericanCinema (1992) and Jackie Stacey’s Star Gazing (1994), which set outdifferent ways for film scholars to investigate the historical andculturally rooted meanings of films, providing alternativemethodologies for investigating film spectatorship than earliertheoretical (particularly, psychoanalytic) approaches. The call for areturn to a more historical engagement with cinema led to theemergence of what became known as the ‘New Film History’,constituted in part by studies that qualified and challengedtheoretical supposition with arguments supported by historicalevidence, documentation and testimony. As the editors of The NewFilm History: Sources, Methods, Approaches have noted, what alsodistinguished this branch of film history was ‘an understanding thatfilms are cultural artefacts with their own formal properties andaesthetics, including visual style and aural qualities’ (Chapman,Glancy and Harper 2007: 6). James Chapman, Mark Glancy and

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Sue Harper have observed that contemporary film historians arerequired to understand the complex processes of filmic systems andthe way that meaning is generated via editing, the various aspects ofmise en scène (including performance), narrative and narration, soundand cinematography. In their introduction, they note that theconception of ‘authorship’ (one of four sections of the book) hasbeen extended to account for the influential contributions ofnumerous personnel, including writers, art directors and stars as wellas directors (ibid.). In fact, one of the defining features of this field,they claim, is the recognition of the role of stars as one of the maindeterminants of mainstream commercial narrative film, recognisingalso that star vehicles have been one of Hollywood’s principal meansof organising production.

During the late 1980s and early 90s, film studies was criss-crossed by numerous dividing lines. While film theorists took upeither psychoanalytic or non-psychoanalytic positions, film historianswere divided (among other things) between adopting the methods ofreception studies or ethnography. Star studies was just one of manyareas in which such divisions emerged and in which these positionswere both negotiated and contested. Christine Gledhill’s Stardomwas published not only during this period but as a response to thissituation, the editor drawing together theoretical and historical worksthat were variously informed by sociological, semiological andpsychoanalytic approaches. Several of the essays had originallyappeared in the journal Wide Angle, which was at the forefront ofdisseminating historical studies that both incorporated theory andrevised existing historical accounts of various aspects of the filmindustry and film culture. Consequently, many of the essays includedin Stardom question previous historical research in order to revisitand rethink some key areas of film history closely related to stardom.

The collection begins with historical accounts of the origins ofthe star system in American cinema, correcting some of the popularmisconceptions that had arisen in orthodox film histories. Janet

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Staiger’s essay ‘Seeing Stars’ (previously published in the journal TheVelvet Light Trap in 1983) refuted the established notion that the starsystem in American cinema was originated by Carl Laemmle, thehead of the Independent Motion Picture Company (IMP), in 1910when he poached actress Florence Lawrence (previously known asthe ‘Biograph Girl’) from the Biograph Company. The story, whichinvolves the announcement of the actress’s tragic death in the pressbeing refuted the following day and the declaration that she wouldsoon be appearing in a series of IMP films, had been repeated inseveral major histories of Hollywood, with Florence Lawrence beingidentified the first film star (see Cook 1990: 41–2). Staiger, however,reveals that the Edison Company had begun promoting its stockcompany of players as early as 1909, borrowing various strategies ofpromotion from the American stage. She also claims that, in 1911,the Edison Company became one of the first American studios tocredit its cast within its films and to provide exhibitors with slidesadvertising their players to be projected in between reels. Thishistory was taken up by Richard deCordova in his essay ‘TheEmergence of the Star System in America’ in the journal Wide Anglein 1985, which he developed into his book Picture Personalities in1990. In an abridged version of this essay in Stardom, deCordovaoutlines key developments in the forms of information andknowledge circulating in the USA about film actors from 1907 to1914, arguing that this was a critical period of transformation inwhich the star system came into fruition. DeCordova notes how theproduction and distribution of discourses about film performersinvolved three distinct types of knowledge, starting with discourseson acting from 1907, to the establishment of ‘picturepersonalities’(actors known for their screen roles), culminating in theformation of star discourses (actors known for their personal lives aswell as their screen roles) in 1914 (deCordova 1991: 17–24).

While discussion of acting features widely throughout Stardom,the book also makes it clear that there is far more to the work of stars

27


than the performances they give before the movie cameras.Promotional work, publicity and product endorsements and fashionmodelling are all significant functions fulfilled by Hollywood’s bignames. This is clearly demonstrated in two influential essays includedhere: Charles Eckert’s ‘The Carole Lombard in Macy’s Window’ andHerzog and Gaines’s ‘“Puffed Sleeves Before Tea-Time”: JoanCrawford, Adrian and Women Audiences’. The combination of thesetwo essays, moreover, is indicative of the book’s revisionist approachto film history, with many of the claims made in the former (originallypublished in 1978) being challenged in the latter (originally publishedin 1985 with an ‘afterword’ added in 1991).

Charles Eckert’s essay explored Hollywood’s relationship withradio networks and with America’s consumer culture of the 1930s,involving tie-ups with fashion and cosmetics manufacturers, as wellas producers of drinks, electrical goods and automobiles. Eckertnotes that during the mid- to late 1930s all of the major Hollywoodstudios adopted such practices to secure additional income streams,resulting in a large proportion of films aimed at women (as theprincipal consumers). While demonstrating the efficiency andentrepreneurialism of the Hollywood studios, Eckert also suggestedthat American women were more or less duped into buyingconsumer goods. It is this assumption that is interrogated andchallenged by Charlotte Herzog and Jane Gaines in their essay.Assessing the impact of fashion promotion through films and filmmagazines, they found that claims that half a million copies of afashionable dress worn by Joan Crawford in the film Letty Lynton(Clarence Brown, 1932) were sold were a myth, noting that‘Hollywood designers and fashion historians … have continuallycited the “Letty Lynton” dress as the most dramatic evidence ofmotion picture “influence” on fashion behaviour’ (Herzog andGaines 1991: 74).

In keeping with other developments within feminist filmscholarship, Herzog and Gaines reconsider ‘influence’ in terms of

28


cultural production and women’s subcultural response. Posing aseries of questions about how female fans responded to 1930s femalefilm stars, they ask whether star imitation was truly an indication thatyoung women believed the message promoted by many Hollywoodfilms that clothes could change their circumstances (ibid.). After adetailed consideration of the work of designer Gilbert Adrian (knownsimply as Adrian) for MGM, particularly his designs for JoanCrawford, the authors focus their attention on the fashion publicityproduced to accompany such films as Letty Lynton, examining theway they address women. They conclude that while there is noevidence to prove that tens of millions of American women wereseduced into buying ready-to-wear versions of Hollywood fashionsduring the 1930s, fashion ‘worked to elicit women’s participation instar and screen myth-making’ and, while some women ‘bought starproducts and tested star beauty recipes’, many improvised with theirown home-produced versions (ibid.: 87). This links directly to JackieStacey’s project on British women’s memories of Hollywood femalestars of the 1940s and 50s, set out originally in her essay ‘FeminineFascinations: Forms of Identification in Star–Audience Relations’(1991) in Stardom and developed further in her book Star Gazing(1994). To both build on and depart from the work of Laura Mulveyon spectatorship and Richard Dyer on stars, Stacey examined theroles played by fashion and beauty products (i.e., those endorsed bystars) in the formation of the relationships between female fans andHollywood stars, with the audience as the primary focus, theirwritten testimony being analysed as much as the images of the stars.

Following the example of Richard Dyer, who had placedadvertisements in the gay press requesting information about gaymen’s attachment to Judy Garland for his book Heavenly Bodies,Stacey advertised in two leading British women’s weekly magazines,Woman’s Realm and Woman’s Weekly, to find readers willing to writeabout their favourite stars of the 1940s and 50s. This resulted in 350 letters and a further 238 completed questionnaires, enabling her

29


to examine the letters and questionnaires of white British womenover the age of sixty, accepting that these are ‘retrospectivereconstructions of a past in the light of the present’ and, as such,needing to be treated as narrative ‘texts’ rather than accurate andauthentic accounts (Stacey 1994: 63). These revealed very differentforms of cinematic identification from those associated withpsychoanalytic feminist film theory, enabling Stacey to identify anddistinguish between identificatory fantasies (e.g., worshipping) andpractices (e.g., copying). Discussing extra-cinematic identificatorypractices (i.e., pretending, resembling, imitating and copying), sheidentifies copying as the most common form, describing how femalefans attempted to close the gap between themselves and the stars bytransforming their appearance in order to look more like theirfavourite star (Stacey 1991: 155). She notes how her respondents’accounts revealed that stars were identified and remembered inrelation to particular commodities: clothes, brands of soap andcosmetics.

Unlike earlier studies of Hollywood consumption andmerchandising that had concentrated on production (most notably,Eckert’s), Stacey’s approach concentrated on consumption asconsumer practice, on how and why women bought and used ‘tie-in’products. Where previous accounts presented women as passiveconsumers of merchandise, they emerged in Stacey’s work as moreempowered and discerning. In this way, Stacey extended and revisedthe debate on consumerism and commodification, whilesimultaneously advancing the debate on identification and desire inaudience–star relations, situating star studies at the crossroads of twoimportant areas of film scholarship, consumerism and spectatorship.She also examined stardom within a specific national and historicalcontext (wartime and postwar Britain), her study making animportant contribution to studies of British Cinema, whileestablishing the importance of star studies for investigations intonational cinema cultures. Stacey’s work on stardom was one of the

30


first major attempts to use ethnographic methods as the basis of astar study and also one of the first to confine itself to a narrowlydefined cultural, historical and theoretical framework. Out of thisemerged some valuable work on memory and nostalgia, escapism,identification and desire, consumption and consumerism, knowledgeand taste, as well the nature of fandom. 8

While Stacey was instrumental in shifting the emphasis fromstar texts to the practices of audiences in stardom, others havesteered star studies towards a more detailed understanding of therole of stars as workers within industrialised systems of filmproduction, distribution and exhibition: most notably, Barry King,Danae Clark, Jane Gaines and Paul McDonald. Since the mid-1980s, Barry King has played a major role in terms ofreconceptualising and providing a vocabulary for describing whatstars do as actors and as workers within the changing economies ofmainstream cinema. After receiving his PhD in 1984 from theUniversity of London for his thesis on ‘The Hollywood Star System:The Impact of an Occupational Ideology on Popular Hero-worship’,King published his research in two articles: ‘Articulating Stardom’ inScreen in 1985 (later abridged and reprinted in Stardom in 1991) and‘Stardom as an Occupation’ in Paul Kerr’s The Hollywood FilmIndustry in 1986. Here, King made a distinction between two kindsof film acting, impersonation and personification, which result directlyfrom three distinct economies: ‘the cultural economy of the humanbody as a sign; the economy of signification in film; and the economyof the labour market for actors’ (King 1991: 167). For King, theeconomics of acting lie principally with exclusivity: namely, actorswith more exclusive attributes and skills (that their colleagues cannotreplicate) are able to command higher salaries. The economies offilm, moreover, are very different to those of the stage, where highlytrained and gifted actors acquire the means – which King designates‘impersonation’ – to subsume their own identities when performingcharacters, displaying versatility in the way they can convincingly

31


perform a wide range of character types. He notes that the tendencyin cinema is to abandon impersonation in favour of ‘personification’so that the actor’s public identity is not subsumed within theircharacter but rather remains on display, with the characterovershadowed by their star persona.

Later, in his essay ‘Embodying the Elastic Self: TheParametrics of Contemporary Stardom’ (2003), King replaced theterms ‘impersonation’ and ‘personification’ with those of‘metaphorical’ and ‘metonymic’ servitude, stating that, metaphoricalservitude ‘is the domain of the leading character actor whosubordinates person as far as possible (technically and genetically) tothe purposes of narrative, becoming a narrative function’, whilemetonymic servitude involves greater similarity between the star’spersona and the characters they play in their films (King 2003: 48).King notes that the metonymic servitude of stars results in thembeing narrative ‘guests’ within their films, their meaning (agency orcharacter) lying outside the diegetic world of the film so that they canbe read by audiences in terms of star persona rather than narrativecharacter. He argues that while the stars of the studio era ‘undertookmetonymic servitude’, appearing to be coherent and stable in theirpersonae, contemporary stars ‘are discursively challenged in theirefforts to meld all the practices undertaken in their name into acoherent commercial identity’ (ibid.: 49). Star’s identities are nowmanufactured and maintained by a series of specialists whoundertake responsibility for various and distinct aspects of theirpublic profile. As a result, stars tend to work with what King calls a‘wardrobe of identities’ (ibid).

Another critical shift in King’s conception of stars (and a shiftfrom studio-era stars to post-studio-era stars) occurs due to the factthat stars are now no longer employees of the studios but rather‘stakeholders in the enterprise that manages their career’ (ibid.). Henotes that the star as entrepreneur must be ready ‘to switch roles asbusiness opportunities arise’, particularly in a global market that has

32


given rise to the constant rewriting of star personae as formeridentities are maintained in some roles and films (especially high-profile, very lucrative and long-running film franchises, serials orseries) alongside newly invented ones (ibid.). King names this phaseof stardom ‘autographic’ (i.e., self-writing). Thus, stars are no longerthere to be read by audiences differently (i.e., as polysemic, as Dyerand others have described), but rather they produce themselvesdifferently in order to be read in different ways, therefore playing amuch more fundamental role in the process of interpretation thanstudio-era stars. Again this is linked to the basic economic fact thatstars are no longer simply workers but entrepreneurs (that is, worker-managers). Operating in a fragmented, highly competitive, intenselyscrutinised, highly commodified global market, the new generation ofsuccessful entrepreneurial stars are forced to manage their personaeby ‘stretching an apparent core of personal qualities to cover allcontingencies’ (ibid.: 60). King notes that, as a result, ‘persona iselastic rather than plastic, closer to a procedure for surviving, aheuristic self, than an essence’ (ibid.).

King’s work breaks with Richard Dyer’s notion of star texts,using Marxist economic theory combined with historical research,augmenting a branch of star studies that includes the work of DanaeClark and Paul McDonald. Of these three scholars, McDonald hasretained the strongest connections to Dyer’s work, particularly withhis supplementary essay to the new edition of Stars published in1998. In ‘Reconceptualising Stardom’, McDonald noted four mainareas in which star studies had developed since 1979: namely, (i)stars and history; (ii) star bodies and performance; (iii) stars andaudiences; and (iv) stardom as labour. Of these four areas, it is thelatter that comes closest to McDonald’s own interests and approachto stardom, enabling him to build on the work of Barry King, DanaeClark, Jane Gaines, Robert S. Sennett and Richard deCordova,among others. In so doing, McDonald has moved away from theinterpretation of star images per se towards an investigation into the

33


institutional practices of stardom in terms of production, distributionand exhibition, of ownership and regulation, exploring what stars doand how they are used, not just by audiences but also by studios,agents, managers and publicists. ‘To appreciate the social activity ofstardom,’ he writes, ‘a pragmatics of star practices is needed toaccompany a semiotics of star meanings’ (McDonald 1998: 200).

McDonald, in his book The Star System, provides a coherentoverview of developments in Hollywood stardom as an industrythroughout the twentieth century. He argues here that understandinghow stars operate in the context of production ‘requires not onlylooking at the image … but also the image as a source of economicvalue’ (McDonald 2000: 118). This involves consideration of variousfactors: (i) the connections between the star systems of the Americantheatre (including vaudeville) and film; (ii) how in the studio era newstars were systematically developed or manufactured; (iii) how thebreak-up of the studio system from the 1950s impacted on theoperations and effectiveness of the star system; (iv) how stars operatein the freelance labour market of post-studio Hollywood; (v) the roleof agents; (vi) the nature of contractual arrangements between starsand production companies or studios; (vii) the function of stars notjust as elite actors but also as producers and executive producers;(viii) the nature and function of licensing agreements concerning starimages and merchandising; and, finally, (ix) the role of the internet inreshaping the nature and control of star images, as well as therelationships between stars and their audience (ibid.: 119).Observing that all the factors that were necessary for thedevelopment of the star system in America were in place by 1913,McDonald notes that during the 1930s and 40s the star systemoperated in virtually the same way at all five of the major studios:Paramount, Warner Bros., the Fox Film Corporation (20th Century-Fox after 1935), Radio Keith-Orpheum (RKO) and Metro GoldwynMayer (MGM), until a US Supreme Court ruling in 1948 forcedthese companies to divorce their theatre circuits from their

34


production and distribution operations. While covering the whole ofthis period, McDonald’s book concentrates largely on the breakdownof the studio system, describing how the studios and the major starsadjusted when the American film industry adopted the ‘package-unit’ mode of production: the package ordinarily including aproducer, a director, a writer and a star or group of stars, usuallybrought together by an agent.

McDonald has also explored the role of agents in his essay,‘The Star System: The Production of Hollywood Stardom in thePost-Studio Era’ (2008). Here he examines the role talent agenciesplay in contemporary Hollywood alongside personal managers,publicists and legal representatives, noting that despite the shift ofpower from the studios to these mediating companies in the 1990ssome things have remained unchanged: for instance, that a ‘smallcluster of companies … make, manage, and control the capital ofstardom in Hollywood cinema’ (McDonald 2008: 180). This begsthe question of who does the choosing, selecting those relatively fewleading film performers that become candidates for stardom. It alsoraises the issue of who gets chosen and why, questions that willcontinually resurface throughout the following chapters of this book.

Conclusion

Since the 1970s, star studies has become an important branch of filmstudies precisely because of its capacity to reinvent itself and embracenew areas of investigation and methodology. Over the years, scholarshave utilised a wide range of methods to investigate numerous areasof stardom, national star systems and the work (i.e., films andimages) of stars from different countries and different historicalperiods. In so doing, scholars have combined various methodologiesin order to produce meaningful and comprehensive studies, involvinganalysis of films and extra-filmic materials (e.g., publicity and

35


promotion), fan discourse and audience surveys, interviewing filmindustry personnel from a wide range of fields of activity (e.g.,production, marketing, merchandising and publicity), as well asfilmgoers. Much more work remains to be done in terms of liaisingwith industry specialists, particularly in terms of agencies,management companies and legal firms, from many parts of theworld, including Bollywood and China, in order to fill the gaps thatstill remain. This suggests that the future of star studies promises tobe as rich as its history.

36

220 S T A R S T U D I E S : A C R I T I C A L G U I D E

INDEX

Note: Page numbers in bold indicate detailed analysis; those in italic denoteillustrations. n = endnote.

8 Women (2002) 75

AAag (Fire/Desire, 1948)

114Aaron, Michele 118acting abilityrole in star quality

84–90tuition 107–8

acting styles 23, 38–9classification 63–4idiosyncratic 44–6,

187–8n2‘method’ 46, 107

Adam and the Ants133

Adrian 9, 29advertising, stars’

associations with138–9

Affleck, Ben 58Affron, Charles, StarActing 16–18, 38, 77,85–8

Aida (1953) 158,200n3

Aladin (2009) 170

Alberoni, Francesco 55‘The Powerless Elite’

18–20Albertson, Lillian 192n6Alexander, Karen 161,

162Alibhai, Abbas 66All About Eve (1950) 40Allen, Steve 141Allen, Woody 93An Alligator NamedDaisy (1955) 156

Altman, Robert 116,117

Les Amants du Pont-Neuf(1991) 115–16

And God Created Woman(1956) see Et Dieu …créa la femme

Andaz (Style, 1949) 96Anderson, Wes 59Andress, Ursula 79Annabella 83Annakin, Ken 131, 156Anne of the Indies (1951)

167Antonioni, Michelangelo

117

Arbuckle, Roscoe ‘Fatty’144

Asian actors, inHollywood 165,168–74

Asoka (2001) 119Astaire, Fred 93Auburn, David, Proof

59audiences, studies

focused on 22–3,30–1, 44–5, 175

Austen, Jane 59auteurs 117auteur theory 22

Automatic DialogueReplacement (ADR)50, 51, 188n3

Awara (The Vagabond,1951) 115

BBaazigar (Gambler,

1993) 66Babington, Bruce,British Stars andStardom 11, 60–1,129

I N D E X

Bachchan, Amitabh 80,93, 96–7, 135, 136–8,182

Bakker, Gerben, ‘Starsand Stories: HowFilms BecameBranded Products’112

Banderas, Antonio166–7

Bardot, Brigitte 70–1,75, 79, 130, 152,154, 155, 156, 160,193n15

Barker, Lex 160Baron, Cynthia(and Diane Carson and

Frank Tomasulo),More Than a Method52–3

(and Sharon MarieCarnicke), ReframingScreen Performance62–4, 107

Barot, Chandra 97Barrymore, John 86, 88Barsaat (Monsoon, 1949)

114–15Barthes, Roland,Mythologies 14

Basinger, Jeanine, TheStar Machine 12, 65,72, 92, 99–100, 102,108, 109–10, 111, 117

Batman & Robin (1997)119

Bazaar (1983) 134Belafonte, Harry 160–1Belasco, David 42Bell, Melanie, Femininityin the Frame 156–7

Belle de jour (1967) 71Belmondo, Jean-Paul

71, 74, 89, 115Benegal, Shyam 134Benigni, Roberto 53–4,54

Bennett, Joan 40Bergman, Ingrid 83Berry, Halle 162Bhumika (1977) 134The Big Brawl (1980)

168Les Bijoutiers du clar delune (1958) 152

Binoche, Juliette 75,115–16

black actors 165,169–70

female 160–2Blake, Larry 49Blier, Bernard 71‘blonde bombshells’

154–5, 157Blonde Venus (1932)

113Blood and Sand (1922)

166Bloom, Claire 157Bloom, Orlando 72The Blue Lamp (1950)

174Bode, Lisa, ‘No Longer

Themselves’ 46–9,52

body-building 164–5,178–9

Bogarde, Dirk 174,200n7

Bogdanovich, Peter118

Bogle, Donald 160

‘Bollywood,’ branding of170–1

see also Indian cinemaBonnes à tuer (1954) 70Borzage, Frank 83Bose, Derek, BrandBollywood 171

Boy on a Dolphin (1957)158

Boyer, Charles 83–4,167

contractual disputes105–6

Boyer, Jean 70Brando, Marlon 46, 71,

117Braun, Harald 153–4Bresson, Robert 88Bride and Prejudice

(2004) 76Bright Road (1953)

160–1British actorscomprehensibility to

American audiences82

success in Hollywood82, 174

‘Bronze Venus’ figures161

Brook, Clive 82Brother, Where Art Thou?

(2000) 119Brown, Clarence 106,

166Buñuel, Luis 71Burmawalla, Mastan

Alibhai 66Burns, Lillian 192n6Burton, Richard 80Burton, Tim 93

221


Butler, Jeremy 11Star Texts 10

Byatt, A. S. 59

CCagney, James 108Cameron, James 60,

188n3camp (writing style)

17–18Capra, Frank 115, 116Carax, Léos 75, 115–16Carmen Jones (1954)159, 160–1

Carnicke, Sharon Marie,‘Screen Performanceand Directors’Visions’ 116–17

see also Baron, CynthiaCarradine, Keith 116Carson, Diane see

Baron, CynthiaCarson, Johnny 141Carstairs, John Paddy

131Carter, Erica 80Carter, Erica, Dietrich’sGhosts 11–12

Cavell, Stanley 40celebrity studies 38,

55–61Cent mille dollars au soleil

(1964) 71Chakra (1978) 134Chalte Chalte (While WeWere Walking, 2003)119

Chan, Jackie 165,168–9, 169, 182, 182

Chaplin, Charlie 40, 93,110

Chapman, James, MarkGlancy and SueHarper, The NewFilm History: Sources,Methods, Approaches25–6

character actors, actingabilities of 85

chat shows 141Chawla, Juhi 119Chen, Joan 165Cheung, Maggie 173Chevalier, Maurice 83,

167child stars 191n1Chinese cinema 12,

171–4magazines 196n7

Chopra, Aditya 66, 115,137–8

Chopra, Anupama 66,119, 137, 146

Chopra, Yash 66, 115Chori, Chori (1956) 115Chow Yun-Fat 165Christie, Julie 157Clark, Danae 31, 33,

84–5Negotiating Hollywood

77–8, 101, 102, 105,194n1, 196–7n10

Cleese, John 170Clooney, George 72,

116, 119Clouse, Robert 168Coen, Joel/Ethan 119Colbert, Claudette 106,106, 163

Colman, Ronald 82comedy, voices

appropriate to 80

commutation test 39–40Confessions of aDangerous Mind(2002) 119

Confidential (magazine)198n15

Connelly, Mike 143Connery, Sean 164Conquest (1937) 106,

166Contantine, Eddie 157contracts 100–6Cook, Pam, ‘The

Trouble with Sex:Diana Dors and theBlonde BombshellPhenomenon’129–33, 154–6

costume 70–1Cotten, Joseph 116Le Couturier de ces dames

(1955) 70Craig, Daniel 164Crawford, Joan 9, 28–9,

40, 69, 78, 108Crouching Tiger, HiddenDragon (2000)170–1

Cruise, Tom 97, 102,117

Cruz, Penelope 173The Curious Case ofBenjamin Button(2008) 73

DDamon, Matt 164Dancer in the Dark

(2000) 75Dancing with Crime

(1947) 131

222

I N D E X

Dandridge, Dorothy159, 160–2

Danner, Bythe 59Darr (Fear, 1993) 66Davis, Bette 1, 2, 18,

40, 69, 77, 78, 123,191–2n4

Davis, Sammy, Jr 161Day, Doris 93, 108,142

De Niro, Robert 93, 98de Palma, Brian 97de Sica, Vittorio 158De Vany, Arthur, and

W. David Walls,‘Uncertainty and theMovie Industry’ 98

Dean, James 71, 73Dearden, Basil 174Death in Venice (1971)

174Decision Before Dawn

(1951) 154Decoin, Henri 70deCordova, Richard 33,

57‘The Emergence of the

Star System inAmerica’ 27

Picture Personalities 27,38, 127–8

Delon, Alain 73–4, 83Delsarte, François 42,

63Deneuve, Catherine 14,

71, 75Denison, Rayna 89–90Depardieu, Gérard 74Depp, Johnny 73, 93,

164Desperado (1995) 167

Devdas (2002) 76, 96The Devil is a Woman

(1935) 113Dharmaraj, Rabindra

134Dhoom: 2 (2009) 170Dietrich, Marlene 18,

79–80, 83, 113, 145,163

digital technology 46–9Dil-ki-Rani (Sweet-Heart, 1947) 114

Dilwale Dulhania LeJayenge (The Brave-hearted Will Take theBride, 1995) 66, 67,138, 146

Dior, Christian 70directors 114–20stars as 93, 114–15,

117–20stars linked to 93,

115–17, 193nn15–16Dixit, Madhuri 182Don (1978) 97Donat, Robert 80–2,

111contractual disputes

105Dorléac, Françoise 75Dors, Diana 70, 79,

129–34, 130, 132,154, 155–7, 158, 160,200n3

Douglas, Kirk 79, 117Downing, Lisa 13–14Drake, Philip 48‘Jim Carrey: The

Cultural Politics ofDumbing Down’44–5, 187–8n2

Drake, Philip cont.‘Reconceptualizing

Screen Performance’45–6

Dunne, Irene 40Durbin, Deanna

196–7n10Dutt, Sunil 115, 134Duvall, Shelley 116,

117Duvivier, Julien 84Dyer, Richard 13, 94,

175influence of earlier

writers on 18, 19–20influence on later

writers 23, 29, 33,55, 124, 164, 171

Heavenly Bodies: FilmStars and Society 10,29, 149–50, 153,155, 175

Stars 1, 6, 10, 11, 14,20–3, 33, 38, 123–4

EThe Eagle (1925) 166Eastwood, Clint 117,

164Eckert, Charles, ‘The

Carole Lombard inMacy’s Window’ 28,30

Edison Company 27Ekberg, Anita 79, 154,

160El Cid (1961) 158Emma (1996) 59, 60Endiran (2010) 170Enright, Florence 192n6ER (TV) 133

223


Et Dieu … créa la femme(And God CreatedWoman, 1956) 70–1

ethnography 30–1, 55European cinema

156–7actors’ success/failure

in Hollywood 82–4,154, 166–7

star vehicles 113see also individualcountries

Everett, Rupert 164Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

117

FFairbanks, Douglas (Sr)

110, 144fan clubs 196–7n10Farquhar, Mary, and

Yingjin Zhang,Chinese Film Stars12, 54

Farrell, Colin 73Farrelly, Peter/Bobby 59Farrow, John 133fashion, reflected in star

personae/dress 70–1Fearless Nadia (Mary

Evans) 134Fedora (1978) 154Feldman, Charles 105Field, Surely Ann 157Fields, Gracie 93, 113,

149, 176–7Fiennes, Joseph 61Fight Club (1995) 73Film ohne Titel (Filmwithout a Title,1947–8) 153

film studies, trends/divisions in 23–4, 26

Fincher, David 59, 73Fitzmaurice, George

166Fleming, Victor 82The Flesh and the Devil

(1926) 166Fonda, Jane 164Forbes, Bryan 157The Forbidden Kingdom

(2008) see Gong FuZhi Wang

Ford, Harrison 56, 164

Ford, John 116Formby, George 113Forst, Willi 154Foster, Jodie 93, 164The Four Horsemen of theApocalypse (1921)166

Fracassi, Clemente157–8

Freeman, Morgan 72–3

French cinema 70–1,73–4

magazines 128–9nouvelle vague 88–9treatment of actors in

Hollywood 167From Dusk till Dawn

(1995) 119Funny Girl (1968) 118

GGabin, Jean 74, 83, 84,

149Gable, Clark 82Gadhvi, Sanjay 170

Gaffney, John, andDiana Holmes,Stardom in PostwarFrance 150–1

Gaines, Jane 28–9, 31,33, 68, 125–6, 138–9

Contested Culture: The Image, the Voiceand the Law 100,103, 104–5

Gallagher, Mark,‘Rumble in the USA’168–9

Gallup, George 109Gamson, Joshua, Claimsto Fame 55, 146–7

Gandhy, Behroze 95–6,134

Garbo, Greta 18, 69,71, 72, 77, 79–80, 85,86–8, 88, 93, 106,122–3, 145, 166

Gardner, Ava 69, 76–7,163

Garland, Judy 10Garson, Greer 82, 163gender, and star studies

24–5Geraghty, Christine

55–7, 130, 155‘Performing as a Lady

and a Dame:Reflections on Actingand Genre’ 60

‘Re-examiningStardom: Questionsof Texts, Bodies andPerformance’ 56–7

Gere, Richard 164German cinema 79–80,

113, 153–4

224

I N D E X

Gershwin, George 161Ghosh, Sujoy 170Gibson, Mel 164Gibson, Pamela Churchsee Hill, John

Gigi (1958) 167Gilliam, Terry 73Gish, Lillian 18, 110,

163glamour(problems of)

definition 68–9role in star quality

68–72, 189–90n3Glancy, Mark see

Chapman, JamesGleason, George see

Stimpart, LarryGledhill, Christine‘Signs of Melodrama’

124–6Stardom: Industry ofDesire 10, 24, 25,26–9, 29

Glen, John 167Glickenhaus, James

168Glimcher, Arne 167Glover, Danny 165Godard, Jean-Luc 71,

89, 115The Godfather (1972)

46, 47Goffman, Erving, ThePresentation of Self inEveryday Life 41–2,46

Goldberg, Whoopi 56,98, 162, 164

Gone with the Wind(1939) 82

Gong Fu Zhi Wang (TheForbidden Kingdom)(2008) 182

Gong Li 173good looksadditional factors

required 76–7commodification 78–9decline, career impact

73–4female 74–9and muscularity 79,

164–5, 178–9relationship with star

quality 66, 72–9 (seealso photogeny)

relationship withtechnology 77–8

Good Night, and GoodLuck (2005) 119

Good Time Girl (1948)131

Goodbye, Mr Chips(1939) 81–2

Goulding, Edmund 86Grable, Betty 78, 108,

163Graham, Sheila 143Grand Hotel (1932)

86–8, 88Grant, Cary 40, 42, 43,

43–4, 116, 158Grant, Hugh 164Greek cinema 113Grier, Pam 162Gundle, StephenGlamour: A History

68–9‘Sophia Loren, Italian

Icon’ 160Gwynne, Edith 142–3

HHamilton, Dennis 131Hammerstein, Oscar II

161Hanks, Tom 98Harper, Sue see

Chapman, JamesHarris, Sue 13–14Haskin, Byron 160Hathaway, Henry 158Hawks, Howard 116Hawn, Goldie 98, 163Hayworth, Rita 13, 70,

192n6Heagle, Anna 190n6Heche, Anne 39Hello Dolly! (1969) 118Henreid, Paul 83Hepburn, Audrey

190n7Hepburn, Katherine

145, 164Here Come the Huggetts

(1948) 131Hero (2004) 171Herzog, Charlotte

28–9Hill, John, and Pamela

Church Gibson, TheOxford Guide to FilmStudies 11

History is Made at Night(1937) 83–4

Hitchcock, Alfred 39,88, 116, 167

Hobart, Rose 9Hoffman, Dustin 56Hoffman, Michael 119Holiday Camp (1947)

131Holliday, Judy 80

225


Hollinger, Karen, TheActress 12, 38, 57–60

Hollows, Joanne, et al.,The Film StudiesReader 11

Hollywoodcontracts 101–6global importance

165–6increased autonomy of

stars 97–8journalism 142–3public relations

197–8n13publicity 138–43,

196–7nn10–11,199n19

talent agencies 113–14treatment of race

165–74see also studio systemThe Hollywood Reporter

143Holmes, Diana 71‘“A Girl of Today”:

Brigitte Bardot’151–3

see also Gaffney, JohnHolmes, Su 189n6homosexuality, rumours

of 145–6, 199n18Hong Kong cinema 168Hopper, Hedda 109,

143, 198n16House of the FlyingDaggers (2004) 171

Houseboat (1958) 158Howard, Leslie 82Howitt, Peter 59Hudson, Rock 93Hughes, Ken 133

Hunnebelle, André 70Hurt, John 164Hutchinson, Josephine

192n6‘hyphenates’ 117–20

II Married a Woman

(1958) 133, 200n3The Ides of March (2011)

119Ieri, oggi, domani

(Yesterday, Today andTomorrow, 1963)158

The Imposter (1944) 84In Which Annie Gives ItThose Ones (TV,1989) 146

Independent MotionPicture Company(IMP) 27

Indian cinema 12, 66,89–90, 114–15,134–8

actors in Hollywood170–1

advertising 138fan culture 135–7,

146–7glamour 189–90n3marketing 196n8role of internet 136–7star system 95–7,

191n2stars’ pay 191–2n4stars’ private lives

134–5, 198n17Indochine (1992) 75Inglourious Basterds

(2009) 73

Ingram, Rex 166Interview with a Vampire

(1994) 73Interview with theVampire (1994) 117

Introducing DorothyDandridge (1999)162

Irons, Jeremy 170Island in the Sun (1957)

161It Happened One Night

(1934) 115Italian cinema 53–4Iversen, Gunnar 71–2

JThe Jacket (2005) 119Jackie Chan’s First Strike

(1997) 168Jagta Raho (Stay Awake,

1956) 96Jannings, Emil 74Jeffs, Christine 59Johar, Karan 115, 146Jolie, Angelina 72Jordan, Neil 73, 117Jourdan, Louis 167journalism 142–3Jugert, Rudolf 153

KKajol 67Kanter, Hal 133Kapoor, Raj 93, 96,

115, 117, 134Kapps, Walter 70Karloff, Boris 93Kelly, Gene 93, 118Kelly, Grace 71, 116,

163

226

I N D E X

Kendall, Kay 156Kerr, Deborah 82Kerr, Paul, TheHollywood FilmIndustry 31

Khan, Aamir 97, 138,182

Khan, Farah 90, 119Khan, Mehboob 96,

115Khan, Shah Rukh 66,67, 89–90, 93, 97,115, 119, 136, 137,137–8, 146, 171,182, 200–1n8

A Kid for Two Farthings(1955) 156

Kidman, Nicole 57, 171Kilgallen, Dorothy 142King, Barry 16, 31–3,

55, 126–7‘Articulating Stardom’

31, 124, 125–6‘Embodying the Elastic

Self: The Parametricsof ContemporaryStardom’ 32

‘Stardom as anOccupation’ 31,103–4

‘The Hollywood StarSystem’ 31

King, Henry 154Klevan, Andrew, FilmPerformance 40–1

Knef, Hildegard 153–4Knightley, Keira 173Kourelou, Olga 127,

171Krämer, Peter 38see also Lovell, Alan

Kramer, Stanley 158Krishen, Pradip 146Kubrick, Stanley 117Kuhn, AnnetteCinema Culture in1930s Britain 80–1

‘Film Stars in 1930sBritain: A CaseStudy in Modernityand Femininity’ 80

Kumar, Dilip 96, 115

LThe L-Shaped Room

(1962) 157La Cava, Gregory 83La Ciociara (TwoWomen, 1960) 158

Laban, Rudolf 63LaBute, Neil 59Ladd, Alan 158Laemmle, Carl 27Lamarr, Hedy 76–7Lancaster, Burt 79, 117Landy, Marcia,

‘Yesterday, Today,and Tomorrow:Tracking ItalianStardom’ 53–4

Langley, Noel 154Lassie 92Laughton, Charles 74,

82Laurel and Hardy 40Laux, Judith see

Stimpart, LarryLaw, Jude 164Lawrence, Amy, ThePassion ofMontgomery Clift 14

Lawrence, Florence 27

Lawrence, Michael 116Lean, David 131Leander, Zarah 79–80,

113Lee, Ang 60, 170Lee, Belinda 156Legend of the Lost (1957)

158Leigh, Janet 39Leigh, Vivien 82Leno, Jay 141The Leopard (1963) 73Letter From an UnknownWoman (1948) 167

Letterman, David 141Letty Lynton (1932)

28–9Li, Jet 165, 182, 182–3,

195n5Life is Beautiful (1997)see La Vita é bella

Liman, Doug 72Linder, Max 128Litvak, Anatole 106,

154Livesey, Roger 80Lollobrigida, Gina 79Lom, Herbert 157The Long Haul (1957)

133, 200n3Loren, Sophia 79, 154,

155, 157–60, 174,200n3

Lorre, Peter 83Loughton, Phyllis

192n6The Love Specialist see Laregazza del palio

Lovell, Alan 126(and Peter Krämer),Screen Acting 62

227


Lukas, Paul 83Lundgren, Dolph 79,

165Lux soap 138

MMacDonald, David

131MacKaye, Steele 42Madame Bovary (1949)

167Mademoiselle de Paris

(1955) 70Madonna 58magazines 142American 196–7n10,

198n15Chinese 196n7English 129French 128–9, 151Indian 135–8Main Hoon Na (I AmHere for You, 2004)90, 119

Majumdar, Neepa,Wanted CulturedLadies Only! FemaleStardom and Cinemain India, 1930s–1950s12, 189–90n3

The Mambo Kings(1992) 167

managers 114Mankiewicz, Joseph L.

40Mann, Anthony 158Mannequins de Paris

(1956) 70Mansfield, Jayne 79,

161Marais, Jean 73

Marcello, Starr A.,‘Performance Design:An Analysis of FilmActing and SoundDesign’ 52, 188n3

Marie Walewska (1937)see Conquest

Marino, Coyote seeStimpart, Larry

Mariscal, Ana 190n5Marshall, Herbert 82Marshall, P. David 18,

143–4, 189n5Celebrity and Power 55,

147–8Marshall, Rob 171Martin, Chris 58Martin, Steve 98, 170Marxist theory 33Masala! (magazine) 135‘mask’, as attribute of

star 85, 123Mask, Mia, Divas onScreen 12, 162

Mason, James 82Mastroianni, Marcello

83Mata Hari (1931) 166Matrimonio all’italiana

(Marriage, ItalianStyle, 1964) 158

Matsuzaki, Yuki 170Matthews, Jessie 80–1,

113Mauvais sang (1986)

116Maybury, John 119Mayo, Archie 84McDonald, Paul 31,

33–5, 54, 94–5, 127,144

McDonald, Paul cont.‘Reconceptualising

Stardom’ 33–4‘The Star System:

The Production ofHollywood Stardomin the Post-StudioEra’ 35, 141

The Star System 11,34–5, 97–8, 99, 101,140–1

‘Why Study FilmActing?’ 39

McGrath, Douglas 59McKenna, Virginia

156McLean, Adrienne L.,Being Rita Hayworth:Labor, Identity, andHollywood Stardom13

Medhurst, Andy 149Mehra, Prakash 96–7Mela (The Fair, 1948)

115Melford, George 166Memoirs of a Geisha

(2005) 171–3‘method’ acting 46, 107Michell, Lee 156Minghella, Anthony 59Minnelli, Vincente 118,

167Miranda, Isa 83The Mirror has Two Faces

(1996) 118Mirza, Aziz 119mise en scène 38Mishra, Vijay 135–6Miss World competition

76

228

I N D E X

Mission: Impossible(1978) 97

Mitra, Shombhu 96Molina, Alfred 170Monroe, Marilyn 10,

70, 79, 80, 130, 131,133, 153, 154, 155,156, 160, 161

Monsieur Beaucaire(1924) 166

Moontide (1942) 84Moore, Demi 57Moorehead, Agnes 116Die Mörder sind unteruns (The MurderersAre Among Us, 1946)153

Moreau, Jeanne 89, 115Morin, Edgar, Les Stars

6, 14–16, 74–5, 85,94, 121, 122–3, 143

Morocco (1930) 113Mortimer, Emily 170Mother India (1957) 96,

115, 134Mr and Mrs Smith

(2005) 72Mukherjee, Hrishikesh

93Mulvey, Laura, ‘Visual

Pleasure andNarrative Cinema’24–5, 29

Murphy, Eddie 98, 165

Nnames, choice of 108Naremore, James, Actingin the Cinema 41–5

Nargis 93, 96, 114–15,134, 182

Nashville (1975) 117Negulesco, Jean 158,

167‘New Look’ 70New Wave (British)

157Niblo, Fred 166Nicholson, Jack 117North By Northwest

(1959) 43, 44Norton, Edward 73Norwegian cinema

71–2nouvelle vague 88–9Novak, Kim 154Novella, Rita 166Now, Voyager (1942) 1,2

nuance, studies of 40–1

nude images,unauthorised/faked127

OOberon, Merle 82Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

72, 119Octopussy (1983) 167Olcott, Sidney 166Oliver Twist (1948)

131Olivier, Laurence 82Om Shanti Om (2007)

90, 119On a Clear Day You CanSee Forever (1970)118

One Fine Day (1996)119

Ophüls, Max 167

L’Ora di Napoli (TheGold of Naples, 1954)158

Ozon, François 75

PPalmer, Lilli 83Paltrow, Gwyneth

57–60, 58, 61as celebrity 57–8as performer 58–60The Paradine Case

(1954) 167Les Parapluies deCherbourg (1964) 75

Parry, Gordon 157Parsons, Louella 109,

143, 198n16The Passenger (1975)

117Passport to Shame (1959)

157Patil, Smita 134–5Penn, Sean 141performance theory 38,

39–54Perkins, Victor 40Peterson, Wolfgang 72Phillips, Alastair 82–4Phir Bhi Dil HaiHindustani (But theHeart is Still Indian,2000) 119

photogeny, role in starquality 72–9

Photoplay (magazine)142, 143

Pickford, Mary 110,191–2n4

Pierrot le fou (1965) 71Pierson, Frank 118

229


The Pink Panther 2(2009) 76, 170

Pitt, Brad 58, 72–3,164, 171

Plath, Sylvia 59Poitier, Sidney 149, 161Pokorny, Michael see

Sedgwick, JohnPollack, Sydney 118Porgy and Bess (1959)

161Portman, Eric 111,

193n12Possession (2002) 59posthumous

‘performances’ 46–8Potiche (2010) 75Prague School 63Preminger, Otto 160The Pride and the Passion

(1957) 158Prince of Tides (1991)

118Private Worlds (1935) 83producers, stars as 117The Protector (1985) 168Psycho (1960) 39Psycho (1998) 39publicity 138–43agents 140–1chat shows 141negative 141–2

QQuirk, James R. 143

RRa. One (2010) 170Radner, Hilary 167Rai, Aishwarya 76, 76,

138, 170, 174

Rakoff, Alan 157Ratner, Brett 168Redford, Robert 73Redgrave, Lynn 157Reed, Carol 156Reeves, Keanu 73reflectionism 174–5La regazza del palio

(1958) 157Rekha 136Reno, Jean 170Rin Tin Tin 92Roberts, Julia 57, 72,

98, 163Roberts, Rachel 157Robeson, Paul 10, 80Rocco and His Brothers

(1960) 73Rodriguez, Robert

119Rogers, Ginger 93Rogers, Lela 192n6Rogers & Cowan (PR

firm) 197–8n13Rooney, Mickey 92Rosen, Phil 166Rosenstein, Sophie

192n6Roy, Bimal 96The Royal Tenenbaums

(2002) 59Rumble in the Bronx

(1996) 168Rush Hour (1998)

168–70, 169Russell, Jane 78, 162Rydstrom, Gary 49

SSabrina 156Saint Laurent, Yves 71

Sánchez-Biosca, Vicente167

Sarhadi, Sagar 134Saville, Victor 81–2The Scarlet Empress

(1934) 113Schlöndorff, Volker 74Schumacher, Joel 119Schwarzenegger, Arnold

79, 93, 164scopophilia 24–5Scorsese, Martin 93Scott, Ridley 72Screen Actors Guild

101, 102, 196–7n10scripts 61–3Sedgwick, John, and

Michael Pokorny, AnEconomic History ofFilm 98

Selznick, David O. 116,154

Sennett, Robert S. 33,108, 139, 196–7n10

Hollywood Hoopla 92Sense and Sensibility

(1995) 60Sergi, Gianluca, ‘Actors

and the Sound Gang’49–50, 52

Se7en (1995) 59, 72–3sex symbols 154–64,

178–9, 201n9Shakespeare in Love

(1998) 59, 61Shallow Hal (2002) 59Shanghai Express (1931)

113Shankar, S. 170Shavelson, Melville

158

230

I N D E X

The Sheik (1921) 166The Shining (1975)

117Sholay (Flames/Embers,

1975) 97, 138Shree 420 (Mr. 420,

1955) 115Sieglohr, Ulrike, Heroineswithout Heroes 11,153–4

Singh, Sunny 200–1n8Sinha, Anubhav 170Sinha, Mohan 114Sippy, Ramesh 97Sirk, Douglas 93Sliding Doors (1998)

59Smith, Susan 81–2Smith, Will 102, 165Snipes, Wesley 165The Snows of Kilimanjaro

(1952) 154Soderbergh, Steven 72,

116, 119Soila, Tytti, StellarEncounters 11–12,72, 80, 126

The Son of the Sheik(1926) 166

sound 49–50, 49–51early development (late

1920s) 77–8factors beyond actor’s

control 50Spacek, Sissy 116Spacey, Kevin 73Spazzoini, Maddalena

158St John, Adele Rogers

143Stacey, Jackie 16, 129

Stacey, Jackie cont.‘Feminine Fascinations:

Forms ofIdentification inStar–AudienceRelations’ 29

Star Gazing 25, 29–31,69–70, 78–9

Staiger, JanetInterpreting Films:Studies in theHistorical Receptionof American Cinema25

‘Seeing Stars’ 26–7Stallone, Sylvester 79,

98, 164, 165Stanislavski, Konstantin

38, 63, 107Stanwyck, Barbara 40,

116, 192n5Star Decades: AmericanCulture/AmericanCinema series 12–13

A Star Is Born (1976)118

star quality 3–4, 7,15–16, 65–91

assessment 109commodification 78–9,

94–5gendering 24–5, 74–5(problems of)

definition 65, 68–9,121

process of attaining37–8, 106–11

role of looks 72–9role of voice 79–84

star studies 1–3case studies 12–13

star studies cont.development 4–5,

10–35future directions

181–5‘Hollywoodcentric’

approach 11methodology 6,

37–64non-western 12tendency to hyperbole

16–18starsacting ability 84–90acting styles 23, 38–9,

44–6audience responses to

22–3, 30–1, 44–5as celebrities 55–61,

110contracts 100–6discoveries 106–11distinguished from

other actors 95female 57, 59–60,

74–5, 154–64image, legal right to

103–5legal transgressions

141–2male vs female 24–5,

191–2n4‘marquee value’ 109as performers/

professionals 56–7,58–60

private lives, focus on55, 57–8, 126–7,130–7, 134–5, 141–2,143–7, 161, 181

publicity agents 140–1

231


‘marquee value’ cont.‘real person,’

revelations of 141–2,147–8 (see also stars:private lives)

relationships withstudios 34–5

(re)naming 108,194n1

role in society/popularculture 1–3, 8–10,21, 55–64

salaries 95–6, 102,191–2n4

screen persona 43–4,56–7, 111–14, 121–6, 148, 149,194–5nn1–4

as social archetypes176–7

socio-cultural context174–8

typecasting 110–11vehicles 111–14,

193n14voice, creation of

49–50Staude, Wolfgang 153Steiger, Rod 133Sten, Anna 190n4Sternberg, Josef von

113Stewart, James 42, 80,

116Stimpart, Larry, et al.,

‘Factors InfluencingMotion PictureSuccess: EmpiricalReview and Update’98–9

Strasberg, Lee 107

Streep, Meryl 56,191–2n4

Street, Sarah 82Streisand, Barbra 77,118, 118–19, 176–7

Strickling, Howard 139studio system 34–5,

92–3, 94–5contracts 101–6discoveries 106–11publicity 138–43,

196–7nn10–11,199n19

suspensions 103Sturges, Preston 116Sulochana 189–90n3Die Sünderin (TheSinner, 1951) 154

Sunny, S. U. 115Superman Returns

(2006) 46Susan and God (1940) 9Svengali (1954) 154Swank, Hilary 164Swann in Love (1983)

74Swanson, Gloria 110Sylvia (2003) 59

Ttalent agencies 113–14The Talented Mr Ripley

(1999) 59Taplinger, Bob 139Tarantino, Quentin 73Tarzan and the JungleQueen (1951) 160

Tasker, Yvonne 79,164–5

Tebaldi, Renata 200n3Temple, Shirley 92, 123

Tendulkar, Sachin 138Thakur, Anant 115Thelma and Louise

(1991) 72Thom, Randy 49Thomas, Rosie 95–6,

134Thompson, Emma 60Thompson, J. Lee 131,

156Thompson, John O.,

‘Screen Acting andthe CommutationTest’ 39–40

Three Coins in theFountain (1954) 167

Tianya (web forum)127

Titanic (1997) 60,188n3

Tomasulo, Frank seeBaron, Cynthia

Tong, Stanley 168Tourneur, Jacques 167Tovarich (1937) 106Träumerei (Dreaming,

1944) 153–4Travolta, John 164Tread Softly Stranger

(1958) 157Trintignant, Jean-Louis

193n15Troy (2004) 72Truffaut, François 89,

115Tucker, Chris 169,

169–70Turner, Lana 123Tushingham, Rita 157Twelve Monkeys (1995)

73

232

I N D E X

The Two Ronnies (TV)133

typecasting 110–11, 113

UUllman, Liv 71–2The Unholy Wife (1957)

133, 200n3

VVadim, Roger 70, 75,

193n15Valentino, Rudolph 72,

73, 166, 167Value for Money (1956)

156van Damme, Jean-

Claude 164van Sant, Gus 39Ventura, Lino 71Verdi, Giuseppe 157–8Verneuil, Henri 71Versois, Odile 157Vincendeau, Ginette

82–3‘“Not for Export”: Jean

Gabin in Hollywood’84

Stars and Stardom inFrench Cinema 11,70–1, 73–4, 75, 88–9,128–9, 167

Visconti, Luchino 73–4,174

La Vita é bella (Life isBeautiful, 1997) 53–4

Vlahopoulou, Rena 113

Vogue 58voice(s)comedic 80creation of 49–50importance to star

quality 79–84studies 188n4

von Trier, Lars 75Vougiouklaki, Aliki 113

WWalls, W. David see De

Vany, ArthurWanger, Walter 106Wargnier, Régis 75Washington, Denzel

164, 165Watanabe, Ken 127The Way We Were (1973)

118Wayne, John 93, 123,

158The Weak and the Wicked

(1954) 156Weber, Max, Economyand Society 19

websites, star/fan195–6nn5–6

Weiss, Andrea 145–6Welch, Raquel 163Welles, Orson 80, 116West, Mae 164What’s Up Doc? (1972)

118Wide Angle (journal) 26,

27Wilder, Billy 154

Wilkerson, Billy 143Wilkinson, Tom 169Williams, Robin 98Winchell, Walter 142Winfrey, Oprah 162Winslet, Kate 60Wojcik, Pamela

Robertson 50–2, 116‘The Sound of Film

Acting’ 50–1Wyler, William 118

YYentl (1983) 118Yeoh, Michelle 173Yield to the Night (1956)130, 131–3, 132, 156

Yingjin Zhang seeFarquhar, Mary

Young, Clara Kimball144

The Young Rajah (1922)166

ZZampa, Luigi 157Zanjeer (Shackles, 1973)

96–7Zhang Yimou 171Zhang Ziyi 127, 171–3,172, 182

Zwatt, Harold 170Zwischen Gestern unMorgen (BetweenYesterday andTomorrow, 1947)153

233

List of Illustrations

While considerable effort has been made to correctly identify the copyright

holders, this has not been possible in all cases. We apologise for any apparent

negligence and any omissions or corrections brought to our attention will be

remedied in any future editions.

Now, Voyager, © Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.; Susan and God, Metro-Goldwyn-

Mayer; North by Northwest, © Loew’s Inc.; The Godfather, © Paramount Pictures

Corporation; La Vita é bella, © Melampo Cinematografica Srl; Gwyneth Paltrow,

British Vogue cover (February 1998), photograph: Mario Testino, Conde Nast

Publications Ltd; Shakespeare in Love, © Miramax Films/© Universal Pictures;

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Yash Raj Films International; Grand Hotel, © Metro-

Goldwyn-Mayer Distributing Corp.; Andaz, Mehboob Productions; Tovarich,

Warner Bros.; Yentl, © Ladbroke Entertainments Limited; Yield to the Night,

Associated British Picture Corporation/Associated British Pathé/Kenwood Films;

Amitabh Bachchan, Masala! cover (vol. 9, issue 400, August 2011), ITP

Publishing Group; Shah Rukh Khan, Filmfare cover (8 December 2010), World

Wide Media; Doris Day, American Photoplay cover (October 1955), Macfadden

Publications; Les Bijoutiers du Clair de Lune, Iéna/U.C.I.L./C.E.I.A.P.; Carmen

Jones, © Carlyle Productions; Rush Hour, © New Line Productions, Inc.; Memoirs

of a Geisha, © Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc./© DreamWorks LLC/© Spyglass

Entertainment Group, LLC; The Forbidden Kingdom, © J&J Project, LLC.

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