Anonymous Players
On June 19, 1905, in Pittsburgh, Pa., when audiences sat down to watch the first feature-length moving picture, The Great Train Robbery, the actors bringing the story to life remained entirely anonymous.  | | The Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center | | A film still taken from Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery (1903). |
Although other forms of entertainment, such as theater and vaudeville, employed known stars, the early film studios formed a monopoly and together resisted identifying their actors, fearing this would give them greater power to command higher salaries. Within a matter of years, however, the "star system" had become a driving force behind the motion picture profession--certain actors regularly played lead roles, became easily identifiable, developed personas on- and offscreen, revealed (sometimes artificial) personal backgrounds, and enthralled the imaginations of the public. was the audience that provided the main thrust for the formation of the star system. Long before studios were willing to point out particular players, viewers demanded that theater owners request a list of the actors' names from the production companies. Fans flooded exhibitors, studios and periodicals with letters asking to know names of stars. When studios saw the audiences flexing their economic power--typically, by choosing one exhibitor over another because of the stars or genres it featured--they gave the people what they wanted. The phenomenon of stars already existed at the turn of the century in the theater and vaudeville communities, but the advent of movie stars provided audiences with a new and distinct group of celebrities. Movies were marketed to working-class audiences and presented as less legitimate than plays. One effect of this was to make the stars seem less pretentious. Immediately, film audiences felt a close, personal relationship to their favorite actors. In contrast to the formality reserved for theater actors, who were known, for example, as Mr. Sothern or Mrs. Fiske, movie actors were referred to by their first names--Mary Pickford, for instance, became Little Mary.
|
|
