American Film Institute

Poster for the film Cleopatra (1917), starring Theda Bara.

The success of these marketing techniques created a need for publicity departments that could supply and disseminate controlled information. This division of the studio was responsible for taking a newly "discovered" actor, sculpting his or her physical appearance and developing the actor's publishable history.

With these industry mechanisms in place, the star-making machinery was up and running. As we will see, the results both benefited and restricted actors: genre stereotypes could launch faces to fame but then typecast them until the end of their careers; the unending desire to know more about a star made that personality familiar and beloved, but it also ended his or her ability to have any privacy.

The business of creating a star
"Types" emerged almost immediately out of the publicity departments, and went hand-in-hand with newly forming genres such as romances, comedies and action films. An actor who grew up in New Jersey, for instance, could gain a wholly fictitious history in order to be packaged as a Western star. By outfitting him in a ten-gallon hat, propagating stories about his calf-roping prowess and starring him in cowboy roles, publicity men could transform him into a famedfrontiersman.

American Film Institute

From her role as The Vampire in 1915's A Fool There Was through other femme fatale parts, such as Cleopatra and Salome, Theda Bara became known as Hollywood's first vamp.

One "type" created entirely by businessmen was the vamp, first embodied by Theda Bara. Born Theodosia Goodman in Cincinnati, Fox's publicity department molded her into an Arab siren. By the time of her debut in 1915, movie mogul William Fox had sent out voluminous material detailing how her name was an anagram for "Arab Death" and declaring that she shared an astrological sign with Cleopatra. Her reputation as a vamp, derived from the idea of sexual vampirism, was cemented with each of her femme fatale film roles. This tradition of continually casting an actor in similar roles in order to reinforce a particular image continues today; it can be traced from Marilyn Monroe's repeated "dumb blonde" characters in the 1950s to Meg Ryan's sweet romantics of the 1990s and 2000s.

As early as 1918, the advertising department at Famous Players-Lasky (soon to be Paramount) equaled the size of its production and distribution arms. As demand for promotion increased, so did supply. By the 1920s, the audiences clamored for gossip about their favorite celebrities, and the publicity departments and fan magazines supplied it with relish. Soon, the private lives of public people became household small talk. Sex appeal quickly became a nationwide marketing tool, and advertisements flourished with stars hyping shampoo, clothing lines, cars and furniture.

	Thinking Points
	Do contemporary films still employ the classical Hollywood style? If so, how do these filming techniques influence your impression of the character and the actor or actress?

Onscreen techniques also continued to alter the relationship between viewer and subject, positioning the stars as the ultimate fantasy. Filmmakers were creating what we now know as the classical Hollywood style, in which the film's protagonist is in almost every shot, photographed using the most flattering makeup, clothing and lighting. Point-of-view shots--in which the star looks at something outside the frame and then the next shot focuses on the object at which they looked--gave the star an implied power, in that what we see is limited to what he or she "sees." In addition, the main character is usually isolated in the center of the frame, to be stared at and admired by the viewer.

With the increased interest in stars came increased power for the actors. In the 1910s and 1920s, Mary Pickford and Rudolf Valentino held the tightest grip on the collective heart of America. Pickford took over for the departed Florence Lawrence at Biograph for $175 per week. Soon known as "America's Sweetheart," by 1918 Pickford earned over $1 million per year.

Library of Congress LC-USZC4-7317

Film poster for Through the Back Door (1921), starring Mary Pickford.

Together with Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks, she formed United Artists in 1919, the first talent-run studio and an example of the kind of command stars had grown to possess. For the first time, actors had some control over their product.

Like Pickford, Rudolf Valentino emerged in the early 1920s as a huge star, due in part to his shrewd packaging by one of the first and most famous press agents, Harry Reichenbach. At Reichenbach's urging, Valentino grew a beard in the assumption that it would create a negative reaction. When it did, his subsequent return to favor (after shaving) marked him as one of the screen's leading luminaries. His death in 1926 saw over 10,000 mourners take to the streets to pay him homage.

The true power behind stars lies with the audience. Stars had power as long as they could continue to bring in money, whether through the sale of tickets or auxiliary products. While some actors and their managers managed to manipulate the system to their advantage, others foundered beneath its demands and limitations. Clara Bow, discussed in the next session, is one of the latter.