The Faces of Cinema

Just like how there is no king without his kingdom, there is no star without their audience. The concept of a star is entirely built on their widespread public influence, and sometimes stars can appear as deities rather than mere humans like you and me. As it turns out, stars are well aware of that fact, and work hard to maintain this illusion. One concrete thing that separates stars from non-stars is the stars’ copious amounts of wealth, and as such it is beneficial for them to show it off. It is commonplace for the extravagant and leisurely activities of wealthy movie stars to be publicized so everyone knows they have money to burn. Despite this, it is also important for stars to maintain a down-to-earth sense of relatability alongside their larger than life lifestyles, lest they can lose their audience’s personal connection with them. This is accomplished through a careful balance of wealth flaunting and interviews that delve into the personal life of the star.

Thanks to this delicately crafted imagery, stars are often perceived to be the ideal form a human can take, and the very definition of what everyone should strive to be. However not everyone will be able to relate to every star, and so to cast a wide net of relatability, stars often gravitate towards very general personalities. O.E. Klapp lays out a wide array of what he calls social types to categorize how people are theoretically supposed to act. Richard Dyer highlights a few of these social types that are especially applicable to 20th century movie stars, those types being the Good Joe, the Tough Guy, and the Pin Up. The Good Joe is a traditional everyman, polite and non confrontational. The Tough Guy is exactly what it sounds like: a guy who’s rough around the edges and “plays by their own rules.” I personally am not a super big fan of tough guys, but that’s mostly because I have a hard time seeing why other people like them so much. Most of the time they just seem like jerks to me, although usually the trope contains some nuance as well. Finally, the Pin Up is more of a stereotype than a type, and is essentially the token woman of the cast. The term “pin up” comes from the fact that these women are usually models famous for their looks, and various posters and other imagery are often produced of them for buyers to “pin up” on their wall. As such, it’s not hard to guess that the Pin Up is not characterized by her unique personality, charm, or acting talents, but rather like most women at the time: by her body.

  

It likely comes as no surprise to anyone that women get the short end of the stick compared to men when it comes to Klapp’s social types. In truth, many of these male exclusive types can be applied to women as well, depending on the media. Despite all of this, oftentimes the most successful type is one that subverts tradition. Marlene Dietrich was a famous actress from the 40’s who largely embodied the trope of “femme fatale” or “fatal woman” in french. In a sense, the femme fatale is similar to other female character archetypes of the time in that the focus of her character is largely her sexual appeal to the men around her. However it differs in that the femme fatale is aware of her own influence over men and uses it to her advantage, sometimes connivingly. This trope often makes for more involved female characters, as despite the focus being on their sexuality, they make an impact on the narrative through their actions.

Dietrich was well known for playing these kinds of characters in the mid 20th century, and she became extremely popular for doing so. She got so big, in fact, that films were constantly being written and produced specifically for her. Films that are created around a certain individual are known as ‘star vehicles’. It was common for directors to in a sense “partner up” with stars and create countless star vehicles for them to act in and propel their career to greater heights. Director Josef von Sternberg, who was previously famous for his crime films, took this partner role with Dietrich, and the two made many films together. Unfortunately for Dietrich and many other female stars at the time, partnerships with male directors (there were very few female ones) often led to the majority of the actresses success being attributed to the director rather than her. Sternberg himself has claimed that he “made” Dietrich, giving her little credit for her own accomplishments.

In the early days of cinema, movies were marketed much differently than they are today. Actors were almost never part of the advertising process. They were essentially considered to be laborers, no more socially important than your average factory worker. Movies were, instead, marketed based on their premises and directors, and that didn’t change for a long time. One of the first actors to be named publicly was a woman named Florence Lawrence. Lawrence was known by some as the “Biograph Girl” due to her numerous movie appearances (nearly 300!) and the fact that she was one of the first women to lead her own film studio in the US. Florence Lawrence is considered by many to be the first ever “movie star,” and what she started slowly began to snowball into one of the greatest phenomena in all of entertainment: the parasocial relationship based celebrity machine known as the Hollywood star system, which would then go on to fuel film related marketing to this very day.

Before the age of red carpets and movie stars, the public focused their adoration (and scrutiny) on more “productive” members of society. People like the titans of industry: Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Ford, and Morgan were the closest you would get to today’s movie stars in terms of public attention. But when the entertainment industry took over the celebrity scene, it took over hard, and now the term celebrity itself is almost fully intertwined with show business. One of the most prolific stars of the 20th century was a model turned actress named Marilyn Monroe. Monroe began her film crusade out of the spotlight, with very few named roles, limited screentime, and clearly only featured for sex appeal, as opposed to charisma or acting talent. Monroe quickly played into this sex appeal and made it her own, becoming increasingly popular with audiences and critics alike. Monroe’s career really started taking off in 1953, where the first three films featuring Monroe as a starring role were released (Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire). She was voted the top female box-office star in the US, and soon began featuring in dozens of magazines and performing publicity stunts.

It is important for movie stars to forge a ‘star’ identity that remains consistent across their roles and is somewhat based on their true selves, and Monroe pulled this off better than anyone before her. She had become the new American symbol of sex, and as the old adage goes: sex sells. In the 1950’s, many people acted outwardly prude, and Monroe absolutely flew in the face of that notion, with an extremely casual approach to sex that had not been seen prior, which boosted her publicity and engagement sky-high. In the circles that did condone outwardly expressing sexual interest, there were debates regarding ‘natural beauty’. Beauty without the need for additives or alterations was seen as superior. During these times there was a general bias toward ‘naturalness,’ or the idea that the way humans would act if we lived in nature and were stripped of society and its rules has its benefits. As has been voiced by countless commentators throughout the years, Monroe fully embodies this idea of both natural sex and beauty, and these were both reflected strongly in her acting roles. While she largely played the part of the ‘Dumb Blonde’ which I will get into later, Monroe’s roles were largely characterized by a simultaneous sense of promiscuity as well as innocence. These two descriptors would appear to be contradictory at first glance, but with Monroe’s treatment of sex as entirely natural and nothing to be ashamed of, it doesn’t interfere with the naivete of her characters. This combination proved to be very popular with male audiences especially, and her popularity as an actress continued to climb and climb.

While many of Monroe’s successes could be attributed to her femininity, that does not mean that making it as an actress in the sexist landscape of the 1950’s didn’t come without its hurdles. Thanks to her reputation as a ‘dumb blonde’, Marilyn was forced to suppress her intelligence, and was generally only scripted to display it as cunning when tricking men with sexual temptations. When she married Arthur Miller, a famous playwright, some of her fans felt betrayed because they felt that someone like Monroe shouldn’t consort with “intellectuals” as it didn’t fit her brand. Monroe was married a few times throughout her life, and each time to massive publicity. But it was actually considerably beneficial to her to be unmarried as it made her appear more “attainable” to her male audience.