The 1930’s presented a new challenge to Hollywood, sound. This change meant that actors were going to be heard and studios needed new actors. At first they began by calling over actors from the stage and trying to have that actor adapt to a new medium. Unlike cinema stage acting is on a much smaller scale and it is of tradition stage acting to produce over pronounced if not exaggerated bodily movement and words. In other words they were to be as flamboyant as possible to get the message across to a whole room. Cinema on the other hand was a blown up version of that. The screen was a larger and so did the person acting, now the whole room can see the actor at virtually the same scale. Therefore actions needed to be minimized because they were on a much larger scale and became more of an attempt to be realistic. The studios later moved on to create a streamlined process of acing training. At the same time during this era the star system was becoming a much bigger phenomenon among Hollywood’s actors and actresses. During this time and through out the way of the star system, it was understood that stars became stars by virtue of the movie, but being in the movie was merely a vessel to propel stardom. With each new movie, photoshoot, interview, and other media publishings the public began to believe they were getting to know more and more of that star. That’s how it worked people wanted to know the real person behind the performer. And it was the job pf the publicists and the production company to sell a like able image and persona of that person. Bette Davis was the complete opposite.
Bette Davis first began as a stage actress and was an actress for Warner Bros. At the time Warner Bros. was known for being a production company that intended on being efficient, they were known pump out a high volume of films every year and focused less on quality. Warner Bros., also had a unique editing style that made it hard to distinguish actor’s performances, on top of that Bette Davis was trying to be marketed as another platinum blonde movie star. This all changed when Bette was to be the star of an upcoming stage adaption of the play Of Human Bondage. As stated in the article Bette Davis: acor/star by Martin Shingler and Christine Geldhill it is stated that”she(Bette) worked with a director who for the first time was interested in capturing her intensity as a performer. John Cromwell ensured that the
nuances of her physical movements were not edited out in the interests of fast-paced narration.” Her performance in this movie would garner immediate critical attention, high praise, and traject her life towards a, unique type of stardom.
Bette would go to be a Hollywood star that was widely known for because of her acting. She was first and foremost an actor than a star. Her continuously high praise for her acting is what kept her in the limelight and made her a star. This was different from other stars at the time who were more known iconically rather than through their work. The story from Of Human Bondage is uniquely special to Bette Davis because it would characterize her work as an actress as well as her persona. In her breakout film Bette plays a woman who lies throughout the entire movie and only at the end does she reveals her true self. In the performance Bette convinces everyone listening and therefore us, this display of duality became a recurring characteristic for Bette’s future roles. Her character’s would often be liars, therefore her onscreen persona differed from that of many others. While other actors were pretending to be real, Bette was pretending to be fake and she was selling it. This then reversed the star persona for Bette, since Bette played a liar people did not know who she was in real life because the other stars went in movies that generally accommodate their off screen persona. Bette Davis therefore represented a somewhat antithesis to the star persona, where in Bette Davis:actor/star it is said that “according to De Cordova, was the convention for Hollywood stars – but rather the secret of personality itself: that it is a fabrication, designed, constructed and performed.” And because of this she also did a unique thing of a star, she tried hide her off screen personality as much as possible to not take away from her skills and performances off screen. Because of this she was sought out to be seen on screen even more since there was no other outlet for her to be seen on. The 1930’s represented changes in not only the history of cinema itself as an artform but also the system of the star and what it can be.