To engage with idea of the Hollywood star system and understand it we must understand it from the beginning up until now. This understanding from the start will help to realize the evolution the system. The star system began with Florence Lawrence, fake death was publicized and staged to be the work of another competing company. It may seem like a strange thing to do but its true intentions were to raise awareness to the actress’s name. This was the first instance in which a movie star’s name was publicized and promoted for an upcoming film. That strategy later on is what comes to be known as the star system. The appropriation of a name and associated persona that is manipulated and displayed to be shown to the public is exactly what the intention of the system was. Stars are things we look up to physically in space and so are the actors and actresses of the Hollywood star system. Production companies with contracted actors or actresses competed to create the most popular persona for a person that could be used to promote upcoming films. Stars became more synonymous with an image and not directly with their acting abilities.
“Stars matter because they act out aspects of life that matter to us; and performers get to be stars when they act out matters to enough people.”(Dyer, 17). This is the first sentence Dyer’s piece about Monroe’s persona as a sexual icon during the 50’s and becoming one the most iconic stars in history. A good way to look at the concept the star system comes from The Building of Popular Images, Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe by Thomas Harris. Here Harris compares two largely popular movie stars and the same time with two different personas. By looking at this we can see how the same avenues are taken to create a str but both on opposite ends of the spectrum Monroe was marketed as sexual icon intended for the male gaze and represented what mattered to men on a sexual nature. While Grace Kelly was marketed as teh girl that was ideal mate for a long term relationship, she represented the american icon of a woman and family. Both represent ideal representation of a woman but with completely different appeal, one being the innate sexual desire and the other representing the ideal woman that meets social standards.
For example Grace Kelly was featured in magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Mcall’s, Women’s Home Companion, Mademoiselle, and Good House Keeping. While Marilyn Monroe was a at one point a pin-up model, in the first Playboy magazine, Esquire, and Coronet. These magazines had different target audiences with different rhetoric and ideas of each person being written in each. They both use magazines and media to promote an image they just present different images.
Now Monroe’s success as discussed by Dyer became a natural process from sexualized Playboy model and pin up girl to sexualized performer and star. Her star persona that became so wildly popular in this time became largely reliant on her life before acting. Because of her life before acting and as a nude model she or the studio was able to maintain that her sexualized persona was true. I think in large part of this ability to validate the persona is what Monroe so immensely popular. She no longer was an image but became real. Her persona was not only real but was also attractive and intriguing at the same time. This was because her persona broke many societal rules and her star persona became controversial. I personally believe that often times in media and especially news like a controversial event people are immediately intrigued by it. Or when a movie or book is known as being controversial it often happens to become very popular. Her sexual background and persona was exploited continually when she became a movie actress. As discussed it was shown how the camera in Gentleman Prefer Blondes was often in a full to wide or medium shot. This was done for the purpose of the maintaining the audience’s focus on Monroe’s body. By doing so we subconsciously create her body as a central and integral part of not only the frame but of the movie. This focus in the film I did not even notice originally, it is evident in the photo shoots but in the moving picture I did not recognize my own attention towards Monroe’s body and its centrality towards her persona.
From here we can see how outlets of all sorts multimedia platforms become integral into the creation of a star. The star system promotes name and likeness to create a like able persona. And it is shown strongly with the creation of the Marilyn Monroe.