Welslyan University's Jeanine Basinger writes about the machine that made the stars - as academic or as fan?
An Informed Fan
An informed fan may be the best description of Jeanine Basinger, the former usherette now the chair of Film Studies at Welslyan University. As her book on movie stars past and present, The Star Machine, proves, the leap to academia did nothing to diffuse the brightly burning torch she continues to carry for those who illuminate the silver screen.
The book is a series of enthusiastic fan letters, lightly but evenly sprinkled with historical research. After an initial treatise on the machinations of the Machievellian studio system - the era when the bosses controlled all aspects of a celebrity's life - the book becomes a series of bios of icons from Basinger's formative years, the Truman period just after the war and before the ubiquity of rock and roll (though some celebrities more associated with the '30's are thrown in.)
Middle-rung Names
To her credit, the personalities that comprise this era have suffered from a bad case of scant literary attention; middle-rung names like Tyrone Power (the book's centrepiece,) Anne Sheridan, June Allyson and John Hodiak. There are even a few pages devoted to character actors like Edward Arnold and to obscuria like Anna Sten. In short, just about anyone whose persona, for whatever reason, failed to last the way the cachés of a Bogart and a Brando have.
Star Quality
I do not use the words "for whatever reason" lightly - for in fact, that's the book's big question: what exactly is star quality? What is that unnameable factor that separates the Marilyn Monroes from the Marilyn Maxwells? For all of her steepage in celebrity culture, Basinger ends up following the leads of studio heads and pundits before her. Like them, she fails to come up with a definitive answer.
What she demonstrates instead is a die-hard empathy for the plight of the cinematically famous. For all of their money and fame, celebrities both then and now, Basinger points out, work extraordinarily long hours, are forced to memorize phone books worth of dialogue, and enjoy virtually no privacy. In Basinger, that omnipresent, least sympathetic of types, the star-as-victim, has at last found a defense lawyer.
What's New?
If you know your old time celebrities, there's very little that is new in this book. What is refreshingly new, however, is the author's tone. Rarely is an entry on cinema published that keeps its scholarly head, even if a modestly sized one, while so infectiously twinkling with giddy, unabashed fan-love.
Reading The Star Machine, we are not transported behind-the-scenes of the major studios long enough to walk away with any substanstial answers to long sought questions. We are instead transported to dark neighbourhood theatres circa 1948, dreamily drinking in those larger than life silver figures and revelling in the sneaky, invigorating violation of a more professional pursuit.
