Are movie stars necessary?

Most sensible people, or most people who want you to believe that they’re sensible, would argue that they’re not. But if you hold to the adage that necessity is the mother of invention, you would have to admit that movie stars are indeed necessary, because it was the moviegoing public that created the movie star.

Stardom as we currently define it dates back — at least — to the second half of the 19th century. Wire communications and new modes of travel were making fame a more widespread commodity than it had ever been. But the movie industry initially believed it had nothing to do with such things. Film historian Eileen Bowser, writing in the indispensible book The Transformation of Cinema 1907-1915, notes: “In the first decade of [the 20th] century, the theater, opera, and vaudeville all operated to a large extent on the basis of a star system, in which the personal magnetism of a particular performer often outweighed other considerations of artistic talent, or the value of the drama or music.” (You have to love the clinicism of that phrase “outweighed other considerations of artistic talent.” A whole essay on what’s wrong with the movies in six words, some might say.) Bowser goes on to note that the movie industry in those days either completely ignored or didn’t have the slightest clue about said star system and how to utilize it. The founders of the film business, one Thomas Edison among them, were so preoccupied with “branding” film itself that concern for the performers in a film and how they could sell product was practically nonexistent. They might as well have been marketing camcorders or something. It was only when exhibitors, distributors, and most of all, audiences began talking about a given film’s performers that the industry took notice.

This is something that pundits who turn up their noses at stardom tend to forget: that movie stars were, and still are, a creation of the moviegoing public. Yeah, they make an obscene amount of money and often lead dissolute lives that make them less-than-perfect models for those who follow their lives—well, blame free-market capitalism for that. But movie stars were not shoved down our throats. Ultimately, what movie stars are about is us — what we love to look at, to hear. Movie stars exist for our enjoyment. And the historical fact is that movie stardom was created by moviegoers.

Of course, our enjoyment is in most cases fleeting. Bowser cites a June 1910 caption, “A Motion Picture Star,” in a New York Dramatic Mirror story on “Vitagraph Girl” Florence Turner as possibly the first instance of a movie performer being called a star. Turner was the lead in a popular short called — and this should give you an idea of the tenor of the times — A Tin-Type Romance. Turner’s career was not such great shakes after that. Her career ended in 1943, three years before her death, with an uncredited bit role in the MGM musical Thousands Cheer. After her, movie stardom had its first flowering, aided and abetted by the public, by a fan magazine named Photoplay (which commenced publication in 1911), and by the still-coalescing movie industry, begrudgingly playing catch-up.

In this feature, you’ll see 50 embodiments of that most indefinable term, star quality. You will see male sex symbols who are undeniably Adonis-like, and others who are not nearly as refined in the physical-feature department but could still make their targets melt. You’ll see a squeaky-clean singer with a sultry side and a toddler with all the confidence of ten seasoned vaudevillians. The thing about star quality is that it’s mercurial. As the saying goes, you know it when you see it.

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