Hello, I'm Joan Lithgow. Welcome to American cinema. Some people say the star is the greatest invention of American cinema.
You can't have American films without those big names in bright lights. In the old days, of the studio system, there was a structure for developing stars. Players were owned body and soul, signed to long-term contracts. With the powerful publicity machine run by the studio, they could reach an audience of millions. But that alone did not guarantee success.
The problem for the studio was to find the one persona out of many possible character roles that would boost an actor to stardom. Humphrey Bogart, for example, played in many parts as a cheap hood before he was recast and ultimately immortalized as Rick in Casablanca. Stars today are still a unique match of individual flair and audience aspiration. With the collapse of the old studios...
system, stars catapulted to power and became the most bankable commodities in Hollywood, who can often determine whether or not a film gets made. In this program, narrated by Kathleen Turner, we look at how this reversal of roles came about, starting with how an old-fashioned star like Joan Crawford was shaped by the studio system. You'll also hear from contemporary stars like Jack Lemmon and Julia Roberts, and find the answer to that in the next episode. elusive question, what makes the star? It's the names on movie marquees that draw the audience in like moths to a flame.
The public's love affair with stars lasts forever. Movie stars exist in a luminous beauty that transcends time. A movie star is mythic. A movie star is like no one you've ever seen walking around in your daily life.
America invented the star, and there's a specific time when that happened. It happened in 1910. That's when the star was born. From the early days of motion pictures, stars have driven the stories told by Hollywood. They have incarnated the visions of directors, provided the most reliable story elements for audiences, and bankrolled more films for producers than any other financial asset. Hi, nice meeting you.
How do you feel about coming tonight? Nervous. Why shouldn't I be nervous?
There's a lot of people here and, you know, I'm nervous. I'm human, what can I tell you? Julia Roberts is a star.
Julia Roberts is a pure corn-fed American star. And that comes from dazzle, and that comes from the smile, and that comes from the eyes, and that comes from, you know, the entire package is sort of instant dream to a certain number of people. of Americans, you know, I mean, people want it.
They want to see it. They want to be repeatedly exposed to it. They want to, when they pay their money, get that thing. The launch of a star career signals the start of a love affair between the public and a movie persona. For the public, it's a new infatuation.
For the star, it's the end of life as they've known it. Well, you sort of say, you know, oh shit, you know? I mean, it's strange because it always, I mean, it's sort of, it's like the ebb and tide. I mean, it'll come and it'll go and, uh... But there are moments when you sort of just have to, you know, choke it down and say, you know, well, I guess people think that I'm good at this.
The greatest stars were often the ones that lasted lifetimes. Extraordinary individuals who refined their personas as they aged. Gary Cooper had a style all his own. He knew the camera. He knew himself.
And he. His style was less is more. What's that? What's what? That.
Oh, that's an anklet. You? No, it's platinum. I never noticed it before. Well, I only wear it when I don't have stockings on.
Where'd you get it? In Spain. From whom? An anklet isn't exactly something you get from a sister. A man?
I'll say he was a bullfighter. Bullfighter? His name was Sebastian.
Hey, what's this with you and those Sebastian? I mean, his name was Michel, but it happened in San Sebastian. Oh, it happened in San...
Any dimples on his knees? Nope. Just scars.
He was very brave. And he had the narrowest hips. I've seen him in the ring.
He had more grace, more style. Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that. Did I say anything wrong? No, it's just that I don't like anklets on women.
You don't? I think they're very vulgar. Well, why didn't you say so? Doesn't mean that much to me. Not anymore.
Audrey Hepburn is a great example because I thought she was just so incredible and so brilliant. But it was the way that I felt watching an Audrey Hepburn movie. That's something that I wanted to do.
I just wanted... to be an actor. I don't want to be a movie star and I don't certainly don't want to be a celebrity.
You know, you look at a star like Julia Roberts and she's talking about how she just wants to be an actress and she wants to, you know, she wants to just be left alone and just let her do her job. that sort of thing and in the old and you look back at someone like joan crawford at jane mansfield and they're saying i'm a star i'm a star look at me and you say what happened here what's the difference what makes a star want to go on i mean surely the danger of having a success and the difficulty of following it the endless enmity that surrounds success in our business is this worth going on with do you know what i mean oh yes indeed every minute of it the old kind put up with it they were trained they went to school on how to be famous within the studios. This is your first lesson with me.
First thing I want to see you do is walk. The heel of the foot comes down first and then on to the ball of the foot. Like that. Neither one of you know what was wrong? No.
First your posture. I'm going to have... Virginia Gary, a young featured player, show you the correct way of walking, sitting down, going up the stairs, and coming down again. We had what amounted to a finishing school on the lot.
We had a drama school. And they went to school regularly, and finally they became good enough so that they were turned over to directors and used on movies. You see, we were trained with a stable of stars when I was growing up and in my teens.
I used to sneak over from my set when I was playing an extra or a small bit part and sneak over and watch the Lewis Stones, Wald Beery, Greta Gary, Three Balmores. Many young hopefuls came to Hollywood seeking stardom, but only the lucky few were ever introduced to the public. as potential stars.
Here's one of my favorites, and I know you all like her too, because she's the personification of youth and beauty and joy and happiness, Joan Crawford. How did Joan Crawford become a star? Well, she was determined to be a star. She learned to dance, she learned to sing, she learned, went to drama school, learned voice placement. She worked all the time.
She was only happy when she was working. You might not have heard it. him on together and she enjoyed a few days but the main thing she wanted to do was get back to work again she just loved getting back to the job oh you're a little stenographer yes i'm a little Hey, dear. I don't suppose you'd, uh, take some dictation from me sometime, would you?
Well, uh, how about some tea, then? Tea would spoil my dinner. Only have one meal a day, and I'd rather hate to spoil it.
Oh, are you reducing? Reducing? Hmm.
Me? Do I need to? Stars have to have the genuine article to become one, but then you've got to push it a little longer, and you have to have people work on them that basically decide what is going to make them a little bit un-life-like. She was probably the biggest star of her time for young people. Each one is an individual.
They're all different. They become stars because of their very difference. They don't match the crowd at all.
They don't even come close to it. And people used to go to the movies to get away from everyday life. There was an illusion about what they saw on the screen.
And that was very nice in those days. That's what distinguished them from the crowd. No really looks like the kind of movie stars that you see that become stars. No one looks like that. The women are drag queens.
The women are female, female impersonators. They have to get in drag too. Everybody has to get in drag to be a movie star. Some kind of drag. Tough guy drag.
No one is really like that. Tell me. Don't. Tell me what? I don't want to die.
Neither do I, maybe, but if I have to, I'm going to die last. Do I need me in this one, Chester Curley? Make it worth your while. There's a few tiny people that have what it takes to get there, but then you gotta go the extra level to make them a movie star.
You don't see these people walking to the drugstore. And the ones that you do aren't stars, they're actors. A star is, in the old days, was someone who was taken up by the studio, trained, you know, processed. The image was, you know, the studio had its feelers out at all times, and whatever information came in, they said, well, we've got to do this to this star.
Put him together with this star, move this star around him this way. I guess I was born out of my time, Miss Judith. I should have lived in the days when it counted to be a man.
Well, I just heard that the Oklahoma kid is old man Kincaid's son. I'm starting to take over the numbers. game Humphrey Bogart before he became a star before they knew what to do with him he was in a lot of lousy roles and every now and then you know he would do something crazy like play the Irish stable hand in dark victory I could not be fresh.
I hear you've got the finest string of horses in the country. Least you can do is to come down and let them have a look at you. Surely if the little horses can get up earlier than one and to run and jump for you you can get up to watch them. They made so many movies I mean four and five movies a year sometimes.
And if you go back and look at all the movies they've made, only a small percent of them really fit what we actually believe their stardom is. But the public remembered those films, embraced them in those films, discarded the others conveniently, and then they were smart enough to start casting them as bogey. From S. Charles Einfeld, director of advertising and publicity, to Martin Weiser.
Dear Martin... Bogart has been typed through publicity as a gangster character. Now, we want to undo this. Sell Bogart romantically.
Sam, I thought I told you never to play. I consider myself lucky that I got a taste of what we would now call the old studio system. While we complained about Gary Cohen or Jack Warner or whoever was running the studio with an iron fist, these guys knew film.
They invented film. The investment studios made in individual stars had to last long enough for the largest possible payoff. There were straight seven-year contracts and you were owned, body and soul.
This is the end of the story. The studio's goal with their ironclad contracts was to test market potential stars in roles the public might buy. I'm still getting letters from people.
I have no idea why, but it's very nice. I'm looking for trouble, and I don't care what people say. It doesn't matter what the people say, what the people say, what the people say.
Jane Russell was a comic. sex pop, you know, and you see her and you have funny ideas and more noise than what. I would like to have done different kinds of characterizations, but I was working with men's directors and they were picking the pictures and doing the casting, you know.
So casting is a very, very important. thing. I used to, when I was a kid, I used to think, hell, if you're an actor, you can play anything.
You should be able to play anything. Why won't they let me play Lear? I may only be 26 years old, but nevertheless, give me a beard and I'll play Lear.
You know, nonsense. Casting is very, very important because there's going to be some actors that will be better for that part. Excuse me. Hi, 27, please.
Head right there for me. You're carrying precious cargo. that far, Weiser. 27. You may not realize it, Miss Kublik, but I am in the top 10, efficiency-wise, and this may be the day promotion-wise.
Listen, you're forgetting to sound like Mr. Kirkaby already. Well, why not? Now they're kicking me upstairs.
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. You know, you're the only one around here who ever takes his hat off in the elevator. Really? The characters you mean.
Something happens to men in elevators. Must be the change of altitude. The blood rushes to their head or something.
Boy, I could tell you still... I have to hear them. Maybe we could have lunch in the cafeteria sometime.
Or some evening after work. 27. Oh. I hope everything goes all right.
I hope so. But you know they call me on a day like this, when it's cold and everything. How do I look? Right. Wait.
Thank you. That's the first thing I ever noticed about you. When you were still in the local elevator, you always wore a flower. Good luck. And wipe your nose.
It seems derogatory to say, oh, he's a personality actor, or he plays the same thing all the time. How well does he do it? Tracy, when he's just sitting and listening to somebody. I would say the son of a bitch is listening for the first time. He hasn't heard those words before.
He's thinking about it. Gary Cooper had such distinctive characteristics in his behavior pattern. Jerry, with our, you know, and the hesitations and this and that, but God, you look back on some of those and how he used them.
I'm sorry, gentlemen, I... No, I'm being disrespectful to this honorable body. I know that. A guy like me should never be allowed to get in here in the first place. I know that.
And I hate to stand here and try your patience like this, but either I'm dead or I'm dead. right or I'm crazy. All of the big male Hollywood stars, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, Jane Stars, all of them don't seem to be acting very much.
And some of the later people, William Holden, Rick Hudson, some of those people as well. And I think that effortlessness of masculinity is really quite important. Good example of that is Duke Warner. Well, I don't favor talking to vermin. But I'll talk to you just this once.
You're not just getting started. The line's been drawn. What Billy did balanced the book so far.
But if one of your men cross my land or even touch one of my cows or do anything to that store, I'm not going to the sheriff, the governor, or the president of the United States. I'm coming to see you. Mr. Chisholm, that sounds like a threat. Wrong word.
Fact. Most of Hollywood, or most of art, is after authenticity. But yesterday's authenticity is today's artifice.
So the whole history of Hollywood is a new authenticity. ...authenticity, and Brando was clearly a new authenticity. Watch streetcar, watch on the waterfront.
He changed the whole style of acting. You don't have to be afraid of me, I'm not gonna play yet. I guess they don't let you walk with those where you've been, huh?
You know how the sisters are. Yeah. Are you trying to be a nun? It's just a regular college. Where's it?
It's run by the sisters of St. Anne. Where is that? It's in Tarrytown. Where's that?
Country. I don't like the country. The crickets make me nervous. He was helpful, he was charming, he would give me his coat on the waterfront, it was very cold at night, and he was a prince. I think I can say this, he was one of my favorite leading men.
I know what you want me to do, but I ain't gonna do it, so forget it. I don't want you to do anything. You let your conscience tell you what to do. Shut up about that conscience. That's all I've been hearing.
I never mentioned the word before. You just stay away from me. Did you love me? I didn't say I didn't love you. I said stay away from me.
I want you to say it to me. Stay away from me. Very often what stars are doing is kind of giving a humanity, an inflection, an individuality to what is still basically a stereotype. They seem to represent sex or integrity or Americanism or virtue or whatever it was not too difficult to play the frustration of the character her in the scene because Marilyn was an incredibly attractive lady, there's no question about it. Tiffany.
Tiffany. Sugar. I wanted to thank you for covering up for me. You're a real pal. It's nothing.
I just thought that us girls should stick together. If it wasn't for you, they would have kicked me off the train. I'd be out in the middle of nowhere sitting on my ukulele.
Oh, it's freezing outside. I mean, when I think about you and your poor ukulele. If there's ever anything I can do for you...
I can think of a million things. That's wonderful! And I still like movie stars who are not like real people. That you will go out all day and you will never see anybody like them.
All my life I've been a symbol. A symbol is eternal, changeless. An abstraction. A human being is mortal and changeable. With desires and impulses.
Hopes and despairs. I'm tired of being a symbol, Chancellor. I long to be a human being.
Carlina Dietrich, Greta Gary, you know, they're like some kind of other. If you come closer, I'll scream. It'll be easier for you to scream without destroying it. It's a romantic kind of woman that isn't perhaps one we connect to as easily as we do that Crawford figure who wants to get something for herself and who's very realistic.
down to earth. You don't know me. No does.
My life belongs to me. You'll make one fine mess of it. It'll still belong to me. Don't marry and you'll frighten me when you talk like that.
If I were a man, it wouldn't frighten you. You'd think it was right for me to go out and get anything I could out of... of life and use anything I had to get it.
Why should men be so different? All they've got are their brains and they're not afraid to use them. Well, neither am I.
I mean, the key thing to the star image is that it is only an image and yet we know there is a real person and that knowledge that we have about the fact that there is a real person makes us believe in the image. You see, pictures have given me all the education I ever had. Since I never went beyond the fifth grade, no formal education whatsoever, and I used to have to read scripts and then look up the words in the dictionary, how to pronounce them and what they meant before I could learn the lines.
I left school when I was only twelve. Never learned how to spell regret. We'll be late. She always managed to keep a fit between all the different parts of the image, and that was always difficult for stars, to keep a fit between what they were like off screen, how they were sold, what the pin-ups were like, what roles they played. The celebrities include Joan Crawford.
Hey, come back here, Joan. And here is Richard Greta, arriving with Wendy Berry. Well, in the so-called golden age of Hollywood, studios certainly did control the image of stars very strongly. They determined what films they would make, how that would be advertised, what they would wear.
what stories about them would be got over to the press and so on. So in that sense, they controlled the image very strongly indeed. We would bring two people together that worked at the studio and insist that they date each other and send a photographer along and a reporter from a fan magazine along on the date.
They went along with it. They did the fake dates once a week if they wanted to. And they went out. out and took opium, you know, and did whatever they did on the side. And nobody would report that as long as they play the game.
As long as they talked to He and Luella and mouth stuff that they wanted to hear, they would leave them alone if they did the other stuff. The fan magazines were fanny wanny. They catered to the children, to the teenagers, and to people who wanted to love these dream people. Any photograph of anyone with a glass in their hand, it might have just been orange juice, but it might be misinterpreted because they never drank and they never smoked.
And they never screwed. Oh, in the old Hollywood pictures, they couldn't do anything. They couldn't have babies when they weren't married. They couldn't be gay.
They couldn't take drugs. They couldn't do anything, basically. They had to live this fake life. But the publicity department took care of that. If they had a life, it wasn't acceptable.
They dreamed up a fake life for them. And the press knew it was fake, but they reported it. It was completely a rigged game in the old days.
Here's what it's like inside the cabin of the luxurious airliner. Normally speaking... there isn't really too much news in Hollywood, and it has to be manufactured.
If I had to guess how many stories were written and planned in a year, I would say 20 or 30 a day times 365. Must be getting near the big village. Paulette's putting on her war paint. It was as important to the studio that they do the publicity as it was that they stand up in front of the cameras and act. Being a star, they eventually could never go out of your house. You could never have a good love affair.
All the things that most people want, you have to give up if you become that famous. And they gladly do it. And I admire those kind of people.
I've always been a big fan of Jane Mayer. The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees. I mean, she just was a publicity crazed.
She loved it and she fed on it. She needed more. More was like a drug publicity game, that's for sure. She used to drop invitations to her wedding from helicopters and stuff.
I mean, she was truly publicity insanity. Your love gave me such a thrill. She was so over the top about being a movie star that it drove her crazy.
She got a taste of publicity. She wanted more and more and more, where every day she would just be running around in bikinis, squealing. ...a chihuahua. She used to walk down Hollywood Boulevard in a bikini walking an ocelot handing out signed pictures of her to startled passerbyers.
You know, she was insane. And so I respect that. One of the things that happens is accessibility to stars grows. As you move into the 50s and the studio system... begins to collapse.
You have stars not being protected by the machinery of the studio any longer. They're out in the streets, they're getting interviewed that aren't controlled. is picking them up and showing them to you. So they become more known for who they really are.
Their private life was another role they were playing. When Lanituners... daughter stabbed her mother's lover to death the public was avid for the lurid details of a star career seemingly in trouble what they saw from the courtroom was a tour de force performance don't let it touch me again i'm absolutely finished this is the end and i want you to get out And after I said that, I was walking towards the bedroom door and he was right behind me and I opened it. Certainly with the main photographers there and she's on the stand.
She is Lana Turner. You can never not be Lana Turner when you're Lana Turner. She was effective testimony. Cheryl got off. I thought it was so sad.
I'm truly frustrated and upset. But Lana also was a major movie star that let her public life, certainly when it got out, she went along with it and used it. Public Life crucifixions were turned by superstars into resurrections of their star careers and recycled in star performances in movies did your daughter ever tell you that she'd seen lucas beating selena no Now, don't you think that if she had seen such a shocking incident, she would have mentioned it to you? I don't know. Well, wouldn't she?
Rather than let it kill her, she kept it up and used it. Mrs. McKenzie, doesn't your daughter ever bring home... of problems how many times do i have to answer your questions the public is really fickle and can be vitriolic as far as their likes and dislikes with a movie star that's why there's up and downs with long career certainly and they're the ones that survived it that can survive a bad one and then good and bad the audience likes to see comebacks and all that stuff well the star system is dangerous because it takes a tremendous toll on the minds and the emotions of people we lost Jane Dean that way emotionally he couldn't handle it I have never done anything right I've been going around with my head in this thing for years i don't want to drag you into this but i can't help it i think i think that you can't just go around proving things i'm pretending like you're tough you and you can't even though you got it you look a certain way you can't that's right you're absolutely look at that you're absolutely right you're not listening to me liftwood was a perfect example of that he was uh An emotionally disturbed man, he would have been better off running a grocery store in some little town in the Midwest where the public wouldn't pay any attention to him than he would as a film star. He was a fine, outstanding actor, but emotionally, he couldn't stand the strength. Ba dum ba dum ba dum de dum boo!
I wanna be loved by you, just you. No else but you. I wanna be loved by you alone.
Marilyn was very fragile. God, if I... I'd lived in seven different foster homes.
I would have been a totally different person. Do you think three sleeping pills are enough? Three is quite a lot. That's pretty potent stuff. If it seems worth doing, it's worth doing well.
There are a lot of tragedies with people and getting so involved in the business and not having the home life. I mean, there's still tragedies now, but it's different. And I think it would be a terrible life to have to be.
in a cocoon as a star without not having your life. Does fame ruin some people's lives, are you saying? Well, maybe, but why did they become actors? I don't understand that. People that don't want fame.
You shouldn't go into show business. That's part of it. That's what you get if it works. If it doesn't work, you never get jobs. If it works, you get famous.
So you have to sort of choose between the two. I had an agent once who always made me cry because he wasn't He wanted me to do film after film after film and kept telling me, you won't be a superstar unless you work constantly. I kept saying to him, I don't want to be a star, I don't want to be a superstar, I'm a working actress. And he never really understood me.
And I had two children at the time and he didn't understand that I was, every time I got on a plane to go off somewhere I was torn. And I always took my children with me. I made exodus.
I took my children with me. my husband, my mother-in-law, and my parents. But that was my choice, so I worked about once a year. So superstar, I do not know what that would be like.
I think the aspects of it that interfere with my personal life are people's inability to accept what I have to offer, which is I make movies, and I make movies for you. So I make a movie, and I make a movie for you. and I give you heart, soul, blood, and guts, the whole nine yards, as much as I can do, the best that I can do it.
And that's a lot. In Hollywood today, the stars, not the studios, make the major decisions. Stars are no longer employees, but independent artists operating through powerful agencies.
I still am. Everything now is a package. It has to be a package and very often that package will start with one of a handful of stars that command an incredible salary.
I'm having a very bad day. Just got out of jail this morning. Already I've been shot at.
I was on the bus and flipped over 17 times. Bitch tried to stab me in the bathroom. Nobody blew up my Porsche. I am in a bad goddamn mood. When the studio system broke down, they...
Made it so that the studios lost their power and they gave it to the artists as independent contractors. So then the artists in turn gave it to the agents by enabling them to do it. Okay, so Monday we get a script and an offer, meaning it's his. All the agents encounter scrambling to get that offer for their clients. Have you read it?
It's not bad. It's not bad. But first time, first time...
director is going to be a big problem. But the most difficult thing is advising the client, okay, got these things to pick from. Here's the one to pick. Yes.
Yeah. because yeah let's let's yes that's the difference between agents because when you're representing stars there are many many opportunities but it's my you know it's ultimately my choice you know it doesn't matter how many people say you know you do it you should do it this is perfect it's great if i don't want to do it i'm not going to do it no matter how many people are telling me to i think the key is that the agents don't have power in themselves their power is is ceded to them by who they represent When the actor has that much control, then he really now is taking on more than just a performance. He's taking on the whole load and I think all too often that can affect the performance because consciously or unconsciously he's carrying this massive thing, him and his company is this, is that or whatever. often can lead to his having control beyond that, way beyond that of the producer or the director or the writer about what happens to that film. the writing, about rewriting, about how it's directed, etc.
The studios themselves have no security because nobody they can count on. They're just waiting in line. It's no matter what their relationship really was with a given star in the absence of a contract.
It's just starting from ground zero again. Here's our script. Please take a look.
I certainly read scripts and I make my choices and all the choices have been no. But I think that they will agree with me that, you know, I say to people. say, why haven't you worked in two years?
Well, show me a movie in the last year and a half that's come out that I should have been in. In my opinion, the role of the agent is not to make the client the most money possible. I'm not a business manager.
I'm not a financial advisor. I'm not their banker. I'm trying to allow them the most choices. Because I really love acting, you want to be able to do as many different parts and be challenged by as many different roles and different types of movies as you can. As soon as the studio see you in a certain way, that doesn't enable you to do the different types of roles that you would like to do.
Hi, Charles. Ray has made a real strong mark in a certain kind of part, edgy, violent or near violent. capable of violence. And he's doing great and very well respected. The movies are doing well.
He is so much more than that in terms of the guy he is and the performance that he can deliver. You were born first. And 12 minutes later, I was birthed.
You're the big brother. And our mother died when we were born. There's a few projects now that I want to do that aren't edgy.
And it's just, you know, getting in the room with these people and, you know, they're out of sight, out of mind. They don't remember some of the softer things you might have done. They remember the successes, so that's pretty much where they start. I would think it's the same problem that anyone who does comedy has and wants to do something more serious. I know I'll never have to dream again If I should wake and feel your lips Surrender to mine I'd just be wasting time In dreaming.
All the pressure in this business on actors is to put them into as small a box as possible. An absolutely caged in type cast situation where they only do one thing. I don't think that I'm playing the same character over and over again, certainly.
That would be boring. I hope I'm not doing that. but I think that there is truth in that and I think that that has as much to do with it's the best, it's what I think is the best of what's there I think Julia Roberts is someone who has played a similar role there's very obvious differences between Pretty Woman and Sleeping with the Enemy for instance but nonetheless there's this continuity of character look at this point every character that I play is going to be sort of you know a young woman young, you know, nice, whatever, white.
I mean, they're all going to have certain, you know, things that are always going to be there that just is inevitable, you know, and it's my job to try to make it different and more interesting, and I guess I must be achieving it to a certain degree because they keep, you know, paying me and stuff. Of course we want her to be sexy and beautiful, but we don't want her to be naughty. You know, I mean, the only virgin prostitute in America...
Not in American films, there are dozens of virgin prostitutes, but the latest version of that is Julia Roberts, Pretty Woman, and it works and works and works and works. Hollywood wants the sure thing, the star, the genre, and so on, but the sure thing, people don't want exactly the same thing. They want the same, only different, and that's the really difficult thing to do. Come quickly. I've just killed an intruder.
AHHHHH! BOOM! Here you are making your 74th international picture. A picture that will be seen by millions of people all over the world.
Many of the people that you've worked with, talented as they have been, have not survived. It's interesting, I think, to try and consider why... you have what is it you have what is the quality that you have for the public that makes it go on wanting to see your pictures well first of all i'm stage struck and i think they all know that secondly i try to get a film that has audience identification Some stars, such as, for instance, Joan Crawford, did develop an awareness that because she had learned the business, that she had to keep reinventing herself to a certain degree as she aged and as times changed, without losing what it was that appealed to people. Joan Crawford, at the time when I started to represent her in 1945, had just had her...
her contract dropped by MGM. L.B. Mayer, who was the head of MGM, had just branded her as one of a number of actresses who had become box office poison, and Joan Crawford was at a turning point in her film career. Just at that time, a man named Jerry Wald, who was a producer at the Warner Brothers studio, decided that despite what L.B. Mayer had said, he was going to Put her in the starring role of a movie called Mildred Pierce. Mildred.
Mildred. A name gasped in the night. The one last word of a dying man.
But one word that tells a thousand stories of a woman who left her mark on every man she met. The morning of the awards, she called me and said, He, I have a terrible cold. I'm in bed. I won't be able to go to the awards.
And sure enough, she was announced as the winner. And a half hour later, this horde of photographers and reporters were all walking into her house and up to her bedroom. And there she was, the queen herself, holding her Oscar. In terms of career management, the Joan Crawford story is a great shining example because at every stage of her career, as she grew older, as what she was doing faltered and the next thing took over, she could be the woman scorned in Mildred Pierce and come back and win the award.
Oscar, she could adjust her morality in a way to her looks, to her image. You know, that face changed more than any face in movie history. She knew how to keep an audience going, Madonna-Like-like. I mean, we think of Madonna-Like as being...
kind of immortally in touch with the public pulse. Not like Joan Crawford. That was decades. I mean, once the public has embraced you, unless you're a total momentary fad, or you've physically changed considerably, or you've done something loathsome that will forever turn them off, one of those three, which are all, you know, rare. Other than that, once a star, you probably can...
be one again and you're just kind of being you're just orbiting around the dark side of the moon you have to find the intersection of what you want to do and what the public will accept you in so what you see with joan crawford she goes from shop girl to grand lady to gargoyle At a certain point, the public wanted her to be Gargoyle. What their image becomes gets very complicated because it's also drawing on what they used to be. Please try to understand.
I married you because I was not... and it was a refuge. When you get out to whatever happened to Baby Jane, you have a movie in which Joan Crawford sits in a wheelchair looking at herself playing in her old movies Oh, he should have held that shot longer. I told him that when we were rehearsing also on these shots.
He wouldn't listen. I think that sense of the changing is very important in star images. They're not just one thing for all time. Star images themselves have a history.
A successful star career was finding a new inflection to their image. Something that did the same thing and yet was different enough to be interesting. I don't look for any particular character.
I don't look for something that's funny or dramatic or it's just what appeals to me. I mean, I just read it and I know that that's what I want. No ever goes, I've got it all.
I want to stay right. here. This is not human nature.
And this business is human nature exponentially amplified. They all are looking for something. Critical acceptance, public acclaim, industry respect. Their own respect.
That'll always be there, it's not gonna disappear.