The Books of My Life: The Star Machine

 The Star Machine (New York: Knopf, 2007), by Wesleyan Film Studies scholar Jeanine Basinger, author of a previous book on silent era film stars in 1999, explores a number of aspects of the classic Hollywood star machine that arose in the 1910s and was at its zenith between the late 1920s and the 1950s. In The Star Machine Basinger looks at the economic and cultural workings of the studio era star making machine in part one, explores how the star machine dealt with stars who malfunctioned, stars who were disillusioned, and stars who were disaffected in a series of interesting case studies in part two, explores the oddities and character actors of the Hollywood studio system who occasionally took star turns again in a series of interesting case studies in part three, and, in a conclusion, looks at the similarities and differences between the classic sound era star system and the neo-star system of today.

There is a lot I found to like in Basinger's study of sound era Hollywood star system. The book represents a lifetime of watching Hollywood films and overhearing what those who went to cinemas to see Hollywood films thought about them and their stars. This adds a historical and audience response dimension to Basinger's work that is often missing from the film analysis of many ultimately ahistorical contemporary film scholars who haven't seem many films beyond the "classics", retrospective "classics" at that, and who do not do much if any analysis of how real audiences responded or respond to Hollywood films and Hollywood stars. Basinger's book explores both the economic and cultural aspects of the Hollywood star making machinery. She looks at how Hollywood "discovered" stars, schooled them, groomed them, remade them, when necessary, sold them, and branded them, and how, despite all this machinery geared to earn studios a profit, it was, in the final analysis, audiences, film goers who wanted to look like stars, live the lives of stars, and even be stars, and to some extent luck or fate, that ultimately made Hollywood's stars. Basinger's book is wonderfully attentive to things like costumes, camera angles, lighting that went into and were essential to the manufacture of a Hollywood star in the studio star making machinery. Basinger's book nicely notes that, given the retrospective nature of much modern film scholarship, that those who aren't seen as stars today and who aren't, as a result, extensively studied by so many modern day film scholars, a star like Deanna Durbin, for example, were stars in their era. Durbin, as Basinger notes, accounted for around 15% of Universal's box office in the 1930s. This economic fact alone means that contemporary film scholars should be studying Durbin. Basinger nicely explores the changes in audiences response to stars in the depression era differed from how they responded to stars in World War II. During the depression audiences revelled in the glamour and fashion of the films while in World War Ii audiences wanted to escape the fears and tensions of the era and so helped create zany, exotic, girl and boy next door, and democracy on the march film stars. Basinger nicely notes that Hollywood manufactured stars for both the female gaze and the male gaze, stars like Lana Turner and Tyrone Power, through schooling, grooming, remaking, clothing, and lighting. Basinger points out that films were often made with certain stars in mind. The star as auteur? Basinger nicely explores the role the Hollywood star machine played in creating younger stars in the 1940s, younger stars who became more prominent in the 1950s and lead, or so some argue, to the juvenilisation of Hollywood cinema in the 1980s and after.

I highly recommend Basinger's The Star Machine to anyone interested in film, Hollywood, the economics of Hollywood, Hollywood and culture, and the American economic system in general. One can certainly argue compellingly that stars and the notion common among film goers that they could become like stars and live like stars was and is one of the opiates of the consumer capitalist masses in the era of consumer capitalism. That alone makes the study of how Hollywood created and made stars important.