Star Works

In a time known as the "golden age" of Hollywood industry, when iconic actors and actresses like Humphrey Bogart and Judy Garland were still lighting up screens across the nation, a hierarchy of powerful film studios rose to the top, producing countless films and, among them, the classics still watched and remembered today. A look behind the curtain of these studios, however, reveals the complex and carefully structured process that brought to life the movies that marked the Classical Era.

One of the most essential parts of the Hollywood movie machine was a factory-based, vertically integrated system that gave studios complete control over every step of the movie-making process, from production to the actual screenings. As detailed during lecture, each studio possessed, for example, its own "stable" of actors and actresses to fill the roles for movies to be produced as well as directors, producers, and more. This, in turn, created a team of dependable artists available to be put onto the production of any movie necessary, whenever was necessary. In addition, as certain stable actors and actresses rose to fame, so, too, would the studios whose movies they would appear in.

One such example of the power of the "stable" of actors, known as the star system, appears in "Media Now" is Rudolph Valentino, who rocketed to fame following his starring role in the romance, "The Sheik." Following his iconic role in the movie, Paramount Pictures found that his fans, a majority of which were female, were interesting in viewing movies they perhaps normally wouldn't be, simply becuase he was in them. This, in turn, led to the placement of the starring actor's name being given even more prominence than even the title of the actual movie itself, as can be seen in the movie posters for one of Valentino's later films, "The Eagle."



The end result left studios focusing on promoting the star power of its actors and actresses in order to lend the companies their success. After all, by emphasizing a popular actor or actress as opposed to the title of the movie, profits could be boosted by a wave of that artist's fans coming in to view the movie.