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No, no, Nanette
I had just seen the 1953 MGM musical The Band Wagon on television. Fred Astaire plays an aging movie star hoping to jump- start his career by appearing in a Broadway musical with ballerina Cyd Charisse. Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray play the writers of the show. There was Nanette -- bouncy, beautiful, with impeccable comic timing and a pretty good singing voice, more than able to hold her own among her stellar colleagues. Why, then, didn't she become a movie star? I called Jeanine Basinger to get an answer.
Basinger is the author of The Star Machine (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), a terrific history of the studio system -- how it made and sometimes destroyed stars during the classic era of Hollywood. Basinger is the chair of film studies at Wesleyan University and curator of the college's film archives.
"Hollywood was a factory. It operated on the principle that if it dropped a lot of nubile young blondes into its star-making machine, at least one of them might come out looking like a heartbreaker," she writes in her introduction. "I wanted to write about the system of star making, about the 'star machine' that evolved at the end of the silent era and 'created' movie stars of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s," she continues.
She asks, What makes a star? and offers a number of answers. Studio support was a major factor. Basinger writes about MGM dancer Eleanor Powell: "During her time on top, Metro quickly figured out how to use her, showcase her, and shape her films to both her and their own best advantage. It was not difficult. Just find a simple story, lard it with musical numbers, get her tapping and smiling, and try to end up with a big-bang spectacular production number in which she could come out and tap her butt off, sending everyone home happy."
Powell had a good 10 years at the top and went home pretty happy, Basinger reports. Not all the star-making stories are so pleasant. Some actors, like matinee idol Tyrone Power, were built up by the studio (in his case, 20th Century Fox), only to find themselves typecast. Power ended up headlining routine action films through much of the...
