From: reiher@ficus.cs.ucla.edu (Peter Reiher)
Subject: Re: The first movie star (was: Leeper Screws the Pooch on CHAPLIN)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 16:38:52 GMT

In article <mattm-210193154305@mcmelmon.apple.com> mattm@apple.com (Matthew Melmon) writes:
>In article <1993Jan21.191430.11359@cs.ucla.edu>, reiher@ficus.cs.ucla.edu
>(Peter Reiher) wrote:
>> As someone else pointed out, the name I was searcing for was Florence
>> Lawrence, and she was the first real movie star.  
>
>We were discussing stars of Chaplin's level.  "Superstars."  

I don't have the previous discussion saved, but I don't remember that
being the issue.  Lawrence was a very big star at the time, one of the
very, very few performers who audiences in large numbers were willing to
pay money to see in a film.  (Being a star was a lot harder when nobody
knew your name.)  Pickford, arguably, was a bigger star even at that time,
and unarguably developed into a much bigger star than Lawrence ever was.
But Lawrence was plenty big, for her time.

>> Note, also, that we are parochially discussing only American films.  In
>> certain ways, the silent cinema of some European countries, notably
>> France and Italy, was more developed, at this stage of cinema's history.
>
>More developed "artistically" - perhaps.  More developed as an
>industry?  Perhaps not.  

Or, perhaps.  Here's some evidence.  Remember "Birth of a Nation", the
film that revolutionized the American film industry?  It did so in a number
of ways, one of which was the suggestion that films could be more than
a few reels long, could even be hours long.  Of course, anyone who'd been
watching the Italian film industry already knew that, as the Italians 
had produced several multi-hour epics that had done well both in Europe
and the U.S.  "Cabiria" is the most famous, and actually isn't half bad,
even today.

George Melies had achieved popularity producing special effects far beyond
what Americans would produce for at least another decade.

Max Linder, a French comedian, while largely forgotten today, was, in the 
1910's almost as big a comedy star as Chaplin.

Emil Jannings, a German, was one of the biggest dramatic stars in the world, 
until sound came in.

It's largely forgotten today that silent films had a unique advantage
over sound films.  A silent film could be shown anywhere in the world
with very little alteration and it would be understood.  Divorcing the
work from a particular language meant that normal Americans actually did see
French, Italian, and German films on a regular basis, in those days.
America undoubtedly did have the largest film industry, and, as the 20's
went on, it became more and more dominant.  But in the earlier periods,
it was one infant among many.

>> Depending on how you want to define "remotely comparable fame", this
>> statement is either incorrect because Gloria Swanson wasn't nearly as famous
>> as Pickford (which is certainly the case), or incorrect because there were 
>> other actress before Swanson who were just as famous as Swanson.
>
>Yeah, yeah.  Swanson had more than enough fame to go around, and
>she was very typical of the "glamour queen" movie star.  And perhaps
>more people know who Swanson is today than Pickford (and I 
>suspect fewer people have heard of Bow or Normand than either
>one).  

That's because Swanson had some kind of career in sound pictures, while
Pickford and Bow had little, and Normand had none, being dead.

>You conveniently ignored Gee Gee.  

I don't know what was so convenient about it.  Garbo had nothing to
do with the points I was trying to make, which was that there were plenty
of very popular female stars between Pickford and Swanson.  Yes, Garbo was
a great star of lasting power, and a major star of silent movies, too.  

>Garbo was unique, and 
>uniquely famous - and she remains famous today.  Perhaps uniqueness
>is a good measure of a star.  Pickford was remarkably unique.  She
>played "America's Sweetheart" where 'many' stars played 'wicked women.'

Lots of other actresses mostly played sweet innocents, among them the
very popular Lillian and Dorothy Gish.  (For that matter, the female stars of
just about any D. W. Griffith film you care to name played sweet innocents.)
Lillian Gish is one up on all of the actresses we've talked about so far - 
she's still alive and occasionally active in film.  She was also one of the 
biggest stage actresses of the 1930's and 1940's, and got starring roles
in films in the 1950's.  (She even got a starring role in a film in the 1980's,
and might in the 1990's, despite being over 100 years old.)  Pickford was 
unique, indeed, but her choice of roles wasn't necessarily what made her unique.

-- 
		Peter Reiher
		reiher@wells.cs.ucla.edu