Stardom in the 1940s: An Introduction to Movie Stars

Introduction: Stardom in the 1940s
Published by
Griffin, Sean.
What Dreams Were Made Of: Movie Stars of the 1940s.
Rutgers University Press, 2010.
Project MUSE.
muse.jhu.edu/book/2219.
For additional information about this book
https://muse.jhu.edu/book/2219
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INTRODUCTION
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Stardom in the 1940s
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The 1940s are often conceptualized as a split decade, a temporal “house divided.” Most obviously, World War II deftly cleaved the
decade in half. Hitler invaded Poland in late 1939, resulting in Britain and
France declaring war on Germany. While the United States refrained from
entering the fight initially, the pull grew month by month, until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The war then dominated all
aspects of American public life for the next few years. Victory came in both
the European and Pacific theaters in 1945, and suddenly the country and
the entire world had entered a new world order. This postwar era saw a
rapid and full-scale revision of life and thought. Not unexpectedly, many
hoped to revert quickly to the way things were before the upheaval of the
war. Yet major changes in global politics and advances in scientific research
also irrevocably altered American life. The onset of the Cold War created a
new enemy for the United States, and new fears of internal subversion—
which at times veered into a fear of anything that diverged from majority
thought. The postwar era was also referred to as the Atomic Age, as humanity started coming to terms with the fact that we could now literally destroy
the planet and ourselves. As Jacqueline Foertsch has written, “The momentous events of the mid-1940s are thus pivotal in multiple respects,” creating
an “impulse to read the 1940s as a decade that is as neatly bisected as it
neatly hangs together” (1–2).
It was a split decade for the Hollywood studios as well. Many film history books cut the 1940s in half, regarding the first part as an extension of
the classic Hollywood era of the 1930s, and the second part as the start of
the post-classical era of the 1950s (Schatz; Lewis; Jewell; Casper). While the
studios in wartime had to adjust to the loss of employees to the military,
and to stronger involvement (and potential interference) from the federal
government, the first half of the decade was generally a high time for Hollywood. With national employment figures suddenly at an all-time high after
a decade of economic woes, but with wartime rationing limiting what was
available for purchase, everyone went to the movies. Furthermore, the studios had by this time refined their business patterns and the “Hollywood
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style” of production, resulting in a number of expertly produced, smoothly
told, and confidently crafted films. Motion picture theater attendance
reached its highest level ever in 1946.
And then the bottom fell out. The federal government’s antitrust case,
which had been shelved during the war, was revived and in 1948 the
Supreme Court decreed (in what became known as the Paramount Decision) that the major studios divest themselves of one arm of their vertically
integrated holdings (production, distribution, or exhibition)—signaling an
end to the smooth organization of the classical Hollywood system. Furthermore, certain members of the government began training their suspicions
on communist infiltration on Hollywood, throwing filmmakers into new
panic. Most of all, though, audiences started abandoning film theaters. With
the onset of the postwar Baby Boom, many moved to newly formed suburban communities—far from urban centers where most movie theaters
resided. Whether in cities or suburbs, Americans also increasingly stayed
home to watch the new mass-marketed gadget called television (whose
development, like the antitrust case, had been put on hold until the end of
the war). As the decade ended, Hollywood was scrambling to figure out
how to survive in a very different environment (Dixon).
If the studios felt a sharp divide in the 1940s, it is unsurprising that stars
experienced it as well. The war significantly impacted the lives and careers
of most stars, and the postwar period brought even more changes. Actors
and actresses, like all Americans, were deeply affected by the war. Some
men signed up for active duty in the military, such as James Stewart, Robert
Montgomery, and Clark Gable. Others were drafted, like Gene Kelly, Victor
Mature, and Mickey Rooney. Some, such as (somewhat ironically) Roy
Rogers and John Wayne, received deferments and consequently felt certain
pressure to explain why they were not “doing their part.” Such losses left
the studios scrambling to find leading men—resulting in a number of young
actors promoted to stardom, such as Van Johnson, Gregory Peck, Danny
Kaye, and Alan Ladd. With women only allowed to enlist in women’s auxiliary units (the WACs, the WAVEs), actresses did not feel as much pressure
to put their careers on hold. Yet female stars did actively participate in the
war effort, volunteering at war bond drives, and meeting with soldiers at
camps, on USO tours, or at the Hollywood Canteen. Older male stars not
eligible for the draft did likewise (Doherty; Dick; Koppes and Black).
In multiple ways, then, stars increased their actual physical presence
among the rest of the population, strengthening their connections to the
general public. Cheesecake photos and films shipped overseas for screenings in combat zones provided troops with a sense of home and “what they
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With many male performers entering the armed services during World War II, Hollywood
studios began grooming and promoting a new crop of men. Van Johnson, for example,
quickly became MGM’s top male star during the war. Collection of the author.
were fighting for.” Increased movie attendance further deepened the felt
relationship audiences had with stars. Together, these elements created a
sense that stars were “just like us,” just perhaps a little “more so.” As one
woman opined at the time, “If your idea of a factory girl is a thin little creature who looks downtrodden and underfed, you’re way off the beam, as my
chums say. A factory girl in real life looks very much like Brenda Marshall,
Anne Shirley, or Betty Grable” (Giles 123).
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The major studios had instituted a relatively well oiled system for discovering, grooming, and showcasing talent (as well as controlling it) long
before the 1940s, knowing that stars helped market their product. Articles
in the industry press indicate that studios began relying more on stars during the decade. Efforts to alleviate pressure from the antitrust case led studios to lessen the amount of block-booking done with theaters, resulting in
individual films needing to be able to sell themselves. This often meant
employing stars more often in projects (Schatz 103–04). While budgets on
average increased during the 1940s partly due to this development, even
pictures made at B-studios such as Republic began to rely on stars such as
Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Judy Canova.
No doubt recognizing their net worth to the studios, stars began to
assert greater power. More and more stars finished their studio contracts
and became independent artists. This trend had begun by the early part of
the 1940s (with the likes of Fred Astaire, Claudette Colbert, Ronald Colman, Ginger Rogers, and Barbara Stanwyck working freelance), but the
numbers grew dramatically after the war. New income tax laws spurred
individuals to “incorporate” themselves, leading a large number of actors
and actresses to set up independent production companies. Stars had
greater opportunity to become independent due to a landmark case brought
by Olivia de Havilland against Warner Bros. in 1943. The courts decided
against the conventional Hollywood studio policy of adding the time an
actor was on suspension to the end of the contract period (for stars usually
set at seven years), which potentially kept an actor in the studio’s control
indefinitely. The ruling granted actors the right to refuse roles and to sit out
the duration of their contracts (Schatz 206–08).
Thus, as the war ended, stars were finding new power and independence. Independence, though, also meant a lack of protection by the studio
against scandal. While valuable contract players could depend upon their
studio to help sweep ugly matters under the rug, stars increasingly had to
fend for themselves. Headlines about Robert Mitchum’s arrest for possession of marijuana or Ingrid Bergman’s extramarital pregnancy exemplified
a newer “no holds barred” era of star coverage in the press. Most devastatingly, stars found themselves easy targets for communist paranoia in the
second half of the decade. Many actors and actresses had looked into socialism or other leftist groups during the depths of the Depression; others had
made films or public comments showing support of Soviet Russia as a
wartime ally. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and
various civic groups that sprang up after the war to ferret out communist
sympathizers quickly jumped on these factors to accuse a number of people
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Olivia de Havilland’s successful lawsuit against Warner Bros. helped free stars from inordinate studio control over their careers. As an independent artist in the late 1940s, de
Havilland won two Oscars as Best Actress for To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress
(1949). Collection of the author.
of working to help the Soviet Union undermine American strength. Some
stars (such as Gary Cooper, Robert Taylor, and Ginger Rogers) eagerly testified about potential communist influence in the industry. Others (Larry
Parks, John Garfield) had their careers destroyed (and sometimes their
lives) as a blacklist developed to keep suspects from finding work.
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Stars, therefore, like Hollywood and America at large, experienced the
1940s as a split decade. Yet a sense of division has been a key concept to star
studies in general. Dyer theorizes how star images are “related to contradictions in ideology. . . . The relations may be one of displacement . . . or of
the suppression of one half of the contradiction and the foregrounding of the
other . . . or else it may be that the star effects a ‘magic’ reconciliation of
the apparently incompatible terms” (Stars 30). Barbara Deming, writing
about films in the 1940s, also stressed that “the heroes and heroines who
are most popular at any particular period are precisely those who, with a
certain added style, with a certain distinction, act out the predicament in
which we all find ourselves—a predicament from which the movie-dream
then cunningly extricates us” (Deming 2). Many analyses of star images
emphasize how performers become stars by somehow embodying (and thus
resolving) cultural contradictions.
That Deming writes specifically about the 1940s indicates that the
decade was split not just in terms of timeline. Examinations of the decade
are often rife with metaphors of ambivalence, divided emotions, and even
schizophrenia. Film books about the 1940s stress this duality, often directly
in the titles: Deming’s Running Away from Myself or Dana Polan’s Power and
Paranoia. Even a book about Hollywood studio design in the 1940s touches
on this lack of cohesion, describing a tendency to collapse multiple decorative styles into an overarching mélange of tastes (Madelbaum and Myers
25). That Deming began putting together notes for her book during the time
in question shows that considering this period as dislocated was common
then, and not just in hindsight.
The growing interest in psychoanalysis in 1940s America undoubtedly
helped spur thought about split personalities and divided desires. Psychological testing in the military rose during the war, most notoriously in an
effort to weed homosexuals out of the service. Many in Hollywood also
became enamored with Freudian therapy at this time. Conceptualizing the
conflict between one’s id and one’s ego led to a consideration of warring
tendencies within the cultural landscape of the period—and there were certainly plenty of “incompatible terms” to negotiate. While World War II is
often portrayed as uniting everyone together in a shared goal, plenty of
internal disagreement still existed. Until the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the
country was locked in vibrant debate between isolationists and interventionists, but fighting the war created its own contradictions. Most centrally,
the war was being fought to restore liberty for all individuals, but doing so
required people to suppress their individualism and work as part of a team
(either in the ranks or on the factory line). Championing freedom also led
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to much propaganda about America as a land of opportunity for all races
and religions. Yet the Zoot Suit riots between white sailors and Los Angeles’
Latino population during the war, as well as the number of race riots in cities
where factories began integrating their workforce, demonstrated the wealth
of prejudice still to be overcome. Women’s place in American society was
also very ambiguous. Wartime propaganda promoted female strength and
capability at traditionally masculine work, while many other aspects of culture (pulp novels and film noir in particular) expressed deep fears about
powerful women. Such worries became exacerbated once the culturally
enforced unity of wartime ended. Postwar culture became littered with
ambivalent antiheroes, and the call for humanist brotherhood after the war
was matched by a concomitant growth of existentialist nihilism.
Such emotional dislocation was matched by actual physical dislocation.
Men were being drafted and sent to military bases and overseas, and large
numbers on the home front moved to industrial centers to work in factories. Integration of women and people of color into the workforce also
physically redistributed populations. The federal government also forcibly
relocated thousands of Japanese Americans into internment camps. With
parents away in the service or working in factories, children were often
largely unattended (an issue that was of importance during this period, but
has largely been overlooked in subsequent histories of the home front).
New housing arrangements, and often housing shortages, were widespread
during the war. Such mobility continued after the war, albeit in a different
fashion, as thousands abandoned the cities for the suburbs (Polan 254).
Polan and Deming both note the motif of the “wanderer” in films of the
period—someone without a home, without direction (see, in particular,
Polan 264–71). Home itself becomes a site of ambivalence and duality.
While a number of films glorify the American home—particularly nostalgic
representations of America at the turn of the century—the shadowy apartments and mansions found in noir, gothic romances, and wartime spy
thrillers present home as entrapment and danger. Certain films encapsulate
both emotions, such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), or Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful
Life (1946). For male veterans attempting to adjust to a civilian life that no
longer felt comfortable, as well as women feeling constrained by a concerted effort to place them back into the domestic sphere after the war,
home was an increasingly complex environment.
Stars, therefore, may have provided an anchor for audiences feeling cut
adrift from everything they had known before. Certain stars seemed present to address each of the contradictory set of values or emotions listed.
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Brazilian “bombshell” Carmen Miranda became an iconic figure of the Good Neighbor
Policy, singing and dancing in musicals of the 1940s. While presented as comically outrageous, her stardom celebrated cultural outreach between the United States and nations
south of its border. Collection of the author.
Some performers even founded their stardom on divided selves: Danny Kaye
constantly played dual roles, and Lon Chaney Jr. was forever typecast as the
Wolf Man. The prevalence of star couples also suggests the divided self:
Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Individual stars such as Carmen Miranda, Sabu, or Lena Horne acknowledged racial and ethnic diversity,
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but often within a certain comfort zone for white audiences. Others helped
negotiate the thorny issue of individualism versus working as a unit. For
example, male stars such as John Garfield, James Cagney, and Errol Flynn
regularly played self-centered guys learning to be part of a team.
Various female stars became prominent by balancing elements of selfassertiveness with conventional female glamour—whether the gumption
and gams displayed by Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth, the grace yet grit
of Greer Garson, or Jennifer Jones’s ability to be both earthy and innocent
(in different proportion depending on the role). Representative of the interest in psychoanalysis, a number of actresses starred as characters with fragmented psyches: Bette Davis in Now, Voyager (1942), Ginger Rogers in Lady
in the Dark (1944), Joan Crawford in Possessed (1947), Gene Tierney in Leave
Her to Heaven (1947), Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit (1948). Female
stars such as Veronica Lake, Lana Turner, Lauren Bacall, and Barbara Stanwyck also delved into the duplicitous figure of the femme fatale common to
noir (Renov).
The most emblematic stars of the decade, though, were the actors who
crafted images of weary souls, cynical about the world but upholding a
sense of morality and justice nonetheless. Deming’s analysis of the decade’s
films reveals the prevalence of disenchanted heroes who take up the war
effort, yet often with a semi-suicidal sacrifice implicit. She connects these
figures to “tough guys” after the war actively courting the ultimate disinvestment of death. Whether crusading in the cycle of social problem films
that developed during the postwar period or wading through webs of
intrigue in noir thrillers, leading men (John Garfield and James Cagney
again, but also Robert Mitchum and Dick Powell, among others) doggedly
carried on in their missions, even though they were not certain of victory,
or even survival (Naremore; Palmer). Nowhere is this more evident than in
the rise to popularity of Humphrey Bogart, whose star image perfectly
demonstrates the dualities of the era, and who stands as probably the most
iconic star of the entire decade. He and others gave voice to the dis-ease
many seemed to feel at the time, yet these stars appeared to hold seemingly
opposite aspects together and resolve the tensions, at least for the duration
of each performance.
In various ways, the stars discussed in this volume negotiated the unstable, ever-shifting terrain of the 1940s and helped audiences do the same.
Certain stars are emblematic of the decade. The comic duo of Abbott and
Costello, as David Sedman describes, shot to stardom in a series of military
farces that helped prepare a still wary American public for entrance into
another war. Their slide after the war and rebound toward the end of the
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decade by uniting with various iconic horror figures is an almost perfect
mapping of how many stars had to reconfigure their careers across this
period. Similarly, Hannah Hamad details how Greer Garson became the
queen of the MGM lot in the early 1940s, supplanting Greta Garbo, Joan
Crawford, and Norma Shearer, but then found it difficult to adjust to postwar tastes. The 1940s also saw the rise of the pinup, and Adrienne McLean
examines the two most famous ones: Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth.
McLean shows how the two, in different ways, counterbalanced the overt
objectification of their bodies with expressions of female independence.
While such a balance fit the “Rosie the Riveter” era of the war, it became
more problematic afterward. McLean details how Grable began to fade in
popularity toward the end of the decade and Hayworth became the source
of scandal for asserting what was considered a bit too much independence
in her affair with Aly Khan. Robin Blaetz describes how Ingrid Bergman
was also punished by Hollywood for her extramarital relationship with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Having become one of the most respected
and in-demand stars of the mid-1940s, Bergman’s story provides a stark
picture of how quickly fortunes could change during this era.
As mentioned, Humphrey Bogart has become symbolic of 1940s Hollywood, precisely for his ability to straddle categories and attitudes—arguably
American cinema’s first antihero. Rick Worland describes Bogart’s path
from villain in supporting parts to existential romantic figure. Part of that
transition happened through the chemistry the actor found with Ingrid
Bergman in Casablanca (1943), and then in his films with Lauren Bacall.
Worland also examines the rise of Bacall, who developed a female persona
that matched Bogart’s sense of strength yet cynicism. Ed Countryman’s chapter on John Wayne suggests many parallels between Wayne and Bogart.
While Wayne is often regarded as an uncomplicated icon of American masculinity, Countryman shows how often Wayne played characters who were
just as world-weary and emotionally isolated as Bogart in his westerns and
war films of the 1940s. The personae of singing cowboy stars Gene Autry
and Roy Rogers are considered usually in even more simplistic terms than
Wayne. Ed Buscombe, though, displays how each, in his own way, mediated between city and county and between tradition and modernity.
Charlie Keil’s examination of Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant along
with David Lugowski’s discussion of Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers, and
Barbara Stanwyck are reminders that performers who rose to prominence
in the 1930s had to negotiate the ever-shifting terrain of the 1940s as well.
Both authors describe the personae that had served each of these stars earlier, and then show how those images were altered to maintain popularity
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both during the war and afterward. In particular, the female stars in various ways domesticated their images—or played characters punished for
their independence and strength. Grant’s image, though, as Keil points out,
also felt pressure to become more “ordinary.” The emphasis on stars as not
much different than the average Joe or Jane trails through many of the
analyses in this volume. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the popularity of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland during the decade. My overview
of their careers shows how audiences liked to perceive them as “ordinary
Americans” or average teenagers, even though it was plainly obvious how
extraordinarily talented they were. That both had troubles balancing that
sense of ordinariness and extraordinariness in the latter half of the 1940s
matches up with the experiences of many of the other stars investigated
herein.
In sum, the 1940s were—for the United States, for Hollywood, and for
its stars—exhilarating and frightening, filled with potential and uncertainty:
the best of times and the worst of times, but always (as Bogart’s Sam Spade
intones at the end of The Maltese Falcon [1941]) what dreams were made of.