Managing the News

Article

Managing the News

by Tavo Amador  
 
Movies are both a popular entertainment and the great art-form of the 20th century, although it took awhile for the latter to be recognized. Early audiences were mainly working-class urbanites, both native-born and new immigrants. Silent pictures didn’t require a comprehensive knowledge of English, and thus became an important impetus towards assimilation. Early in the nickelodeon era, fan magazines began documenting and discussing film personalities, something the studios realized would help sell tickets, yet caused them anxiety by focusing on the actors on screen, thereby giving the stars financial leverage.    

In his scholarly yet lively Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine: A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers (University of Mississippi, $40), Anthony Slide covers the rise and fall of the publications that once had a huge influence on what audiences believed about their idols. The sheer number of magazines that once thrived is staggering, although Photoplay was probably the most important. Their heyday was the 1930s, but they remained a powerful force well into the 1970s. Many prestigious writers contributed to them, including Theodore Dreiser, Somerset Maugham, and H.L. Mencken. In general, the writing was good, even if the content was fluff. Women and gay men were the principal readers, and actresses like Joan Crawford, Claudette Colbert, Shirley Temple in the 1930s to Elizabeth Taylor in the 50s and 60s were most prominently featured on covers and in stories.

The magazines and the studios developed an uneasy, symbiotic relationship. Studios controlled access to the stars, which magazines needed. The magazines, however, promoted images approved by the studio. Shrewd stars like Crawford, whom Slide says “never met a writer she didn’t like,” knew how to use the magazines to gain and retain public affection and loyalty.

A fascinating section covers gay stars. One popular writer, Herbert Howe, promoted himself as a bachelor, with a different date each night. In truth, he was gay, and his articles are surprisingly daring. He was attracted to Hispanics, and in a 1925 story about the first screen Latin Lover, Spain’s Antonio Moreno (who may have been gay), Howe describes interviewing him as he stepped out of a shower. “One dry hand was extended in salutation while the wet one was employed with a Turkish towel massaging the equatorial zone.” Moreno says, “I like action, you know,” glancing up from “the vigorous action of the towel upon his left leg.” Howe and Mexico’s Ramon Novarro, whose Latin Lover popularity rivaled that of gay Rudolph Valentino, were romantic partners for many years. Their break-up, writes Slide, precipitated Novarro’s alcoholism and reliance on hustlers, one of whom murdered him.

In the 30s, the magazines featured articles about Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, who owned a home together and were frequently pictured in various domestic poses. In 1933, Hollywood magazine profiled them in an article, “We Can’t Afford a Hollywood Marriage,” in which they lamented the need for a “Hollywood front.” Three years later, Screenland featured “Hollywood Bachelors at Home,” showing them side-by-side by their pool. Grant said, “Every morning when we aren’t working, we jump out of bed into our bathing trunks, make a run for the surf.” In 1939, Ruth Waterbury wrote about Grant’s “Gay Romance.”

Mainstream audiences appeared clueless, a trend persisting into the 50s, when Movies featured scantily clad, buff gay actors Tab Hunter and Roddy McDowell in an article hilariously titled, “Calling All Girls.” By 1971, things had changed somewhat. Modern Screen chronicled “Hollywood’s First Homosexual Marriage,” although the   men, later identified as Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors, weren’t named.

For decades, the magazines avoided scandal and politics. They were challenged in the 50s by Confidential and other tabloids, which exposed celebrity secrets. It’s not surprising, therefore, that from the late 50s until the early 70s, as her life became more controversial, Taylor dominated magazine covers and articles.

Slide shows that the 1960 election of President Kennedy turned his wife Jacqueline into the first non-movie personality prominently featured in film magazines. Throughout the 60s, she rivaled Taylor. Often the same article covered them both. “What Liz and Jackie Did To Get Their Husbands Back,” headlined Screen Secrets in 1969.

Rona Barrett has her own chapter. From 1960-80, she transformed coverage of Hollywood stars, focusing on younger ones who appealed to the growing teenage market. Older, established gossip columnists like Hedda Hopper and Sheilah Graham were hostile to Barrett, who became the first important television celebrity commentator. Her name appeared on many magazines, and one introduced the concept that would later become the basis for People, which permanently changed fan magazines.

Although People covered movie stars, its attention shifted to television personalities, including soap opera performers, pop singers, and eventually, anyone who was famous. The prose was short, the pictures plentiful. Scandals were welcomed. It has successfully adapted to the instant-news world of the Internet.

Creating images is as old as civilization – from the Pharaohs to the Renaissance Papacy to Louis XIV to American Presidents, rulers have used existing media to impress their subjects and rivals. Fan magazines, however, altered the focus from the politically powerful to those providing popular entertainment in a more democratic age. Slide’s well-illustrated account of how that happened is, therefore, an important, engaging contribution to cultural history.

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