Movie Star

In the early days of silent movies the names of the actors and actresses appearing in movies were not publicized or credited because producers feared this would result in demands for higher salaries. However, audience curiosity soon undermined this policy. By 1909, actresses such as Florence Lawrence and Mary Pickford were already widely recognized, although the public remained unaware of their names. Lawrence was referred to as the “Biograph Girl” because she worked for D. W. Griffith's Biograph Studios, while Pickford was "Little Mary." In 1910, Lawrence switched to the Independent Moving Pictures Company, began appearing under her own name, and was hailed as "America's foremost moving picture star" in IMP literature. Pickford began appearing under her own name in 1911.
IMP promoted their “picture personalities”, including Florence Lawrence and King Baggot, by giving them billing/credits and a marquee. Promotion in advertising led to the release of stories about these personalities to newspapers and fan magazines as part of a strategy to build “brand loyalty” for their company's actors and films. By the 1920s, Hollywood film company promoters had developed a “massive industrial enterprise” that “…peddled a new intangible—fame.”
Hollywood “image makers” and promotional agents planted rumors, selectively released real or fictitious biographical information to the press, and used other “gimmicks” to create glamorous personas for actors. Publicists thus “created” the “enduring images” and public perceptions of screen legends such as Rock Hudson, Marilyn Monroe, and Grace Kelly. The development of this “star system” made “fame…something that could be fabricated purposely, by the masters of the new ‘machinery of glory’.” However, regardless of how “…strenuously the star and their media handlers and press agents may…try to ‘monitor’ and ‘shape’ it, the media and the public always play a substantial part in the image-making process.” According to Madow, “fame is a ‘relational’ phenomenon, something that is conferred by others. A person can, within the limits of his natural talents, make himself strong or swift or learned. But he cannot, in this same sense, make himself famous, any more than he can make himself loved.”
Madow goes on to point out “fame is often conferred or withheld, just as love is, for reasons and on grounds other than ‘merit’.” According to Sofia Johansson the “canonical texts on stardom” include articles by Boorstin (1971), Alberoni (1972) and Dyer (1979) that examined the “representations of stars and on aspects of the Hollywood star system”. Johansson notes “more recent analyses within media and cultural studies (e.g. Gamson 1994; Marshall 1997; Giles 2000; Turner, Marshall and Bonner 2000; Rojek 2001; Turner 2004) have instead dealt with the idea of a pervasive, contemporary, ‘celebrity culture’.” In the analysis of the celebrity culture, “fame and its constituencies are conceived of as a broader social process, connected to widespread economic, political, technological and cultural developments.”