Show People: A History of the Film Star

by Michael Newton

Overview

Show People offers a comprehensive history of the idea of the film star from Mary Pickford to Andy Serkis, traversing more than one hundred years and drawing on examples from America, Britain, Europe, and Asia. Renowned film writer Michael Newton explores our enduring love affair with fame, glamour, and the cinematic image. Newton builds up an expansive picture of movie stardom through explorations of striking and diverse figures such as Ingrid Bergman and John Wayne, Anna Karina and Sidney Poitier, Maggie Cheung, and Raj Kapoor. He celebrates the great performers of the past, and he looks forward to developments in the future, while also illuminating the inner workings of the movie industry and what moves us in a film and in an actor’s performance.

An encyclopedic, illustrated history of film idols ready for their close-ups, Show People is ultimately a book about cinephilia, the love of cinema, and our complex connection to that celebrated and beleaguered figure, the movie star.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789141566
Publisher:	Reaktion Books, Limited
Publication date:	10/16/2019
Edition description:	1
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Michael Newton teaches literature and film at Leiden University. He is the author of popular books on film and cultural history, including Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children and Age of Assassins, and two BFI Film Classics volumes, Kind Hearts and Coronets and Rosemary’s Baby.

Table of Contents

Preface 9

Part 1 The Silent Star

1 Mary Pickford: The Biograph Girl 17

2 Pola Negri: Inventing the Star 29

3 Charlie Chaplin: The Tramp 43

Part 2 The Golden Age

4 'Asta' and 'Cheeta: The Animal Star 55

5 Peter Lorre: Character Actor 67

6 Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly: A Star Danced 73

7 Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant: The Public Image 84

8 Vivien Leigh: Ruinous Selves 93

9 Veronica Lake: Half-obscured Faces 109

10 Carole Lombard: The Screwball Heroine 115

11 Greer Garson and Joan Fontaine: The Forgotten Star 120

12 Orson Welles: The Film Star as Fragment and Failure 137

13 Ingrid Bergman: Intermezzo 150

Part 3 National Cinemas - Stars For The Nation

14 Lamberto Maggiorani and Maria Pia Casilio: Absent Film Stars in Vittorio De Sica's Films 167

15 Moira Shearer: The Marionette 174

16 Gloria Swanson: Having a Face 183

17 Ava Gardner: I Am Not an Actress 189

18 Montgomery Clift: He's Not There 200

19 Setsuko Hara: The Still Point 212

20 Toshiro Mifune: Studying Lions 221

21 Nargis and Raj Kapoor: My Heart Is Hindustani 226

22 Giulietta Masina and Marcello Mastroianni: Nothing Is Sadder than Laughter 240

23 John Wayne: How to Grow Old 250

24 Audrey Hepburn: Frankenstein's Creature 261

25 Marilyn Monroe: The Suffering Star 271

26 Juanita Moore and Susan Kohner: Imitation of Life 280

Part 4 New Wave Stars

27 Janet Leigh and Tippi Hedren: Torturing the Audience 287

28 Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant: The Strange Death of the Hollywood Golden Age 294

29 Anna Karina: The Muse 299

30 Celia Johnson and Julie Christie: The Adulterous Star 305

31 Sidney Poitier: The Defiant One 313

32 Dustin Hoffman: Little Big Man 322

33 Woody Allen: The Director as Star 332

34 Robert De Niro: For Real 340

Part 5 Posthuman Stars

35 Harrison Ford: Blade Runner and the Replication of the Person 353

36 Maggie Cheung: Centre Stage 360

37 Naomi Watts: Mulholland Drive 372

38 Scarlett Johansson: A New Kind of Emptiness 381

39 Shu Qi: A Placeless Heaven 388

40 Andy Serkis: Lear's Shadow 395

Afterword 405

References 421

Acknowledgements 433

Index 435

Editorial Reviews

"Show People, by academic Newton, examines how film stars shaped the medium, rather than vice versa. In fact, it’s a collection of essays on individual actors, from Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin to Scarlett Johansson, sometimes focusing on a single film, sometimes on whole careers, and sometimes just on gossip. . . . [Made] me want to seek out some of the oddities and forgotten classics he mentions."

Evening Standard

"In effect Newton presents the history of film told through famous actors and the notable movies in which they starred. . . . Each of the stars included brought something new to film culture, and Newton highlights and contextualizes that 'something' in contemporary work. Infused throughout are musings on the ephemeral nature of stardom, from rise to fall. But rather than presenting a thesis of the mechanisms of gaining and maintaining popularity, this book discusses multiple stars, allowing the reader to make comparisons across time and draw parallels and distinctions."

Choice - S. Reysen

"In Show People, professor and columnist Newton waxes rhapsodic about a century of acting, with a special fondness for  performances about performance. . . . I spent a few nights rewatching movies I hadn't seen in a while, simply  because of the way Newton writes about those small beats we love without knowing how to quite explain, the ones that can get reframed with new, wider context when you think about them more."

NPR - Genevieve Valentine

"Newton has subtlety, originality, and a wide range of reference. . . . He has the knack of apt quotation . . . and sharp summary.

Sight and Sound

Thorough and thoughtful, Newton’s Show People is a major addition to existing literature on the subject of film stardom. I can't wait to read it a second time.

Gary D. Rhodes