By Jennifer Baldwin. It’s August and that means Stars. Movie Stars. August is the month when TCM airs its annual “Summer Under the Stars” festival — 31 days of movie stars — with each day devoted to the films of a different star. This year’s schedule includes days devoted to Basil Rathbone, Norma Shearer, Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Olivia De Havilland, Clint Eastwood, John Gilbert, Warren Beatty, Thelma Todd, and many more. Thanks to “Summer Under the Stars,” August has become a month that classic movie fans can’t help but love.
But why do we love it? First of all, we love the posters. Seriously, TCM does a phenomenal job with their advertising when it comes to the “Summer Under the Stars.” Last year’s promotional art posters were so good, in fact, that I wish TCM had sold them as full-sized glossy posters that I could put on my wall. This year, graphic artist Michael Schwab has designed eye-popping silhouettes for each of the thirty-one stars.
Why else do we love the “Summer Under the Stars”? Well, there’s the chance to see films rarely shown on TCM. When you’ve got twenty-four hours devoted to say, the films of John Gilbert, there’s bound to be a lot of movies that don’t normally make the TCM rotation. This year’s rarities include films starring Gilbert, Thelma Todd, and Woody Strode. Also, days devoted to Gene Tierney, Julie Christie, Ann Sheridan, Bob Hope, Kathryn Grayson, Lee Remick, and Robert Ryan offer the opportunity to dig a little deeper into the filmographies of stars who don’t get as much play as some of the perennial heavy hitters like Flynn, Bergman, and Hepburn.
But beyond the promotional art, and the rare films, the biggest reason we love the “Summer Under the Stars” is because we love the stars themselves. Sure, TCM shows a Katharine Hepburn movie at least once a week (and that’s on a slow week), but there’s something about watching an entire day’s worth of her films (or Errol Flynn’s, or Paul Newman’s, or Ingrid Bergman’s) that’s just… special. A big part of loving old movies means loving old movie stars.
That’s why I’m distressed to see a few articles on the web recently claim we don’t need movie stars anymore (and even more radically, that we never really needed them in the first place). Sure, the annual “Are Movie Stars Dead?” article is as predictable as the old “Did Jaws and Star Wars Kill the Movies” article. But this new trend – to not just lament the death of movie stars but to say “good riddance” as well – is a bit disturbing. Who are these people who think that movies don’t need movie stars?
It’s an idea that’s utterly foreign to me. I got into old movies because of the movie stars. I wouldn’t have become the crazy, obsessive classic movie fanatic that I am today if it hadn’t been for the movie stars I came to love. I was first introduced to old movies by my mom: folding laundry with her on the couch, a rainy Saturday afternoon, an old Hitchcock film or 1940s romance on the TV. I enjoyed these old movies well enough, but they didn’t mean all that much to me. I hadn’t fallen in love with them yet.
But I fell in love with old movies thanks to an Entertainment Weekly special edition book called, The 100 Greatest Stars of All Time. I’m not kidding. I bought the book on a whim one afternoon when I was sixteen and I’ve been reading it ever since. It was my first introduction to some of the great classic stars, like Steve McQueen and Barbara Stanwyck. It broadened my knowledge and stoked my curiosity about those stars I already knew. It was my gateway to the films of Natalie Wood and Paul Newman and Bette Davis. It was my constant companion as I scoured the shelves of video stores and my local library, looking for the films of those stars I had become obsessed with. A dazzling photo of the star and a list of his or her “essential” films was all I needed from that Entertainment Weekly special edition to begin my love affair. And these love affairs have been going on ever since.
That’s why when it’s Errol Flynn day during “Summer Under the Stars,” even though I’ve seen his films dozens of times, I still stop and watch The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk — because I love Errol Flynn. That’s why I’m counting down the days until it’s Ann Sheridan day – because I love that feisty, down-to-earth redhead.
To cut movie stars out of the equation means cutting out one of the great pleasures of watching movies. Why do these anti-movie star people want less pleasure in their movie going experience? There’s nothing like watching a movie star command the screen. The moment Errol Flynn strides on screen in The Adventures of Robin Hood — with a dead deer slung over his shoulder, a saucy look on his face, a brazen insult on his lips — is more fun than any special effect, more thrilling than any car chase (unless it’s a car chase with Steve McQueen, of course). It’s a star moment. Why would we want to give that up? Why would we want to say that’s not important?
What the popularity of TCM’s “Summer Under the Stars” perfectly illustrates is that movie stars are one of the biggest reasons we watch movies in the first place: We want to bask in their glow, we want to fall under their spell, we want to experience that heightened state of humanity – all the glories and the pathos – that is the lofty domain of the movie star. We’ll watch the most mediocre of movies, in fact, just to see our favorite stars do their thing.
We love these stars to the point of devotion. Like the gods and goddesses of antiquity, movie stars are, as film critic Ty Burr pointed out in my old Entertainment Weekly special edition, “aspects of ourselves available for communal dreaming, writ large and luminous on a theater wall.”
If we lose these luminous stars, if we throw them out as something irrelevant and unwanted, then we lose something that’s been an essential part of the movies since 1909, when Carl Laemmle made the “Biography Girl” Florence Lawrence the very first movie star.
If we don’t need movie stars, we might as well give up on the movies. I didn’t fall in love with old movies because I loved the poetry of John Ford or the touch of Lubitsch. Those loves came later. I fell in love with old movies because I fell in love with the people in them. To be captivated by these glowing faces on the screen is to be captivated by something deeply human, something inimitable, something larger-than-life that nevertheless touches us in our souls. Whoever wants to say ‘we don’t need movie stars’ should spend a day watching TCM this month to see just how much we do need them. Without the movie stars to gaze at, the screen might as well be black.
Posted on August 9th, 2010 at 5:30pm.
MUST. OWN. THOSE. POSTERS. NOW.
Yes, they’re great – aren’t they? You can find a lot more of them on-line.
I think my favorite is the teaser poster for The Letter, with the outstretched bloody hand passing off the envelope to another hand. Creepy and awesome!
I love the posters, too, because they give these older movies a modern cache; it lets people know these films can be just as entertaining and relevant as any of the latest stuff out at the multiplex.
I really have to agree. I can watch Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Errol Flynn, and Rita Hayworth all day long. I think the reason people in the media nowadays are saying that we don’t need movie stars is because Hollywood has been producing such poor ones lately. This is just their way of excusing their lack of effort in finding and cultivating great new stars. They could do it, just like they could write better stories, but I don’t think they want to try.
My little niece’s (10 years old) favorite movie star is Audrey Hepburn! I gave her the TCM bio for Christmas and she and her friend watched it 10 times in a row. 🙂
It’s almost like Hollywood today doesn’t know how to cultivate stars. They’ve got people with talent and charisma out there, they just don’t know how to use them. Which is too bad. I haven’t seen Salt yet, but I’m excited to see it to finally see a star performance that isn’t afraid to BE a star performance. I dig super-duper special effects like any good, geeky comic book readin’ gal, but there’s nothing like watching a movie star light up the screen and make you fall in love.
Audrey Hepburn is a perfect example. Her performance in Roman Holiday is simply exhilarating. The electric passion she generates with Gregory Peck, her strength of character, her grace, her charm — there’s just nothing like it. That is a performance and a star-turn that will live forever.
But I firmly believe there are actors and actresses out there today who could be just as exhilarating, if given the chance. Amy Adams made quite an impression in Enchanted, for instance. But she hasn’t done much with it since. This is where the old studio system could really benefit a star. They could guide a career. Of course, they could also ruin a career through typecasting and bad scripts, so it was a mixed bag. I don’t know the solution, but I do know that movies need movie stars.