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tion all of the telephone callers. The point is that everyone in town has a press agent to direct the Power of the Press into friendly and smooth-flowing channels.
This army of press agents is in addition to the hundreds of publicity men at the major studios who work under the top "ballyhooer. The studios have specialists. One man will handle the top-ranking columnists, another will handle magazines, another'will handle the radio commentators, another will handle the fashion editors. In addition, the studio publicity chief will assign individual men to his top stars, and individual men to sets on which pictures are being shot so that at all times the stars have a contact with the press.
All of them are serving the Great God Ballyhoo, and seeing this vast army of drum-beaters about him, it is small wonder that the star is affected by it and salaams to the gentlemen of the press.
You might think, in your naivete, that a star as famous, say, as Norma Shearer, would be above this, and would be removed from any search for publicity. She is internationally noted; When she goes out into the market places of the world, people scream and fight to get near her, to touch the hem of her garment. Millions of dollars have been spent by M-G-M in advertising her pictures and in presenting her flawlessly. You'd think, then, wouldn't you, that Miss Shearer would not need a publicity man?
Let me tell you something that happened just recently. Norma, with the entire M-G-M publicity staff at her disposal, became dissatisfied with the publicity she was receiving. So
The starmakers have sickened Norma Shearer. Tinsel for her has lost its glitter.
Adolphe Menjou and Dolores Costello in "King of the Turf." In the midst of the crowding, surging, shouting of the frenzied spotlightseekers, Menjou fights for the honor of an ancient art.
she engaged Russell Birdwell for $25,000 a year to plot a publicity campaign for her, to handle all of her press contacts and in other ways to see to it that she was presented to the Power of the Press in the most favorable light.
What, you ask, would Birdwell do for $25,000 a year? Well, on the March of Dimes radio program, Birdwell went to Eddie Cantor, the master of ceremonies, and asked him to let him
examine the script. "May I see your introduction of Mis'; Shearer?" asked Birdwell. What he read was this: "I now present the First Lady of Hollywood, the Queen of Cinema, gracious Miss Norma Shearer." Birdwell hurriedly crossed all of that out, and substituted this: "And now. ladies and gentlemen, Norma Shearer." Birdwell's angle is that Norma, who is a very human human being, must be humanized, instead of being set up on a pedestal as a very dignified celluloid dowager. So Cantor introduced her as Norma Shearer, nothing else.
Miss Shearer's dissatisfaction with M-G-M's publicity, unfortunately, was a below-the-belt blow at the men who work at the Culver City studios. Actually what {Continued on page 80]
for May 1939
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