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THE ACTUAL
personality process, resulting in the tyrannical reign of the starsystem, the super-film, and the publicity blurring campaigns, all of which were to develop to such an extent that they strangled themselves. The producing companies made their great mistake when they decided to cater for the taste of the music-hall patron. The enthusiasm of the real public had already fallen off when directors tended to repeat themselves. The standard of films had reached a rut; a groove out of which it had to be jolted if big business was to be continued. Some new weapon was needed to stir the public out of its apathy.
The Americans decided to recapture the attention of the masses by the wholesale exploitation of stars, a process, if such it may be called, which was in its embryo with the success of films in which Chaplin, Fairbanks, Pickford, Swanson, etc., played. The film business of Hollywood was to become one big game of bluff. Obviously, those who bluffed hardest (and no nation in the world is so accomplished in the art of bluffing as the American) made the most money. The film men began to work (and some of them realise it now) to the detriment of the prestige of the film. The cinema lost a public who loved it for itself and what it meant to them. They had no liking for vaudeville, for star turns on a big scale. In the place of the old film-goer there arose a new type of audience, a vacant-minded, empty-headed public, who flocked to sensations, who thrilled to sensual vulgarity, and who would go anywhere and pay anything to see indecent situations riskily handled on the screen. Of such types are the audiences of to-day largely composed.
America exploited the star-system for all the crooked business was worth. Competitions were organised; beauty contests arranged; vast correspondence 'fan mails' worked up; widespread campaigns of personal publicity launched; marriages and separations arranged; whilst a public of the lowest and worst type responded with the eagerness usually found in such people. They began to write letters to their favourite stars; how old were they; how much were they worth; how much did they weigh; what sort of face cream did they use; why were they married; what were their children like (if any) and so on. This was encouraged and fanned by the publicity men. In contrast to the audiences of early days, people now went to the cinema to see films because of the stars who were in them. They cared nothing for the films themselves, so long as they were shown
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