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THE AMERICAN FILM
in the divorce market from receiving current publicity. To counteract this, some thousands of photographs are circulated yearly of well-known film stars in familiar and entirely creditable attitudes. The public are saturated with this sort of propaganda, and believe it all. A typical story is cited by Walter Kron, who quotes from a criticism by a woman journalist, Louella Parsons, as follows: '. . . his work as Lord Nelson in The Divine Lady proved what a really fine artist he is. With an arm missing and blind in one eye, he still managed to have sex appeal.' Another favourite method of retaining
public esteem is the personal appearance. 'Miss travels
specially to London for the opening performance of her new film,' and so on.
The continued forcing of the star-system inevitably called for new faces and fresh talent, and before long producers were raking the world for suitable aspirants to film fame. This, in due course, led to the distressing habit of 'discovering' likely persons in countries thousands of miles from California, transporting them, buoyed up by false promises, to Hollywood where, after a few months of exaggerated publicity, they were forsaken without so much as making one film appearance, being left to find their way home as best they might. Although less guilty in this respect, English studios have tried the same devices of beauty competitions and the like. The chances are remote that the winner of any film contest has any cinematic talent whatsoever beyond an insipid, pretty face. All these disreputable methods of finding film 'talent' are of no use to the progress of the cinema.
As time went on, the haloes of existing stars in Hollywood began to pale visibly. Producers were continually forced to find new stars. Fresh names began to replace the old favourites, and stars of the calibre of Dolores del Rio, Sue Carol, Lupe Velez, and Joan Crawford appeared, dragged from remote corners of the stage or studio crowd work. Productions became more and more costly. The spectacle film, which for some years had lain low, developed into the superfilm, and once more casts of thousands costing millions were employed to attract the public. At the same time, hundreds of feature-films were made to type; and one became accustomed to whole groups of movies of the same variety. There was a craze for war films, aviation films, underworld films, mother-love films, night-life films, backstage films, Spanish films, costume films, etc.
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