A history of the movies (1931)

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THE STAR SYSTEM 89 this month's celebrated artist. And so was born the press-agent's heaven, and the golden age of buncombe and hokum, in which screen celebrities were turned into sacred cows for their fans to worship at ever-increasing cost of adoration, began to spread its saccharine extravagances over the studios. To imply that the independent producers sensed the deep interest of the public in movie personalities, and created the star system because of their superior acuteness, while General Film manufacturers were obtuse, would entirely misrepresent the situation. The fact is that the almost hysterical acceptance of personality exploitation by movie goers was a startling surprise to all factors and all factions in the screen world. No one had foreseen it, and no one was in any degree prepared for the results that followed its advent. The star system in films was in reality created by the public, and the public has had full and undisputed charge of its creation during every moment of its history. Nearly all independent producers were exhibitors or distributors before they became manufacturers, and nearly all theater owners and exchange managers accepted improvements in quality only when competition compelled them to do so. For years the majority of exhibitors steadily, and often noisily, resisted every attempt to move the movies upward, agreeing with the trust that five or ten cents was the top price for tickets and that a higher fee would close the door to millions of workingmen and their families. The exhibitors, as a class, insisted on flimsy, melodramatic stories, manufactured at low cost so their rental bills could be kept at the minimum. Progress had thus to contend with the opposition of most theater owners and the conservatism of the patents company. A few exceptional exhibitors and exchange men observed the improvement in public taste which inspired Griffith and a few others to search for quality in production, and Hodkinson, Tally, Mitchell Mark, Adolph Zukor and others to better exhibition methods — and sensed the unspoken desires of audiences illustrated dramatically by