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CHAPTER 6 Stars
When, finally, movie actors began to talk, audience likes and dislikes regarding stars became very pronounced, the girl or boy running a temperature over Pat O'Brien or Joan Blondell becoming very impatient of types like Robert Taylor and Joan Bennett.
Liking this star or disliking that one is of course quite natural, and also pretty general, but extremely detrimental to any fair or useful estimate of a star's personal appeal or his suitability for a role. However, personal likes and dislikes might be tempered if one could give one's favorite star an impartial or dispassionate appraisal, but easy as that sounds, it rarely works out.
Sometimes a spiritual, mental and physical once-over is offered to prove how completely and utterly detached or impersonal we actually are, but in the end that kind of scanning always discloses so many special likes and dislikes, the best we can say for it is, it is not impartial.
Starting with the physical, we meet up with the adoring crowd that ignores or denies anything but spiritual appeal in stars like Janet Gaynor and Anita Louise, fans totally blind to curves, disclaiming emphatically that those two ladies are shapely or desirable.
True that any desire awakened by the Misses Louise and Gaynor is a gentle and protective thing, while Joan Blondell and Alice Faye arouse a more lusty and possessful animal, but gentle or lusty, it is sex appeal just the same. After all, that young man in State Fair was interested in something more than Janet Gaynor's skill at churning butter.
In seeking star types dominantly spiritual or obviously lacking in sex appeal there are but two likely prospects; Charlie McCarthy and Donald Duck, and there seems to be justifiable suspicions regarding Charlie.
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