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period of twenty years, from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second—coincided with the fame, fortune and power of great movie stars, who became absolutely essential in promoting the products. (Directors, on the other hand, were mostly ignored, and for a very long time, few of them—with exceptions like Chaplin and De Mille—had any real clout; most were regarded as secondary to a movie’s success.) It became clear with each passing season that neither talent, acting ability nor studio publicity had much to do with the creation of a star: that was the result of the public’s need. The French philosopher Edgar Morin was on the mark when he wrote, “The imaginary life of the screen is the product of this genuine need for an anonymous life to enlarge itself to the dimensions of life in the movies; the star is its projection. People have always projected their desires and fears in images,” and the movies are but the most recent sign of this (literal) projection.
    Of course the studios had to recognize what audiences wanted, and they had to respond to this need. The conventional wisdom held that only the stars and producers turned movies into hits, and so Hollywood executives selected young people they felt the public liked and essentially created identities for them—even to the point of changing their names and insisting on certain patterns of conduct in their private lives. Archibald Leach, an acrobat from England, became Cary Grant. Spangler Arlington Brough was renamed Robert Taylor. Ruby Stevens was turned into Barbara Stanwyck. Later, Roy Scherer was rechristened Rock Hudson. Thousands received new identities, and backgrounds were created for them that sounded more interesting, more exotic or more polite than the truth suggested.
    Thanks to powerful studio publicists and “talent handlers,” the public never knew that so-and-so might be socially inferior or unacceptable according to the standards of the day. Non-Caucasian actors were rarely cast as anything but servants, laborers, criminals or people of low intelligence. Under threat of dismissal from the studio or permanent demotion to minor, stereotyped roles, lesbian and gay actors were forced to go out in public with proper “dates” of the opposite sex—or even to marry for the sake of their careers. This hypocritical requirement is common even in the twenty-first century.
    During their off-work hours, women contracted to movie studios were advised not to appear in public without makeup and a fashionable outfit. Men had to behave so that they were regarded as unimpeachable gentlemen, and any studio player could be dismissed for failing to adhere to certain moral standards, sometimes defined in their contracts, or simply invented in a whimsical moment by a mogul. For the sake of image, public appearances and romantic rendezvous were arranged by studio publicists, in concert with fan magazines and the daily press, and journalists were duly alerted in advance concerning the whereabouts of the celebrities.
    If a movie star was an alcoholic, a drug abuser, unfaithful to a spouse or found guilty of a crime, the studios could take care of that. Movie executives routinely arranged for media silence, bribed the police and negotiated with newspapers and gossip columnists. In the so-called glory days of Hollywood, the studios thus manipulated the lives of countless thousands. All this control was taken for granted as part of big business.
    HENCE THROUGH THE JOINT efforts of Metro and the fan magazine Movie Weekly, everyone was invited to submit a new name for Lucille Le Sueur. The winner, as it turned out, would not in fact receive one thousand dollars as the advertising indicated: that was the total amount of money to be awarded. The top prize would be five hundred dollars, with ten other prizes of fifty dollars each for those who submitted the ten next-best names. “She has beauty! She has personality!” shouted the contest headlines.