I’m no actor and I have sixty four films to prove it.
— VICTOR MATUREIf you want to see the girl next door, go next door.
— JOAN CRAWFORD
There is a marvelous scene in the 1956 hit High Society that distills the greatness of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby not as terrific singers, which they of course were, but as consummate movie stars.
It is their rendition of Cole Porter’s swingingly whimsical “Did Ya Evah,” which as film historian Jeanine Basinger writes, required Frankie and Der Bingles to sing, dance, hit their marks, not mangle the lyrics, deliver the scripted dialogue, stay within their characters, act slightly drunk, keep the beat of the orchestra playback, move around a tight set following a specific choreography and all the while appearing to be utterly at ease while never forgetting that they were rivals for the audience’s affection.
This marvelous description of star power comes early in Basinger’s The Star Machine, a thoroughly researched and delightfully written layer cake of a book about a business that Hollywood couldn’t even define but almost always succeeded in through a combination of astute planning, brilliant marketing, understanding its audience better than the audience understood itself, as well as sheer dumb luck.
Basinger deftly and wittily elucidates the steps in making a star:
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