Starmaker
David O. Selznick and the Production of Stars in the Hollywood Studio System
David O. Selznick (1902–1965) was one of the most prominent film producers of the Hollywood studio era, responsible for such artistic and commercial triumphs as King Kong, David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, A Star Is Born, Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, Spellbound, and The Third Man. However, film production was not his only domain. Starting in the late 1930s, he built an impressive stable of stars within his own independent company, including Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh, Joan Fontaine, Jennifer Jones, and Gregory Peck.
In Starmaker: David O. Selznick and the Production of Stars in the Hollywood Studio System, author Milan Hain reveals the mechanisms by which Selznick and his collaborators discovered and promoted new stars and describes how these personalities were marketed, whether for financial gain or symbolic recognition and prestige. Using a wide range of archival materials, the book significantly complements and reshapes our understanding of Selznick’s celebrated career by focusing on heretofore neglected aspects of his creative and business activities. It also sheds light on the US film industry during the Golden Age of Hollywood studios and in the postwar period when the established order began to break down. By structuring the book around Selznick and his role as a starmaker, Hain demonstrates that star production and development in the Hollywood studio system was a highly organized and systematic activity, though the respective strategies and procedures were often hidden from the public eye.
Hain offers an extremely well-researched overview of Selznick, in collaboration with numerous archives, and crafts a narrative that is sure to be enjoyed by fans of classic film and various Selznick productions.
Starmaker draws on Thomas Schatz’s 2015 study, ‘The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era,’ a seminal history that Mr. Hain uses to deepen our sense of how interrelated the means of production were with the advent of screen personalities.
Neither description nor excerpting conveys the dimension of Selznick’s activities. That experience is reserved for researchers fortunate enough to see for themselves. Collected at the University of Texas in the Harry Ransom Center’s David O. Selznick Archive are ‘4,674 document boxes, plus 428 oversize or custom boxes, 147 music folders, 6 galley folders, 101 sound discs, 155 bound volumes, and 35 flat file drawers (2,388 linear feet).’ . . . [F]ilm scholar Milan Hain has made admirable use of this voluminous collection in his excellent Starmaker: David O. Selznick and the Production of Stars in the Hollywood Studio System, a step-by-step examination of David Selznick’s process of creating and utilizing stars.
Starmaker is one of the best pieces of work I have read in recent years about the phenomenon of stardom and about Hollywood cinema in the 1930s and 1940s.
Starmaker is the first book on Selznick that concerns his professional career and his (mis)judgment of talent as he aided in the creation and development of stars. This approach makes it an extremely interesting, unique take on the role of the film producer not tackled before in book form.
Milan Hain is assistant professor of film studies at Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic. He is author or coauthor of five books and his work has appeared in such publications as the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, Czech and Slovak Journal of Humanities, and Jewish Film and New Media.