Who, overall, was the biggest (male) movie star of the Golden Era?

[Big J]

Bogie.

OK, all finished. Next subject?

+1
It's gotta be Humph for that era!

 

[MisterCairo]

So many ways of calculating an answer to that question. I came across this survey:


http://www.reelclassics.com/Articles/General/quigleytop10-article.htm

Gable finished as high as second a number of times behind Temple and Rooney. Gable as noted was a constant though, Temple was in there for quite a number of years, and Bogey was there but not in the numbers we tend to think of.

Image and reputation change perceptions. Actors all but forgotten were huge stars at the time, and actors (female as well as male) we regard as golden era gods were not quite as huge ($ draw wise) as we think today.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I am familiar with Arrangement In Black And White. The woman he caricatured, and her kind, would never be seen in a Harlem jazz club although her children might.

Have read several accounts by jazz fans and musicians who frequented jazz clubs in the twenties, thirties and forties and don't recall any hint of "slumming" or overt racism. Quite the reverse. Most white jazz fans who frequented live venues and interacted with black people came to see racism as rather silly.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't recall ever saying anything about jazz clubs. Although the Cotton Club, Connie's Inn, and several other Harlem jazz spots of the twenties were strictly segregated -- although black performers were featured, in settings emphasizing a "jungle" or "plantation" motif, black patrons were not permitted, and the clubs catered exclusively to the upscale white trade.

Malcolm X worked as a waiter, house dancer, and master of ceremonies in several Harlem night spots in the early and mid forties, and he had a lot to say about the class of white folks he tended to run into, little of it favorable. His most memorable account was that of a young man he knew who claimed to be "more Negro than any Negro," a man who wore the clothes, jived the jive, embraced the cause, loved the music, and on and on and on. And then he sidled up to Malcolm's white girlfriend and asked her "What's a good-looking girl like you doing throwing yourself away on a sp*de?"

 

[emigran]

I always love this question... probably isn't a bona fide winner since there were so many notable really big stars, the likes of which have never influenced culture again . Today's mega stars are often carefully manufactured by the super-powered media. GE stars like Gable ( whom I held to be a rather over-rated actor as as compared to Tracy for example) were IMHO given star ranking due to their screen presence image more than their merit as talented actors.
Remember too what going to the movies was as a cultural phenomena in the GE.
I really cannot offer a "sabermetric statistic" to this long standing inquiry...like who was bettera: Mickey Mantle or Joe Di Maggio...
However, I really love GE flicks

 

[LizzieMaine]

I always love this question... probably isn't a bona fide winner since there were so many notable really big stars, the likes of which have never influenced culture again . Today's mega stars are often carefully manufactured by the super-powered media. GE stars like Gable ( whom I held to be a rather over-rated actor as as compared to Tracy for example) were IMHO given star ranking due to their screen presence image more than their merit as talented actors.
Remember too what going to the movies was as a cultural phenomena in the GE.
I really cannot offer a "sabermetric statistic" to this long standing inquiry...like who was bettera: Mickey Mantle or Joe Di Maggio...
However, I really love GE flicks

It's important to note the power that the fan press had in hyping stars in the Era -- Photoplay magazine, Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, and all the pulp movie rags were extremely influential, and were freely used by the studios to manipulate the careers of favored players and to sink stars who had fallen out of favor with the front office.

Interestingly, the readership of movie fan magazines in the Era was almost entirely working-class and female, usually young, single women in their twenties, the group which also made up the single greatest bloc of movie ticket buyers. The marketing of male stars had a great deal to do with satisfying this specific demographic -- which explains the incessant promotion of an actor like Gable, who the movie marketers considered the ideal dream man for these moviegoers. By contrast, Fred Astaire -- who was and remains highly regarded by critics then and now -- was considered "box office poison" by exhibitors in the late thirties, because no matter how many urban sophisticates liked him, Sally Punchclock considered him absolutely repellant.

 

[Fading Fast]

A few thoughts / questions on your post Lizzie,

I have no idea, but who are the buyers today of "US Magazine," "People," etc. that populate the checkout line in the supermarket? My completely unscientific observation from being bored in line is that it is mainly women, but no real sense of an age bias (all ages seem to buy them).

Didn't Astaire's movies do well - I am truly asking, I have no idea, but assume they must of or they wouldn't have kept making them? I can see why he wouldn't be the typical male star appealing to young women, but I just assumed his movies did well.

Regarding emigram's comment about stars being carefully manufactured today (which I agree with), the GE stars were, for the most part, working under the studio system and were very carefully controlled (or manufactured). And, yes, I agree - all this "who is the biggest" is fun (I enjoy it), but silly as we can wrap a metric around it (box office, years at the top, blah, blah, blah) but as we know today, that doesn't fully capture it as some stars never see big box office (Brad Pitt has had only a few really big-money hits but was / is (?) a megastar; whereas, Tom Cruise seems to almost always have mega-hits but most people think he's cracker-house crazy and would hardly consider him more representative of a star than Pitt).

It's a fun, not-serious game, but what the heck, I'll play. For me, there was no bigger star than Cary Grant as he was near the top for three decades. Close behind is Tracey - three-plus decades of outstanding movies. But that's no more meaningful than any other metric - I just respect longevity in a very fickle business.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Astaire did well in the cities, but tanked in the towns -- independent theatre owners, not controlled by chain booking, avoided his pictures in droves. He was one of only two male performers specifically attacked in the famous "Box Office Poison" article in the Hollywood Reporter in 1938 -- the other was Edward Arnold, who was also a long way from Gable-type material: he was that beefy, jowly fellow who played a long string of sinister capitalists in the movies of the thirties. All the other performers named were women -- Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, and Kay Francis were all attacked as not being worth the salaries they were earning when it came to box-office returns.

The millenial kids I know don't have any use for the modern celebrity rags, and seem much less interested in "celebrity culture" than the previous generation. If I had to guess, based on their advertising content and who I see buying them, I'd say the audience for these publications was white working-to-lower-middle-class married women in their thirties: not quite "soccer moms," but a notch down on the social scale. Tee-ball moms, maybe.

 

[Fading Fast]

Astaire did well in the cities, but tanked in the towns -- independent theatre owners, not controlled by chain booking, avoided his pictures in droves. He was one of only two male performers specifically attacked in the famous "Box Office Poison" article in the Hollywood Reporter in 1938 -- the other was Edward Arnold, who was also a long way from Gable-type material: he was that beefy, jowly fellow who played a long string of sinister capitalists in the movies of the thirties. All the other performers named were women -- Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, and Kay Francis were all attacked as not being worth the salaries they were earning when it came to box-office returns.

The millenial kids I know don't have any use for the modern celebrity rags, and seem much less interested in "celebrity culture" than the previous generation. If I had to guess, based on their advertising content and who I see buying them, I'd say the audience for these publications was white working-to-lower-middle-class married women in their thirties: not quite "soccer moms," but a notch down on the social scale. Tee-ball moms, maybe.

I know Edward Arnold's movies well - you describe him quite accurately. A better version of him, IMHO, was Walter Connolly - he could play the sinister capitalist, but usually had a more three-dimensional role. One of my favorite little TCM gems (not a big picture, not well known, but just enjoyable) is "No More Orchids" in which Connolly plays Lombard's failing banker father trying (quite successfully and dramatically finally) to prevent her from marrying for money to save him and not for love. The movie also has another of those great "mature men" actors of the time - C. Aubry Smith who could do sinister and sympathetic with the best of them.

It will be interesting to see if the millenials shake up the celebrity culture over time as their influence grows. They are already rocking the restaurant chain world as they embrace perceived fresher / healthier chains like Shake Shack and Chipotle and not McDonalds etc.

I had heard the box-office poison thing about Hepburn, but not all the others. So who do you think was right in the sense that did those big stars, whom the towns didn't embrace, bring in enough box office money from the big cities to justify their salaries and industry status or were the studios a bit too enthralled with big city success and critics that it impacted their financial judgement (hard to believe as they all seemed beholden to the dollar)?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, my sentiment's with the exhibitors on this, especially since the studios had the legal right to shove whatever they produced down their throats thru block-booking contracts whether the exhibitors wanted them or not. Personally, I love Astaire's pictures, but Hepburn is way too la-de-dah for me, Garbo annoys me, Mae West was the world's first female female impersonator, the only Joan Crawford picture I like is the one she made with Harry Langdon, and I can never tell if Marlene Dietrich is putting everybody on or if she really means to be like that. And Kay Fwancis -- ah, the weeper's weeper. Give me a Glenda Farrell or Jean Arthur or Barbara Stanwyck picture any day of the week.

Walter Connolly was always good. His capitalists were generally more sympathetic than Arnold's -- sort of a halfway point between Edward Arnold and Guy Kibbee on the bloated movie plutocrat scale.

 

[Fading Fast]

Well, my sentiment's with the exhibitors on this, especially since the studios had the legal right to shove whatever they produced down their throats thru block-booking contracts whether the exhibitors wanted them or not. Personally, I love Astaire's pictures, but Hepburn is way too la-de-dah for me, Garbo annoys me, Mae West was the world's first female female impersonator, the only Joan Crawford picture I like is the one she made with Harry Langdon, and I can never tell if Marlene Dietrich is putting everybody on or if she really means to be like that. And Kay Fwancis -- ah, the weeper's weeper. Give me a Glenda Farrell or Jean Arthur or Barbara Stanwyck picture any day of the week.

Walter Connolly was always good. His capitalists were generally more sympathetic than Arnold's -- sort of a halfway point between Edward Arnold and Guy Kibbee on the bloated movie plutocrat scale.

I'm with you on Arthur and Stanwyck (both had fantastic voices) - both seem like they'd be great to hang out with - there's no "hanging out with" Hepburn or Crawford (who I truly find scary).

Dietrich is a different kind of scary form Crawford - Crawford seemed pro-actively rapacious and vindictive / Dietrich seemed like she'd simply dismiss you as not important

What are your thoughts on Lombard - she seemed regular gal to me?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I always thought Lombard was better than the movies she was in -- I'd like to have written a picture for her. One of the best comic actresses of her time, in a time when Hollywood didn't think much of funny women.

 

[Fading Fast]

I always thought Lombard was better than the movies she was in -- I'd like to have written a picture for her. One of the best comic actresses of her time, in a time when Hollywood didn't think much of funny women.

Agreed - "In Name Only," "No More Orchids" and "Vigil in the Night" are the only ones I truly enjoy of her movies and those are far from her most popular.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I was surprised that Marie Dressler topped the Reel Classics list of stars for 1932 and 1933, and made the list for 1934 even though she died in July of that year. She was the farthest thing from a Hollywood glamor girl. She made her name as a comedienne on Broadway, where she was a star for many years. Then was a top star in silent pictures before a series of hit talkies.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The early talkie years were a very flukey period -- the big silent stars were being cleared out, and the big stars of the later thirties were just getting started, so there was a lot of room for niche performers to get attention. Will Rogers -- another performer with a unique screen persona -- was the top male draw for a couple of years during this stretch. Wallace Beery was also very popular during these years, and co-starred in a string of successful pictures with Dressler. Warner Brothers had their own answer to Dressler with Winnie Lightner, who got sick of the grind, married her director, and quit.

After Dressler died, MGM tried to turn Marjorie Main into the "new" Marie Dressler, even to the point of pairing her up with Wallace Beery, but it didn't work.

 

[emigran]

This wonderful thread can easily go ad infinitum... opinions are likely just opinions...
I loved Edward Arnold along with Gene Pallette and the weeper's weeper was the best thing in satin and fur collars and cuffs...
Long live the Golden Era...