The Origins of the Film Star System: Persona, Publicity and Economics in Early Cinema

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Andrew Shail (Newcastle University, UK)

The Origins of the Film Star System

Persona, Publicity and Economics in Early Cinema

Andrew Shail (Newcastle University, UK)

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English

Bloomsbury Academic
21 April 2022

Film theory & criticism; Social & cultural history; Popular culture; Cinema industry

Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, Andrew Shail traces the emergence of film stardom in Europe and North America in the early 20th century. Modifying and supplementing Richard deCordova’s account of the birth of the US star system, Shail describes the complex set of economic circumstances that led film studios and actors to consent to the adoption of a star system. He then explores the film industry’s turn, from 1908, to making character-based series films. He details how these characters both prefigured and precipitated the star system, demonstrating that series characters and the ‘firmament’ of film stars are functionally equivalent, and shows how openly fictional characters still provide the model for ‘real’ film stars.

By: Andrew Shail (Newcastle University UK)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 744g
ISBN: 9781350272255
ISBN 10: 1350272256
Pages: 424
Publication Date: 21 April 2022
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Andrew Shail is Senior Lecturer in Film at Newcastle University, UK. He is the author of The Cinema and the Origins of Literary Modernism (2012), co-author, with Robin Stoate, of Back to the Future (2010), editor of Reading the Cinematograph (2011) and coeditor of Neurology and Modernity (2010), Menstruation: A Cultural History (2005), and the journal Early Popular Visual Culture.

Reviews for The Origins of the Film Star System: Persona, Publicity and Economics in Early Cinema

The Origins of the Film Star System includes an impressive bibliography and reproductions of rarely seen publicity photographs and posters … Shail's book stands as a monumental achievement, demonstrating the dynamism of historiography while arguing for the necessity of looking beyond American modes and machinations of the early star system. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * CHOICE * Shail has provided a fresh account of the emergence of the star system, impressively systematic in its argumentation, that could easily become the new standard for the next thirty years. -- Charlie Keil, University of Toronto, Canada