What Dreams Were Made Of: Movie Stars of the 1940s

Introduction: Stardom in the 1940s

1 ★★★★★★★★★★ ✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩ I N T R O D U C T I O N Stardom in the 1940s SEAN GRIFFIN The 1940s are often conceptualized as a split decade, a temporal “house divided.” Most obviously, World War II deftly cleaved the decade in half. Hitler invaded Poland in late 1939, resulting in Britain and France declaring war on Germany. While the United States refrained from entering the fight initially, the pull grew month by month, until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The war then dominated all aspects of American public life for the next few years. Victory came in both the European and Pacific theaters in 1945, and suddenly the country and the entire world had entered a new world order. This postwar era saw a rapid and full-scale revision of life and thought. Not unexpectedly, many hoped to revert quickly to the way things were before the upheaval of the war. Yet major changes in global politics and advances in scientific research also irrevocably altered American life. The onset of the Cold War created a new enemy for the United States, and new fears of internal subversion— which at times veered into a fear of anything that diverged from majority thought. The postwar era was also referred to as the Atomic Age, as humanity started coming to terms with the fact that we could now literally destroy the planet and ourselves. As Jacqueline Foertsch has written, “The momentous events of the mid-1940s are thus pivotal in multiple respects,” creating an “impulse to read the 1940s as a decade that is as neatly bisected as it neatly hangs together” (1–2). It was a split decade for the Hollywood studios as well. Many film history books cut the 1940s in half, regarding the first part as an extension of the classic Hollywood era of the 1930s, and the second part as the start of the post-classical era of the 1950s (Schatz; Lewis; Jewell; Casper). While the studios in wartime had to adjust to the loss of employees to the military, and to stronger involvement (and potential interference) from the federal government, the first half of the decade was generally a high time for Hollywood . With national employment figures suddenly at an all-time high after a decade of economic woes, but with wartime rationing limiting what was available for purchase, everyone went to the movies. Furthermore, the studios had by this time refined their business patterns and the “Hollywood style” of production, resulting in a number of expertly produced, smoothly told, and confidently crafted films. Motion picture theater attendance reached its highest level ever in 1946. And then the bottom fell out. The federal government’s antitrust case, which had been shelved during the war, was revived and in 1948 the Supreme Court decreed (in what became known as the Paramount Decision ) that the major studios divest themselves of one arm of their vertically integrated holdings (production, distribution, or exhibition)—signaling an end to the smooth organization of the classical Hollywood system. Furthermore , certain members of the government began training their suspicions on communist infiltration on Hollywood, throwing filmmakers into new panic. Most of all, though, audiences started abandoning film theaters. With the onset of the postwar Baby Boom, many moved to newly formed suburban communities—far from urban centers where most movie theaters resided. Whether in cities or suburbs, Americans also increasingly stayed home to watch the new mass-marketed gadget called television (whose development, like the antitrust case, had been put on hold until the end of the war). As the decade ended, Hollywood was scrambling to figure out how to survive in a very different environment (Dixon). If the studios felt a sharp divide in the 1940s, it is unsurprising that stars experienced it as well. The war significantly impacted the lives and careers of most stars, and the postwar period brought even more changes. Actors and actresses, like all Americans, were deeply affected by the war. Some men signed up for active duty in the military, such as James Stewart, Robert Montgomery, and Clark Gable. Others were drafted, like Gene Kelly, Victor Mature, and Mickey Rooney. Some, such as (somewhat ironically) Roy Rogers and John Wayne, received deferments and consequently felt certain pressure to explain why they were not “doing their part.” Such losses left the studios scrambling to find leading men—resulting in a number of young actors promoted to stardom, such as Van...