Gossip magazines like this Photoplay have been around since the dawn of the film industry, but why are they so popular?

For as long as I can remember I have been enormously bewildered as to why so many people find gossip publications like The Inquirer, People Magazine, Star Magazine, and US Weekly so appealing. Beyond having a lack of interest in fashion I fail to recognize the purpose behind holding celebrities’ figures and overall looks under a microscope; praising one on a given week and criticizing them the next. And aside from all of this I also fall short of understanding the undying interest in celebrities’ social and romantic lives. This is not all to say that I consider celebrities uninteresting, quite the contrary, however the sex life of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt is not anywhere near the top million interests I have in the film industry and the people who are part of it.

But why is this? Why do so many people follow the romantic storylines of celebrities’ lives? All judgments aside, because for many the interest is indeed a guilty and harmless pleasure, the answers could lie in the history of the film industry – particularly the history of the “star system.” That system started out as a promotional ploy of Hollywood studios to draw audiences and gain their loyalty to them by creating a loyalty to a particular actor or actress. Back in the old days of the industry, actors and actresses were required to sign contracts with a studio that would make them exclusive to that studio (this was an integral part of the studio system). So, if a particular actress proved popular in one picture and wished to do many more, she would sign a contract that would pretty much assure (but not guarantee) her more work, and the studio would exploit her popularity by making her inclusion in a film part of the promotional material (posters and such) in an effort to draw audiences who enjoyed seeing that particular actress. And if she became really popular (like Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, etc.) she would get all the work she wanted, and even some work she didn’t want (if a star refused to do a project their studio told them to do it could suspend the star’s contract, preventing them from working or being paid). How this all ties together is further explained by Richard Multby in his book Hollywood Cinema. He says, “The studio system was committed to the deliberate manufacture of stars as a mechanism for selling movie tickets, and as a result generated publicity about the stars’ off-screen lives designated to compliment and play upon their screen images” (the “manufacture of stars” pertains to the tendency of studios to make sure their stars maintain a specific, marketable  on-screen persona and personality, complete with mannerisms and quirks. A good example would be Cary Grant). So, during the early days of the industry (primarily 1930s and 1940s) studios actually spurred gossip about their stars in order to reap higher ticket sales.

This all explains a lot about how the market for star gossip became so big, but why did/do readers keep reading? Multby asserts that “the publicity surrounding the star system told its audiences that stars were just like them.” Continuing this idea, he goes on to quote film historian Margret Thorp, who says “The ranking box-office favorites must be good to look at certainly, but they are not required to be creatures of classic perfection. In many ways it is an advantage for a star not to be too beautiful. She stands then closer to the average and that is what the fans want, an ideal they can emulate, a creature not too bright and good, one whose heights they might actually scale themselves with a little energy and a little luck. The glamorous star today is natural [in comparison to yesteryear]. She does not pluck her eyebrows and paint on new ones – she does not try to be a fairy-tale princess but an average girl raised to the nth power. ‘Vivid’ is the adjective she works for hardest.”

Does knowing the personal and intimate details of celebrities' lives make them seem more normal?

So, if audiences like viewing their favorite stars as “normal” people like themselves, then can we assume that those audiences’ interest in stars’ romances and sex lives is due to the idea that knowing these personal aspects makes them seem closer to normal? According to Multby, magazines like Photoplay, Modern Screen, and Shadowland regularly ran articles like “Who is Your Husband’s Favorite Actress and What Are You Going to Do About It?” Attractions were readily admitted, and figuring one’s favorite actor or actress also dealt/deals largely with a star’s glamorous persona. So, paradoxically, we like to envy the glamour of the star status but find it equally important to consider any person with that status to be “normal.” It sounds strange, but makes sense. But this is all still in context of the star system as it was during the years of the studio system (when vertical integration and long-term star contracts existed). Once the ruling of the Paramount case came down in 1948, the studio system was finished and actors and actresses were no longer bound by contracts. They were finally able to pursue work wherever they could find it. This caused the star system to change, but not disappear. Studios still recognized that the stars of their films did the most to sell them, if for no other reason than because the people depicted on-screen were the most visible part of the entire industry. However this also meant studios had much less stock in how actors and actresses were perceived by the public, i.e. fan and gossip magazines. Just like today, if an actress became a “train wreck” she would have a harder time finding a gig. If a star was bad publicity, the studios simply wouldn’t hire them. But this didn’t mean studios no longer had to worry. A modern and infamous example is how Tom Cruise’s unpopularity, due to his professed allegiance to Scientology and TV antics, led to reduced box-office numbers for 2006s Mission: Impossible III. The studio suffered financially, but had no leverage in demanding compensation.

What does Tom Cruise’s instance mean regarding today’s star system? It indicates that the same criteria for a lovable star in old Hollywood is the same as it is today, and fan and gossip magazines still hold as much power as they ever did. It’s easy to envy the glamour of Cruise’s status as an A-list actor, but as was proved with Mission: Impossible III audiences at the time (and debatably now) didn’t consider him “normal,” and so many turned on him. So what is the function of magazines like The Inquirer, People, US Weekly, and Star? They function to indicate what those publications’ readers consider acceptable according to their criteria of what an enviable celebrity should be. They hardly speak for everyone, but because their readership is so big the opinions of them and their following demand to be taken into consideration by Hollywood studios so that they can make more informed business decisions about who to hire and promote. After all, the last thing any studio wants is another Tom Cruise-like incident.

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