Siegel S., Siegel B. The Encyclopedia Of Hollywood

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

serials A cinematic saga told in installments; each install-

ment almost always ends in a cliff-hanger. The concept of the

movie serial was borrowed from newspapers and magazines

that published serials to encourage a steady readership. In this

same fashion, ﬁlms of one, two, and three reels were made and

released on a weekly basis as parts of a grand tale. Almost

always produced on a much smaller budget than a feature

ﬁlm, the serial became a popular mainstay of the silent cin-

ema, and a low-prestige but proﬁtable endeavor during the

sound era for Hollywood’s more hard-pressed studios.

The serial, in embryonic form, came into existence with

What Happened to Mary? (1912), a 12-chapter entertainment

that concerned Mary’s life story. Each one-reel installment was

a complete story in itself, and, taken together, they more

closely resembled a series than a serial, but the seeds were

planted for the serials to come. The ﬁrst bona-ﬁde serial

arrived on movie screens just one year later when

WILLIAM

SELIG

produced 13 chapters of The Adventures of Kathlyn

(1913) in an episodic format. Selig’s serial was a mild success.

In early 1914, however, the serial became big box ofﬁce for the

ﬁrst time with the landmark, 20-chapter Pathé production,

The Perils of Pauline, starring

PEARL WHITE

. The commercial

impact of The Perils of Pauline, with the newly devised concept

of cliff-hanger endings and dangerous stunts, was such that,

within the next 12 months, almost every major ﬁlm company

in the United States released at least one serial, many of them

cranking out several. One company, Kalem, holds the record

for the longest serial, The Hazards of Helen (1914), that ran a

phenomenal 119 chapters at one reel per chapter.

Pearl White was the “Queen of the Serials,” but she was

hardly the only star of this fast developing genre. Other actors

of note who appeared in silent serials included the popular

FRANCIS X

BUSHMAN

; William Desmond; Elmo Lincoln, the

ﬁrst Tarzan; and even Jack Dempsey, the prize ﬁghter.

It appeared as if serials were dead and buried when the

talkies arrived. Serials were low-budget outdoor adventures,

and sound equipment forced most movies in the late 1920s

and early 1930s to be studio bound. According to Kalton C.

Lahue in his excellent book about the serials, Continued Next

Week, the ﬁrst sound serial, The Indians Are Coming (1930),

was made at a cost of $160,000 and brought in $1 million,

proving that the format was worthy of renewed interest.

Serials began to evolve into juvenile entertainment in the

1920s and were almost exclusively for kids by the 1930s. The

action was rarely realistic, but the thrills were nonstop. In

the sound era, the major studios virtually abandoned the

serial, leaving them to the poorer companies such as Mascot

and Columbia, which churned them out regularly in the

1930s and 1940s. Among the most famous serials of the

1930s were those that followed the exploits of Buck Rogers

and Flash Gordon, with

BUSTER CRABBE

, the former

Olympic swimming champion, interpreting both roles.

Although Crabbe never effectively made the transition from

serials to feature ﬁlms,

JOHN WAYNE

who starred in three

cheapie serials in the early 1930s was turned into a star by

John Ford in Stagecoach (1939).

Movie serials continued to be made into the 1950s, but

television ultimately put an end to the peculiar art form by

providing similar weekly thrills for young audiences with

shows such as Captain Video.

It is worth noting that the spirit of the serials, if not the

actual episodic cliff-hanging style and format, inspired the

making of both the Star Wars trilogy and the Indiana Jones

ﬁlms of more recent years.

series An open-ended set of ﬁlms having the same charac-

ter or characters and following a tried-and-true formula with

only minor variations from movie to movie. Unlike serials,

with episodes that end in a cliff-hanger, series consist of com-

plete ﬁlms having a beginning, a middle, and an end.

In America, the series was born with the Mr. Jones ﬁlms

(1908–09) made by

GRIFFITH

. These one-reelers starred

John Compson, Florence Lawrence, and

MACK SENNETT

Series ﬁlms, largely westerns and comedies, soon began

to multiply. For instance, there was

ANDERSON

’s long

series of hugely popular “Broncho Billy” westerns (1910–16).

Among silent comedians, John Bunny played a character with

no false humility called “Bunny” in a series between 1912 and

1914. Then there was the Fatty series (1913–17) starring

ROSCOE

“

FATTY

”

ARBUCKLE

, and the Sweedie series

(1914–15) starring

WALLACE BEERY

, among many others.

Though feature ﬁlms dominated the silent era in the later

teens and 1920s, the ﬁlm series tended to remain in the realm

of the two-reeler. There were, of course, exceptions, such as

feature-length movies of the the Cohens and Kellys series,

which had a long life in the talkie era as well.

Although series ﬁlms were modestly popular during the

silent era, they became a veritable Hollywood mainstay dur-

ing the 1930s and 1940s. Most, but not all, series ﬁlms were

feature-length “B” movies, made on low budgets and

designed to ﬁll the lower half of double bills. In time, the

average series ﬁlm proved to be a steady, if not spectacular

money-maker. Many of the more well-known series, however,

were actually exceedingly proﬁtable and proved to be cash

cows for the lucky studios who owned and exploited them.

Series ﬁlms in the sound era went far beyond just west-

erns and comedies. In fact, a large majority of series featured

mystery/detective heroes such as Sherlock Holmes, the Thin

Man, Mr. Moto, Bulldog Drummond, Charlie Chan, Boston

Blackie, and the Falcon. The domestic series also ﬂourished,

featuring the likes of Henry Aldrich, Blondie, and the great-

est, most successful series of them all, Andy Hardy. There

were also jungle series with heroes such as Tarzan; medical

series with men in white such as Dr. Kildare; animal series

that featured Rin Tin Tin, Francis the Talking Mule, and

Lassie; monster series of undying popularity with ghouls

such as Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man; not to

mention the still-popular western series such as Hopalong

Cassidy. The list goes on and on.

Series ﬁlms were not only cheaply produced and reliable

sources of income, but they also offered the major studios

vehicles into which they could put fading stars who still had

name value but who no longer had the drawing power neces-

sary for leading roles in “A” movies. On more than one occa-

sion, though, the supposedly washed-up star’s career was

SERIALS

378

resurrected by a series (as in the case of William Boyd who

played Hopalong Cassidy).

More often, however, studios used their series as a safe

means of introducing new actors to the mass audience. Audi-

ences could be counted on to show up, irrespective of any

raw, unpolished performances from minor “guest” actors. A

great number of stars received their early training in the

Andy Hardy ﬁlms at MGM.

LANA TURNER

JUDY GARLAND

Kathryn Grayson, and Donna Reed, among others, all had

early roles in Andy Hardy movies. In fact, in addition to her

appearance in an Andy Hardy ﬁlm in 1942, Donna Reed was

also featured in the Dr. Kildare and Thin Man series, all in

the same year. Even

CLINT EASTWOOD

made one of his ear-

liest screen appearances in a Francis the Talking Mule ﬁlm.

The series as a Hollywood staple died hard and fast in the

1950s with the rise of television and its multitude of prime-

time series.

Surprisingly, though, the concept of the series has sur-

vived in a big-budget format with such latter-day offerings as

James Bond, Indiana Jones, Superman, and Rocky, although

one might justiﬁably refer to some of these movies as sequels

rather than ﬁlms in a series.

See also

AYRES

LEW

;

LASSIE

;

RIN TIN TIN

;

ROONEY

MICKEY

;

TARZAN FILMS

WEISSMULLER

JOHNNY

set decorator The person responsible for the detailed

dressing of all the sets created for a ﬁlm after they have been

conceived by the art director and built by the set designer.

The set decorator, much like an interior designer, chooses

the speciﬁc furnishings for a set. Very often, the modern set

decorator is an interior designer.

See also

ART DIRECTOR

;

SET DESIGNER

set designer A somewhat misleading title for the person

responsible for building a ﬁlm’s various sets based on designs

suggested by the art director. The set designer takes the art

director’s concepts and turns them into reality, using his or

her practical skills as a builder. He or she knows what is phys-

ically possible and will draw blueprints of the sets to match

(as much as possible) the art director’s vision. After these

more detailed sketches are approved by the art director,

director, and producer, the set designer will then oversee the

building of the sets.

See also

ART DIRECTOR

;

SET DECORATOR

sex in the movies A short scene taken from a play called

The Widow Jones became the May Irwin–John C. Rice Kiss

(1896), the ﬁrst intimate moment shown on screen. The

closeup kiss shocked audiences; one wonders what those

audiences would have thought, for example, of the ultra

steamy coupling of

JACK NICHOLSON

and

JESSICA LANGE

a kitchen table in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981). But

sex in the movies has not ridden a racy upward curve since

1896. The acceptable limits of what could and could not be

shown on the screen has changed according to forces often—

but not always—beyond Hollywood’s control.

For the most part, movies during the early 20th century

were rather tame. America was a culturally isolated country

during these years until soldiers returned home from Europe

after World War I with considerably different ideas about

sex. Relaxed moral standards led to bawdier movies in what

became known as the Jazz Age. Films of the 1920s and early

1930s were risqué, with nudity and suggestive sex scenes far

more explicit than anything that was to be seen either before

or during the rigidly enforced

HAYS CODE

years between

1934 and the early 1960s.

The ﬁlmmaker most responsible for daring ﬁlms during

the 1920s was

CECIL B

DEMILLE

. His sophisticated sexual

dramas, such as Male and Female (1919), many of them with

GLORIA SWANSON

in the lead, were big box-ofﬁce winners

and hastened the acceptance of such behavior on ﬁlm. Even

after the creation of the Hays Ofﬁce in 1922, DeMille con-

tinued to make sexy movies, using the new self-censorship

dictum of “compensating values” to go even further than he

had before. He simply “punished” those characters by the

end of a ﬁlm who had “sinned” during its course. Thus The

Ten Commandments (1923) had more sex and debauchery in it

than any of DeMille’s previous pictures.

The personiﬁcation of the new attitude toward sex was

CLARA BOW

, the “It” Girl, who deﬁned the ﬂapper as an

independent woman capable of sensual enjoyment. A more

intense sexuality could be seen in the ﬁlms of

RUDOLPH

VALENTINO

GRETA GARBO

, and, later,

MARLENE DIETRICH

Sex and sexual themes ran rampant during the early

sound era.

ERNST LUBITSCH

’s sly operettas were loaded with

clever innuendos, both verbal and visual. The famed

“Lubitsch touch” was a subtle means of sending a sexual mes-

sage across to his audience, such as having the shadows of a

man and woman fall across a bed as if they were sprawled

there together in a lover’s embrace.

Although Lubitsch’s approach to sex was sophisticated,

others took a more direct approach, and none was more

direct than that of

JEAN HARLOW

, the reigning sex symbol of

the 1930s. Her characters reveled in their sexuality. In addi-

tion, she has been generally credited with shifting sexual

attention from the legs to the breasts, where it remains today.

When rigid enforcement of the Hays Code began in

1934, attitudes toward sex in the movies changed dramati-

cally and stayed changed for approximately three decades.

One need only compare the 1932 version of Red Dust to its

1953 remake, Mogambo, to see that the earlier ﬁlm was inﬁ-

nitely more erotic and clear about the sexual nature of the

characters’ relationships.

American sexual attitudes, at least as they were expressed

in the movies, seemed frozen in time. Characters had their fun

offscreen after the dissolves and fadeouts. Sexuality was only

subtly alluded to, and one had to be fairly sophisticated to pick

up the references. For instance, it’s doubtful whether many

who saw

THE MALTESE FALCON

(1941) knew that the Joel

Cairo character (Peter Lorre) was intended to be homosexual.

Challenges to the Hays Code during the 1940s and 1950s

slowly chipped away at the restrictive industry self-censor-

ship. By the late 1960s, a ﬁlm like Midnight Cowboy (1969),

with open references to homosexuality could be made with

SEX IN THE MOVIES

379

major stars in leading roles and win a Best Picture Oscar.

Midnight Cowboy was rated “X,” but by today’s standards it

would, at worst, be rated “R.”

Controversial ﬁlms that had sex as their main themes,

such as Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Pretty Baby (1978), con-

tinued to break new ground in the 1970s. One of the most

important ﬁlms in this trend was the pornographic ﬁlm Deep

Throat (1973), which was a surprise hit with mainstream

audiences. Ultimately, sex in the movies began to catch up

with the sexual revolution in American society. By the end of

the 1970s and during the 1980s, sex on the big screen ﬁnally

became almost as acceptable as violence.

There have, of course, been limitations. Films concern-

ing gay people have been far more circumspect than those

depicting heterosexuals. For example, Crossﬁre (1947) was

originally a story about a homosexual, but when the ﬁlm was

made it was changed to a Jew, turning it into a movie con-

demning anti-Semitism rather than attacking homophobia. It

has been the rare Hollywood ﬁlm that has dealt directly with

homosexuality, the most famous of them being The Boys in the

Band (1970), Cruising (1980), and Torch Song Trilogy (1989).

Even less attention has been paid to lesbianism, with a mere

handful of ﬁlms led by The Children’s Hour (1962), Rachel,

Rachel (1968), and Lianna (1983).

There has been no shortage of sex in ﬁlms in the 1990s.

In fact, many pornographic ﬁlms and soft-porn pictures were

made in addition to feature ﬁlms such as Monster’s Ball

(2001), which included gratuitous sexual scenes. Audiences

were shown what they had previously only imagined.

There was also more willingness to include homosexual

characters and even ﬁlms about homosexuals. Philadelphia

(1993), a very popular and critically successful ﬁlm, con-

cerned the plight of a homosexual lawyer with AIDS;

TOM

HANKS

playing the lead helped draw audiences, but Holly-

wood itself had begun to see prominent ﬁgures struck down

by AIDS and was more willing to handle the subject. In and

Out (1997) was partly a result of Tom Hanks’s Oscar speech

thanking his high school drama teacher. In In and Out, high

school teacher Kevin Kline has to confront his sexual iden-

tity. Both Jeffrey (1995) and The Birdcage (1995) were adapta-

tions of plays that had homosexuals as leading characters. In

As Good As It Gets (1997) the Jack Nicholson character, who

is initially homophobic, comes to actually assist and care for

his gay neighbor, played by Greg Kinnear. The whole issue

of Hollywood and homosexuality was the subject of the doc-

umentary The Celluloid Closet (1995).

See also

SEX SYMBOLS

FEMALE

;

SEX SYMBOLS

MALE

;

SCREEN TEAMS

sex symbols: female Movie moguls have often been

referred to as “ﬂesh peddlers” with good reason, but if Hol-

lywood ﬁlms have sometimes been gratuitously salacious,

they have also been exhilaratingly sensual. In the right vehi-

cles, and through the collaboration of writer, director, pro-

ducer, cinematographer, and costume designer, certain

actresses have been able to transcend their roles to become

symbols of sensuality, viewed by audiences as the ultimate

object of sexual desire. Audiences need and want an ideal

image to long for. In the case of the male moviegoer, that

desire has been elicited by an ever-changing and evolving

company of female sex symbols.

The ﬁrst Hollywood sex symbol,

THEDA BARA

, played

upon the fear of sex. She was the original vamp, an exotic

seductress whose brand of sensuality in ﬁlms during the mid-

1910s was both alluring and dangerous; men would pay if they

fell into her clutches. It wasn’t long, though, before a health-

ier attitude toward sex and women emerged. The Jazz Age

introduced the ﬂapper, a sort of uninhibited girl next door

who was sexy without being threatening.

CLARA BOW

, the “It”

Girl, epitomized this dominant sex symbol of the 1920s.

The early sound era of the late 1920s and early 1930s fea-

tured the last of the ﬂapper sex symbols in the person of

JOAN

CRAWFORD

. But Crawford, like

GRETA GARBO

and

MARLENE

DIETRICH

, soon crossed the ﬁne line from sex symbol to

glamour queen. The real sex symbol of the 1930s was

JEAN

HARLOW

. With her platinum hair and blowsy style, she was a

wonderfully vulgar icon of her age. What distinguished her

from the glamour queens was that her appeal was based not

SEX SYMBOLS: FEMALE

380

Jayne Mansﬁeld, seen here in a publicity still, was one of

the more outrageous Marilyn Monroe clones in the 1950s

sex-symbol sweepstakes. If Monroe formalized the big-

bosom look, Mansﬁeld turned it into a cliché.

(PHOTO

COURTESY OF MOVIE STAR NEWS)

on romance or sophistication but on her sexual magnetism.

Moviegoers went to the movies not to see how she was

dressed but how she was undressed and how she slinked and

purred. Harlow’s impact was so great that a great many up-

and-coming actresses, including

CAROLE LOMBARD

BETTE

DAVIS

, and

BARBARA STANWYCK

, were forced to dye their

hair to match her platinum marcelled waves.

After Harlow’s tragic death in 1937, the sex symbol man-

tle was available to all comers, and there was a growing num-

ber of contenders, among them the beautiful and exotic

HEDY LAMARR

, the G.I.’s favorite pin-up girl,

BETTY

GRABLE

, the peekaboo hairstyled

VERONICA LAKE

, the rav-

ishing

RITA HAYWORTH

, sweater girl

LANA TURNER

, and the

smoldering

AVA GARDNER

. All of them were popular, but

none was the dominant sex symbol of the 1940s.

JANE RUSSELL

, under the tutelage of Howard Hughes,

made a splash in the 1940s, personifying a new breed of more

blatant sex symbol, her cleavage creating a stir in The Outlaw

(1943). But Russell was merely a precursor of the 1950s sex

symbol personiﬁed by

MARILYN MONROE

Monroe was the vulnerable child/woman, blonde, big

breasted and naive; she set the standard in the 1950s as Har-

low had done during the 1930s. In fact, she was asked to play

the title role in Harlow (1965) but turned it down repeatedly.

Like Harlow, Monroe had clones such as Jayne Mansﬁeld,

Mamie Van Doren,

KIM NOVAK

. Marilyn was warm, sexy, and

provocative; every move she made, every sound she uttered,

seemed to have a sexual connotation; yet she communicated

much more than her typical “dumb blonde” roles allowed

and that set her above the competition.

If Monroe was hot,

GRACE KELLY

was cool, representing

a more aloof version of the 1950s blonde sex symbol. Some-

where between the two was the dark-haired

ELIZABETH TAY

LOR

, a child of Hollywood who grew up to become a

violet-eyed temptress.

The 1960s saw the rise of a new sort of sex symbol, or

“sex kitten,” as dubbed by the media. These were often pouty

young starlets who, after Monroe’s death, were touted as her

successors, among them Carol Lynley, Carroll Baker, Ann-

Margret, and

JANE FONDA

During the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, an

inﬂux of foreign actresses came to Hollywood to seduce

American moviegoers. Sophia Loren led the pack, followed

by such beauties as Virna Lisi, Gina Lollobrigida, Ursula

Andress, and Elke Sommer.

The sexual revolution of the sixties and the feminist

movement of the seventies made sex symbols somewhat

obsolete. It was no longer acceptable to view women merely

as sex objects. The 1960s’ emphasis on individuality also

altered the public’s perception as to what constituted sexy.

Sex appeal became less a matter of physical appearance.

Cybill Shepherd in The Last Picture Show (1971) and

KATH

LEEN TURNER

in Body Heat (1981) exemplify later screen

sirens, but often they played down the sensual side of their

screen personalities to receive a wider range of roles. Even

Raquel Welch, who worked at becoming a sex symbol in her

early years, found that she received few good roles in ﬁlms and

abandoned the movies for a nightclub, stage, and video career.

In the 1980s, Darryl Hannah and Kim Basinger seemed

to be heading in the sex-symbol direction, but neither estab-

lished herself as a major box-ofﬁce attraction strictly on the

basis of her sex appeal. Perhaps the only bona-ﬁde sex sym-

bol of the 1980s was Bo Derek; her screen image was based

purely on sex, but her ﬁlms did not do well at the box ofﬁce,

and she hardly became the traditional sex symbol.

Nowadays there are few female sex symbols in feature

ﬁlms, although there are actresses who do not mind taking

off their clothes and being seen as “sexy.” Actresses don’t

want to be typecast as sex symbols because that would

inevitably restrict the range of roles they are offered.

SHARON STONE

is a case in point. There are, however, a

handful of actresses who might qualify for the label of “sex

symbol,” including Pamela Anderson,

CAMERON DIAZ

Salma Hayek, and Angelina Jolie.

sex symbols: male One can roughly divide male sex

symbols into three categories: sensitive, “beautiful” men,

such as

TYRONE POWER

and

MONTGOMERY CLIFT

; charis-

matic types who exude style and perhaps a devastating charm,

such as

RUDOLPH VALENTINO

CHARLES BOYER

, and

CARY

GRANT

; and the beefcake star, exempliﬁed by

ROCK HUDSON

and

SYLVESTER STALLONE

. No matter what category the

male sex symbol might fall into, however, the career of such

a star generally lasts longer than that of most female sex sym-

bols, perhaps because women fans respond less to transient

qualities in their cinematic ideals than do men.

FRANCIS X

BUSHMAN

was the ﬁrst of Hollywood’s male

sex symbols. Known as the Handsomest Man in the World,

he was a barrel-chested he-man with a well-fed look that

drove women wild during the ﬁrst half of the 1910s. He

might have remained the most famous of the silent screen’s

lovers had not Rudolph Valentino emerged in the 1920s to

elicit the kind of adulation that would later go to rock stars.

Valentino established a new kind of sex symbol; he was sen-

sual, almost effeminate, and could be cruel, but mostly he

seemed to have a rapport with women that no screen actor

ever had before.

Although Valentino was the greatest of the silent-screen

sex symbols, he wasn’t the only heartthrob of the 1920s.

JOHN GILBERT

became one of the leading sex symbols of the

late silent era, particularly when teamed with

GRETA GARBO

Male and female sex symbols were teamed throughout

the rest of Hollywood history. For instance,

CLARK GABLE

was often paired with female sex symbols such as

JOAN

CRAWFORD

JEAN HARLOW

, and

HEDY LAMARR

. Even in his

ﬁnal movie, The Misﬁts (1961), he was paired with the last

great female sex symbol,

MARILYN MONROE

Gable had modest competition as the reigning male sex

symbol of the decade from

CHARLES BOYER

, who was nick-

named the Great Lover. Certainly the dashing

ERROL

FLYNN

also had his following, as did Tyrone Power and

ROBERT TAYLOR

As a new decade began, the muscular and swarthy Victor

Mature showed off his physique in One Million B.C. (1940),

entering the beefcake sweepstakes with a studio publicity

SEX SYMBOLS: MALE

381

campaign that referred to him as a “beautiful hunk of man.”

His sex-symbol heyday was in the late 1940s and early 1950s,

thanks to the hit Samson and Delilah (1949) and several simi-

lar biblical epics.

Just as Mature came into his own as a sex symbol in the

postwar years, so did a great many other actors, including

BURT LANCASTER

, Rock Hudson, and Montgomery Clift.

Lancaster was a truly gifted actor whose magniﬁcent body

and striking good looks weathered as well as his talents into

the late 1980s. Ironically, both Hudson and Clift were sex

symbols who also happened to be homosexuals. With some

exceptions, such as Giant (1956), Hudson was principally a

beefcake presence in ﬁlms, especially in his younger days, but

Clift was a genuinely talented actor, and women responded

not just to his good looks (before his automobile accident)

but to his sensitive performances.

Lancaster, Clift, and the newest sex symbol of the 1950s,

MARLON BRANDO

, were that rare blend of sensual performer

and immensely talented actor. It was a combination that

became more frequent, beginning in the 1940s and continu-

ing to the present. Female fans liked the dumb brute just as

much as men liked the dumb blonde, but female fans also

found a place in their palpitating hearts for the handsome

charmer, too, leading to the rise of such latter-day sex sym-

bols as

PAUL NEWMAN

ROBERT REDFORD

WARREN

BEATTY

, and

TOM CRUISE

Of the more macho types, men who acted more with

their shirts off, one must include

JOHN TRAVOLTA

RICHARD

GERE

(pants off, as well as shirt), and Sylvester Stallone.

The feminist movement has freed women to express an

interest in sex more openly, and the number of male sex sym-

bols has increased. In fact, male sex symbols outnumber female

sex symbols by a wide margin, with new contenders steaming

up movie screens almost every year; witness the success of such

actors as Dennis Quaid, Patrick Swayze, and Rob Lowe.

Surely, the most popular (or most “sexy”) hunk de jour

for the 1990s was Leonardo DiCaprio, who played a studly

Romeo to Claire Danes’s Juliet in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo +

Juliet (1996). But DiCaprio’s sexiest role was certainly as the

waif stowaway artist who seduced Kate Winslet on that fate-

ful voyage of the Titanic (1997), stealing hearts nationwide.

See also

SEX SYMBOLS

FEMALE

Shearer, Norma (1900–1983) She was billed by

MGM as the “The First Lady of the Screen,” and the publi-

cists were not far wrong: Shearer was the queen of the Metro

lot, and Metro was the number-one studio. The actress com-

pensated for a relative lack of talent through the force of her

personality; she had an unmistakable screen presence and

admirable poise, both of which helped her to accumulate six

ACADEMY AWARD

nominations and one Oscar as Best

Actress. Attractive, though not a beauty, Shearer nonetheless

cut a striking ﬁgure through a canny understanding of ﬁlm

lighting and how it affected her appearance. Not least among

her assets was her marriage to MGM’s head of production,

IRVING THALBERG

, who personally guided her career. With

Thalberg’s help in choosing her vehicles, she was among the

most popular actresses of her day, at or near the top of most

popularity polls during the ﬁrst half of the 1930s.

Born Edith Norma Shearer in Montreal, she studied the

piano as a child. She broke into the movies in front of the

screen, tinkling the ivories in a nickelodeon. In desperate

need of money after her father went broke, her mother trun-

dled Shearer and her sister to New York. Mrs. Shearer was

hoping she could get her two daughters into the movies.

Norma edged into her ﬁlm career as an extra in The Flap-

per (1920), quickly working her way up to a featured role in

The Stealers (1920). She worked steadily thereafter in mostly

unimportant movies, moving to Metro Pictures right before

it became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She ended up staying

with MGM for the rest of her ﬁlm career.

Shearer had her breakthrough in 1924 when she starred in

He Who Gets Slapped. During the next several years, she played

a large number of sophisticated ladies; becoming a favorite of

female movie fans, who copied her clothing and hairstyles.

She was not, however, MGM’s biggest star in the last years of

SHEARER, NORMA

382

Richard Gere became the reigning male sex symbol of the

late 1970s and early 1980s in ﬁlms such as Looking for Mr.

Goodbar (1977), American Gigolo (1979), and An Ofﬁcer and a

Gentleman (1982). He certainly left a great many female fans

Breathless (1983) when he disrobed for the camera.

(PHOTO

COURTESY OF MOVIE STAR NEWS)

the silent era—Garbo had that distinction. That soon began

to change after Shearer married Thalberg in 1927.

Thalberg, known as the boy wonder for his ability to spot

talent and produce quality hit productions, picked Shearer’s

scripts with his vaunted commercial and critical sense. She

catapulted to the top of the MGM heap in such silent ﬁlms as

Lubitsch’s The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927) and The

Latest from Paris (1928) and then in sound ﬁlms, including

The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929) and The Divorcee (1930),

which brought her a Best Actress Academy Award. Oscar-

nominated performances in Their Own Desire (1929) and A

Free Soul (1931) soon followed, by which time Shearer was

among the highest paid actors in Hollywood, earning a

reported $6,000 a week.

Shearer then entered her highbrow period with rich roles

in such sophisticated fare as Private Lives (1931), Strange Inter-

lude (1932), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), and Romeo

and Juliet (1936), the last two of which garnered her Best

Actress nominations. Then the ailing Thalberg died in 1936.

Shearer was cut adrift in more ways than one—besides losing

her husband, she also lost her mentor and her protector.

Thalberg had laid the groundwork for her starring role in

Marie Antoinette (1938), which brought Shearer her ﬁnal Best

Actress Oscar nomination, but without the late mogul’s

unfailing intuitive knack for picking scripts, she soon began

to appear in poor vehicles. At ﬁrst, she did well in choosing

Idiot’s Delight (1939) and The Women (1939), but she stumbled

badly when she turned down leading roles in Gone With the

Wind (1939) and Mrs. Miniver (1942). Her later ﬁlms such as

Escape (1940) and We Were Dancing (1942) were disasters.

When what became her ﬁnal ﬁlm, Her Cardboard Lover

(1942), bombed at the box ofﬁce, Shearer decided to retire.

As a stockholder in MGM, though, she still wielded

power and inﬂuence at the studio. For instance, she was

instrumental in establishing Janet Leigh’s career.

Shearer remarried after leaving MGM, taking a former

skiing instructor as her husband. In her later years, she

became blind and lived at the Motion Picture and Television

Lodge in Woodland Hills, California.

There is a building named for her at MGM, the last

legacy of the First Lady of the Screen.

See also

LEIGH

JANET

Sheen family dynasty An acting family headed by patri-

arch Martin Sheen (1940– ), who has quietly built a signif-

icant body of work in both movies and television. Sheen

possesses a dignity and sincerity on screen that makes him

instantly likable. He is not, however, a warm character; he

displays an aloofness that tends to lend him an air of mystery.

Still in the midst of his career, his four children have also

joined the acting ranks, and two of them have become stars.

Born Ramon Estevez of a Spanish father and Irish mother

in Dayton, Ohio, he later changed his name to Sheen to avoid

racism and typecasting. Upon graduation from high school,

he knew exactly what he wanted to do. He traveled to New

York to become an actor and soon made his stage debut in the

Off-Off-Broadway show The Connection in 1959, followed by

his Broadway debut in Never Live over a Pretzel Factory. But

his big breakthrough came in a later Broadway show, The

Subject Was Roses, in which he starred in 1964. Among his

other important stage appearances were the rock version of

Hamlet presented by Joseph Papp, the New York Shakespeare

Festival’s production of Romeo and Juliet, and Death of a Sales-

man, in support of

GEORGE C

SCOTT

in a Broadway revival.

Even with those sterling credits, Sheen did not have an

easy time of it in the movies. Though he made his ﬁlm debut

as early as 1967 in The Incident and starred the following year

in the ﬁlm version of The Subject Was Roses, he didn’t catch on

with the public. The critics hailed him in Badlands (1973), but

he gained more attention for his excellent work in a great

many TV movies during the 1970s, especially his perform-

ance in the title role of The Execution of Private Slovik (1974).

A modest level of movie stardom ﬁnally came his way as a

result of his performance in

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

’s Apoc-

alypse Now (1979), but the role nearly killed him; he suffered

a heart attack during the grueling ﬁlming in the Philippines.

He not only survived the heart attack but also began to

thrive thereafter, working far more often on the big screen in

parts large and small in such ﬁne ﬁlms as Gandhi (1982), That

Championship Season (1982), The Dead Zone (1983), Firestarter

(1984), The Believers (1987), Wall Street (1987), and Da (1988).

Martin Sheen was later cast as the deﬁning character,

President Jed Bartlet, on one of NBC’s most popular televi-

sion series, The West Wing.

The ﬁrst of Sheen’s children to follow in his footsteps was

his eldest son, Emilio, who used the original family name of

Estevez. One of the original members of the

BRAT PACK

Emilio Estevez (1963– ) became a favorite of teenage fans

thanks, in part, to his role as a vulnerable jock in John

Hughes’s ﬁlm The Breakfast Club (1985). Estevez has starred in

a number of ﬁlms throughout the mid- to late 1980s, includ-

ing the hit brat-pack western Young Guns (1988). Unfortu-

nately, he also chose to write, direct, and star in Wisdom

(1987), which proved to be anything but a wise career move.

In the meantime, Emilio’s kid brother, Charlie, also

began to act, using the more familiar family name of Sheen.

Charlie Sheen (1966– ) has since eclipsed his older brother,

catapulting to fame in a role originally written for Emilio in

the Academy Award-winning Platoon (1986). He has since

gone on to greater fame in ﬁlms such as Wall Street (1987),

Eight Men Out (1988), and Major League (1989).

Two other Sheen children, Ramon and Renee, are actors,

primarily in television. All four Sheen children have worked

at one time or another with their father, although they have

yet to appear en masse.

short subjects These are ﬁlms under 30 minutes long.

When all movies consisted of only one or two reels, short sub-

jects were the only ﬁlms the industry produced, so the term

didn’t come into use until well after the establishment of the

feature-length motion picture.

By the 1920s, most Hollywood fare was full length,

except for serials, comedies, newsreels, and cartoons. Serials

were made up of short episodes shown (usually) on a weekly

SHORT SUBJECTS

383

basis until the story was completed. Serials became enor-

mously popular during the 1910s, and they continued to ﬁll

out movie bills until they petered out in the 1950s. A num-

ber of actors achieved fame in serials, among them

PEARL

WHITE

and

BUSTER CRABBE

. Only one major movie star

made the leap from serials to starring in feature-length

movies:

JOHN WAYNE

Comedies remained popular as short subjects during the

1920s and beyond because they served as a successor to

vaudeville. At the beginning of the talking-ﬁlm era, major

vaudeville comedy acts were signed by

WARNER BROS

.to

make short subjects with their new sound-on-disc system—

before the release of

THE JAZZ SINGER

in 1927.

Among the biggest producers of early short subjects were

independents such as

MACK SENNETT

and

HAL ROACH

, who

made comedy shorts starring the likes of Laurel and Hardy,

OUR GANG

, Charley Chase, Edgar Kennedy, and many oth-

ers. By the time the studio era began in earnest, however, the

majors developed their own short-subject departments.

Their shorts were usually comedies, but sometimes musical

acts were featured as well.

Newsreels were ﬂashes of history caught on ﬁlm. Ironi-

cally, while documentary movies held little appeal to ﬁlmgo-

ers, newsreels, such as The March of Time series, were quite

popular and became a genuine source of information for the

mass audience before TV news ﬁnally put them out of busi-

ness in the late 1950s and 1960s.

The most popular short subjects, particularly during the

sound era, were cartoons. Led by

WALT DISNEY

with Mickey

Mouse, the boom in animation brought several studios into

the animated short-subject arena. Animation remained the

cornerstone of the short-subject market into the 1960s until

the competition from animated television shows ﬁnally

proved too strong.

In the end, serials, live-action comedy shorts, newsreels,

and cartoons passed from the movie scene because of eco-

nomics. They proved handy during the Depression when

ﬁlm studios did everything in their power to draw audiences

to movie theaters. Like double features, short subjects were

bonuses offered to audiences in the hope of increasing busi-

ness. During the ﬂush 1940s, there was no reason to change,

but during the 1950s, as ticket receipts plummeted, cost-sav-

ing measures had to be taken. Short subjects were rarely big

money-makers, so they were among the ﬁrst to go. Live-

action shorts were axed ﬁrst, followed by serials, newsreels,

and ﬁnally the cartoons.

Shorts subjects, however, continue to be made, mostly

as vehicles for directors and producers trying to break into

feature films. These are independent productions without

studio backing. Very few regular moviegoers ever see these

shorts in theaters because they usually receive poor distri-

bution; they are more often seen in film festivals than in

film theaters. Yet they are voted on by Academy members,

and the winners have not only an Oscar to show for their

efforts but also a foot in the door of the industry. One such

young filmmaker who got his start making shorts was

STEVEN SPIELBERG

, whose 24-minute Amblin’ (1969)

brought him to the attention of

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Spielberg later named his production company Amblin

Entertainment in homage to the short subject that launched

his career.

Animators working on short subjects often wish to earn

positions on feature ﬁlms. Many animated shorts are come-

dies, although some are also serious allegories. The Wrong

Trousers (1994), from the popular series Wallace and Gromit,

is an example of such a comedy, and Mona Lisa Descending a

Staircase (1992) provides a comic reaction to classic works of

art.

Live action shorts also tend toward comedy and allegory

as well. Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1995) depicts the

unlikely coupling of two disparate world views—Kafka’s sur-

real and bizarre imagination linked to the sentimentality of

FRANK CAPRA

. Other live action short ﬁlms tend to be comic

vehicles, such as Lieberman in Love (1996) and The Lunch Date

(1991). Cesar Romero’s Great Artists Steal (2002) begins with

a quotation from Pablo Picasso and then goes on to juxtapose

in split-screen Jackie Chan “stealing” some of the physical

gags of

BUSTER KEATON

. Darren Ng’s The Scapegoat (2003)

offers an impressively Keatonesque short populated almost

entirely by Vietnamese actors, most of whom are related to

the writer-director.

SHORT SUBJECTS

384

Among the most admired series of live-action short subjects

were those written and performed by Robert Benchley. He

made a total of 46 clever shorts, with such titles as The Sex

Life of a Polyp (1928), the Oscar-winning How to Sleep (1935),

and How to Eat (1939).

(PHOTO BY FRED HENDRICKSON,

COURTESY OF MOVIE STAR NEWS)

On the other hand, documentaries are far more serious by

their very deﬁnition and often tend toward political subjects.

The Johnstown Flood (1990), Rose Kennedy (1991), A Time for Jus-

tice (1995), One Survivor Remembers (1996) and Mighty Times:

The Legacy of Rosa Parks (2003) all deal with social and political

issues, such as disasters, political ﬁgures, integration, and the

Holocaust. Two politically controversial ﬁlms were Robert

Richter’s School of the Americas Assassins (1996) and When Abor-

tion Was Illegal: Untold Stories (1993). One of the most effective

short documentaries was Debra Chasnoff’s ﬁlm Deadly Decep-

tion: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons, and Our Environment

(1992), which sparked a boycott of General Electric products.

More-upbeat documentary shorts include Educating Pete

(1993), a ﬁlm about the mainstreaming of a child with

Down’s syndrome, and A Story of Healing (2000), which

depicts the work of America’s doctors and nurses in Vietnam,

where they help Vietnamese children.

See also

ANIMATION

;

NEWSREELS

;

SERIALS

Sidney, Sylvia (1910–1999) An actress, she appeared

in ﬁlms since 1927, achieving her greatest fame during the

1930s. Delicate and pretty, she starred in many ﬁlms in which

she played a victim, but these usually weren’t her best movies.

Sidney was a talented and versatile actress but had little

opportunity to display her skills on screen because of her

being typecast.

Born Sophia Kosow, she overcame poverty and became

an actress, making her Broadway debut at the age of 17, the

same year that talkies arrived. She soon made her way to

Hollywood, making a cameo appearance in Broadway Nights

(1927), followed by a slightly larger part in Thru Different

Eyes (1929). She reappeared on Broadway for a short while

before returning to Hollywood to begin her ﬁlm career in

earnest as the female lead in

ROUBEN MAMOULIAN

’s dazzling

City Streets (1931), which made her a star.

Among her many ﬁne ﬁlms during the 1930s were Josef

von Sternberg’s An American Tragedy (1931), Street Scene

(1931), Madame Butterfly (1932), Fury (1936), Sabotage

(1936), You Only Live Once (1937), and Dead End (1937).

She married Bennett Cerf, the wealthy publisher, in

1935 (the marriage ended the following year) and later wed

actor Luther Adler (1938–47), who was the second of her

three husbands.

By choice, she began to act far less often in ﬁlms from the

1940s. Her best ﬁlms in these later years were Blood on the

Sun (1945), Les Miserables (as Fantine, 1952), Summer Wishes,

Winter Dreams (1973) for which she was honored with a Best

SIDNEY, SYLVIA

385

A gallery of shots of the lovely Sylvia

Sidney, among them two stills from her

most famous ﬁlms, You Only Live Once

(1937) with Henry Fonda and Madame

Butterﬂy (1933).

(PHOTOS COURTESY

OF SYLVIA SIDNEY)

Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, Damien: Omen II

(1978), and Hammett (1983).

When not in ﬁlms, Sidney was active in the theater,

appeared in TV movies, such as Raid on Entebbe (1977), and

did guest shots on TV series such as the 1988–89 sitcom Dear

John with Judd Hirsch. She had bit roles in the feature ﬁlms

Beetlejuice (1988), Used People (1992), and Tim Burton’s Mars

Attacks! (1996).

Siegel, Donald (1912–1991) Considered by many to

be among the best of the “B” movie directors of the late

1940s through the early 1960s, he entered the commercial

mainstream in the early 1970s through his association with

CLINT EASTWOOD

. Siegel had always shown a special ﬂair

for crime and action/adventure movies, and consistent with

the male orientation of his ﬁlms, his characters were often (in

the American tradition) loners facing impossible odds. In a

directorial career spanning more than 35 years and 36 feature

ﬁlms, he made a considerable number of minor classics in

several different genres.

Despite his rough-and-tumble image and a childhood

spent in Chicago, Siegel received his higher education at

Cambridge University in England and, after deciding to

become an actor, continued his studies at London’s Royal

Academy of Dramatic Art. He went nowhere as an actor,

though he eventually appeared in a number of ﬁlms, includ-

ing many of his own in cameo roles. Unable to make a living

in front of the camera, he went to work for

WARNER BROS

.in

1933, spending the next 13 years moving up the ladder from

assistant ﬁlm librarian to assistant cutter and montage direc-

tor. As head of the montage department at Warner Bros. in

the early 1940s, he was responsible for the powerful sequence

at the beginning of Casablanca (1942).

His excellent montages brought him the opportunity to

direct short subjects in the mid-1940s, and he responded with

two Oscar winners, Star in the Night (1945) and Hitler Lives?

(1945). Having won two Academy Awards in the same year,

he was ﬁnally given a chance to direct feature ﬁlms. Ironi-

cally, he would never win another Oscar; in fact, he would

never be nominated for another Academy Award.

Siegel’s ﬁrst feature was The Verdict (1946), a solid crime

melodrama that featured Warner stock company performers

PETER LORRE

and Sydney Greenstreet. He worked without

much distinction for a number of years as he mastered his

new craft. Siegel then drew a good deal of attention from his

prison ﬁlm, Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), which depicted explo-

sive violence and used real prisoners as extras. The movie had

a powerful impact and remains a minor masterpiece among

prison pictures.

The director’s most famous film of the 1950s was his

one and only science-fiction movie, Invasion of the Body

Snatchers (1956). The film depicts alien pods infecting

humans and stealing their forms, and a number of critics

saw the film as a political statement against McCarthyism.

It was remade by director Philip Kaufman in 1978 with

both Siegel and the film’s star, Kevin McCarthy, appearing

in minor roles.

Siegel continued making low-budget ﬁlms of merit with-

out getting very much attention either from the critics or the

industry. Among his other memorable ﬁlms of the later

1950s and early 1960s were the excellent

MICKEY ROONEY

movie Baby Face Nelson (1957), one of

ELVIS PRESLEY

’s most

satisfying ﬁlms, Flaming Star (1960), and one of

RONALD

REAGAN

’s best movies—and also the future president’s last—

The Killers (1964).

With the demise of the Hollywood-supported “B” movie,

Siegel was forced to begin to direct for television in the mid-

1960s. He reemerged a few years later in feature ﬁlms with

the well-reviewed Madigan (1967) and the ﬁrst of his

CLINT

EASTWOOD

hits, Coogan’s Bluff (1968), which Siegel also pro-

duced. He went on to direct and often produce the Eastwood

vehicles Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), The Beguiled (1971),

the megahit Dirty Harry (1971), and Escape From Alcatraz

(1979). During the course of his newfound success, he ofﬁ-

cially changed his name from Don Siegel to Donald Siegel.

In addition to Siegel’s work with Eastwood, he also

directed most of the top action stars in Hollywood, display-

ing his technical skill in the slick, if silly,

CHARLES BRONSON

thriller Telefon (1977), saving the

BURT REYNOLDS

caper ﬁlm

Rough Cut (1980, he was the fourth director on the project),

and directing

JOHN WAYNE

in his ﬁnal movie, The Shootist

(1976), sending that legendary actor out on a high note.

Siegel’s one major ﬂop was his last movie, the Bette

Midler disaster Jinxed (1982).

Simon, Neil (1927– ) America’s most popular play-

wright, Simon has penned more than 20 plays, many of

which have been turned into movies, many also having a

screenplay by Simon. Simon has also written more than 10

original screenplays, most of which have also been major

commercial and critical successes. His speciality is comedy,

and his ﬁlms are a potent mix of witty lines and ﬁnely

wrought characters. The writer has been a veritable font of

creativity and big box ofﬁce with both plays and ﬁlms.

After graduating from New York University in 1946,

Simon honed his skills writing for television programs such

as The Tallulah Bankhead Show in 1951, Caesar’s Hour in

1956–57, and The Phil Silvers Show in 1958–59. He left tele-

vision in 1961 after having his ﬁrst hit play on Broadway,

Come Blow Your Horn, a comedy that found its way to the

movies in 1963.

Simon continued writing plays but broke into the movie

business with the original screenplay for the Peter Sellers

comedy After the Fox (1966). The critical and commercial

success of that ﬁlm opened doors for him, and he wrote the

screenplays for many of his hit plays, such as Barefoot in the

Park (ﬁlm 1967) and The Odd Couple (ﬁlm 1968), the latter

movie winning the only Oscar nomination of his long and

remarkable career.

Although maintaining his prodigious output for Broad-

way, Simon alternated between adapting his own work for

the screen and writing original screenplays. Among his adap-

tations have been Plaza Suite (ﬁlm 1971), Last of the Red Hot

Lovers (ﬁlm 1972), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (ﬁlm 1975),

SIEGEL, DONALD

386

The Sunshine Boys (ﬁlm 1975), Chapter Two (ﬁlm 1979),

Brighton Beach Memoirs (ﬁlm 1986), and Biloxi Blues (ﬁlm

1988). On one rare occasion, he adapted the work of another

author, writing the screenplay for the

STEVE MARTIN

vehicle

The Lonely Guy (1984).

Among Simon’s original works for the screen have been

The Heartbreak Kid (1972), Murder by Death (1976), The

Cheap Detective (1978), Max Dugan Returns (1983), and The

Slugger’s Wife (1985).

In recent years, Simon’s work has been autobiographical,

deepening the texture of his stories and bringing warmth to

his sometimes brittle humor. For instance, Chapter Two dealt

(in ﬁctionalized form) with his coming to terms with the

death of his ﬁrst wife and his marriage to actress Marsha

Mason, his second wife. He subsequently wrote a highly

acclaimed trilogy for the theater (all three plays becoming

ﬁlms): Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and Broadway

Bound, which have detailed, in turn, his coming of age, army

experience, and beginning as a writer.

In the 1990s Simon seemed to lose his touch. The Marry-

ing Man (1991), starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, was

unsuccessful. This was followed by a made-for-television

ﬁlm, Broadway Bound (1992), and by Lost in Yonkers (1993),

with Simon returning to his familiar New York setting. Per-

haps hoping to reverse the situation, he scripted Neil Simon’s

The Odd Couple 2 (1998), reuniting

JACK LEMMON

and

WAL

TER MATTHAU

, but even that lovable acting team could not

make the ﬁlm more proﬁtable that the $18 million gross,

which was under Simon’s expected levels.

Sinatra, Frank (1915–1998) A singer, actor, producer,

and one-time director who scaled the heights of show busi-

ness as few before or since. Known as the Voice, the Chair-

man of the Board, and Old Blue Eyes, Sinatra became one of

the wealthiest and most powerful people in the entertain-

ment industry. Music was the main focus of his career, but he

nonetheless appeared in more than 50 ﬁlms, mostly in star-

ring roles. Sinatra was twice nominated for Academy Awards,

winning once in the Best Supporting Actor category for his

portrayal of Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953). He was

effective in musicals, particularly those in which he costarred

with

GENE KELLY

, and showed considerable skill as a dra-

matic actor and charm in light romantic comedy. Though his

physique ﬁlled out during the years, he came to fame as a

skinny young man with a winning combination of streetwise

toughness and beguiling innocence.

Born Francis Albert Sinatra in Hoboken, New Jersey, he

had visions of a sportswriting career when he was a youngster

and worked brieﬂy as a copy boy for a local newspaper. Hear-

ing the music styles of Billie Holiday and

BING CROSBY

, how-

ever, decided him to pursue a singing career. He started with

a local group called the Hoboken Four, and when the quar-

ter broke up, the young singer took the solo route and toured

the vaudeville circuit. Eventually, Sinatra landed a job as a

singing MC at the Rustic Cabin, a roadhouse in Englewood,

New Jersey. It was there that Harry James heard him sing in

1939 and immediately hired him as a band vocalist. A year

later, he joined Tommy Dorsey and began to record with the

band’s vocal group, the Pied Pipers.

Sinatra soon went out on his own and appeared on radio’s

Your Hit Parade and then his own show, Songs by Sinatra. The

turning point came in late 1942 when he appeared at the

Paramount Theatre in Times Square. When Sinatra was

introduced, the place went wild, bobby-soxers swooning and

crying out for him in an explosion of emotion. The event

became show-business legend, and Sinatra soon became his

generation’s most popular entertainer.

While still a band singer, Sinatra appeared in several ﬁlms

featuring Tommy Dorsey’s group, making his movie debut as

part of the band in Las Vegas Nights (1941). He had his ﬁrst

starring role in the breezy, if inconsequential, musical Higher

and Higher (1943). He went on to star in or make cameo

appearances in at least one ﬁlm per year throughout the rest

of the decade, winning a special Oscar for The House I Live In

(1945), a documentary condemning bigotry. His best vehicles

were those in which he was teamed with

GENE KELLY

Anchors Aweigh (1945), Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949),

and the groundbreaking On the Town (1949). In all of these

ﬁlms, he showed a surprising dancing talent, but Kelly was

clearly the main attraction.

After the initial excitement of seeing Sinatra on the big

screen wore off, movie fans began to judge Sinatra more crit-

ically. Poor ﬁlms such as The Kissing Bandit (1948), The Mir-

acle of the Bells (1948), Double Dynamite (1951), and Meet

Danny Wilson (1952) led to a considerable drop in his popu-

larity. When he suffered from severe vocal-chord problems

in 1952, it appeared as if his career was shattered.

Sinatra pleaded for the role of the scrappy Angelo Mag-

gio in the ﬁlm version of James Jones’s From Here to Eternity

(1953). The movie was a

COLUMBIA

production and the stu-

dio’s boss,

HARRY COHN

, was always on the look-out for

down-and-out talent he could hire cheap. He got Sinatra for

a mere $8,000, but when the movie became a hit and earned

Sinatra an Oscar, the singer was back on top.

Sinatra went on to make many of his best ﬁlms during the

1950s, starring in an eclectic mix of musicals (when his voice

was restored in the mid-1950s), comedies, and dramas. His

musicals included Guys and Dolls (as Nathan Detroit, 1955),

and High Society (1956); the highly underrated

FRANK CAPRA

ﬁlm A Hole in the Head (1959) was among his comedies. Sina-

tra’s reputation as an actor, however, was ultimately based on

his serious roles in such ﬁlms as the controversial

OTTO PRE

MINGER

movie The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), for

which he was nominated for a Best Actor

ACADEMY AWARD

plus his strong performances in The Joker Is Wild (1957) and

Some Came Running (1959).

Sinatra gained notoriety in Hollywood for his leadership

of the cliquish

RAT PACK

, a group that previously had been

led by

HUMPHREY BOGART

. During the early 1960s, he was

particularly active in Hollywood, often starring with rat-pack

cronies

DEAN MARTIN

, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and

others in lightweight entertainments of the ilk of Ocean’s

Eleven (1960), Sergeants Three (1962), Four for Texas (1963),

and Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964) and producing a num-

ber of these ﬁlms, as well. He also made a few serious movies

SINATRA, FRANK

387