Hollywood was determined to keep the image of its stars intact. Having a marketable image led
some stars to fame and fortune, but keeping up appearances demanded a lot from them.
Let's look at the rules Old Hollywood stars had to follow.
As the roaring 20s kicked off and movie studios flocked to Hollywood, they released
their talent scouts into the wild, searching for fresh faces to turn into stars. They would
then contract these aspiring actors for years. All of this was done to protect a major studio's
economic interests. These contracts meant an actor could only work with a single studio,
locking them down for years. In the beginning, it seemed that these stars were handsomely paid,
some stars made as much as five thousand dollars a week. But as an actor's popularity grew,
their salary didn't rise. And that was all thanks to the contracts put in place.
It wasn't just actors who were placed under contract. Nobody was exempt.
"You're under contract. You're gonna stay that way. Anything you write is going to be the
property of Capitol Pictures, and Capitol Pictures is not going to produce anything you write."
Even directors, writers, producers, cinematographers, art directors,
and technicians were asked to sign on a dotted line. This practice made everything in the
production stage that much easier, even if it meant that some of the props and sets were a
bit more inferior than they could have been. What do Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and
Natalie Wood all have in common? Their legendary A-list names were all created by the studios that
built them into the stars they're remembered as today. During the time of Hollywood's Golden Age,
it was standard practice for an actor's name to be changed, and the reasons were endless.
While Gilda lead Rita Hayworth was viewed as an all-American bombshell,
her birth name was Margarita Cansino. Her father was Spanish while her mother was Irish-American.
Forced to change her name to appear more Anglo-sounding, her transformation completely
white-washed her ethnicity. Joan Crawford, on the other hand, was born Lucille LeSueur.
Her name change came by way of an MGM studio executive who declared that her last name reminded
him of a sewer. Crawford allegedly loathed her given stage name, which reminded her of crawfish.
But it wasn't just female screen stars who had to change their names. Men weren't excused from this
practice, either. Cary Grant, for example, was actually Archibald Alexander Leach, and was given
his new identity by Paramount Studios. Louis B. Mayer, co-founder of
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, once declared: "A star is made, created; carefully and
cold-bloodedly built up from nothing." Sure enough, that's precisely what Hollywood was
doing during its Golden Age. The iconic producer noted that all he initially looked for in a future
star was their face and if they could look good on camera. In his opinion, he could do the rest.
Sure enough, future A-listers had to be willing to change their appearance, and sometimes,
their entire image. Along with changing her original Hispanic last name, Rita Hayworth
also went through a rigorous physical change. She was subject to years of electrolysis to change
her hairline. Marilyn Monroe was manufactured into the blonde bombshell she's forever remembered as.
Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, Monroe actually had dark brown curls when she first began
her climb to Tinseltown's elite. Modeling agency head Emmeline Snively once told her:
"Look darling, if you really intend to go places in this business, you've just got to
bleach and straighten your hair because now your face is a little too round."
Old Hollywood was also a supporter of expensive plastic surgery, which still wasn't common at
the time, and even as early as the 1920s, nose jobs and facelifts were being performed.
Since the stars of Hollywood's Golden Age signed contracts with specific film studios, this meant
they had to remain loyal to their company and subsequently missed out on roles with competitors.
Although actors were looked after, it also made it difficult for A-listers to branch out and take
different roles. That being said, on occasion, some actors were allowed to be taken out on
loan to other studios for specific flicks. Though the parent studio would always make sure that the
actors were a credit to their employer. Some stars succeeded with these loans.
Elizabeth Taylor was under contract with MGM until 1960, yet they allowed her to pick
different projects with other studios. And these movies weren't the usual fare she made with Metro
Goldwyn Mayer, either. Her other films touched on daring themes like pregnancy out of wedlock,
homosexuality, and cannibalism. "A child is comin'.
Sired by Brick outta Maggie the cat." Others, such as Olivia de Havilland of Gone
with the Wind fame, didn't have the same luck. De Havilland, who signed with Warner Bros. in
1935, was sick of the one-dimensional roles she was repeatedly forced to play and began declining
parts the studio thrust upon her. The punishment? De Havilland was essentially blacklisted from
the industry, with Warner Bros. even going as far as to tell other studios to not hire her.
Being locked into long-term contracts with their studios, actors had virtually no say
when it came to whatever roles were assigned to them. While many stars were unwilling to go
against the system, Olivia de Havilland boldly decided to rebel against Warner Bros., making a
legendary change to the Hollywood system. In an interview, de Havilland said:
"What bothered me was playing one-dimensional parts in films. Those roles were intended simply
to fill the routine function of 'The Girl.'" As such, the A-lister began declining roles and
found herself basically suspended from the studio, without pay. De Havilland didn’t have an onscreen
role for almost two years during the prime of her career. Yet de Havilland was relentless,
and with the knowledge that her lawyer father gave her, she took Warner Bros. to court,
and won. The result was "The De Havilland Law," a seven-year rule on contracts that
ultimately helped destroy the old studio system. Although appearances meant practically everything
in Old Hollywood, that doesn't mean that just any pretty face could act. Studios were willing to
dish out big bucks for acting classes for their aspiring A-listers. Shirley Temple revealed a
great deal in her book, Child Star. For instance, while she was still a rising star in Tinseltown
in the early 30s, Fox executive ​​Winfield R. Sheehan gave her and her mother some blunt news.
Due to the youngster's potential, the studio demanded she take acting lessons, even if they
risked the expensive price tag to do so. Ava Gardner was also asked to take classes
after signing her initial contract with MGM. When she did her first screen test with the studio,
an official allegedly declared that she couldn’t act or talk, but that she was still sensational.
Along with her acting lessons, the Mogambo star was also asked to take
vocal lessons to get rid of her Southern accent. Vocal training was also given to Lauren Bacall,
and it paid off. Her low seductive voice became her signature. As the star revealed in her memoir,
By Myself, director Howard Hawks was the one who instructed her to read out loud by herself
and keep her voice in a lower register. In Hawks’, incredibly sexist view,
there was nothing more grating than an excited woman speaking in a higher register.
It's no secret that Old Hollywood stars were usually typecast.
"What? Toby Doyle, you really think so? After all, he's a dust actor. Man barely knows how to talk."
It turns out that sometimes, their entire image was carefully crafted, too. Studios'
publicity departments went to great lengths to create backstories for their future A-listers.
Joan Crawford had a very rough childhood, yet MGM made sure to completely hide her past,
even telling the press that she came from an upper-class family.
Backstories and lies continued well into an actor's career. When Judy Garland became pregnant,
MGM didn't want to ruin her innocent image. So they ordered her to take more drugs after her
weight gain, all while her publicists dished to the tabloids that “she ate like a truck driver.”
If anything, at least the actors were self-aware of the inevitable truth that they were typecast.
Rita Hayworth couldn't shake off her femme fatale image, causing her to lament that:
"Every man I knew went to bed with Gilda and woke up with me."
The Golden Age of Hollywood churned out movies at a meteoric rate. Over 7,500 feature films were
made by studios between 1930 and 1945. Of course, to produce that many features, actors were pushed
to the brink of exhaustion, since there was no limit put in place to how much a star could work.
The solution that studios used to keep their A-listers working was simple: feed them pills.
As Twentieth Century Fox doctor Lee Siegel explained in Goddess: The Secret Lives of
Marilyn Monroe, it was the norm to use pills as a "tool to keep stars working," adding that by
the early 50s, "everyone was using pills." Perhaps the most well-known example of this
exploitation was Judy Garland. The Wizard of Oz star only had one day off a week, sometimes
working 18-hours shifts filled with singing and dancing. To keep her awake, studios fed
her amphetamine uppers, while in the evenings, she was given sleeping pills. Tragically, when Garland
tried calling in sick or tried going to therapy or the hospital, the filming delays came out of
her paycheck. At one point, she owed MGM $100,000. At the age of 47, Garland died of a drug overdose.
There's a reason why every female star from Hollywood's Golden Age had a slim figure: they
weren't allowed to gain weight. Gaining weight was forbidden when a star signed their contracts.
Fresh faces were closely examined by executives and then sometimes given a dietitian before a
studio would begin heavily promoting their work. Studios weren't discreet with what they expected
from their A-listers, sometimes even acting downright cruel. Judy Garland was nicknamed a
"fat little pig with pigtails" by MGM execs, with studio head Louis B. Mayer demanding the actor,
quote, "consume only chicken soup, black coffee and cigarettes, along with pills."
Swedish-born actor Greta Garbo was also hit with a blunt realization when she made it to
Hollywood in 1925. Mayer allegedly told her that, "In America, we don't like fat women."
Along with dieting, female actors also had to try and remain active.
Marilyn Monroe was keen on weightlifting. Speaking to Pageant in 1952, the actor revealed:
"I spend at least 10 minutes each morning working out with small weights."
While the movies made during Hollywood's Golden Age were filled with glitz and glam and A-listers
swooning for one another, behind the scenes, a fairytale ending wasn't that easy to come by.
It turns out, studios had a lot of say when it came to an actor's love life. When Boys Town
star Mickey Rooney went to MGM and declared he was going to marry Ava Gardner in 1942,
studio head Louis B. Mayer bluntly forbade it. "I think we're just pals who might be something
more sometime in the future. You gotta ask Mr. Mayer. I think it's just pals."
Although Rooney was eventually allowed a very private wedding, others weren't as lucky.
According to Scandals of Classic Hollywood, there was a rumor that Jean Harlow couldn't
marry William Powell because MGM had written a clause into her contract that said she could
never get married. For gay actors, it was even more challenging. Studios would arrange
marriages between gay, lesbian, and bisexual actors to hide their actual sexual orientation.
Before World War II, female fashion was drastically different in America.
While French designer Coco Chanel slowly started integrating menswear such as pants
for women in the late 1920s, things were still strict across the pond. In fact, in 1938,
a woman in Los Angeles was sent to jail for five days for wearing trousers in a courtroom.
Hollywood was no different. A 1933 article published in Movie Classic magazine claimed
that studios gave out official orders: "…that their women stars should not be
photographed in male attire or quoted on the subject."
Even Marlene Dietrich, who came to Tinseltown from Germany, wasn't exempt. One story saw her
getting turned away from the trendy Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood, simply for wearing pants.
It was The Philadelphia Story star Katharine Hepburn that helped abolish Hollywood's
strict dress code. The actor refused to comply and act as a cookie-cutter starlet,
and when RKO's costume department stole her pants one day, she walked around the studio
in her underwear. Naturally, Hepburn got her pants back, slowly paving the way for her peers.
With so many rules set in place by Old Hollywood studios to keep their stars in check, one must
wonder: how on earth didn't they miss anything that happened behind closed doors? Ingeniously
and callously, the studios hired spies. The spies could be anyone from waiters to janitors that
compiled reports on various actors for the studio. As detailed in Get Happy: The Life of Judy
Garland, Garland's assistant, Betty Asher, was fooling her for years. As Garland herself once
shared, Asher would report to MGM once a week detailing exactly who the actor would see,
her eating habits, and if she was out too late in the evening. Garland reflected that:
"I can remember crying for days after I found out what she was doing to me."
It wasn't just screen stars who had their lives painstakingly scrutinized.
Movie directors were also watched closely while a film was in production to make sure
the studio's best interests for the flick were going according to plan.
To do this, filmmakers were spied on by production assistants, line producers, and script clerks.
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