A thorough study of the legendary producer and his creative business savvy
Milan Hain. Starmaker: David O. Selznick and the Production of Stars in the Hollywood Studio System. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2023.
Hardcover : 9781496846051, 304 pages, 35 b&w illustrations, published August 2023
Available for purchase as hardcover and e-book: University Press of Mississippi, Amazon, Barnes and Noble
Also available as an audiobook on Audible and Google Play.
Description
David O. Selznick (1902–1965) was one of the most prominent film producers of the Hollywood studio era, responsible for such artistic and commercial triumphs as King Kong, David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, A Star Is Born, Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, Spellbound, and The Third Man. However, film production was not his only domain. Starting in the late 1930s, he built an impressive stable of stars within his own independent company, including Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh, Joan Fontaine, Jennifer Jones, and Gregory Peck.
In Starmaker: David O. Selznick and the Production of Stars in the Hollywood Studio System, author Milan Hain reveals the mechanisms by which Selznick and his collaborators discovered and promoted new stars and describes how these personalities were marketed, whether for financial gain or symbolic recognition and prestige. Using a wide range of archival materials, the book significantly complements and reshapes our understanding of Selznick’s celebrated career by focusing on heretofore neglected aspects of his creative and business activities. It also sheds light on the US film industry during the Golden Age of Hollywood studios and in the postwar period when the established order began to break down. By structuring the book around Selznick and his role as a starmaker, Hain demonstrates that star production and development in the Hollywood studio system was a highly organized and systematic activity, though the respective strategies and procedures were often hidden from the public eye.
Reviews
„Starmaker is one of the best pieces of work I have read in recent years about the phenomenon of stardom and about Hollywood cinema in the 1930s and 1940s.“– Peter Krämer, senior research fellow in cinema and television at De Montfort University
„Starmaker is the first book on Selznick that concerns his professional career and his (mis)judgment of talent as he aided in the creation and development of stars. This approach makes it an extremely interesting, unique take on the role of the film producer not tackled before in book form.“– Gillian Kelly, author of Robert Taylor: Male Beauty, Masculinity, and Stardom in Hollywood
The book is filled with interesting photographs as well as supplemental information about stars under contract with Selznick as well as various film releases overseen by Selznick. Hain offers an extremely well-researched overview of Selznick, in collaboration with numerous archives, and crafts a narrative that is sure to be enjoyed by fans of classic film and various Selznick productions. – Annette Bochenek, Hometowns to Hollywood
Starmaker draws on Thomas Schatz’s 2015 study, “The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era,” a seminal history that Mr. Hain uses to deepen our sense of how interrelated the means of production were with the advent of screen personalities. – Carl Rollyson, New York Sun
…a detailed study of popular stars as marketable properties… – Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library Journal July 2023
„the author exercises select case studies inspired by careful archival research at the Harry Ransom Center (at the University of Texas at Austin) to capture the essence of Selznick as a creative and economic agent during this period. (…) Overall, Hain’s study of David O. Selznick will be of interest to anyone invested in the machinations of the Hollywood star system. This text confronts readers who believe Selznick was little more than a ‘peddler of flesh’ and makes legible what made him a true ‘starmaker’, without completely minimizing the natural talents and creative labor of his contracted female stars.“ – Gabrielle Stecher, New Review of Film and Television Studies, vol. 22, no. 2 (2024)
„film scholar Milan Hain has made admirable use of this voluminous collection in his excellent Starmaker: David O. Selznick and the Production of Stars in the Hollywood Studio System, a step-by-step examination of David Selznick’s process of creating and utilizing stars.“ – Sydney Ladensohn Stern, Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 54, no. 1 (2024)