"EVERYBODY LOVES SOMEBODY": THE A&E "RAT PACK" BIOGRAPHIES Author(s): MIKITA BROTTMAN Source: Biography, Vol. 23, No. 1, THE BIOPIC (winter 2000), pp. 160-175 Published by: University of Hawai'i Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23540207 . Accessed: 04/09/2014 20:14 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Hawai'i Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Biography. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Thu, 4 Sep 2014 20:14:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "everybody loves somebody": the a&e "rat pack" biographies MIKITA BROTTMAN The growth of photography and the motion picture industry in the twen tieth century has been coterminous with the cult of the celebrity personality. When specific actors and actresses suddenly became valuable, sought-after property, when the ticket-selling faces took on names, then the star system was born. Or as Kenneth Anger puts it, "Cinemaland was cursed in its cra dle that fateful by chimera, the 'Star'" (28). The cult of celebrity experi enced such rapid and prodigious expansion that by the middle years of the current century audiences were accustomed to being persuaded that they had special and privileged access to the off-screen, day-to-day lives of the "stars." In certain circumstances, fans found themselves encouraged by stu dio publicity mechanisms to attempt to erode the boundaries separating the individual from ego the personality of the celebrity, thereby allowing rhe fan to identify completely with the blessed life of the star. Writer Jay Mclnerney claims that it's an indication of a collapsed value system when the "great chain of being" seems to be defined by our distance from these luminaries—or our empty connection to them, however vague—and when the on the highest rung social order is occupied by these people, who are "essentially not anything" ("Questions"). For the some, celebrity is a mirror, a reflection in which the public stud ies and adjusts its own image of itself (Durgnat 137-38). For others, the celebrity is a direct or indirect projection of the needs, drives, and dreams of American society (Walker xi). As Richard Dyer point out, "stars have a priv in the ileged position definition of social roles and types, and this must have real in consequences terms of how people believe they can and should behave" This (8). privileged position is maintained in a variety of different it's maintained the ways. Primarily, by public relations industry that grows Biography 23.1 (Winter 2000) © Biographical Research Center This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Thu, 4 Sep 2014 20:14:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Brottman, A&E Biographies 161 up alongside any successful celebrity. This industry allows us to amass, without any conscious effort on our part, a tremendous wealth of details concerning every aspect of the star's life and lifestyle—from biographical accounts of childhood by close friends or family members, to photograph ic archives recording various hair styles and the history of outfits worn on various occasions, to graphic accounts of emotional intimacies and sexual preferences. It's also maintained by techniques like the close-up, a device that Bela Balazs describes as appearing to reveal "the hidden mainsprings of a life which we thought we already knew so well" (185), and by such mech anisms as the cinema or television celebrity "biopic." Critics have often observed how celebrity personalities are "construct ed" by the entertainment industry. This "personality construction" is so intrinsic to the "star system," so taken for granted by film and television audiences, that it's sometimes very difficult to understand how far it goes, where it begins, and when—if ever—it ends. These constructions, which include notions about what "makes" a star, and how people "become" stars, are so deeply entrenched in the ideology of western culture that they may perhaps be better described as myths. "touched with magic" One of these myths is the belief that stars become stars because they are "touched with magic" in the form of "great talent," "a rare personality," "an instantaneous connection with the public," "an overabundance of charis matic on-screen charm," or "the ability to make you care" (Wilkerson and Borie 181). Another myth is the idea that stars get "discovered," as in the old story of the accidentally-spotted soda-fountain girl who was quickly ele vated to stardom—a myth that, according to Daniel Boorstin, "soon took its place alongside the log-cabin-to-White-House legend as a leitmotif of American democratic folk-lore" (162).1 Other celebrity myths include the "star plucked out of nowhere who becomes difficult and uncooperative," the "big star who's declined into obscurity," the "star who sacrificed every thing on the altar of ambition," and the overarching myth of "Hollywood as destroyer." These myths, of course, all change and develop over time. It was once widely believed, for example, that the role and the performance in a film revealed something about the star's personality, which was then "corrobo rated" by stories in fan magazines and similar "reliable" sources. In other words, the plot of a film was often regarded at some level as the working out of the actor/character's inherent nature. A good example of this is the This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Thu, 4 Sep 2014 20:14:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 162 Biography 23.1 (Winter 2000) "character" of Greta Garbo, whose line "I want to be alone" in Grand Hotel in 1933 was attributed again and again to the "real" Garbo (who requested only that the press stop hounding her), and interpreted as the expression of an innate, fundamental, and even "metaphysical" personal desire (Dyer 176, 18 In). Today, this myth has been replaced by the new myth of "contradictions in-the-image" when viewed retroactively. For example, as Richard Dyer points out, today's Bogart cult tends to see him at odds with his contem porary image—more full of worldly wisdom perhaps—just as today's Marilyn Monroe cult sees her as full of tragic consciousness—a quality so at odds with her movie roles that to the modern viewer, the contradictions threaten to fragment the image altogether (71). This current wave of celebrity myths was ushered in by a cluster of scandalous "true-life" Hollywood chronicles published in the 1970s. Heralded by Kenneth Anger's infamous Hollywood Babylon series, other outrageous publications included Haywire (1977), Brooke Hayward's chronicle of her life as the daughter of prima donna mother Margaret Sullavan, and Mommie Dearest (1981), Christina Crawford's inglorious depiction of her movie-star parent. Since the 1970s, no celebrity biography or biopic has been complete without its sordid accounts of the "seamy side" of stardom—the myths of destruction, of celebrity scandals, of Hollywood's "dark side." The glamor and the tinsel, the beautiful people and their daring love affairs, are now equally famous for their sordid under belly—rhe realm of greed, lust, jealousy, and shame. As long as there is a celebrity elite living in an illusory world of sparkle and style, as long as Hollywood fuels dreams of a glamorous, sexually charged, thrill-packed universe, there will continue to be stories told of intolerable pressures, vio lence, and catastrophe. Myths of Hollywood's dark side generally tend to revolve around the legendary "pressures" that every star must face: the criticism, the hypocrisy, the the backstabbing, extravagance, the dramas and scandals, the searching into inquisitions private lives, and the fabled rejection that follows the leg endary adulation. Looking at the stars now involves looking underneath their skirts, inspecting their pants, sniffing their bedsheets, and spying their through bedroom keyholes. Today, the celebrity biopic is expected to chronicle not the lavish just homes and priceless jewelry, but the personal anxieties and emotional tensions, the drunken collapses and nervous break downs that lead to frenetic and distasteful contests of luridity between the tabloids, gleeful at the misfortunes of the rich and famous. This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Thu, 4 Sep 2014 20:14:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Brottman, A&E Biographies 163 MASS FANTASY Since its inception in 1984, the A&E Biographies® series has become extremely successful. Currently airing six nights a week on the A&E Channel, it covers a diverse three hundred subjects a year, and attracts more than two million viewers each evening. Each episode is marketed separate ly on video. Biography Magazine gives more celebrity gossip; an A&E Biography® Web Site went online in July 1996; and an A&E Biography® Book Series was launched by Crown Publishing in July 1997. And January 1999 witnessed the inauguration, with much hoopla, of the A&E is in fact a Biography® Channel.2 The entire A&E Biography® "system" subtly coordinated marketing process, most apparent on the A&E home video ver Biography® web site, with its online cyberstore offering sions of almost every A&E Biography® ever shown, plus all the customary books, t-shirts, baseball caps, and embroidered sweatshirts.