Mining the Dream Factory: Thomas Hart Benton, American Artists, And
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
104 105 Benton also told reporters that he hoped his painting might be displayed in “some large motion picture theater,” where moviegoers could scrutinize the “combination of machine and sex that Hollywood is.”3 Benton put a lot into this project, including sketching a series of sar- donic Hollywood Notes depicting industry activities, such as story confer- ences and movie premieres (figs. 2, 3) and writing a caustic essay titled “Hollywood Journey,” both intended for an exposé on “what goes on” in the Mining the movie industry.4 But the commission with Life fell through. Benton’s candid take on “the machinery of the industry” did not segue with how the movie in- dustry expected to be seen. Nor was it compatible with how popular maga- zines like Life, which depended on motion-picture advertising income, typically depicted the movies. And it certainly did not fit the glamorous and romantic Fig. 2. Thomas Hart Benton, Director’s image of Hollywood that the industry fostered and American audiences ex- Conference, 1937. Ink and ink wash on paper. Location unknown pected to see: “the national fairytale,” observed Ruth Suckow in a 1936 arti- DreaM Factory cle, of “overnight rise to fame and material wealth, to social opulence, with Sex and Beauty in headline type.”5 Almost from its infancy in the early twentieth century, the American film thoMas hart Benton, aMerican artists, industry has been called a “dream factory”: a fabricator of fantastic moving images, an entertainment enterprise promising stardom and riches to those lucky enough to work in “the movies.”6 The “factory” part of that identity, how- anD the rise oF the Movie inDustry ever, was mostly discounted, especially by the movie industry. Downplaying the structural realities of its assembly-line operations, studio-system manage- Erika Doss ment policies, and general corporate profit profile, the movies avoided a mass-production reputation in favor of rags-to-riches fables of individual suc- cess: an American Dream of the independent upward mobility of movie stars. Success stories, like that of Theodosia Goodman, the daughter of a Cincinnati In August 1937, Thomas Hart Benton traveled to Hollywood, commissioned tailor who morphed into the exotic silent movie icon Theda Bara, or Tom Mix, by Life magazine to paint a “movie mural” illustrating how feature films were the son of a Pennsylvania stable master who became the highest paid cow- made. The artist spent much of his time at 20th Century Fox’s studios in boy actor of the 1920s, helped fuel that dream. Century City, a commercial and residential area of Los Angeles, where the Adopting certain symbolic and economic strategies, the movie industry pictures Ali Baba Goes to Town, a screwball comedy starring Eddie Cantor cultivated and controlled its dream factory image through much of the twenti- and Gypsy Rose Lee; Life Begins in College, a farce featuring the Ritz eth century. In the 1910s, for example, when many American movies were Brothers comedy team; and In Old Chicago, a big-budget musical showcas- produced in studios on the East Coast, the industry institutionalized a star ing movie stars Tyrone Power and Alice Faye were being filmed on various system of celebrity players who were avidly marketed in posters, stills, lobby lots. Based on what he described as the “several hundred drawings” that he Fig. 3. Thomas Hart Benton, Carthay Circle, cards, newspaper ads, and fan magazines, such as the industry organ 1937. Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on made during his month-long visit, Benton’s dynamic painting Hollywood paper. Private collection Photoplay, launched in 1911. During the 1920s, the industry, now centered (1937–38) is filled with the stars, supporting actors, directors, skilled techni- in Southern California, capitalized on its sweeping cultural dominance with cians, and machines of major studio production of the movie industry’s self-referential symbols and rituals, including a huge sign with fifty-foot-high Golden Age of the 1930s (fig. 1).1 by thirty-foot-wide letters that spelled out its name in the Hollywood Hills; At the center of the large horizontal canvas, which echoes the propor- red-carpet premieres with swanky celebs and mobs of fans at exotic theaters tions of a movie screen and embodies the energized collage aesthetics and like Grauman’s Chinese; a Walk of Fame featuring movie star handprints and frenetic pacing of motion pictures themselves, is a scantily dressed chorus footprints; and, beginning in 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and girl auditioning for a scene in In Old Chicago. As Benton explained in a letter Sciences annual awards ceremony, where bronze “Oscars” were handed out to Daniel Longwell, the Life editor who arranged his Hollywood assignment: for movie industry “bests.” By the 1930s, the industry’s overblown opinion of its own self-importance had become the subject of a number of movies about The young lady who occupies the center of the panel is more a sym- the movies — about, especially, how stars like Theda Bara and Tom Mix were bolical than an actual movie figure. I wanted to give the idea that the born.7 machinery of the industry, cameras, carpenters, big generators, high American artists — from authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Budd voltage wires etc. is directed mainly toward what young ladies have Schulberg, and Nathanael West to painters like Benton, Edward Hopper, and under their clothes. So I took the clothes off but added a few little Reginald Marsh — responded to this powerful new mode of mass communica- bits for the post office. I hope you like the picture. I do.2 tion in different ways.8 In the industry’s early years, some worked for the stu- dios designing sets, painting backdrops, and making movie posters. Many 106 107 Doss Mining the Dream Factory artists were influenced by the anarchic aesthetic of the movies, whose dy- painters, sculptors, bedbugs, and cockroaches.”11 Ingram sculpted, Benton namic and illusory visual representations assaulted “natural” or stable under- painted, and both scrambled for odd jobs in the movie industry to make a liv- standings of time, space, and storytelling. Others were drawn to the physical ing. First joining the Edison Company in the Bronx, where he wrote scenarios, settings of moviegoing: Hopper, a movie enthusiast, illustrated plush theater dressed scenes, and did some bit acting, Ingram subsequently worked for interiors in paintings such as New York Movie (1939; fig. 4). Marsh rendered Vitagraph (located in Brooklyn), then at Fox, Universal, and World studios (in movie theater facades and audiences in Paramount Picture (1934) and Fort Lee).12 He began directing his first pictures in 1916 and continued to Twenty Cent Movie (1936; fig. 5). Still other artists explicitly critiqued the sculpt and sketch while making twenty-seven movies and building a reputa- dream factory: the evidence of its structural operations, celluloid offerings, tion as an extraordinarily creative and fiercely independent cinema “artiste” and incredible fan base, as well as the celebrity lifestyles of its stars, provided who detested the corporate mind-set of the big studios. In the mid-1920s, rich fodder for these works. Benton, whose experience with the movies was Ingram left Hollywood in disgust and settled in the French Riviera, where he extensive, worked all these angles. started his own production company. He retired from the movies in the 1930s Settling in New York in the early teens, after spending several years in and spent the rest of his life sculpting. As a writer for Theatre Magazine ob- Paris studying modern art, Benton found jobs in the burgeoning movie stu- served in 1928, “Rex Ingram is one of the few motion picture directors with a Fig. 4. Edward Hopper, New York Movie, 1939. dios of Brooklyn and Bedford Park, New York, and Fort Lee, New Jersey. Like distinct cultural background, an artist’s conscience, temperament, and an am- Oil on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art, the high-tech start-ups of the 1990s in California’s Silicon Valley, the early bition that transcends the narrow limitations imposed by Hollywood’s ‘Big New York, Given anonymously, 396.1941 movie industry was innovative, collaborative, and informal, backed by risk-tak- Business.’” A decade later, Benton would grapple with similar themes in his ing entrepreneurs who sought to capitalize on cinema’s phenomenal growth painting Hollywood and in his critical essay “Hollywood Journey,” denouncing and expanding market. As film historian Ben Singer notes, nearly 5,200 fea- the movies as “an economically conditioned Art.”13 ture films and some 31,300 one-, two-, and three-reelers (each about ten to As he advanced in the early motion motion-picture industry, Ingram cre- twelve minutes long) were produced in the United States alone between ated opportunities for Benton and other artists. Benton designed sets and 1912 and 1920. Movie theaters multiplied in number and size: in 1900, New painted backdrops for Fox and Pathé studios, making seven dollars a day. He York City featured 97 nickelodeons (named for their five-cent admission fee), even did a bit of stunt work, later recalling: “One time Rex got it into his head seating from two hundred to five hundred people; by 1910, there were four that I might be made into an actor and gave me a part in a barroom scene hundred such theaters in Manhattan — and more than twenty thousand, ac- with Paddy Sullivan and Jimmy Kelly and a lot of other pugs in those days who cording to Scientific American, in the nation’s “northern cities.” During the put on the fights for the movies.” The name of Benton’s silver-screen debut 1910s, upscale “movie palaces” were built to accommodate one thousand to remains unknown, and the movie itself has no doubt disappeared — fewer than five thousand patrons for nonstop showings that began around noon and 14 percent of early silent features survive today in their original format — but continued until late at night.9 With their inventive stories, stereotypical charac- the film in question might have been Broken Fetters (1916), a “white slavery” ters, dynamic visual effects, and seemingly infinite variety — from westerns and melodrama that Ingram directed for Universal.