"Everybody Loves Somebody": The A&E "Rat Pack" Biographies

Abstract

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 by that fateful 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 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 ego from 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 empty luminaries—or our connection to them, however vague—and when the highest rung on the social order is occupied by these people, who are essentially not anything (Questions). For some, the 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 ileged position in the definition of social roles and types, and this must have real consequences in terms of how people believe they can and should behave (8). This privileged position is maintained in a variety of different ways. Primarily, it's maintained by the public relations industry that grows