On Sat, 4 Jun 1994, Patrick B Bjork wrote: > > *In this age of media sensationalism, how did the major studios succeed > in covering up the antics and maladies of its performers? As it happens, I'm writing a thick biography of Jerry Lewis, who entered show biz during the final years of the Studio Era and continues to lurk around its periphery into the age of tabloid journalism. I've spent a lot of time thinking and writing about this question, particularly in showing how received stories about Lewis or Martin & Lewis couldn't possibly be true even though they'd been reported as fact for decades. The studios did indeed have publicity machines that were able to squelch bad press -- much as personal publicists such as Pat Kingsley or Marion Billings do today. They would trade an exclusive story on some hot star or film or topic for cooperation from the press about something they didn't want to leak out (Rock Hudson's sex life, for instance, or Lionel Barrymore's drug and drink habits). The 'approved' columnists -- Hedda and Louella -- worked in much the same way. David Niven wrote a nice passage about his efforts to reach detente with the two of them in one of his autobiographies. There was also, though (and much more so than today), a puppy-dog press more than eager to present only a positive and glowing account of performers (or, for that matter, politicians and athletes -- compare the whitewashings of Babe Ruth, FDR, John Kennedy). The contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts of Martin & Lewis, for instance, are almost always appropriate for including in a press kit, so rarely do they ever do anything but toe the studio line. Dean and Jerry had very marketable angles -- the playboy and the monkey -- and every story about them from 1946-54 presents them as exactly that. There *was* a tabloid press running parallel to the mainstream entertainment press (as there is now), but they almost NEVER coincided. When Dean and Jerry broke up, for instance, the mainstream press attributed it solely to Jerry's ambition and his desire to work more often; the tabloids ("Confidential," "On the QT," "Lowdown," "Top Secret," "Uncensored" -- great names, eh wot?) wrote strictly about more sensational reasons: jealousies, bickering wives, unexcused insults. There was a clear, unperforated line between these sorts of publications. Today, with magazines like "Vanity Fair," "Movieline," "Premeiere" and "Entertainment Weekly" regularly crisscrossing between the two modes of reporting, the distinction between Ally-to-the-Stars and Rat Fink isn't so clear. I know in my own work I am always caught between the postures of Cultural Historian and Sensationalist (this, of course, brings us closer to the current mode of thought *against* biography -- Janet Malcom, the NY TIMES book reviewer (whose name I can never remember correctly -- it's Japanese), etc.). Don't forget, of course, that the stars of old were paid employees of large companies and had the backing of those companies in keeping their private lives private. The free-agent movie stars of today don't have the same luxury. An interesting inverse test case of this is the Hearst Publications' reaction to "Citizen Kane," and the deliberate effort of Hearst employee Hedda Hopper (or was it Louella? I can't ever distinguish them) to freeze out RKO and Welles unless she had something bad to say. It's the one blatant instance where the aggrieved party was the press and not the studio and a nice negative instance of how it all worked. Anyway, I'm very interested in the notion of a book on La Lake: I just taught "Sullivan's Travels" last winter and my students all loved her, and I've got a long-term interest in "This Gun for Hire" (through Borges, as it turns out -- if we ever have beers together I can make it make sense!). Tell us more (or write me off-list)! All best, | "Here lies New Critic, who would fox us Shawn Levy | With his poetic paradoxes. [log in to unmask] | Though he lies here rigid and quiet, | If he could speak he would deny it."