Joan Crawford Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine Anthony SlideLong before Robert Pattinson, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie, Kristen Stewart, Zac Efron, and Will Smith, there were Tyrone Power, Claudette Colbert, Rita Hayworth, Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marilyn Monroe. And before them, Norma Talmadge, Rudolph Valentino, Charles Chaplin, Florence Lawrence, and Lillian Gish.
Just like long before Entertainment Weekly and PopSugar.com, there were Photoplay, Motion Picture, Modern Screen, Picture-Play, and The New Movie Magazine.
Film historian Anthony Slide's recently published Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine: A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers (University of MI Press) is a classy, thorough examination of the socio-historical role of movie fan magazines, which covered the careers, lives, and loves of Hollywood movie stars, from the 1910s to the magazines' demise in the late 1970s.
"The fan magazine is such a seemingly worthless object, and yet it is of interest and value to both the film scholar and the sociologist," Slide writes in his introduction. I couldn't agree more. I'm no sociologist, but fan magazines of the '20s and '30s were incredibly valuable during my research for my biography of actor Ramon Novarro.
As Tony Slide (we've known each other for several years) explains in Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine, those publications gave you a glimpse — however rainbow-colored at times — into both the moviemaking world and the socio-economic-historical-political context in which that world existed.
Tony — whose perception of modern stardom might radically change if he spent more time with Robert Pattinson, Brad Pitt, or Sandra Bullock fans — has kindly agreed to answer several questions (via e-mail) about Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine for Alt Film Guide. Please click here for the q&a.
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