Over the past few months, we’ve watched a series of revolutions in cinema history. We’ve seen Italian Neorealism strip away studio artifice in pursuit of authenticity, explored how Method acting transformed screen performance, and watched the 1950s grapple with changing ideas about youth and rebellion.
This month felt like a good moment to take a step back in time, back to Hollywood’s Golden Age and the era of the studio star.
Long before Marlon Brando and James Dean encouraged audiences to believe they were watching real people, Hollywood had created and then perfected something rather different: the movie star. In the studio era, audiences often chose a film not because of its director or even its story, but because Cary Grant, Clark Gable or Bette Davis happened to be in it.
These performers were not simply actors; they were personalities, carefully cultivated by the studios, whose presence alone could sell a ticket.
What fascinated me, watching this month’s films, was that there doesn’t seem to have been a single formula for becoming a star. Clark Gable’s easy masculinity has almost nothing in common with Katharine Hepburn’s razor-sharp intelligence or Bette Davis’s extraordinary emotional intensity. Each commands the screen in a completely different way.
I was also struck by something else. Looking at these films today, the faces themselves feel remarkably varied. The stars are undoubtedly glamorous, but not in an interchangeable way. Their appeal often lies in what makes them distinctive rather than what makes them conventionally perfect; a reminder that star power has never been quite the same thing as beauty.
Three films in particular helped me understand why audiences fell so completely under Hollywood’s spell.
It Happened One Night (1934)
My surprise favourite from this month’s viewing, It Happened One Night is a simple enough story. Ellie Andrews, a wealthy heiress, runs away after clashing with her father over her impulsive marriage. On her journey she encounters Peter Warne, a quick-witted newspaper reporter who recognises an exclusive story when he sees one. The two reluctantly travel together, each believing they can outsmart the other, while gradually discovering that first impressions can be misleading.
I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so funny. So many classic romantic comedies have been imitated that it’s easy to assume the originals will feel familiar rather than fresh.
Instead, It Happened One Night remains wonderfully alive.
Much of that comes from the wit of the script, but even more from the chemistry between Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Their conversations have an effortless rhythm, each trying to gain the upper hand while clearly relishing the contest.
The film was also the first to win all five major Academy Awards – Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay – a feat that has only been matched twice since (by One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence Of The Lambs).
It also spawned one of cinema’s more charming pieces of folklore: after Gable famously removed his shirt to reveal he wasn’t wearing an undershirt, sales of men’s vests apparently fell dramatically. Whether entirely true or not, the story speaks to the extraordinary influence movie stars held over popular culture.
More than anything, though, this film helped me understand Clark Gable’s appeal. Watching Gone with the Wind, it’s easy to admire his confidence as Rhett Butler. Watching It Happened One Night, you see something warmer: an actor whose charm feels so effortless that he makes it look accidental.
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
If Clark Gable is the epitome of the effortless leading man, Katharine Hepburn represents something quite different.
The Philadelphia Story follows Tracy Lord, a wealthy socialite preparing for her second wedding. As the ceremony approaches, her ex-husband C.K. Dexter Haven reappears, accompanied by two journalists covering the event. Over the course of a chaotic weekend, old relationships are reconsidered, hidden insecurities emerge, and Tracy is forced to confront the impossibly high standards she has set for both herself and those around her.
I had relatively high expectations of The Philadelphia Story, as I’d heard so many times that it’s considered one of the best films ever made.
It’s also an important chapter in Hollywood history. By the late 1930s, Hepburn had acquired the unfortunate label of “box office poison”, with some exhibitors believing audiences no longer wanted to see her. Rather than accepting defeat, she acquired the rights to Philip Barry’s stage play and helped bring it to the screen.
The resulting film became one of her greatest successes and effectively reinvented her career.
The opening caught me a little off guard; as Tracy and Dexter’s marriage comes to an end, he shoves her to the ground in a very slapstick way. It is clearly intended to be funny, or at least to land as a brisk comic flourish before the story begins. Watching it today, I found it startling. Later, Tracy’s younger sister Dinah casually asks whether Dexter really “socked” her as the newspapers claimed, and the question barely raises an eyebrow. Nobody seems to regard it as defining his character or preventing the possibility of reconciliation.
It’s one of those moments that reminds us not only how attitudes towards relationships have changed, but how differently audiences in 1940 were expected to respond to comedy itself. Interestingly, the scene was included partially because Hepburn felt that the audience would enjoy seeing her “fall flat on her face”, and was such fun to film that they did it multiple times. That Hepburn herself embraced the scene so enthusiastically makes it feel less like an awkward relic and more like a glimpse into a very different comic sensibility.
The biggest pleasure of the movie for me was just how witty the writing is. The dialogue never feels merely amusing; it sparkles. Conversations become verbal tennis matches in which every line lands with precision, and the pleasure comes as much from the language itself as from the plot.
Hepburn is magnificent. As a character, Tracy could easily have become cold or unlikeable, but Hepburn allows glimpses of vulnerability beneath the confidence. She is intelligent, poised and fiercely independent, yet never entirely certain of herself.
It is a beautifully balanced performance, with Grant and Stewart also displaying both brilliance and chemistry throughout.
Watching it now, it is difficult to imagine anyone other than Hepburn playing Tracy Lord. That, perhaps, is one definition of star power.
All About Eve (1950)
All About Eve offers something altogether sharper than this month’s other films. The story centres on ageing Broadway star Margo Channing, whose seemingly devoted admirer, Eve Harrington, gradually insinuates herself into every aspect of her professional and personal life. What begins as admiration slowly becomes rivalry, raising uncomfortable questions about ambition, ageing and the price of success.
I expected a backstage drama, but what I found instead was a wonderfully perceptive study of performance – both on stage and off it. Almost nobody in All About Eve is exactly who they first appear to be. Characters flatter, manipulate, exaggerate and reinvent themselves. The theatre becomes a metaphor for public life, where everyone is performing some version of themselves.
At the centre of it all is Bette Davis. Her features are striking rather than conventionally pretty, but she possesses something much rarer than perfect beauty: absolute command of the screen. Margo Channing is proud, insecure, funny, cutting and unexpectedly vulnerable, often within the same scene. Davis never asks the audience to like her; she simply refuses to let us look anywhere else.
The supporting cast reinforces another thought that occurred to me while watching these films. Hollywood’s stars once seemed to encompass a broader range of faces and personalities than we perhaps expect today. Anne Baxter’s polished beauty, Celeste Holm’s quiet elegance and Thelma Ritter’s wonderfully earthy wit all coexist comfortably on screen, each memorable for different reasons. Their individuality becomes part of the film’s richness.
The film even contains an early appearance by Marilyn Monroe, still on the cusp of superstardom. It’s a reminder that one generation of stars is always waiting in the wings as another begins to fade – a central theme of the All About Eve itself.
Star power
Taken together, these films helped me understand that the studio star was more than just a great actor.
Method acting asks us to believe completely in the character. The great studio stars achieved something subtly different: they invited audiences to spend two hours in their company. Whether playing a reporter, a society heiress or a Broadway legend, Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis each brought something unmistakably their own to the screen.
I wonder whether that’s why these performances continue to feel so fresh. They remind us that charisma can never be duplicated exactly. The source might be warmth, intelligence, wit, vulnerability or sheer force of personality, but whatever form it takes, true star power is instantly recognisable.