Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame

Ty Burr

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jun 4, 2013 - Performing Arts - 448 pages

With 8 Pages of Black-and-White Photographs

In this captivating history of stardom, Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr traces our obsession with fame from the dawn of cinema through the age of the Internet. Why do we obsess over the individuals we come to call stars? How has both the image of stardom and our stars' images changed over the past hundred years? What does celebrity mean if people can now become famous simply for being famous? With brilliant insight and entertaining examples, Burr reveals the blessings and the curses of celebrity for the star and the stargazer alike. From Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, to Archie Leach (a.k.a. Cary Grant), Tom Cruise, and Julia Roberts, to such no-cal stars of today as the Kardashians and the new online celebrity, Gods Like Us is a journey through the fame game at its flashiest, most indulgent, occasionally most tragic, and ultimately it's most culturally revealing.

Contents

• From Edisons Blobs to Florence Lawrence: 3
• Mary Pickford Norma Talmadge Flappers and Virgins: 23
• Charlie Doug Rudy and More: 45
• The Silent Star Scandals: 70
• The Movies Speak: 79
• The Great Singularities of the Studio: 95
• How Stars Were Made: 115
• Monsters Scarlett Women and Other Characters: 128
• Postwar Studio Stardom: 143
• Brando Changes Everything: 157
• Small Screen Small Gods: 178
• The New Rock Celebrities and the Warhol Factory: 191
• The Long Voyage of the African American Star: 204
• The 1980s: 235
• Cable VHS and Arnold: 259
• Michael Jackson Madonna and: 277
• The 1990s and Beyond: 291
• Stardom in the Internet Age: 322
• Star Death: 353
• Notes: 367
• Bibliography: 381

About the author

Ty Burr is the film critic for The Boston Globe. For more than a decade he wrote about movies for Entertainment Weekly, and he has also served in the film acquisitions department of HBO. He estimates that after thirty years of serious movie-watching, he has seen on the order of 10,680 films. On a good day, he remembers 7,000 of them.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame
• Author: Ty Burr
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013
• ISBN: 0307390845, 9780307390844
• Length: 448 pages
• Subjects: Performing Arts / Film / History & Criticism; Social Science / Media Studies; Social Science / Popular Culture