Alfred hitchcock presents victim four3/16/2024 Variety also cited the decision to allow the 1953 Academy Awards to be aired on NBC as a sign of the film industry’s acceptance of television’s credibility. Studios relented provided the stars received the opportunity to plug the studio and its recent releases. With labor changes in Hollywood and a decline in overall film production, television became an attractive and viable option for Hollywood actors who were out of work. However, this claim overlooks the significant number of actors who were no longer bound by contracts with major studios due to the upheaval in the industry.Īs a result, these actors were able to seek employment wherever opportunities arose. Until the mid-1950s, studios purposefully kept their stars away from television. Radio had previously offered such a space for Hollywood stars to supplement their film work, but television increasingly took over this role. While some actors perceived TV work as an abdication of their star power, others recognized it as an avenue to sustain their careers and connect with a fresh audience.Įarly television frequently recruited performers from various entertainment media, enlisting film actors, radio personalities, and Broadway/stage performers to provide programming talent for the burgeoning medium. Therefore, it would seem essential for television to boost the images of such marginal stars by drawing on authenticity as a value superior to the artificiality of constructed glamour and by underscoring television’s ability to rediscover or uncover the genuine talents of the film world’s castoffs and supporting players.” it would appear as though, while the cinema’s star system was delineated by a complicated aesthetic, industrial and economic history, the television star is simply a fall from grace.” Television studies scholar Susan Murray rightly comments suspiciously on these theories: “The dominant tendency in star studies has been to denigrate the stature of television stardom, to argue that television does not actually produce stars of the complexity, depth, and cultural value that film does, largely because of the medium’s lesser cultural status and its essential familiarity and intimacy… In the 1950s, the transition from film to television was still a relatively new concept, and many Hollywood actresses were hesitant to make the switch. The emergence of television in the 1950s and 60s transformed the entertainment industry, leading many iconic Hollywood actresses to transition from film to TV. Television of the 1950s brought the big screen stars into the inner sanctum of our living rooms. “TV has done more for old movie stars than plastic surgery,” -Popular TV critic for the LA Mirror Hal Humphrey wrote his articles based on network and press agent publicity, defended television’s stars in comparison to films during the time in the period when big screen actors were transitioning to television.Ĭiting the examples of Joan Blondell, Ann Sothern, and Joan Crawford, Hal Humphrey claimed that these actresses were not “has-beens.” It might be more apt to describe them as mistakes made by the movie industry and rectified by television.”ĭuring the 1950s after decades of escaping the world and its worries within the vastness of the darkened movie theater, television delivered the actors we imagined vividly on the big screen and altered the illusion by fitting them inside a little box in our homes. We were always pretty offbeat, but people get used to us being offbeat.” -Alfred Hitchcock (as quoted in “The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion,” 2001) In television the problem is to maintain a standard (especially after seven years). I cannot say I know how the arrangements were made. “This is the way of television… Half-hour shows were becoming one-hour shows, so it was decided that ours was to become a one-hour show. The CMBA Presents the 2023 Spring Blogathon: Big Stars on the Small Screen - In Support of National Classic Movie Day SILVER SCREEN STAR’S JOURNEY TO A SMALL GOLDEN BOX 1955 Headliner Alfred Hitchcock film director © Copyright CBS Broadcasting Inc.Īll Rights Reserved Credit: CBS Photo Archive
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