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Abstract
Anna Sten was a Russian émigré star who, thanks in great part to an aggressive promotional campaign, became a household name for the four years she was contracted to Samuel Goldwyn during the 1930s, only to fall into obscurity by the end of the decade. This article considers her ethnicity as a significant reason why she failed as a Hollywood star. I do this by means of a textural analysis of the various promotional texts (film stills, glamour portraits, press articles and fan magazine features) that shaped Sten's cumulative star persona by casting her in relation to contradictory stereotypes of ethnicity. The archived correspondence documents written by Samuel Goldwyn and members of his publicity department are another important source. These are illuminating in terms of the strategies employed by the studio in their marketing of Sten as ‘foreign’. This article builds upon the work of scholars such as Diane Negra, Christian Viviani and Linda Mizejewski on the representation of foreign stars in America during the first decades of the 20th century, as well as Philip Gleason's work on the assimilationist drive of the era. As the failure of Sten's ethnicity coded persona during the xenophobic 1930s suggests, during this era Hollywood and American society were apt to conceptualise ethnicity only in relation to a limited number of rigidly defined ethnic types.
Notes
1. It is often reported that Goldwyn spent more than one million dollars publicising Sten. See New York Times, 9 August 1936, p. X2. According to a New York Times survey of 400 theatre managers on 1934’s most successful films, Sten's first and second Hollywood films, Nana (Dorothy Arzner) and We Live Again (Rouben Mamoulian) lost money. While they had been marketed as Goldwyn's biggest films of the year, he had to rely instead on the less promoted Kid Millions (Roy Del Ruth) for profits. See New York Times, 30 December 1934, p. X5; New York Times, 25 November 1934, p. X5. The Variety ‘Picture Grosses’ reinforce these findings. Although Nana and We Live Again did well in some American cities, most theatre managers commented that takings were not as high as expected and the films did not do well enough to compensate for the excessive amounts spent on publicity. The Wedding Night (King Vidor, 1935), Sten's final film for Goldwyn, did no better and several theatre managers relayed the message that the names of Sten and Gary Cooper were not sufficient to ‘carry’ the film. See the Variety ‘Picture Grosses’ of 27 February 1934, p. 4; 6 March 1934, pp. 9–10; 13 March 1934, p. 8; 20 March 1934, pp. 8, 11; 13 November 1934, p. 8; 20 November 1934, p. 8; 20 March 1935, pp. 8–9.
2. The archival sources cited throughout this essay, unless indicated otherwise, are from five principal sources: the Samuel Goldwyn Papers (housed in Special Collections at the Margaret Herrick Library), Anna Sten's biography file (on microfiche at the Margaret Herrick), the Margaret Herrick Photograph Archives (which includes files on Sten and each of her films), the Margaret Herrick Library periodical holdings (which include a good collection of 1930s fan magazines) and archived copies of the New York Times (accessible online through the ProQuest Historical Newspapers database).
3. Farnol was the head of Goldwyn's New York publicity branch from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s.
4. See also letters written by movie fans on the positive role of films and stars in ‘Americanizing’ immigrants in Photoplay, December 1934, p. 6; Photoplay, December 1932, p. 10.
5. For more on the eugenics movement during the thirties see Mizejewski (Citation1999, pp. 114–21) and Kline (Citation2001).
6. Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft or UFA was Germany's principal film studio, and one of the most lucrative studios in Europe, during the interwar years.
7. Stills depicting this scene can be found in the Margaret Herrick Photograph Archives’ file of Nana production stills.
8. For more on the vamp type in Classical Hollywood films see Rosen Citation1973.
9. These images can be viewed at the Margaret Herrick Library, where they are filed in the Photograph Archives under Sten's name.
10. These images are also archived in the Margaret Herrick Photograph Archives, under Sten's name.
11. This binary also impacted American stars. Wholesome Janet Gaynor experienced much fan resistance when she experimented with dying her hair a seductive red, and when Norma Shearer tried playing vampish roles fans wrote to the fan magazines asking that she ‘return to straight dramatic roles and good clean pictures that children could see’. See Photoplay, August 1932, pp. 28–29, 90. It must be noted, however, that certain actresses were able to transcend this dichotomy. For example, Bette Davis began her career as a routine all-American ingénue but was able to develop out of the type when she began to be perceived as a serious dramatic actress. See Klapart Citation1985. It seems that, because of the rapidity with which Goldwyn's publicity department cycled through types, Sten was not given the opportunity to build successfully on established types, and to a degree personalise them, as did these more successful actresses.
12. This image can be found in the Margaret Herrick Photograph Archives, archived under Sten's name.
On the relative ‘naturalism’ of Classical Hollywood film performance, see Dyer Citation1998, p. 139.
13. A copy of this image is in the Margaret Herrick Photograph Archives, archived under Sten's name.
14. Further glamour portraits depicting Sten with her hair styled in this manner can be found in the Margaret Herrick Photograph Archives, archived under Sten's name.
15. Copies of these stills can be found in the Margaret Herrick Photograph Archives’ files on We Live Again and The Wedding Night.
16. McDonald mentions that the Classical Hollywood studios typically had more than one publicity branch and employed entire divisions of people whose sole responsibility was responding to fan-mail.