From its inception at the end of World War I, the Hollywood "star system" was predicated on packaging talent in ways that increased the likelihood for producers and distributors to maximize the opportunity for market control by promoting a movie on the basis of its stars and their celebrity status. Over the decades, the presence of star players in a movie would reliably attract audiences into movie theaters. The serious dislocations for production and the eroding audience in the theatrical exhibition sector confronting the American feature film industry by the early 1960s at first was interpreted as heightening the stakes for presenting established stars to audiences. For a time at the very beginning of the decade, the movie industry invested greater hopes in the effectiveness of "star power."
Hollywood stardom itself, of course, was based on assumptions not clearly defined about a particular kind of screen presence. The cinema in the United States had never developed the traditions of Great Britain and Europe, where actors and actresses crossed easily back and forth between stage and screen. Hollywood thespians normally had far less formal acting training than their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic.
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