IN SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950), Billy Wilder's poisoned love letter to the silent cinema, Erich von Stroheim gives William Holden a little lesson in film history. "There were three young directors who showed promise in those days," lie says. "D. W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, and Max von Mayerling." This judgment is not proto-auteurism, nor a self-serving application of the great-man theory of film history . Instead, it reflects the realization, common in the days of silent pictures, that directors were generally the people who made things happen, at least as far as the art of cinema was concerned.¹

Today, industry analysts tell us that such power is spread among a small group of stars, directors, agents, and creative production heads.² While a number of silent stars certainly developed the same authority, they were essentially seeking to control their own vehicles. Agents had no such power, and most producers...