ruth amossy autobiographies of movie stars

Autobiographies of Movie Stars: Presentation of Self and Its StrategiesAuthor(s): Ruth AmossySource: Poetics Today, Vol. 7, No. 4, Literature in Society (1986), pp. 673-703Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772934Accessed: 22/12/2009 04:34

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AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF MOVIE STARS Presentation of Self and its Strategies

RUTH AMOSSY French, Tel Aviv

The autobiography of movie stars is part of an abundant production centered on the presentation of self. It pertains not so much to a literary genre as to a specific cultural domain endowed with a logic and regulation of its own. The media now devote a considerable space to the spectacular presentation of an individual by himself. This "performance" can take the most varied forms: celebrity interviews, autobiographical writings of all kinds, memoirs of political personali- ties, appearances of candidates on TV during electoral campaigns, matrimonial ads, erotic confessions in feminist magazines, etc. One can truly speak of a new culture of the presentation of self, invading even the most unexpected fields, expressing itself equally through written and oral texts, verbal and visual means. This formal diversity often conceals the homogeneity of a cultural practice pertaining to a specific domain.

In "discourses of the presentation of self," I include all categories of contemporary cultural production that aim at presentation of self by verbal, visual or any other means. Though diverse, all such discourses are subject to similar constraints, obey the same rules and confront identical difficulties. They encounter various problems arising from the mental categories of contemporary times and in their attempts to find solutions, they display a global strategy of auto-representation found in classified ads as well as in public life narratives.

This essay is concerned mainly with a symptomatic aspect of this strategy. It discusses the impact of a contemporary notion, the stereotype, on the staging of the self. Stereotypes are here understood in Lippmann's sense (1922) as "pictures in our heads," or collective simplified and frozen representations of a group, an individual, an institution or any element of social reality or the surrounding world. A stereotype is found whenever a cultural model turns into a recurrent, fixed pattern, a prefabricated schema (Amossy 1984:690).1 We will

1. For more definitions, see Harding (1968: 273-274) and T.E. Perkin's stimulating discussion in "Rethinking Stereotypes" (1979).

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examine how the growing consciousness of stereotypes affects the self- presentation of the Hollywood female star in her autobiography,2 thus illuminating both the implicit regulation of a fashionable genre and the logic of a cultural mechanism at work in contemporary production.

Any study devoted to the presentation of self is rooted in the pioneering work of E. Goffman who defined the concept and revealed its fundamental unity through its multifarious manifestation in everyday life. Systematizing the "theater of the world" metaphor, Goffman shows how social interrelations are regulated by the so-called "performance" of each participant. Performance here includes the total activity of a given person in a given occurrence, to influence other participants in a certain way (Goffman 1959:15). Everyone gets a

"part" - i.e., a routine or pre-established model of action developing during the performance. Thus, in all circumstances a certain presentation of self has to be carried out in the framework of a ritualized

exchange subject to explicit or implicit constraints. The mise en scene of the self is thus subordinated to a concrete objective. It regulates our

relationship with others through the impression we make and the image we succeed in imposing on them. From Goffman's point of view, the theatrical metaphor does not raise the eternal question of being and

seeming. The presentation of self can be cautiously calculated, felt to be sincere or mechanically conform to tradition. The main point is that it is always linked with social action, its regulation and its condition of

possibility. The specificity of the presentation of self in cultural discourses is

best measured against everyday practice. The written page, the radio interview or the TV image deeply alter the notion of interaction fundamental to Goffman's demonstration. He interprets it as an

exchange realized in the physical presence of all the members or as the

reciprocal influence the partners exert on their respective action while in each other's immediate physical presence (Goffman 1959:15). Cultural production modifies the significance of interaction by inte-

grating it in a different communication system. The face to face

exchange is replaced by an interrelation based on spatial and temporal distance: the partners do not have to be physically present and their

reciprocal influence is neither direct nor immediate. Though by definition deferred, the interaction exists and underlies the communication as such. In matrimonial ads3 or star autobiographies, the subject

2. Though arbitrary, the choice of female stars offers a few advantages: Hollywood stereotypes concerning women have been thoroughly analyzed in well-known works like

Popcorn Venus (1973) and From Reverence to Rape (1973) and do not have to be described and discussed at length. It is thus possible to concentrate on the autobiographer's specific relationship to her stereotype. Moreover, the subject of female stars' presentation of self is tempting because it is obviously linked with the larger question of women's mise en scene in contemporary culture. From now on, the term "star" will refer to female actresses. 3. Presentation of self in Goffman's tradition has been analyzed in matrimonial ads. See Francois de Singly, "Les manoeuvres de seduction: une analyse des annonces matrimoniales"

(1984).

PRESENTATION OF SELF AND ITS STRATEGIES

depicting himself does so in accordance with his audience's presumed expectations. To "sell" himself, he must conform to the general norms and preconceived opinions of his potential receiver. Modeling his image on a suitable pattern and subordinating his mise en scene to the known or guessed reactions of his anonymous partners, he attempts to exert an influence on their thoughts and actions. It is easy to see how this applies to a bachelor advertising in the papers, an actor or a singer giving a lengthy magazine interview or a movie star writing her life story.

It is thus the modification and not the disappearance of the interaction that entails a transformation of the presentation of self in cultural discourses. In this new type of communication, auto-representation acquires a relative autonomy. Removed both from the physical presence of the audience and from the immediacy of its reactions, the mise en scene seems to display itself within its own boundaries. It appears to some degree as self-sufficient: it has a life of its own, independent of the reciprocal influence and the social activity it serves. The confession of a political figure or the autobiography of a star look like finite and autonomous objects, free of whatever social action they are supposed to perform. Actually, their very participation in a given social practice is not necessarily perceived as such. Inter- preted as an entity endowed with its own value, the presentation of self is valorized for its intrinsic contents and not for its function in a social ritualized interaction. It is because the doing is forgotten or under- scored that the being is brought to the fore. What is stressed in cultural discourses is not the role of the presentation of self but the precious essence of its subject. No doubt this is equally true of everyday life whenever the quest for identity exceeds the concern for efficiency. The relationship between self definition and social role is complex and has often been analyzed by both sociologists and philosophers. However, no social action would be possible without a hierarchy privileging the doing. Cultural discourse, on the contrary, is built on a preeminence of the being. It is supposed to reveal a true-to-life personality. It seems justified only insofar as it shows who really is the individual presenting himself. In this context, presentation of self turns into an important commitment: my very being is at stake when I offer my autoportrait to my distant and anonymous audience. The task is made even more perilous by the fact that the presentation is confined to a unique performance, namely a finished product. Forever fixed in its image, my self threatens to remain in these limits eternally.

From this perspective, the individual presenting himself cannot simply respond to the pressures of a given situation or work toward an objective limited in scope and time. He must also cope with the audience's growing demands for authenticity; he is summoned to display his intimate self. In other words, he is asked to remove the masks of social roles and show the flesh and blood character under the professional, familial, etc. stereotyped parts. In his representation as in

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the information he provides about his life, what he does is valued only insofar as it reveals what he is. As for the presentation of self, it is regarded as a gratuitous gesture rather than as a ritualized social activity. Talking about herself, a great Hollywood star is supposed to prove her commitment to sincerity and truthfulness; her revelations are meant to establish a privileged communication with her audience. They are like the gifts of the gods which serve no mercantile, utilitarian purpose. Even in a widely-distributed magazine, her autoportrait is presented as an invitation to share her intimacy and aims at nothing more than an honest relationship. The headlines emphasize this: "THE MOST REVEALING INTERVIEW JANET GAYNOR EVER GAVE! ... At last! Janet breaks down and tells you all the things you've been wanting to know about her: Is she bitter about life and love? What of her screen career? An honest, intimate chat" (Levin 1970:73). All the images imposed on her, all the conventional attitudes

displayed in public give way to the secret feelings of the real person. The pleasure of attending a presentation of self in a cultural discourse

depends on its readiness and its ability to break established moulds. However, nobody really wants the well-known patterns to be

destroyed. The reader who asks for the true story behind the glamorous image of the star also insists on getting the latter as well. If he is

eager to see the true woman, it is because she is a Hollywood idol. He wants the dream factory manufactured object as well as the real, intimate person. The presentation of self thus faces a double require- ment: It has to break the collective frozen image while at the same time

preserving it, both denouncing and preserving the stereotype. Its ultimate end, as everybody knows even when they pretend to forget it, is the promotion of a cinematic product as well as of the star system as a whole. Like other cultural discourses centered on the presentation of self, the autobiography of stars is part of a specific social activity and cannot be properly understood out of its context. Its success can be measured by efficiency, requiring the rules of the game to be scrupu- lously observed. If the presentation of self stresses its aspect of personal confidence and uninhibited revelation, it is because that is the best way to perform its task. The emphasis on being allows doing. The more the audience is charmed by the unveiling of a true self and sees the performance as a gratuitous, self-sufficient gesture, the more it will react in accordance with the implicit norms of the expected interaction.

From this point of view, the stereotypes that guarantee commercial

promotion in the movie industry are most effective when they undergo a process of denunciation or deconstruction by the star herself. Clearly the autobiographical form is appropriate for this task since it allows the star to express herself freely as a unique individual. In this respect, it constitutes an expansion and improvement of the magazine interview revelations.4 The autobiography, however, can play with the stereo-

4. For a preliminary study of the relationship between autobiography and interview, see Philippe Lejeune, "L'entretien radiophonique" (1980).


type in a more subtle and complex way because it enjoys a more independent status: the autobiographer speaks alone, without the intermediary of the interviewer, and the text, generally written by an aging star who is definitely or momentarily out of business, is less directly linked to the market. All these characteristics give the autobiography a special position among the various discourses of the system: promotional discourses (studio announcements, fan-club publications, fashion pictures, endorsements of products, etc.), publications about the star's life (e.g., scandals created by the press, gossip columns, etc.) and criticism or commentaries (Dyer 1979:68-72).

It is symptomatic that studies devoted to the star system do not consider the autobiographies of stars for these are too marginal in the concrete activity of the film industry. Moreover, they are part of another field: as bestsellers, they are commodities in the publishing market; as autobiographies, they are related to a given literary genre. On the other hand, analysts of autobiographical writings do not show any particular interest in the autobiographies of stars, considering them a sub-class of popular literature closely linked to the movie market. This ambiguous and uneasy position explains the lack of critical atten- tion given to the autobiographies of stars up to now. Actually, this class of texts has to be defined both in the context of the global star system and in terms of the so-called autobiographical genre. From the latter, it borrows the general reading contract (Lejeune 1975) and the conventional structure of life narrative. From its position in the star system, it derives the specific models shaping the exemplary Hollywood story as well as the implicit rules of presentation of self.

If the manipulation of stereotypes plays such an important role in this unwritten legislation, it is because the issue of the stereotype has a special relevance for the Hollywood star. First the star as such is frozen in her Olympian role and asked to embody the godlike creature manufactured by the dream factory (Powdermaker 1950; Morin 195 7). Secondly, the very creation of a star implies a process of stereo- typing. It is current knowledge that the movie star is "made" by a fixed image largely circulated by the media. Clearly the recurrent and frozen image adopted by the collectivity is not the real person but rather constitutes the "fictive personality" through which, as Lippmann noted in his pioneering study of stereotypes (1922), any public figure is known to the average citizen. The collective image is the product of reduction: schematization and simplification are compulsory. Marilyn Monroe is the dumb blonde with a gorgeous body and childish behavior. John Wayne is the tough guy, good-hearted and always devoted to Justice. Through their multiple roles, they are easily recognized and referred to their basic identity. The image of the star is neither the real person nor a fictive character: it is a hybrid pertaining to both. To keep the successful image unchanged, the star is condemned to play the same kind of role. To the audience, the well-known type expresses the ideal personality of its interpreter. Conversely, the real person as presented

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by publicity, the press and fan magazines looks like the immediate continuation of the fictional character. The roles played by James Dean look as if they simply revealed his essence and everything that was shown of his private life seemed to confirm the portrait of the rebel hero. When Cary Grant received the Oscar, Frank Sinatra aptly de- clared the he was getting it not for a particular interpretation, but for being Cary Grant (Westerbeck in Weis: 1981). As for the personalized stereotype produced for each star (the everlasting image of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich), it always draws on general models like the rebel adolescent, the dumb blonde, the femme fatale. No wonder feminist essays found a privileged material in Hollywood categorizations (Rosen 1973; Haskell 1973; Mordden 1983).

The star is thus triply stereotyped: in her professional image as an

Olympian creature; in the specific image invented for her and expressed by her whole cinematic being; and in the social and psychological type she embodies. In the stereotyped image that invades both the market and the consciousness of her time, the star contemplates herself as in a

magic mirror. She sees in her glorious reflection not only her own

person but also her fascinating, detachable double. "The star," writes

Edgar Morin, "watches the detachment and display of the archaic double: her screen image, her own omnipresent, bewitching, radiant

image. Like her own admirers, the star is subjugated by this image surimpressed upon her real person" (1957:83; my translation). How- ever, she remains able to distinguish between herself and the glamorous idol. Who knows better than she how she has been fabricated from start to finish by the dream factory? She is thus divided between the neces-

sity of distanciation and the desire for identification. Whatever the final choice, she has to find some solution or personal formula for her

problematic relationship with the powerful stereotype. The audience often wonders how fabulous beings like Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich or Lana Turner relate to their image. How did these goddesses, frozen in their eternal type, look at themselves - how did they really want to look? Did they wholeheartedly accept their mask? Or did they fight against it? To all these questions, the autobiography is supposed to give more or less explicit answers. When she tells her life, a star may criticize her artificial prototype and denounce the schema created for her by the movie industry; but she may never ignore it. This is the first rule of her presentation of self: confrontation with the stereotype image is one of the inescapable topoi of the star autobiographical narrative. That the story is written by the heroine herself or by some

anonymous professional is of no consequence. The theme of the

problematic relation to the magic movie double derives from the logic of the genre and not from a spontaneous choice or an inner drive. This is a commonplace that can be invested by the author-protagonist as well as by any ghost writer.

The topos of the confrontation with the stereotyped self is at the


heart of a global strategy characteristic of the star autobiography. Reduced to its simplest form, this strategy is displayed on the cover where it fulfills an obvious publicity function. Short fragments adver- tizing the book clearly show how the genre exploits the advantages of both the stereotype and its expected deconstruction. In My Story by Marilyn Monroe (1974), the reader will meet the real woman: "Obviously authentic. Reveals Marilyn's most private thoughts and feelings." "Full of intimate details, it reads like a house afire." "Norma Jean's own story!" All the same, he will also find in the autobiographical narrative the star he dreamed of: "Probably the best published study on the tragic child woman superstar we knew as Marilyn." "It is a book for fans." Superbly subtitled "The lady, the legend, the truth," Lana by Lana Turner (1983) shows the same tactics: "The naked, intimate truth - finally, she tells it all!" "LANA - Her image was sex goddess of the screen - her life was the hottest part she everplayed." More straightforwardly, Britt Ekland's book True Britt (1982) tells the readers that "Now, in her autobiography, Britt tells in her own words the story of her private life behind the public image."

"In her own words" is a key formula. The supposed superiority of the autobiography is its personal, authentic dimension. Biographies must emphasize other advantages like the depth analysis the subject would not be able to perform on himself. Marilyn: An Untold Story by Norman Rosten (1967) is described as an "intimate close-up" "that captures all the variations and enigmas of her amazing life" and explains the long-distance calls in the middle of the night, the craving for a baby, the failures of her marriages. More often, the biography promises to unveil secrets and expose scandals that the protagonist would rather have kept untold. "Juicy, juicy, juicy!" claims a biography of Lana Turner (Morella and Epstein, 1971). The authors set out to unfold "The Public and Private Lives of Miss Turner," which is "her whole life," "in an unblushing candid way." The charm of the biography derives from what only an outsider can do; the strength of the autobiography is that it is written by the protagonist herself, telling her side of the story in an inner search for truth.

From the perspective of the star system, biography is an extension of the scandalous press stories, while autobiography develops from the personal, intimate interview. To insure its positions, the autobiographical narrative denounces all possible competing forms; its purpose is to answer the false stories circulated by the media. Telling the truth and answering all the fabrications of gossip is another topos of the genre. In various episodes, reference is made to the lies, calumnies and deforma- tions of the previous, public versions. Sometimes, the whole enterprise is explicitly justified by the desire to set the record straight. In her own words, Marlene Dietrich bluntly declares that she is writing this book to clear up all the misunderstandings created by those who made money on her. Or Lana Turner: "I refuse to leave this earth with that pile of

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movie magazine trash, scandal and slander as my epitaph. So now I'm ready to share what I've always kept private, to set the record straight" (Turner 1982:9).


The autobiography thus implies that the subject re-appropriates the main thing he has been deprived of for so long, i.e., his real self. The star who is constantly manipulated is finally allowed to take control, thus gaining a position. From a mere commodity manufactured by a specialized industry, she turns into a full subject, an autonomous individual. Instead of an image built by others, she is now a narrator capable of shaping herself and mastering the meaning of her own life. It is important to remember that this situation is inherent in the autobiographical gesture. The star who responds to the market demand and hires a professional writer to tell her story is no different in this respect from the improvized author trying to express her deepest feelings. There is a starting point common to all star autobiographers.

This initial position entails a global strategy of presentation in the narrative as a whole. At the source of the text, a movie actress reduced to a mercantile object turns into a subject narrator with the use of the first person. She erases all external discourses about herself and replaces them with "her own words." From then on, she can freely relate to the image created for her by the dream factory. The stereotyped representation is the key to her success. Since it is the source of her greatness (prestige, fans, adulation, money), it can only arouse some degree of identification in her. On the other hand, the star can never completely identify with her public image and often feels imprisoned within its limits. How could one excape uneasiness when his personality is reduced to a simplified frozen schema for commercial purposes? Between this double pole - transformation into a magnify- ing phantasm, on the one hand, and into a mere commodity, on the other - the star's very existence as a human being is threatened. The task of the autobiographer is to re-assert this being. Even if the writer is not fully conscious of it, the autobiographical narrative by definition constitutes an attempt to recover this dimension of her life. Within this framework, every star tries to grasp her self in a verbal presentation that reveals it, ipso facto, to others.

Wanting to seize the real being, the autobiography also shows how the intimate self became a superstar: how Norma Jean turned into Marilyn Monroe or the Brooklyn girl into a Hollywood sex goddess. The opening of Shelley Also Known as Shirley fully orchestrates this theme:

Who is Shirley Schrift? What happened to her, and what metamorphosis took place that changed her into Shelley Winters, movie star? Adolescence is the time when most children sfruggle with their identity. I have come to feel that when adolescents are forced by circumstances to change their name, for whatever reason, they somehow bury part of that identity and for much of their adult life are compelled to try to reclaim and rejoin it into a unified feeling of a complete self. So it was with me ... (Winters 1980:3).

This passage displays the theme of split personality and the quest for

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If this picture looks slightly schizophrenic, it's how I often felt amid the demands of the dream factory.

reunification underlying any star autobiography. A simple way of uniting Shirley Schrift and Shelley Winters is to tell how one put herself in the other's shoes. From Cinderella to the gorgeous princess of the ball there is a continuity that only a tale of metamorphosis can convincingly establish. The autobiographical text does not only try to assert the authentic "I" behind the glamorous idol, it also intends to fuse them and integrate them into a harmonious whole. In this perspective, it is a unifying discourse allowing the subject to overcome the puzzling experience of split and schism. To gain control implies more than possession, it also means homogenization and totalization of the self.

As stated before, the project of reunification need not be inten- tional. It is inscribed in the logic of the genre and in the position the narrative assigns to the first person writer. The objective, however, does have to be distinguished from its concrete realization. If the life story


does not substitute the real person for the stereotyped image or if it fails to unite them, it is not for want of good will but because the borders between legend and truth are constantly fluctuating and uncertain. Interferences and reciprocal influences create a complex inner space where it becomes impossible to differentiate one entity from another. There can be no NormaJean outside of Marilyn Monroe and, conversely, no Marilyn free of the burden of NormaJean. Between the two, who knows what is shadow and what is reality? Does Narcissus master his reflection on the waters or is he manipulated by its magic? Shirley Schrift can believe, pretend or refuse to be Shelley Winters; she can struggle with her double or nourish it. But she cannot keep from being closely interwoven with her Hollywood image - so closely that she does not exist anymore outside of the permanent dialogue between Her and her Self. This complex set of relationships governs her presentation of self in her life story. Actually, it is activated by each text in its own way. Originality does not derive from the game, inherent in the

genre itself, but from the individual style adopted by the players. Even so, the possibilities for individual variations are not infinite. The relation to the stereotype is part of a repertoires and its possibilities are limited by the logic of the field (the theoretically possible attitudes toward the stereotyped self image) and by the constraints of the preva- lent mentality (the attitudes one is expected to adopt toward his stereotype image). We will briefly outline the main categories of this repertoire on the basis of a corpus of female star autobiographies.

What happens to the former caterpillar watching the butterfly? After a moment of surprise, it recognizes and gets used to its new image. This is one of the attitudes adopted by the actress confronted with her reflection of femme fatale or naive ingenue. Many stars complacently emphasize the resemblance, if not the identity, between their stereotyped double and themselves. Preferring proximity to distantiation, they establish a continuity between "the lady, the legend, the truth." Lana Turner's narrative illustrates this point of view perfectly. The autobiographer confirms that the image responsible for her glorious career corresponds to the real woman. The recognition of the stereotyped Hollywood portrait is stated in the opening of the book. The original scene told by Lana Turner before she gives a detailed account of her childhood is her first encounter with herself. The young, unknown actress watches a preview (They won't forget, 1937) and, along with the audience, she discovers her screen image: "The sound track's jazzy, earthy beat magnified the image on the screen. It was a young girl - was it me? - but, my God, the way she walked!" (Turner 1982:7). Adopting the spectator's point of view, she sees herself as an object of desire. Stunned, she greets the newcomer: "That walk was

5. A "repertoire" is "an aggregate of items governed by system relations which constitutes the way a culture can convey information about reality" (Even-Zohar 1980:67).

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more than teasing - it was seductive. Her breasts and backside were not that full but when she walked, they bounced. From behind me came an audible growl, and a chorus of wolf whistles filled the hall" (Turner 1982:7). She still has to take possession of the glamorous girl she mentions in the third person so that she can merge with her. This is done with the help of the assistant producer: "As we hurried to a waiting car, I clutched the young man's sleeve. 'Listen,' I said. 'Tell me. I don't really look like that....' He cut me off with a light smile. 'Fortunately,' he said, 'you do'" (Turner 1982:7-8). For Lana Turner, the phantasm and the real person coincide through the media- tion of others: She is the sex goddess that astounded her on the screen, since that is how people see her in real life. She gets her identity from her reflection both in the movies and in men's eyes. JuliaJean has been introduced to Lana. All her life, she will play - or rather be? - the gorgeous, legendary Hollywood lady.

Of course, Lana insists on the fabricated dimension of her sexy image and denounces the categories imposed on her. Whatever the pleasure of endorsing the glamorous stereotype, she plays by the rules of the autobiographical game, defining the image as distinct from herself: "That image clung to me for the rest of my career. I was the sexual promise, the object of desire. And as I matured, my facade did too, to an image of coolness and glamour - the movie star in diamonds swathed in white mink. There was another side of the picture. .. " (Turner 1982:8). She protests from a professional vantage: "The publicists planted 'items' about me in newspapers and magazines. The more often I appeared in print, the better the studio liked me - which is not to say I approved of their campaign. The publicity shots all seemed to highlight my bosom. I was tagged 'the sweater girl' to hype the movie. It took me years of hard work to overcome the 'sweater girl' label" (Turner 1982:27). She also denounces the image from a personal point of view: "Sex was never, with any man, the first thing on my mind, and if I didn't make love for weeks I was content. No, I wasn't frigid. But I hated the public notion that I was constantly picking up men. Sex was so much what I symbolized, so much of my image, that I closed myself off to the pleasures of the act" (Turner 1982:93). In spite of this revolt, the true person emerging from the life story faithfully resembles the legend of glory and desire, passion and violence; the autobiography enumerates a fabulous series of lovers, husbands and diamonds. In her life as in her narrative, Julia Jean will try to live up to her double. Apparently, she no longer wants to exist outside of Lana, with whom she has chosen to identify. Even the suffering, weak, often cheated woman she presents behind the glamour of the star is still part of the legendary Lana. As the cover page puts it: "HER LIFE WAS THE HOTTEST PART SHE EVER PLAYED."

The text Marilyn Monroe gave Milton H. Greene, which was published after her death, offers an interesting variation of the positive


relation to the star image. In My Story (1973), the stereotype becomes the form of a personal dream rather than the product of an industry. Before its concretization in the movies, the vamp-child haunted the adolescent Norma Jean, playing for the little orphan the role of a compensation fantasy. Norma Jean invented Marilyn Monroe before the producers and publicity agents did; she watched her personality split in her daydream where there was no obstacle to her magic metamorphosis: "I daydreamed chiefly about beauty. I dreamed of myself becoming so beautiful that people would turn to look at me when I passed (.. .) I dreamed of myself walking proudly in beautiful clothes and being admired by everyone and overhearing words of praise. I made up the praises and repeated them aloud as if someone else was saying them (Monroe 1974:19). Beauty became Cinderella's magic wand; still a vague aspiration for the child, it materialized by the time she was twelve. As with Lana Turner, it all began for Norma when a sweater created a sensation in class. The autobiographer compares her body to "a friend who had mysteriously appeared in my life, a sort of magic friend" (Monroe 1974:23). Putting on make-up in the mirror, looking in the eyes of her admirers on the beach, she discovers her other self with a growing jubilation. The split is accompanied by a feeling of euphoria:

I was full of a strange feeling, as if I were two people. One of them was Norma Jean from the orphanage who belonged to nobody. The other was someone whose name I didn't know. But I knew where she belonged. She belonged to the ocean and the sky and the whole world (Monroe 1974:25).

The Other will soon be named, promoted, labeled and finally transformed into the most glorious of stars. The stereotyped image appears as the marvelous concretization of a secret dream arisen from a double fantasy: the actress's and the audience's. In My Story, Marilyn insists that her reputation was not built by the publicity department but by the thousands of spectators who sent her enthusiastic letters. Erasing the industrial dimension of her cinematic being, she presents her image as the creation of her own will, the result of hardship and the price of obstinate hope. Marilyn Monroe the superstar is more than a triumph, it is the author's amorous gift to the universe; through her, Norma can relate to the real world and feel for the first time a sense of belonging: "I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else. The Public was the only family, the only Prince Charm- ing and the only home I had ever dreamed of" (Monroe 1974:124).

The stereotype invented by the subject and later confirmed by Hollywood, dreamed of before it was marketed, desired before it was exploited; transformed into a tool of salvation, a gratifying split giving birth to the best part of herself, a euphoric space where her own desire meets the audience's and thus succeeds in relating harmoniously to the

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Norma Jean ...

world: how could one possibly imagine a more positive attitude toward the stereotype? The other side of the coin is well known. Trapped in her dumb blonde roles, Marilyn will desperately try to escape from her too glamorous self. Innumerable commentaries have been devoted to her marriage with Arthur Miller, the Strasberg period in New York, the growing discontent of the adulated star. The text of My Story is frag- mentary and does not include these developments. It only mentions another meaning of the double personality first interpreted as a fairy tale metamorphosis: the princess still bears an invisible Cinderella inside her that will never totally adhere to her other self:

When I just wrote "this is the end of Norma Jean," I blushed as if I had been

caught in a lie. Because this sad, bitter child who grew up too fast is never out of my heart. With success all around me, I can still feel her frightened eyes


looking out of mine. She keeps saying "I never lived, I was never loved," and often I get confused and think it's I who am saying it (Monroe 1974:31).

This most euphoric relation to the stereotyped image ends in the most tragic failure. Endowed with the power of a Holy Grail, it spreads anxiety and death.

Julia Jeans accepts Lana Turner, Norma Jean dreams of Marilyn Monroe, Gladys Smith presents herself as Little Mary. There are many ways to take advantage of a fictional character. Mary Pickford's way is to warn against the stereotype while complacently staging it. In Sun- shine and Shadow (1955), the autobiographer dwells on her childhood, describing a little girl who literally is "America's sweetheart" - as Cecil B. De Mille says in his foreword, "the image of girlhood" and "the kind of person we all want to love." Told by the protagonist herself, Mary's

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. . . and Marilyn Monroe

PRESENTATION OF SELF AND ITS STRATEGIES 689

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Little Mary

young years look like a series of beautiful roles invented for the bright Hollywood star. I am not suggesting that we doubt the accuracy of the episodes or the sincerity of the narrator. What matters is how the autobiographer identifies her real person and her star image. Telling about herself, she gets into her character's shoes - or is it the reverse? In her autoportrait as in her movies, Mary is a delicious and courageous little girl full of vitality, a pure creature embodying sensitivity, opti- mism and the nicest moral virtues. Here is Gladys-Mary at the age of thirteen, decided to act in a David Belasco show. Getting an introduc- tion from a famous actress by charming her maid, she convinces the well-known producer to give her an interview and gets the part. Belasco then asks her: "By the way, what made you say your life depended on


seeing me?" "Well, you see, Mr. Belasco, I'm thirteen years old, and I think I'm at the crossroads of my life. I've got to make good between now and the time I'm twenty, and I have only seven years to do it. Besides, I'm the father of my family and I've got to earn all the money I can" (Pickford 1955:58). And this is how brave Gladys, re-baptized Mary Pickford, started a brilliant career on Broadway. The biographic sequence can successfully compete with many a scene from Poor Little Rich Girl or Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

If the autobiographer revolts against her stereotyped image, it is when she sees herself condemned to wear it as an adult. None of her fans wanted her to change: they wanted her to stay America's Sweet- heart for ever and ever. At the age of thirty-two, Mary Pickford was still playing a child in Little Annie Rooney. It is sweet to grow famous by appropriating a fictive character, but is is hard if not impossible to be frozen in it once and for all. If the stereotype does not change, the real person, on the contrary, cannot excape from time. How can anyone stay "little sweetheart" forever? The actress faces a choice: to be truthful to her image in spite of her age, to disappear behind it or to

modify it. Forgetting that stereotypes do not evolve, Mary first made an attempt to grow up. The autobiography tells her unsuccessful

struggle against the powerful Hollywood image. She played adult roles in two movies without convincing her audience to give up the old

image. Desperate, she made what seems the biggest decision of her life: to cut off the blonde curls that had won her international celebrity. Her hairdresser shuddered, her husband collapsed, indignant fans denounced the sacrilege. "What I wasn't prepared for," Mary confesses, "was the avalanche of criticism that overwhelmed me. You would have thought I had murdered someone, and perhaps I had, but only to give her successor a chance to live" (Pickford 1955:176). Soon after this catastrophe, Mary left the screen. She does not comment about this precocious retirement at the age of forty but simply talks about her other activities. Presenting herself as a total woman - a wife, a mother and a business woman, Mary Pickford intends to break the mould of Little Mary in her memoir. However, she closes her life story on a nos- talgic evocation of her main title of glory, America's Sweetheart.

Carroll Baker rose to the much envied status of star through her

interpretation of Baby Doll in Elia Kazan's film. She played a woman- child married off by her father to an older man, Archie Lee, so he could support her. The main clause of their strange contract is that he will refrain from making love to her until her twentiety birthday. Desir- able and provocative, Baby Doll refuses to be touched; she sleeps alone in a cradle, sucking her thumb while her husband is consumed with desire. Both childish and sensual, Carroll Baker beautifully embodies this perverse ingenue. As an immediate result, she is confused with her character and imprisoned in the type she successfully incarnated. The autobiographer protests vehemently against this absurd identification,

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Mary Pickford

denying that her real person resembles the cinematic role and thus denouncing the very process by which Hollywood creates its stars:

While I wanted the audience to judge me on the basis of what I created as an actress, torridness and infantilism were constantly being projected upon me as a

person. I thought of myself as a private person - an actress, yes - but divorced from my screen image. The press, however, was having a field day describing my sensuous baby face and my nubile body, portraying me as a stupid little piece of

baggage. They were intent upon manufacturing a ludicrous, larger than life

symbol, whether or not it had anything to do with the real me (Baker 1983:173).


Yet on the cover page of the pocket edition is a photograph of Baby Doll sucking her thumb in the famous cradle. Symptomatically, the book itself is entitled Baby Doll - An Autobiography. Beyond those editorial maneuvers, the text presents Carroll in an ambiguous manner. Still a virgin, the young maiden is taken under the protection of a rich and much older man, who promises not to touch her. Like the fictive heroine, Carroll accepts Louie's presence while escaping his embraces. Her behavior, like her narrative, offers a mixture of candor and per- versity, provocation and revulsion that would suit Tennessee Williams's character perfectly. Is it a retrospective projection on the part of the autobiographer or a delusion of the reader? Fiction and reality can no longer be distinguished. The stereotype and the human being are so interwoven that it is impossible to tell if the confusion is Carroll's or the audience's. In any case, it is not only the press that transforms Carroll Baker into Baby Doll.

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Refusal to identify with the public image does not prevent the subject from internalizing it. Obviously, even the strongest denunciation cannot liberate the star from her stereotype. Actually, re- jection and negation are only variations of the narcissistic relationship underlying the written presentation of self. They are part of a range of codified attitudes including discreet delectation, manifest jubilation, nostalgia or criticism. Among the possibilities inherent in the logic of

autobiography, humor is one of the best ways to achieve distantiation. Abandoning her efforts to disentangle her stereotyped image from her real self, the star chooses to stage the inescapable dialogue lucidly and ironically. Making fun of herself, she gains a relative superiority since she can watch the disintegration of her personality from outside and acquire as a narrator the mastery she loses as a protagonist.

This is exemplified by Shelley Winters in her memoirs. From the

beginning, she replaces the classic version of Cinderella in Hollywood with the tale of the Ugly Duckling. The conventional episode of the

poor, unknown girl winning a beauty contest is told in a comic vein.

Young Shirley, who has just gone to the dentist and the hairdresser on

credit, wins first prize in a beauty contest because of the exuberant cheers of her Girl Scout comrades. Though the jury is amazed at these

unexpected results, her friends are enthusiastic: "After all, it was their

(hirley Schrift - the summer she got beauty- con test fever


ugly duckling who was turning into a swan, and if it could happen to me, it could happen to anybody" (Winters 1980:23). This early scene is a prelude to the later transformation created by the studio. Shirley's first meeting with her glamorous self is told with a spicy humor quite different from Lana Turner's dramatic version. The young actress has to provide her makeup man with her chart ("Eyes slanted wrong, nose too wide, lips too thin, .. ."), which she reluctantly does. She is told to close her eyes:

I must have fallen into an exhausted sleep because it seemed like only minutes later that he told me to open my eyes. I looked into the mirror, and a gorgeous platinum blonde stared back. It wasn't me, but she sure as hell looked sensa- tional. She had high cheekbones, large, wide eyes that slanted upward, long lashes, full sexy lips and a chiseled nose. How had he performed this miraculous feat? (Winters 1980:85).

The narrator intensifies the experience of split personality by elaborating on the magic sleep theme. She knits it together with the motive of the narcissistic idealized reflection: looking in the mirror, she discovers an irresistible platinum beauty that neither she nor her relatives recognize ("That evening when I walked into the house, neither Blanche nor the landlady knew who I was until I opened my mouth" (Winters 1980:85)). Actually her transformation into a movie star was far from easy. The narrative shows how the actress won success by her tireless energy, courage and will. The brave self-made woman and the funny girl merge in the autobiographical text, overshadowing any stereotype manufactured by the studios. With its humorous treatment of the Hollywood idol, the written presentation of self creates an image of Shelley Winters that supplants the stereotyped one.

Another strategy consists of deconstructing the stereotype analyti- cally, without ever indulging in identification. This is done by Marlene Dietrich in a book that reads like a gigantic enterprise of demystifica- tion. She does not set out to denounce the portrait manufactured by the movie industry but just explains the secret of the incarnation coldly and matter-of-factly. Behind the glamorous image of thefemmefatale, she reveals the hard working actress trying to bring her character to life: her efforts to embody the type that is mistaken for her own being are considered just another job. Of course Marlene, faithful to the autobiographical tradition, warns against the well-rooted tendency to mistake her role for her real person; she scornfully declares that to compare the two is stupid. The inability to distinguish between the fictive character and the actress is the essence of foolishness for her. She is not interested in the complexity of the star's dialogue with her self nor does she recognize the necessity of the narcissistic relationship. What she analyzes is not the relationship between the stereotype and the unique individual but the presence of a hard working actress behind the facade of the cinematic type. The femme fatale is no more than a mask put on day after day, conscientiously and painstakingly, by a

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Marlene Dietrich in the Blue Angel

good interpreter willing to fulfill her duty. The stereotype does not withstand the portrait of the disciplined and reasonable proletarian:

Naturally, we are beautiful, in the photos and in life; but we were never as extra- ordinary as the image they created of us. We clung to our images, as the studio required. But none of us took pleasure in that work. It was a real job that we did well. If Harlow or Crawford or Lombard had been asked for their opinion, they all would have answered the same thing (Dietrich 1984:104).

Here Marlene Dietrich clearly distinguishes between herself and

Marilyn Monroe. The narcissistic jubilation of the star embodying her own character is an attitude she feels bound to criticize. What she values is the work itself, not the enjoyment of the game. If she is proud of her cinematic image, it is not because of some voluptuous projection but because she sees it as a job well done. She reminds the reader how difficult it was in the thirties, when censorship was still very strict, to

provoke fantasies, rouse dreams and fill movie halls. This is what the Mae Wests, the Jean Harlowes, the Marlene Dietrichs succeeded in


doing and the pleasure they derived from the stereotyped image was what a good worker gets from a professional achievement.

Marlene Dietrich deconstructs her public image of femmefatale not only by presenting it as a'well performed task but also by presenting herself as a plain, disciplined worker. This is how she describes the relationship between the star and her director, von Sternberg. He

... had decided to put me in the limelight overnight, which was all the same to me. In fact, he manipulated an unknown girl from Berlin; of course, I was young and vulnerable and I was there to seduce the vast American public. But in my eyes, I was what I had never stopped being: a German who was careful to fulfill her duty, and nothing more (Dietrich 1984:83).

In the studio, Marlene mentions her sense of discipline and her punctuality. In fact, as she sees it, her only merit was her ability to follow instructions and to do whatever was expected of her. Hence, there is no essential difference between the international star and the brave soldier who did not hesitate to take risks during World War II to fulfill her mission. Marlene seems to be prouder of her trips to the front than of her triumphs as a movie star. No doubt, both in the army and in her career, she practiced the same virtues - discipline and a sense of duty. However, she describes her work for the Allied Forces as more meaningful than her Hollywood roles: she thus helped her adoptive country and her own cause, participating in History, not only in the history of the Seventh Art. The stereotype of the disciplined German fighting on the right side is unexpectedly superimposed on the image of the mysterious and provocative woman and does more than simply erase it: it explains its real origins. It was her rare sense of duty that enabled Marlene to embody the femme fatale with unequaled per- fection. She does not really care for the nature of the image nor does she feel close to the character that von Sternberg chose for her. Ulti- mately, it is his triumph since it is the divine creature he created out of his own dreams. The actress asserts that she was no more than an obedient tool - "his Trilby, his Eliza Doolittle"; at most, his modest interpreter. True to the image of the good worker and disciplined professional, the life story refuses to dwell on dramatic loves and fairytale luxury. Not a word of the passionate affairs recorded by the press and in unauthorized biographies. Marlene rather tells about her duties, her culinary talent or her intellectual capacities. As expected, the attempt to deconstruct the myth is rigorous and systematic.

A little too much, perhaps, for the average reader who wants to protect a small part of his old dreams. Marlene's tactics degenerate into parody in Maximilian Schell's film about her. The director shows his attempts to lead the star to comment on her cinematic image. Con- fronted with her most famous roles, the actress contemptuously refuses to take them seriously; she does not seem interested in her femme fatale stereotype nor does she understand why anyone is willing to waste his time on such trivial things. Eventually, going beyond her

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Marlene Dietrich during World War II


own stereotype, she attacks the whole dream factory that manufactured it. The criticism is too sharp for the spectator who does not want his heroes to be dethroned once and for all and the movie can be enjoyed only by a sophisticated audience prepared to appreciate Schell's clever techniques as well as his ironic presentation of the old star. Such a mise en scene would not be possible in a standard autobiography for it would violate the elementary rules of the presentation of self inherent in the genre. The tacit legislation of star autobiography implies that the public image is maintained at the very moment it is denounced and present even when the real woman appears behind the glamorous surface.

This short typology does not intend to be exhaustive but rather illustrates how each work represents a variation on the basic rule defining star autobiography. The problematic relationship of the subject to her own public image is at the core of the genre; the confrontation with the stereotype is a constraint no autobiographer can evade. Thus the existence of a repertoire including a range of logically possible attitudes that can of course be subdivided in subtler ways or extended. In this field the most personal and indignant reactions, the most intimate confessions, are part of a cultural and generic code. To

enjoy the book fully, the reader must be acquainted with the Holly- wood stereotype embodied by the actress. How else could he follow the dialogue between the real self and the manufactured double? Star

autobiographies are certainly written for well informed audiences, even for fans; but to be on the safe side, they provide all the background and frames of reference necessary for a good understanding. It is the star's

relationship to her fictive personality as a dumb blonde, afemmefatale or a "girl next door" that determines the choice and presentation of the episodes, the organization of the text, the style and tone of the narrative. The flavor of the book depends on this particular presentation of self; the techniques of the mise en scene are subordinated to the attitudes adopted toward the magnified public image.

Beyond the star's relationship to her stereotype double, each autobiography must display the beauty and dangers of stardom. The narrator has to confront not only her own image in the public mirror but also her duty to embody some kind of Olympian figure for the spectator. This professional role also constitutes a frozen pattern, a collective representation imposing its schema on the subject's mise en scene. If Mary Pickford, Marilyn Monroe or Shelley Winters had succeeded in escaping their specific image, they still would have to conform to their role of Hollywood deity. On this level, the demands of the reader are uncompromising and the rules of the games very strict. The life of the star has to fulfill the audience's expectations, i.e., to illustrate the extravagant and magnificent luxury of a legendary Hollywood, on the one hand, and to dwell on the misery of a frail

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woman, on the other. The glamor and suffering (divorces, deaths, alcohol, madness) are two sides of a single picture. The audience wants to get both and, in its eagerness, it fails to see the recurrent and banal nature of the pattern. Individual hardship is often interpreted as the harsh reality behind the surface glory and thus assimilated to the flesh and blood person hidden behind the public image. In this framework, the life story concentrates mainly on two aspects of the star's existence. First, it tells of her dazzling rise to fame where a life of luxury and passion awaits her. The autobiographer describes where she lived, the parties she attended and, primarily, the godlike figures she saw frequently. Secondly, it reveals the many failures of private life, the heartbreaking separations and the terrible periods of exhaustion and depression. The narrator rarely bothers to go into detail when she talks of the practical side of her work: a meticulous account of her techniques or what was happening on the set is considered superfluous.

This is due to the popular image of the star created by the media. In the imagination of the average reader, the star devotes her existence to luxury, leisure and love; she enjoys endless pleasures: meetings, idylls, balls, premieres, etc. Morin aptly describes the mythical life the star, unlike the rest of us, is supposed to live. Knowing no boundaries, she is liberated from ordinary limits. Jumping on a plane and crossing continents to shoot exteriors is usual for the great actress. "It is a play life, or rather a carnival life, disguises (.. . ) pouring out pictures, echoes and gossip like flowers and confetti (Morin 1957:74; my translation). The star lives on a superior ontological level; like gods and kings, she does not have to work but to spend. The autobiographer is thus expected to depict herself as a divine figure moving in a privileged space where everything is easy and beautiful, a world of wealth and excess. This is how June Allyson (1982) describes her various homes at length, elegantly skipping the figures Britt Ekland takes pleasure in men-

tioning:

An empty mansion in Carlwood Drive, whose owners never realized its potential, came into our grasp. We knew that we had found the house of our dreams.

Rod (Steiger) paid 750,000 dollars for the twenty roomed, cloistered mansion and when asking me to redesign its interior from beginning to end he

opened a special account for me, the "Carolwood Account" with the City National Bank into which he paid 100,000 dollars from his record royalties (Ekland 1980:181).

The everyday life of the star is a dream come true, set in a paradise of vast spaces, gorgeous palaces and elegant furniture. The inhabitants are dressed up in fancy clothes and expensive jewels. Even proposals are made in a capitalistic fairy-tale way:

While we were sitting there a messenger arrived, and Bob excused himself from the table. When he returned I didn't notice that he had dropped something into

my martini. Eventually, I picked up the drink, and something flashed at the bottom. Believe me, it was not an onion or an olive.


"Fish it out, " he said. What I fished out of the martini glass was a fifteen-carat marquise diamond ring! (Turner 1982:109).

There really was a Hollywood is the title of Janet Leigh's autobiography (1984), which often presents the protagonist as Alice in Wonderland:

Atwater Kent lived on the top of a mountain in Hollywood Hills, but his estate began at the bottom. As we wound our way toward the glittering summit, past terraced gardens and gushing fountains, past softly illuminated statuary, I felt like Cinderella approaching the palace. In certain ways, my fairytale discovery did parallel Cinderella's. . . The evening proved that movie magazines didn't lie - at least about Mr. Kent's affairs. Most of those attending were "the famous," either in front or behind the camera; the ladies were all beautiful and the gentlemen all handsome; there were elaborate gowns and expensive jewels; there were alternating orchestras and tuxedo-clad waiters carrying trays of champagne and caviar and every con- ceivable gourmet appetizer. .. (Leigh 1984:67).

In this superb existence of festivities and leisure, a Prince Charming is needed. Morin points out that the star is by definition a great lover: she "suffers, divorces, is happy, lives from love, for love" (Morin 1957:80; my translation). In this domain, her life coincides ideally with her cinematic roles. Moreover, love constitutes the "most ex- quisite," "most exciting," "most immediately consumable" "fruit" of a life of leisure. The most beautiful love stories are the passions that unite two famous stars: Lana Turner and Tyrone Power, Britt Ekland and Peter Sellers, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, Shelley Winters and Vittorio Gassman. In this respect too, autobiographical writings are an extension of press gossip and interviews. To the average reader eager to participate in the intimacy of those explosive passions, the confession guarantees that "there really are stars" and "there really is a Hollywood": the movie magazines do not lie. Here we find again the basic rule of the presentation of self, implying that the mise en scene eventually has to highlight the stereotype while pretending to denounce it. The autobiography dwells on the many disillusions, betrayals, broken marriages, in brief all the misery inflicted on the heroine. They exhibit the painful moments and the hurt or bitter feelings of a flesh and blood woman, the pitiful victim of her own glory. The star has to pay tribute to Hollywood, to the almighty and infernal machine that made her and that threatens to crush her. This is the main point of the variable plot developed by each life story in its own way. The variety of details, names and dates conceals the remarkable homogeneity of a codified narrative.

This aspect of the text is interpreted as an uncompromising deconstruction of the star's glamorous stereotype but is an integral part of the show. When kings and queens condescend to appear as ordinary human beings, they do not thereby lose their crown; on the contrary, they seem more precious and dearer to their admiring subjects. The

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tacit pact, or reading contract, underlying the autobiography specifies thatbeyondthesimple,ordinary woman the star will retain all her glory, forever displaying a realm of dreamlike greatness and godlike passions. From this perspective, autobiographies are ideal movie publicity even if they do not sell a given product directly but rather concentrate on an aging or retired star. The presentation of self that is characteristic of the genre participates in a global social practice; its rules cannot but be subordinated to an objective of maximal efficiency.

From this point of view, autobiographies of stars fully respond to Elisabeth Bruss's definition of "autobiographical acts." Commenting on literary genres, Bruss remarks:

We all choose, as passive as we may appear, to take part in an interaction, and it is here that generic labels have their use. The genre does not tell us the style or construction of a text as much as how we should expect to "take" that style or mode of construction - what force it should have for us. And this force is derived from the kind of action that text is taken to be (Bruss 1976:4).

However, the pre-existing category of genre (in this case, auto-

biography as an autonomous entity) is not necessarily the only or even the best way to account for the nature of the interaction. The relation-

ship established between text and reader, narrator and audience in stars' autobiographies is based on the rules of the presentation of self in a global sector of contemporary culture rather than on any generic constraints. Indeed, Bruss, like Lejeune, draws on Tynianov to highlight the crucial importance of social context for any historically minded genre analysis. But they do not consider that official labels respect divisions and boundaries already endowed with institutional recognition - in other words, which belong to the past. Autobio-

graphies of stars are referred to the autobiographical genre following a tradition based on the pre-eminence and autonomy of verbal texts.

They are classified as a popular and inferior branch of a genre that has been canonized very late and never without restrictions. The reorgani- zation of the cultural field carried out by the massive invasion of the modern media is not reflected in the authorized taxonomy in any way. Nor does it account for the vast range of possibilities that radio, the press, film or TV now open to self expression and confession. What was once restricted to the confines of the book now assumes the multiple forms invented by contemporary communication media. Thus the

presentation of self, once limited to a fixed genre, now transgresses the boundaries not only of literature but also of verbal discourse.

In this context, autobiographies of stars participate in a global production obeying its own rules. They are as much related to matrimonial ads or magazine interviews as to canonized authors' so-called literary confessions. Moreover, like classified ads, the poli- tician's life story or the rock singer's interview, they participate more or less openly in a social practice. As such, they are intimately linked to


various aspects of this total activity and must be analyzed in their constitutive relation to discourses like studio publicity, press scandals, unauthorized biographies or interviews. Autobiography of stars develops at the intersection of the rules of contemporary presentation of self and the star system erected by the movie industry. Only an open perspective refusing excessive compartmentalization can analyze its specificity, studying it at the junction of several domains. To perform this task adequately, the analyst himself must stand at the crossroads of several disciplines too often separated, like sociology, poetics and theory of literature, cinematic studies and semiology of culture.

REFERENCES

1. AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND BIOGRAPHIES Allyson, June with Frances Spatz Leighton, 1982. June Allyson (New York: Berkley

Books). Baker, Carroll, 1983. Baby Doll (New York: Dell). Dietrich, Marlene, 1984. Marlene D. (Paris: Grasset). Ekland, Britt, 1980. True Britt (London: Sphere Books). Leigh, Janet, 1984. There Really was a Hollywood (New York: Doubleday). Monroe, Marilyn, 1974. My Story (New York: Stein and Day). Morella, Joe and Edward Z. Epstein, 1971. Lana. The Public and Private Lives of Miss

Turner (New York: Dell). Pickford, Mary, 1955. Sunshine and Shadow (New York: Doubleday). Rosten, Norman, 1967.Marilyn. An Untold Story (New York: Signet). Turner, Lana, 1982. Lana. The Lady, the Legend, the Truth (New York: Pocket Books). Winters, Shelley, 1980. Shelley Also Known as Shirley (New York: Ballantine Books).

2. CRITICAL WORKS Amossy, Ruth, 1984. "Stereotype and Representation," Poetics Today 5:4, 689-700. Bruss, Elizabeth, 1976. Autobiographical Acts - The Changing Situation of a Literary

Genre (Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins UP). De Singly, Francois, 1984. "Les manoeuvres de seduction: une analyse des annonces

matrimoniales," Revue Franfaise de Sociologie XXV, 523-559. Dyer, Richard, 1982. Stars (London: FBI Publishing). Even-Zohar, Itamar, 1980. "Constraints of Realeme Insertability in Narrative," Poetics

Today 1:3, 65-74. Goffman, Erving, 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Harper). Harding, John, 1968. "Stereotypes," International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences,

David L. Sills ed., vol. 15 (New York: Macmillan and the Free Press). Haskell, Molly, 1973. From Reverence to Rape - The Treatment of Women in the Movie

(New York: Penguin Books). Lejeune, Philippe, 1975. Le Pacte Autobiographique (Paris: Le Seuil, "Poetique"). Levin, Martin, ed., 1970. Hollywood and the Great Fan Magazines (New York: Arbor House). Lippmann, Walter, 1922. Public Opinion (New York: Penguin [Reprinted New York: Pelican

Books, 1946] ). Mordden, Ethan, 1983. Movie Star - A Look at the Women who made Hollywood (New

York: St Martin's Press). Morin, Edgar, 1957. Les Stars (Paris: Le Seuil. Reprinted 1984, Galilee). Perkins, T.E., 1979. "Rethinking Stereotypes," Ideology and Cultural Production, Barret,

Corrigan, Kuhn and Wolff eds. (New York: Croom Helm). Powdermaker, Hortense, 1950. Hollywood The Dream Factory (Boston: Little Brown). Rosen, Marjorie, 1973. Popcorn Venus (New York: McCanne & Geoghegan). Weis, Elisabeth, ed., 1981. The Movie Star (New York: Penguin Books).

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