The Five Biggest Stars of the 1930s

In earlier posts, we listed our picks for the five biggest stars of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The stars of the 1930s faced a decade of transition as the movie industry moved from silent films to almost exclusively talkies. The big change didn't matter for a handful of stars (e.g., Greta Garbo), but for others it may have contributed to their decline. As always, new stars emerged and they dominate our list below. As with our other Biggest Stars posts, our criteria focused on boxoffice power, critical acclaim, and enduring popularity.

1. Greta Garbo - In 1930, at the age of 25, Garbo was already a huge boxoffice attraction. Her first talking film Anna Christie was the highest grossing film of 1930. Her popular and critical successes continued throughout the decade with Mata Hari (1931), Grand Hotel (1932), Anna Karenina (1935), Camille (1936), and Ninotchka (1939). She earned four Oscar nominations during the decade, but never won. At the height of her popularity, she was earning $300,000 per film.

2. Clark Gable - Starting in 1932, the International Motion Picture Almanac ranked the top ten stars at the boxoffice annually. Clark Gable made the Top 10 every year of the 1930s and was the runner-up to Shirley Temple for the top spot three times. He also received his only Oscar nominations for It Happened One Night (which he won as Best Actor), Mutiny on the Bounty, and Gone With the Wind. Yes, Mr. Gable had a very good decade.

3. Bette Davis - She arrived in Hollywood in 1930 and had appeared in over 20 films before garnering critical acclaim for Of Human Bondage (1934). Who forget how she spewed out her classic line to Leslie Howard: "And after you kissed me, I always used to wipe my mouth! Wipe my mouth!"  Her performance earned Bette Davis her first Academy Award nomination. By the time the decade ended, she has won Oscars for Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938). She also appeared in popular films such as The Petrified Forest (1936), Dark Victory (1939), and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939).

4. Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers - They made their debut as a team in supporting roles in 1932's Flying Down to Rio. By the end of the decade, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were the most famous dancing duo in the history of film. Nine of their ten collaborations were made in the 1930s, including Top Hat, Swing Time, and Shall We Dance. Their popularity was so great that Astaire earned a percentage of the profits on some of their movies--a rare practice in Hollywood at the time. Alas, Rogers made considerably less than her co-star, but she also branched out to serious roles and earned an Oscar in 1940 for Kitty Foyle.

5. Shirley Temple - In retrospect, it's hard to appreciate Shirley Temple's immense popularity in the 1930s. But she was the biggest draw in the U.S. for four years in a row (1935-38) and ranked in the Top 10 for another two years (1934 and 1939). But the movie-going public can be fickle and, following the commercial failure of The Blue Bird in 1940, Shirley Temple's career was never the same. She had peaked at age 12!

Honorable Mentions: Katharine Hepburn, Luise Rainer, Paul Muni, Myrna Loy, and Errol Flynn.

Hollywood Optimism vs. British Reality

Within the last week, I watched two films I hadn't seen in many years: the 1937 Shirley Temple vehicle Wee Willie Winkie and the 1959 British crime drama Sapphire. It would be difficult to find two films so distinctly different in every way. And yet, these films share a common theme: prejudice. Predictably, one film ends with an optimistic resolution while the other leaves many hanging threads.

McLaglen and Shirley.

Wee Willie Winkie is a prime example of the formula that made Shirley Temple a boxoffice sensation in an era in which moviegoers coped daily with the realities of the Great Depression and impending war. She plays an inquisitive nine-year-old who, with her widowed mother, travels to Northern India to live with her grandfather (C. Audrey Smith). "The Colonel" is a crusty military man with no time for children, so he entrusts his granddaughter to the rough and tough Sergeant McDuff (Victor McLaglen). Pretty soon, McDuff is conducting training drills just so Shirley--looking very cute in her little uniform--can play soldier.

Shirley also befriends Khoda Khan (Cesar Romero), a captured rebel leader plotting war against the British Army. Following Khan's escape, several British soldiers are killed in a skirmish. It looks like more blood will be spilled--on a grander scale--unless Khan and the Colonel can overcome their prejudices and reach an accord.

If you've seen any of Shirley's 1930s films, you know how Wee Willie Winkie is going to end. It's no wonder that Shirley was appointed an ambassador later in real life; by then, her negotiation skills, apparently developed through her movie roles, had to be impressive. Of course, there's a certain satisfaction in knowing the outcome of a Shirley Temple film. It's a comforting experience.

As for Wee Willie Winkie, in particular, it's slickly directed by John Ford (though I grew restless with the 100 minute running time). It features Victor McLaglen in the kind of role that made him famous. His gruffness is the perfect complement to Shirley Temple's sweetness. They make a wonderful team and remain the best reason to watch Wee Willie Winkie.

Made 22 years later, Sapphire tackles racial prejudice in Great Britain, but does so in the guise of a conventional murder mystery. In the opening scene, two children discover the corpse of a young woman in Hamstead Heath. The police soon identify the victim as 21-year-old Sapphire Robbins, a student at the Royal College of Music whom her friends described as a "sweetie." Why would anyone want to stab her six times in the chest?

Police question a suspect in Sapphire.

As the investigation unfolds, a complex portrait of Sapphire emerges. She was three months pregnant, a fact that her fiance and his family may or may not have known. She wore "flashy, pretty underwear" under her conservative clothes. And, in the words of one confidante, she "tried to pass herself off as white" (we learn that her father was white and her mother was black).

Sapphire is not the first film where a character tries to hide his or her race. It was a major subplot in the original Imitation of Life (1934) and took center stage in films like Pinky (1949).

What differentiates Sapphire is its frank approach and willingness to show the ugliness. A detective inspector working on the case casually asks Sapphire's physician: "Did she tell you she was colored? You always can tell, can't you? I can tell them a mile away." There is subtle prejudice, too, such as the landlady who liked Sapphire, but doesn't want people to know the truth because she runs a "white house" and it could hurt business. There's even prejudice against white people; a black barrister, who talks down to the police, makes disparging remarks about Sapphire for being half-white.

Of course, Sapphire plays it safe to a certain extent. The lead detective, Superintendent Hazard (Nigel Patrick), is a no-nonsense, nonjudgmental character. It might have been more interesting to watch him struggle with his own prejudices instead of making his second-in-command the bigot. Still, that's a minor quibble with a well-meaning mystery that reveals the murderer's identity, but is intelligent enough to avoid a neat and tidy resolution. Reality is often messy.

I'll Be Seeing You (1945)

I'll Be Seeing You (1945). Cast: Ginger Rogers, Joseph Cotton, Tom Tully, Shirley Temple and Spring Byington.

Background: After the death of her parents, Mary supports herself by working as a secretary. One night, her boss invites her to dinner at his apartment, Mary accepts, believing that he is inviting her to a party--only to discover that she is the only guest.She is attacked by her drunken boss. While fighting off his advances, Mary accidentally pushes him to his death through an open window. After being convicted of manslaughter, she is sentenced to six years in prison.

The story begins when Mary Marshall, who is half way through her prison sentence, is given an eight-day leave pass for the Christmas holidays. Travelling by train, she meets Zachary Morgan. The two quickly become friends. Zachary has just been released from the hospital as he has been suffering from shell shock and has become a prisoner of his own mind. In hope to speed up his recovery, he prepares himself to getting back to his life. Attracted to Mary, he follows her to her stop and pretends that he is visiting his sister in the same town of Pine Hill. Mary invites Zachary to visit her at the home of her aunt and uncle. Romance soon develops for the two as they spend Christmas Day together and attend a dance on New Year's Eve. Both however have the problem of having to tell the other of their past. On their last day together, Mary's cousin Barbara unintentionally tells Zachary about Mary's situation and, in his is anger, he boards the train without saying goodbye to her. After telling her family goodbye, Mary travels back to prison to continue with her sentence. Will Zachary have enough confidence to overcome his disappointment?

I've always enjoyed the wonderful performance of both Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotton. I hope you have the opportunity to view this wonderful romantic journey back to a different time.

Ginger Rogers (July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an actress, dancer, and singer who performed in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century. During her career, she made a total of 73 films, and is best known for her role as Fred Astaire's romantic interest and dancing partner, in a series of ten Hollywood musical films that revolutionized the genre. She also achieved great success in a variety of film roles, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Kitty Foyle (1940).

Joseph Cheshire Cotten (May 15, 1905 – February 6, 1994), was an actor of stage and film. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original productions of The Philadelphia Story and Sabrina Fair. He is associated with Orson Welles, leading to appearances in Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Journey into Fear (1943), for which Cotten was also credited with the screenplay, and The Third Man (1949). He was a star in his own right with films such as Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Love Letters (1945) and Portrait of Jennie (1948).