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Garbo contemplates a comeback

February 14, 2012

Bm garbo 2001

In the current issue, Robert B. Ray explains movie stardom as a perplexity in Hollywood’s attempt to mechanize its productions according to “Taylorist-Fordist models of rationalized production”:

When Garbo was contemplating a comeback, cameraman James Wong Howe was hired to do a screen test. When the actress arrived for the session, he was disappointed by how ordinary she looked, and surprised that she had brought with her neither make-up man nor hairdresser. “I had never photographed her,” Howe recalled, “I was frightened. This great lady!” What followed amounts to the crucial lesson:

When the camera started to turn…she listened to the grinding sound and her face changed, her expression, her whole emotional mood came to life and transformed her completely. It was incredible, wonderful…. She was like a horse on a track: nothing, and then the bell goes, and something happens. When the shot was over, she said simply, “Have you got enough?” And I said “Yes,” and very matter-of-factly she remarked, “Okay, I go home.” She did. And she was nothing again. (Charles Higham, Hollywood Cameramen, 92.)

Precisely because movie-star performance does not involve Taylor’s notion of skill, it cannot be standardized, and its “workers” cannot be easily replaced. Movie stardom amounts to a highly unusual task, unimagined by Taylor and unlike almost any other job in the world.

[read more]

Filed Under: Nonfiction Tagged With: Greta Garbo, Robert B. Ray, The Mysteries of Movie Stardom

Announcing the New Issue of NER (Vol. 32, #4)

January 26, 2012

The new issue of New England Review has just shipped from the printer, and a preview is available here on our website. Order a copy or subscribe today to receive the full content of this beautifully printed issue of NER.

In these pages, you’ll find new stories by Peter LaSalle, Zana Previti, Katya Reno, Caedra Scott-Flaherty, Gregory Spatz, Megan Staffel, and David Yost, appearing alongside new poems by Larry Bradley, Adam Giannelli, Janice Greenwood, A. Van Jordan, Laura Kasischke, Matthew Olzmann, Jacques J. Rancourt, and Carrie Shipers.

In nonfiction, Eileen Pollack revisits the ranch house of her childhood, Theodore Leinwand contends with Charles Olson contending with Shakespeare, Robert B. Ray asks if movie stars are ultimately unskilled workers, and Jonathan Levy makes a case for the use of dialogues in learning. Plus a new translation of Virgil’s Aeneid Book 5 by Ian Ganassi, Samuel Butler‘s thoughts on memory, Norman Davies on “How States Die,” and cover art by Tim Fitts.

Filed Under: News & Notes Tagged With: Carrie Shipers, Matthew Olzmann, Megan Staffel, Robert B. Ray, Zana Previti


Vol. 43, No. 2

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NER Digital

David Ryan

Behind the Byline

David Ryan

NER’s Elizabeth Sutton speaks with 43.2 contributor David Ryan about juxtaposition, character development, and writing around gaps in his story “Elision.”

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