ABSTRACT
Michael Slowick notes that the addition of synchronized sound to the movie experience led audiences (at least as much as movie magazines represented them) to believe that sound and voice contributed a heightened sense of realism and hence of understanding who movie stars really were. Slowick’s chapter also demonstrates the degree and the reach of an emergent celebrity culture, where stars were famous because of their presence in ever-more available media and consumers of popular culture developed interest in attachments to this expanded role of celebrity. Slowick demonstrates how “revelations” in the early sound-cinema period via sound itself were seen as providing greater insight into the “real lives” of the personalities of movie stars. This article addresses these questions by examining one prominent strain found in fan magazines during the transition to sound: the equation of sound technology with realism and truth and the consequent notion that sound technology could reveal more of—and even embarrass—the star.
