Part of the pantheon

Henry Fonda once said that he had never had any ambition to be a film star. But then how could a man want to become someone who came out of nowhere, had no past, so that even the names we know them by were mostly not ones bestowed on them by their parents and the registrar? An old college football star (John Wayne), a virtual tramp who had served time on a chain gang (Robert Mitchum), circus acrobats (Cary Grant and Burt Lancaster)— each had served no professional apprenticeship, but had become more famous than men had ever been, their subsequent careers a source of wonder not just to the world but to themselves. They were the Hollywood film stars of the mid- 20th century, not actors — actors will come again — but stars. These men never will.

Burt Lancaster, who liked explaining things, once tried to explain the difference between the two to me:

There is something about the star, his appearance or his personality: you just want to see him again. An actor may have the skill, but not the presence. It’s so much more important in a film where your face is nine feet across in close-up. So people like myself might be schlepps as actors….

He spread his hands like Elmer Gantry, and continued:

I never saw Barrymore as Hamlet, I saw John Gielgud and he was extraordinary. But I don’t think you’d have cast him as Wyatt Earp.

But then these last were actors; the stars were the gods. They did not shout like Burton and Olivier, or any of the actors of the English stage; they just were, heroic and beautiful, where now there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon, except Brad Pitt. And Tom Cruise.