‘Hollywood is a Woman's Town’: Masculinity and the Leading Man in American Fan Magazines of the 1930s

In their address to a predominantly female readership, fan magazines of the 1930s asserted that Hollywood was one place in which women were not subordinated to men as female stardom was superior to that of male stardom. The magazines’ representations of male actors were both compliant with, and resistant to, the tough‐guy image of hegemonic masculinity. The personas of most ‘leading men’ who led the supporting casts of female stars were represented as softer forms of masculinity than that of the majority of male stars. The on‐screen hard forms of masculinity of male stars were softened by the magazines’ reports of their off‐screen personas, and the personas of some actors were presented as a bipolar masculinity that combined soft and hard forms.

'vigorous face-slapping' types like Cagney and Clark Gable, and she noted that in all his films Howard 'played the role of a sensitive soul [who] possesses a rare, faun-like quality and a whimsical humor'. 3 Another wrote that, in Howard's love-making on the screen, there were 'so many tokens of affection and respect that women want, but so seldom get, from less subtle lovers'. 4 As magazines that were 'written primarily by, for, and about women', fan magazines of the 1930s have been regarded as an important source for understanding the period's constructions of femininity, but they also provide an important source for the same period's constructions of masculinity, especially from the perspectives of women. 5 They do so in their representations of the on-and off-screen personas of male screen actors whose masculinities are posited in various degrees and combinations of softness and hardness. This study draws upon American fan magazines as primary source materials for the construction of masculinity during a period when gender relations were destabilised by the Great Depression. 6 It demonstrates that fan magazines placed a value on the 'soft' masculinity of a number of screen actors who regularly played the 'leading man' in the romantic genre in which female stars were the major protagonists. It was the leading man rather than the tough-guy stars of the 'male' genres who were ideal partners for the female stars, many of whom played characters who were braving the troubled times faced by women in the Depression.
In constructing the personas of male screen actors, the fan magazines provide a valuable additional source, and in a number of respects an alternative, to representations of masculinity in the 1930s that were authored by, and were primarily addressed to, men. There has been a tendency to focus on representations of tough masculinity in the public art, fiction and films of the 1930s, and these representations have been interpreted as a reaction to the assault on masculinity by the Depression. One attempt to reinforce masculinity was evident in New Deal public murals and in the novels of 'proletarian' authors that focused on the tough and muscular manifestations of masculinity associated with working-class males. 7 The American 'tough-guy' ideal has been traced back to the dangers and self-reliance on the frontier and the competitive individualism of early American capitalism, but it underwent changes as corporate capitalism and consumerism became more important. 8 In 1933, a more consumeroriented masculinity was revealed in the publication of the magazine Esquire. The male reader of Esquire was addressed as a consumer who no longer represented the ideals of hard work, moderation, self-control and mobility, but rather sought the best in fashion, food and pleasure in his leisure time. Esquire supported machismo through its coverage of sports like baseball and boxing, fearless pursuits such as big-game hunting and bullfighting, violence in its short fiction and an unquestioned heterosexuality with its ribald cartoons and female pin-ups. 9 For most readers, this was a vicarious machismo and a belief that consumerism-damaged masculinity lay behind many media portrayals of effete masculinity among men of the 'leisure class'. There were some weak working-class male characters in films of the 1930s, often the strong heroine's father or brother was work-shy and a failure as breadwinner, but the softer forms of masculinity were most frequently displayed by wealthy characters.
Hegemonic masculinity works in part through the production of exemplars of masculinity and film historians have described the tough guy personas of male film stars of the 1930s, such as Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and Gable, as exemplars of the ideal masculinity of the period. 10 The tough guy personas are the major interest of Mike LaSalle in his book on the male screen actors of the 1930s, but he also points to another type of actor who played characters who were 'relaxed, well-mannered and comfortable in a woman's milieu'. 11 William Powell was an example, but LaSalle focuses on Robert Montgomery who was 'dapper, pleasure-loving' and 'the ideal costar in woman's pictures'. 12 Other male actors of this type receive from LaSalle either very brief mentions (Herbert Marshall, Howard) or none (Franchot Tone, Gene Raymond).
The on-screen personas and careers of Montgomery and other 'debonair' actors, such as Powell, Marshall and Melvyn Douglas, are the subject of a book, The Debonairs, but the authors, James Robert Parish and Don Stanke, do not provide an analysis of the actors' personas in relationship to masculinity. 13 One author who has written on the relationship of the on-screen personas of these actors to masculinity is Drew Todd who writes that the 1930s was an anomalous decade with respect to the popularity of the dandy hero, a 'masculine ideal', who shared the screen with the tough guy. Todd uses terms such as sophisticated, elegant and suave to describe actors who performed in art deco Hollywood settings where they used their charm to conquer the ladies. 14 Philippa Gates' study of changes in the detectives of classical Hollywood and the actors who played them complements Todd's analysis. Gates writes that, in the crime genre, Hollywood had two responses to the Depression: the working-class gangster and the upper-class type gentleman detective who was suave rather than tough. The 'soft-boiled' hero detective was played by Englishmen, such as Basil Rathbone and George Sanders, or by Americans, such as Powell and Warren William, who were no less sophisticated and gentlemanly. The gentleman detective characters and the personas of the actors who played them may not have conformed to the American tough guy image, but neither were they effeminate; they engaged in the manly pursuits of investigating crime, bringing criminals to justice and conquering women. Their cerebral approach was sometimes compared favourably to the physical approach of dumb tough guys. 15 It would be a mistake, therefore, to refer to the onscreen debonair or dandy hero played by such actors as Powell or Montgomery as a media expression of subordinated masculinity. He was, rather, a high-class variation of hegemonic masculinity.

Female stars and fan magazines
Todd proposes that it was the screen dandy's ridicule of the high society in which he participated that appealed to Depression audiences, and Gates speculates that Depression audiences were receptive to a hero who, unlike the tough gangster, represented an escapist fantasy, part of Hollywood's disavowal of the Depression, as well as an optimistic view of law and order. I would like to suggest that these relatively soft representations of masculinity were closely related to another peculiarity of the decade: the pre-eminence of female stars. If male stars with tough personas are understood as a reaction to or compensation for the weakened position of men in the Depression, the strong female roles played by prominent female stars can be understood as an expression or reflection of the greater independence achieved by women who during the Depression often became the breadwinners in families. 16 The assumption within the film industry that women made up the majority of the audience and that women chose the films that couples went to see encouraged the production of films with women as the central protagonists and the promotion of female stars in publicity campaigns. Emily Carman has shown that it was principally female stars who achieved substantial independence through freelancing among studios and used agents to negotiate contracts that gave them considerable control over their careers and the films in which they starred. Provisions in their contracts included receiving a percentage of a film's profits, approval of the story and director, the right to choose designers, cameramen and, of importance here, choice or approval of male co-stars or leading men. 17 Lists of top box office stars as chosen by exhibitors and data on stars' salaries support the contention that women had a more eminent place in the star system of the 1930s, particularly in the early years of the decade, compared with earlier and later years. From 1922 to 1929, male stars either outnumbered women (six years) or matched them (two years) in the top-ten box office stars. From 1930 to 1934, women stars outnumbered men in three years and matched them in one. Women stars were slightly outnumbered by men in 1935 to 1937, matched them in 1938 and were outnumbered by them, six to four, in 1939. 18 Although the proportions are about equal in the 1930s, what stands out is the high proportion of women in the lists in comparison with subsequent years. For the three years, 1940-42, the proportion was two women to eight men; in 1943, it was one woman and nine men, and although the proportion of women improved from 1944, male stars continued to outnumber female stars thereafter. 19 With respect to the salaries of stars, comprehensive data are available for 1937 when the highest ten salaries were received by six women and four men, although there were only seven women among the top twenty salaries. 20 Nowhere was the pre-eminence of female stars more celebrated than in fan magazines. The early movie magazines with their detailed synopses of movie plots had had a mixed-sex readership, but as movie magazines transformed into, or were replaced by, fan magazines with their focus on the off-screen lives as well as screen appearances of movie stars, the magazines became 'an almost exclusively female domain'. 21 There are no exact data on who bought and read fan magazines, but by locating through census data the writers of 107 readers' letters to Picture Play from 1920 to 1938, Lies Lanckman found that seventy per cent of the writers were female and thirty per cent were male. 22 During the 1930s, most of the fan magazines with the highest circulation were edited by women, most fan magazine writers were women and although there was a significant number of males writing for the magazines, there was a clear address to a female readership. 23 This address was most obvious in their advertisements of such items as soaps, shampoos, make-up, sanitary pads, anti-perspirants, deodorants, hosiery and methods of reducing busts, and in their special sections on fashion, beauty advice, good manners and the modern hostess and her home.
One outside predominantly male influence on the fan magazines were the studios whose publicity offices provided much of their material, including fabricated biographies and stories of the stars. In the early 1930s, the magazines published what was perceived as improper information on some stars, and, in 1934, the studios sought to control the fan magazines' 'inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and exaggerations' by requiring the Association of Motion Picture Producers' (AMPP's) certification of fan magazine writers, their interviews with contract players and final approval of article copy. 24 The fan magazines were subjected for a short while to close scrutiny, but fan magazines continued to publish reports on and interviews with stars that bypassed the studios' approval and an occasional scandal arose around a particular article, such as Photoplay's 1939 report on 'Hollywood's Unmarried Husbands and Wives'. 25 The concern of studio executives to prevent scandalous items on the off-screen lives of their contract stars, male and female, does not appear to have influenced the extent to which the magazines addressed women or their representations of masculinity. Almost all covers of fan magazines were of female stars, and on those rare occasions when a man appeared on the cover, he was likely to be accompanied by a female star. A rare exception was Gable who appeared alone on the front cover of the July 1933 issue of Movie Mirror. Inside the magazines there were more, often twice as many, full-page photos of and articles on female stars than male stars or actors. 26 Several articles explained why women were more interested in female stars than in male stars. Laura Benham in the October 1934 issue of Picture Play wrote that there were only two male stars (Chaplin and George Arliss) who could fill a movie theatre solely on their own strength, and that no glamorous male star had the attraction of a glamorous female star; even Montgomery and Gary Cooper could only make a picture successful if they are 'coupled with a well-known and popular actress'. The 'mere male', according to Benham, can only achieve 'a dubious nebulous stardom' that is dependent on his choice of female screen partners. 27 Faith Baldwin in the February 1934 issue of Modern Screen wrote that the few exciting male stars shine only in the 'bright reflections' of the female stars around whom all the glamour and excitement of Hollywood centres. Baldwin wrote that the women who make up the majority of cinema audiences were only willing to wait in line for hours to see the female stars: we women are interested in our own sex. We like stories about us, films about us, experiences that touch us. We suffer with our women stars … love with them, and see ourselves in other circumstances through them … We come to the theatre to see life through the star's eyes -a woman's eyes. 28 A psychologist was recruited by Motion Picture to inform its readers that women go to the cinema to see other women on the screen and not the male stars: 'When you see the life-story of a woman unfolded on the screen, for the length of the picture, you are that woman. So completely do you identify yourself with her that you live with her, laugh with her, love with her'. 29 If, as the fan magazines assumed, female stars provided models of identity and imitation among their readers, how then did they represent gender inequality between male and female film actors? The male in the majority of films may finally assert his authority over the female, at least in the last minutes of the film, but fan magazine writers did not believe that this was the case in the 'real', as opposed to the 'reel', world of Hollywood. The fan magazines claimed that women ruled Hollywood, and in support of this claim the New Movie Magazine recruited Samuel Goldwyn, Hollywood's leading independent producer, who justified the assertion by emphasising the predominance of the female audience who chose films according to the female stars. 30 Some female fan magazine writers were more vigorous in their assertions of female dominance than Goldwyn. According to Helen Pade, Hollywood was a woman's town where the women 'wear the pants, figuratively as well as often literally', and they enjoy higher salaries as well as 'special privileges and immunities denied male stars'. 31 Benham was emphatic that Hollywood was the one place in an otherwise man's world where the woman is the 'sovereign mistress of all she surveys'; she dominates Hollywood professionally, financially and socially as she receives larger salaries than male stars, receives more fan mail and is the biggest attraction at the box office. 32 Baldwin proclaimed that Hollywood was a matriarchy 'wherein the rulers are decidedly queens instead of kings'. 33 Helen Louise Walker provided evidence that Hollywood was a woman's town from interviews with male stars. Gable is quoted as saying that the differences in salaries say it all: 'feminine glamor, appeal, whatever you choose to call it, is worth more at the box office than anything a man can offer. Nearly all of the well-known women in Hollywood earn more money, per week, than men do', and in a town where women earn more money than men 'things get all topsy-turvy'. An unnamed 'leading man' under contract to MGM complained that a man's reward for achieving a big following at the box office was that he was 'allowed to support one of the important women stars!' 34 Somewhat circumscribed statements of the female influence were provided by Errol Flynn who stated that, 'there is probably no other place where men discuss their business and professional affairs with women as freely and as fully as they do here', and by Humphrey Bogart who mumbled that the men let the women think that they control them. Walker's conclusion was that 'women rule Hollywood pretty conclusively-and that men like it'. 35 Major female stars expressed varying views on Hollywood as a woman's town. Carole Lombard proclaimed that women in Hollywood are 'rulers of a fantastic kingdom where the wealth is a product of the women'. 36 Constance Bennett told her interviewer that acting in films was the only career where woman 'are on absolute equality with men', but although she was one of the few actresses who had a limited say about the stories of her films, 'in the majority of cases the actress has absolutely nothing to say about the vehicles in which she appears'. 37 Miriam Hopkins disputed that Hollywood was a woman's town because it was men who owned the business, produced and directed the films, gave out contracts and hired 'even the biggest woman star'. 38 In an article titled 'It's a Man's World', Janet Graves wrote that, although the realm of motion picture acting is apparently ruled by the glamour queen, lavishly gowned, lovingly photographed, invariably surrounded by several of those adoring stooges, her leading men … we must remember that the ranks of all the important people behind the stars are also dominated by men. Hollywood has women directors and many women scenario writers, but our sex is definitely in the minority in this field. 39 The impression that in 1930s Hollywood women were on one side of the camera and men on the other was rarely questioned by the fan magazines, but one item recognised that 'acting isn't the only movie career' for a woman in Hollywood and proclaimed that women were 'holding good paying positions as talent scouts, film cutters, film editors, script girls, readers, wardrobe women, designers, scenario writers, executive secretaries and even directors and research managers'. 40 When a rare article focused on a woman in the industry who was not an actor, an emphasis was placed on her relationship to the stars. Ida Koverman who was referred to as Louis B. Mayer's 'confidential super-secretary', 'executive secretary' and his 'right hand' was mentioned as the woman who promoted the actress Jean Parker after Koverman was 'haunted' by Parker's eyes in a photograph. 41 Dorothy Arzner, 'the only woman director of the talkies', was presented as a woman who will not talk about herself but 'rave about the stars she has guided to success'. 42 Arzner with 'the authority of any male director' was credited with making Ruth Chatterton 'world-famed' and directing a film (Craig's Wife) which 'may be the turning point in Rosalind Russell's career'. 43 An article on the script writer Francis Marion proclaimed her 'the one genius in pictures … the most brilliant, versatile and accomplished person in Hollywood…[and] a star maker de luxe'. 44 Thus, the fan magazines conveyed a message that Hollywood was the one setting where hegemonic masculinity did not prevail and that it was the major female stars who demonstrated the ascendency of women over men. This ascendency was also expressed in their discourse on the leading man.

Female stars and leading men
Male actors and stars represented several masculinities and one way to decipher the fan magazines' representations of those masculinities is to examine their distinction between the male star, who received top billing and played the central protagonist, and the leading man. The general, dictionary meaning of leading man is the male actor who has the most important part in a play or film. The fan magazines' references to leading men included this general meaning, but the term had an additional meaning in the fan magazines of the 1930s: the leading man led the supporting cast of a female star. This more particular meaning of leading man and the distinction from male star is discernable in fan magazines from the second half of the 1920s when major female stars, such as Mary Pickford and Pola Negri, were reported to have chosen their leading men. 45 One item in 1928 explained that some male actors were given a boost to stardom by the female stars who brought them into prominence as their leading men, and one fan writer complained that producers permitted the women stars to pick leading men who were from five to ten years younger than themselves. 46 It was in the early 1930s, when the pre-eminence of female over male stars was most evident, that the more particular meaning of leading man was commonly used. There were male actors such as Robinson, Cagney and Paul Muni who achieved stardom soon after they entered movies and were never labelled as leading men. Some actors such as Tone, Raymond and Joel McCrea continued as leading men throughout most years of the decade, although they might occasionally receive a starring role in which they were billed over a lower-tier female actor. Others, such as Gable, Marshall and Howard, were labelled as leading men for a period and then advanced to co-stardom with a major female star and an occasional first billing over a female star.
The masculinity of the leading man was problematised by their subordinate position to the female stars. References to a female star and 'her leading man' were ubiquitous in fan magazines: Tone was the 'leading man for Crawford in Sadie Mc-Kee', Loretta Young 'returns to the screen as the heroine of The Unguarded Hour with Franchot Tone as her leading man' and Douglas is Gloria Swanson's 'new leading man'. 47 Full-page photos of the female stars in their new films sometimes included small insert photos of their leading men. A full-page photo of Claudette Colbert is captioned as making 'a grand entrance in her new picture "Imitation of Life"' with a small insert of William as 'the lucky leading man' (Figure 1). 48 Similar references were made in advertisements for films and reviews in the trade press. An advert for the film Ladies of the Big House has a large photo of Sylvia Sidney with the caption, 'No star on the screen today can equal the rapid box office rise of this girl', with a small insert of Raymond, 'The fastest growing young leading man on the screen'. 49 A review of I Live My Life with Joan Crawford notes that Brian Aherne should get a billing as 'Joan's best leading man in many moons', and a review of Born to Be Kissed refers to it as a 'Jean Harlow film' and notes that 'Franchot Tone, recently with Joan Crawford in "Sadie McKee" is the leading man'. 50 Not only were leading men subordinate to the female stars, they were often reported to have been chosen by them. McCrea is named the leading man to play with Bennett on her 'special request', and other female stars are reported to 'have grabbed at him' to be their leading man. 51 For her first film under a new contract with Warner Bros., Chatterton was shown the screen tests of various actors as possible candidates for her leading man, and when she saw George Brent's test, she is reported to have cried, 'That's my man!' Brent was chosen and Chatterton later married him. 52 Female stars were reported to do battle over their leading men. After Lilian Harvey lost to Janet Gaynor in obtaining Henry Garat as leading man, she 'raised a merry fuss' to obtain Lew Ayes after she learned that Gaynor wanted him. 53 Movie Mirror posed the question if Jean Harlow had requested Tone, Crawford's fiancé, as her leading man in The Girl from Missouri (1934) 'for the sheer deviltry' of annoying Crawford. The magazine went on to ask if Crawford believed that Harlow had 'played those love scenes with Franchot more ardently than she had ever played a love scene with any leading man, just for the effect it might have on Joan at the preview'. 54 Some of these reports may have been fabricated or embellished by the fan magazines but, as Carman's work has shown, the contracts of a number of 'A-list actresses' enabled them to choose their male co-star or leading man. 55 Greta Garbo was reported to be 'one of the few stars who has absolute choice of her leading man', and finding one for her film Romance (1930) proved a problem as she put her 'thumbs down' test after test. When she saw one whom she liked, Gavin Gordon, he 'could scarcely believe his own ears' when he was told that Garbo had chosen him. 56 When Montgomery was chosen for the Garbo film Inspiration (1931), Picture Play commented that 'no greater distinction can be won by any leading man'. 57 Modern Classic reported that when Garbo saw Gable on the screen, she said, 'Dot iss my next leading man', and he duly appeared with her in Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise (1931). 58 When Marshall was chosen as Garbo's leading man in The Painted Veil (1934), Photoplay reported that all the biggest female stars had clamoured for 'this tall, suave Englishman' as their leading man but that 'the Garbo lead is the accolade'. 59 In 1932, Photoplay pronounced that Garbo had been an 'absolute jinx' on almost all her leading men who had performed badly in her films. None of these leading men were 'weaklings' but their 'normal strength [was] weakened by a complex of awe, worship and inferiority'. Garbo in her films was usually 'the aggressor, the wooer', so that any man 'placed in the position of one being wooed, looks like a sap to the public'. 60 Movie Mirror named the search for Garbo's leading man for the film Queen Christina (1933) 'the greatest man hunt in the history of Hollywood'. The magazine reported that 'the great Garbo remained unmoved' when the studio showed her the tests of several actors for the part. The writer commented: 'One quiet woman was controlling the fate of half of Hollywood's males'. Laurence Olivier was not tested but Garbo had seen him in films, and she gave her approval that he would play her Spanish lover in the film. Olivier sailed from England, but, two months later, the magazine reported that John Gilbert had been chosen for the role. 61 The caption of a full-page photo of Garbo and Gilbert together stated that, 'Only the powerful will of Garbo made it possible'. Garbo had proposed Gilbert for the role from the beginning and 'when all possible leading men were disposed of, she proposed Gilbert once more'. 62 Although a tendency of fan magazines to elaborate on the influence of female stars may have operative here, Garbo's position within MGM was a relatively strong one. Her new contract with MGM in 1932 gave her choice of script, director and co-stars, and she was given her own production unit, Canyon Productions, within the MGM complex. Queen Christina was the first film that Garbo chose to make in her production unit. 63 The leading man phenomenon was the subject of several lengthy fan magazine articles, particularly in the first half of the decade. The fact that these articles were written by male writers may explain their somewhat sarcastic lamentation in describing the status and fate of leading men. One article had a revealing tagline: 'Those loving leading men-they often win stars, but seldom stardom'. The author, Colin Reynolds, wrote that a leading man is to be found in every film 'that stars a beauteous lady', and goes on to clarify his necessary qualities: he must be 'reasonably manly and good-looking', he should be a first class actor but 'yet not so good that he steals the lady star's best scenes', he must be old enough 'to make the star appear a little younger, yet young enough to stir romantic pulses' in both the heroine and 'in the breasts of female film fans', and he 'must be the perfect second fiddle … without ever for a moment jeopardizing the supremacy of the starry siren'. Reynolds argued that an actor's success as a leading man can prevent him from becoming a star: 'Conrad Nagel can always be depended upon to be a thoroughly leading man-for which reason, poor chap, stardom has passed him by', and Brent is so good as a screen lover that he will 'never rise to personal stardom'. Reynolds concluded that, 'only a very few good leading men ever prove successful stars'. 64 The subordinate status of the leading man and his challenge in becoming a star were stated forcibly in an article by Hal Hall. The women stars fight over the leading men because 'of their physical charms and their eager willingness to submerge their own personalities while the film queens march onward to greater heights of glory'. The actors who play leading men find that their earning powers are reduced, and their screen careers are shortened. They are pushed into making one film after another in which all the skills of the directors and cameramen focus on 'making an expensive woman star more glamorous … It is his fate to wait patiently until the story demands that the lovely lady shall be held in masculine arms or shall shed high-priced tears on a masculine shoulder'. An unnamed 'famous director' explained that when a film is built around a star with a story that has been written for her, 'we naturally see to it that no one overshadows her', for while they 'can always get other leading men … a popular star is not found so easily'. Hall doubts whether the men will ever reach stardom and refers to them as 'sacrificial lads' for the greater glory of the women stars. 65 When a leading man was given a starring role, his promotion was attributed to the female stars with whom he had previously appeared. One item explained that a significant cause of Montgomery's success was that 'two of the important stars', Shearer and Crawford, had requested him for parts in their films. 66 An advertisement for Shipmates (1931), which welcomed Montgomery as MGM's 'New Star', included four photos of 'His Steps to Stardom', three of which showed him with Crawford, Shearer and Garbo in three of his previous films (Figure 2). 67 A fan of the female stars who disliked Montgomery wrote that she was glad that he had been made a star because she would now be able to see her favourite female stars without him spoiling their films. 68 Movie Mirror reported that the success of Montgomery as Shearer's leading man in Strangers May Kiss (1931) had persuaded MGM to give him the starring roles in Shipmates and The Man in Possession (1931) 'opposite quite unimportant leading women'. 69 Although Montgomery was listed after Shearer in Private Lives (1931), Movie Mirror believed that he had 'lick[ed] the stardom jinx' and was settling down to be a 'steady star'. 70 MGM continued to alternate Montgomery between leading men roles in films of the major female stars (Crawford, Garbo, Bennett, Marion Davies, Ann Harding, Helen Hayes) and starring roles in less costly films with lower tier actresses (Dorothy Jordan, Madge Evans), and as the fan magazines focused on the major female stars, they paid most attention to Montgomery when he appeared as their leading man rather than in his starring roles with other actresses.
Brief references to a leading woman or leading lady in the sense of supporting a male star were numerous, and there were occasional mentions of certain male stars, such as John Barrymore and Harold Lloyd, who chose their leading ladies. One significant difference from the woman's perspective of the fan magazines was that, although leading men led the supporting cast of female stars in films in which romantic love was the major narrative line, leading ladies often led the supporting cast of male stars in films in which romantic love was secondary to the major narrative line of interaction among men as in the Western, gangster, law enforcement and war films. This made them of less interest to fan magazines, and although there were occasional items on leading ladies who were also referred to as 'featured players' to distinguish them from stars, in contrast to the discourse on leading men, there was no discourse on the status of leading ladies in relationship to male stars. 71

The masculinity of male stars and leading men
An insistence on Hollywood as a woman's town in which women were the most important stars and ruled over their leading men was one expression of the fan magazines' resistance to hegemonic masculinity, albeit a resistance limited to a discourse on stardom. Another partial resistance to hegemonic masculinity is to be found among the magazines' representations of the masculinity of male actors. The magazines' representations can be understood as a combination of compliance with the dominant tough guy representations in media that was addressed primarily to men and resistance to them. Some actors, such as Cagney, Robinson and Wallace Beery, were often tagged as 'tough guys', but in their films their toughness took various forms that varied from hardened criminal to self-reliant labourer and upholder of the law. A more frequently used term, 'he-man', encompassed a greater number of actors and was used sometimes to denote a handsome actor who was not necessarily tough. Other frequent terms were virile and hard-boiled, although the latter was also used to refer to certain female actresses such as Harlow and Glenda Farrell. Most actors labelled as tough guys had working-class personas, but this did not mean that all actors with upper-class personas were regarded as soft. William often played wealthy men whose toughness was expressed in their no-holds-barred drive for success and power. Powell could on occasion express a toughness that was generally hidden behind his debonair, cocktaildrinking persona. Actors with upper-class personas such as Howard and John Boles were valued for their softer masculinity as expressed by their emotionally sensitive and caring relationships with women. Thus, although there was a tendency in hegemonic masculinity to create a binary between tough and soft ('feminised') masculinities, such a binary is too simplistic in considering the personas of male screen actors and their representations in fan magazines. There were, however, correspondences between types of masculinity in terms of toughness and softness and the distinction between star and leading man. One attempt to sort types of masculinity among male actors in a Photoplay 1933 issue did not distinguish explicitly between leading men and male stars, but although most male stars were placed in a category of 'the masterful, dominating male', most leading men were placed in a category of 'the gentler, to-be-mastered male'. 72 On screen, leading men were most often placed in the upper-middle or upper class. When the female star played a wealthy woman or socialite, the leading man played her husband, lover or admirer and was part of the wealthy stratum. When, as was often the case, the female star played a working-class woman, the leading man was the wealthy side of the cross-class romance. It was unusual for the female star to play the wealthy side of a cross-class romance, but when this occurred there were a few leading men, such as McCrea, who alternated between wealthy and working-class male parts. 73 Most of the characters played by leading men were wealthy, living in penthouses, spacious apartments or mansions. They were men of leisure, frequenting expensive restaurants, and nightclubs, and they dressed immaculately, often in tuxedos, white bow ties and top hats. They were witty and suave, and although they were part of the upper class, they often took a cynical view of its mores. If their masculinity was somewhat feminised, they were heterosexual, and their softness was used to charm the ladies. 74 Two terms that were used to describe many of the leading men were 'gentleman' and 'debonair': Boles was 'always a gentleman', Paul Cavanaugh 'lives up to the traditions of a gentleman', Brent is 'the polished, debonair lover', Warner Baxter 'is as debonair as his screen self' and Howard was 'a gentleman both on and off screen'. 75 An exemplary example of the debonair, upper-class persona is Tone, one of the most prominent leading men of the 1930s (Figure 3). His leading man roles in the 1930s tended to fall within a narrow social class range: he was frequently the son of a wealthy family (Midnight Mary, 1933 Street, 1937, Between Two Women, 1937). If his character was poor, he had worthy aspirations, as a graduate who wants to be a journalist (Gentlemen Are Born, 1934) and a brilliant inventor (Suzy, 1936). Of the few films in which Tone's character was located in the lower class (his farmer in The Stranger's Return, 1933) or outside the modern milieu (a British soldier in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, 1935), the unusual casting was noted by film magazines. 76 Tone expressed his dissatisfaction with his typecasting in a number of interviews. He complained that it was difficult for him to vary the parts in which he is 'usually the gay devil with dishonest intentions toward the little chorus girl'. 77 He disliked his portrayals as the 'Park Avenue' or 'stuffed shirt, wealthy playboy', which he had 'done to death', and he claimed to be mystified that he was continually cast in 'wealthy, social register roles'. 78 Descriptions of Tone's physical features made evident that this 'suave sophisticate' was not of the he-man type: he is 'rather slight in build', has a 'boyish' look, and is 'almost too "pretty" to be handsome'. 79 Picture Play Magazine claimed that Tone had a 'tough-guy complex' as he believed that he would be 'a push-over for the George Raft kind of role'. 80 A few of the male stars, such as Arliss and Powell, were also described as gentlemen or debonair, but the personas of most leading men were at odds with the personas of such stars as George Bancroft, Robinson and Cagney whose on-screen characters and off-screen social background were located in the working class and whose onscreen tough, hard forms of masculinity were sometimes expressed, particularly in the case of Cagney, in violence towards women. However, fan magazines tended to resist hegemonic tough-guy masculinity by distinguishing between an actor's on-screen and off-screen personas. An item on Bancroft claimed that though 'on the screen he's a tough, hard-boiled guy in actuality he's as soft-boiled as a shirt that just came out of the wash'. 81 Similarly, an article titled 'Soft-Boiled Eddie' stated that, although Robinson was identified with Little Caesar, he is in fact 'a genial, mild-mannered gentleman, given to good cigars, light wines, and after-dinner story-telling'. 82 The fan magazine coverage of Cagney included both affinities and differences between his on-screen and off-screen personas. When the emphasis was on affinity, fan magazines dwelt on Cagney's social background; his is 'shanty Irish', he grew up in a district the cops call 'Guerilla Jungle', his boyhood companions would later become gangsters, racketeers and criminals, including those who were executed for shooting policemen. 83 It is in this environment that he learnt to use his fists to advantage at an early age, he learnt how to act tough and talk tough and he learnt how to smoke a cigarette, letting it hang from the lower lip. In his tough roles on the screen, 'Jimmy is actually reliving the life he was part and parcel of throughout the formative years of his life'. 84 Cagney's toughness was also emphasised in reports on his disputes with Warner Bros. over his contract, but many items focused on the differences between his on-screen and offscreen personas. One of the earliest items refers to Cagney's 'amazing combination of contradictions' who 'drops into gangster lingo but off set talks like a professor'. Once known as 'the red-headed terror of Avenue … [he] reads long-winded Russian novels. Dostoiervsky (sic) is his favorite'. 85 Later items considered him 'the very antithesis of a tough guy: his soft, whispering voice, his mild and gentle manner proceed from a warm and tender heart', with 'an almost feminine sensibility'. 86 Items on male leading men with an on-screen soft masculine persona would, on occasion, note a stronger off-screen persona. Raymond's film roles were described as 'weak and vacillating', but he is 'the direct antithesis of most of the roles he has portrayed', and is in fact 'a most forthright and determined young man'. 87 Although many items feminised Raymond in their descriptions of his physical appearance ('blond male', 'beautifully light blond and wavy hair', 'platinum blond man'), other items sought to convey a strong masculinity by describing his sporting activities, especially his horse riding. 88 Marshall was reported to conform on-and off-screen to 'the suave, urbane and utterly charming character that women demanded of him', but off-screen he was also a 'level-headed, wise businessman'. 89 It was common in fan magazine coverage of leading men to emphasise affinities between their on-and off-screen personas as well as noting certain differences that contributed to a more expansive portrayal of their masculinity. One article on Montgomery proclaimed that there was 'no man in pictures' with a 'look off-screen more like their on-screen selves'. 90 Although there was an occasional complaint of smugness or 'going high-hat', most reports were complimentary: he was 'charmingly mannered and well-seasoned', unlike other young men in Hollywood, he was 'intelligent and well-bred', he brought 'humor and sophistication into love making', and was 'always genteel' with 'none of that brute-strength stuff'. 91 Montgomery was 'the sort of fellow hostesses dream of snaring for week-end parties', but although 'he has achieved the fine art of being casual … his charm robs him of none of his virility', which is demonstrated by his activities on his own farm in Connecticut where 'he hunts, rides, fishes and swims'. 92 The fan magazine descriptions of the upper-class family background of Montgomery and Tone strengthened the off-screen affinity with their screen roles. Montgomery had 'began life surrounded by wealth and culture', his father was the vicepresident of a large company, he went to a prestigious school and travelled all over Europe. 93 Fan magazines never mentioned that Montgomery's father had committed suicide, but they did note that the father's death left the family with insufficient funds for Robert to continue his education and that Robert went to work as a mechanic's helper and as a deck hand on an oil danker before joining a stock company in Rochester, New York. 94 Tone's family 'always had money', his father was 'a forceful, dynamic business executive', his mother was the grandchild of a Congressman and the daughter of a State Senator; Tone went to 'an exclusive school for the sons of rich men', he attended Cornell University and as the 'Cornell sheik, idol of New York debbies … [he was] gallant, charming courteous'. 95 Fan magazines linked Tone's 'impeccable background' to his persona as a 'sophisticate to his finger tips': he has a 'beautiful command of the English language', he is 'well read, well-informed in an unassuming sort of way', 'his good breeding is inherent', he is 'decidedly Bond Street', he 'speaks French fluently', and he is 'playful, gay, and quite informal'. 96 The distinction between on-screen and off-screen personas was one way the fan magazines complicated the tough-guy masculinity portrayed by stars on the screen. Another way was to represent a male actor's masculinity as a hybrid or bipolar type that moved between hard and soft modes and combined both in some fan magazine coverage. 97 This demonstrated both compliance with and resistance to hegemonic masculinity. As noted, Gable has been seen as a prime example of the macho form of masculinity associated with the working class, but in his films and fan magazine coverage Gable's masculinity and its relationship to social class varied depending on whether he was the leading man or whether he had the starring part or shared it with the female star. Some of the earliest items on Gable had suggested a similarity with Valentino but these comparisons ceased following his 'heavy', pre-leading man roles as a gang leader (Dance, Fools, Dance, 1931), a mobster (A Free Soul, 1931) and a brutish chauffeur who starves little girls to death for insurance (Night Nurse, 1931). Gable's mobster in A Free Soul fascinates the heroine played by Shearer, and he is confronted by the leading man in that film, Howard, who played 'the noble self-sacrificing and honorable lover'. A Photoplay article in 1931 indicated that Gable's real life had prepared him for such characters: 'he has wandered all over America on his own. He has ridden the brake breams of a freight car. He has known hunger'. 98 Another item in the same year described him as 'rough, male and vital', as a 'cross between an actor and a lumberjack'. Gable had worked as a lumberjack and that experience, according to Gable, had made him 'pretty tough … as hard as iron in every muscle'. Gable's female interviewer stated that Gable was able to make concessions to women because his sex made him superior to them and though women resented the arrogant male, they loved it too. 99 Gable's roles as leading man represented a considerable rise in class: an architect in Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise (1931) with Garbo, a wealthy lawyer with political ambitions in Possessed (1931) with Crawford, a minister in Polly of the Circus (1932) with Davies and a doctor in Strange Interlude (1932) with Shearer. 100 In contrast to his characters' brutal form of masculinity in previous films, his leading men roles represented a considerably softer masculinity and fan magazine coverage was moderated accordingly. 101 It was reported that he considered that women approved of his screen 'treat-'em rough and tell-'em nothing attitude', but laughed at the idea that he would actually treat a woman brutally like he did Shearer in A Free Soul. The interviewer believed that most women would prefer 'the shy, idealistic Clark Gable of reality to the swaggering menace of the screen'. 102 Another item proclaimed that there 'is a sweetness about him that makes you doubt his roughness, a softness that makes you doubt his hardness, a sympathy that makes you doubt his cruelty'. 103 Along similar lines, an item asserted that 'beneath his hard exterior, there is a yearning for love, and a deep tenderness'. 104 However, other reports, published fan letters and interviews insisted that Gable had been miscast in his leading man roles. 105 Gable complained in an interview that whereas Possessed 'made him a well-dressed, cultured fellow, but one who still slapped down his women', his following two films were entirely unfitted to his type, which was 'the modern feminine version of a cave man'. The problem, according to the interviewer, was that the female stars demanded him as their leading man and once he had played with Garbo and Crawford, 'Marion Davies had to have her turn'. 106 Gable received co-star billing with Harlow in Red Dust (1932) and his tough rubber plantation owner represented a break from his leading man roles. Reviews of the film celebrated that Gable was 'back again' as he was 'in one of those he-man parts that made him famous' and returns him to his 'rough, tough guy [with] nothing subtle about him'. 107 A continued concern that miscasting and misguided publicity posed a threat to Gable's masculinity arose especially after The White Sister (1933) in which Gable was billed beneath Hayes and cast as a romantic Italian soldier who falls in love with the daughter of an Italian prince. Jay Brien Chapman argued that Gable's career was threatened by the trend in Hollywood for 'gentleman types' as exemplified by Howard. From a comparison of Gable's photos in 1933 with those taken two years earlier, Chapman perceived the working out of a 'polishing' process with some of the recent photos going so far as 'to give him a poetical, "spiritual' look"'. 108 In 1933, Gable accepted his casting as something over which he had no control: 'it doesn't pay to squabble with the Front Office over the way they cast pictures'. 109 A year later, following the release and acclaim of It Happened One Night (1934), Gable declared his rebellion 'against being cast as mere box-office bait in minor roles opposite glamorous females'. He was now 'going to demand some good HE-man roles'. 110 On the whole, Gable achieved his wish with such films as Call of the Wild (1935) that provided him with ample displays of tough masculinity (Figure 4). The one clear exception was Parnell (1937), a critical and commercial failure that some fan magazines explained by Gable's miscasting. Parnell, the nineteenth-century Irish politician, is portrayed as smitten by love, made helpless by illness and ending with an emotional death scene, which was compared with Garbo's death scene in Camille. 111 Gable's masculine persona was fully reclaimed in his last film of the decade, Gone with The Wind (1939) in which his hard, rough-with-women masculinity could once again be viewed in contrast with Howard's softer mode.
Reports of Gable's lifestyle reinforced the tough persona by emphasising his early years of hardship, his outdoorsman activities in the wilds, particularly hunting and fishing, his informal clothes and dislike of formal dress and his taste for plain food. 112 The tributes to Gable's masculine lifestyle indicated a need to compensate for the more vulnerable masculinity of his earlier leading man roles and his Parnell, and they sometimes took a somewhat defensive approach to his masculinity by stating that he was not a sissy or a softie. 113 Among fan letter writers, there were differences as to how tough they wanted Gable to be. One fan complained in 1935 that Gable was 'turning sissified': 'For Heaven's sakes, we want Clark rough, uncouth, a cave man-anything but the way he is today'. 114 Another fan replied that if Gable 'had continued in rough, uncouth, woman-beating roles', he would not be 'the top actor of the screen'. This fan did not want Gable to be changed back to a cave man; she wanted him as he was, 'charming, a little dangerous, devastating, gentle and dynamic'. 115 This is a description of a bipolar masculinity that combines hard and soft elements.

The leading man departs
The leading man in the sense of leading the supporting cast for a female star continued into the 1940s and several items reported on the shortage of young leading men during the war. With reports of a proportional increase in the male audience and of the greater popularity of male stars, there were no more claims that women ruled Hollywood or items on female stars choosing their leading men. The term lost its special meaning and was no longer associated with specific male actors. Some of the leading men of the 1930s who had become stars by the end of the decade continued as stars (Gable, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Robert Taylor), anchored their stardom to a particular genre (McCrea in westerns), moved into character roles (Marshall), diversified their roles (Tone who also became a producer, Montgomery who also became a director) or experienced a decline in their film careers (William, Brent, Raymond). The rough, tough, working-class hero of film noir was a prominent masculinity in the 1940s, and the traits of the soft-boiled hero of the 1930s -eloquence, elegance and wealth -came to be associated with the villain. The debonair masculinity that was typical of many leading men of the 1930s found less favour and what had been accepted as a seductive form of heterosexuality came to be associated with homosexuality.
The entrance of the United States into the Second World War devalued softer forms of masculinity as the image of the American soldier drew upon the traditional male virtue of toughness that was associated, in particular, with working-class males. The American soldier was seen to be protecting American women by their courage rather than catering to their emotional needs. Many women found work in war-related industries but leaders of businesses and unions emphasised that this was a short-term expedient and that men were the appropriate breadwinners and providers. 116 The male as breadwinner had been propounded emphatically during the 1930s but, in contrast to the context of men at war, this was a defence of the male at a time when many unemployed men felt humiliation as a consequence of their economic dependence on wives and daughters. 117 The tough-guy image of the 1930s was, in part, a reaction to the Depression's emasculation of the male worker, but this image catered less to the needs of women, many of whom, wives and daughters, had to economically support their families in the face of vehement opposition to the employment of married women and occupational discrimination against all women. 118 In these circumstances, the fan magazines' representations of female stars as women who were not dependent on men and of leading men who were empathetic towards feminine feelings appealed to many women.
Fan magazines were complicit, in part, with the hegemonic tough-guy masculinity displayed by major male stars, but they also resisted it. This resistance took three forms. First, they valued and praised soft forms of masculinity displayed by the majority of leading men and a minority of male stars, often above that of the 'he-man' stars. Second, the tough-guy masculinity of male stars was heavily qualified by a distinction between their hard on-screen personas and their softer off-screen personas. And third, certain male stars were represented as having a hybrid or bipolar masculinity, moving between, and combining in certain roles, hard and soft modes. These forms of resistance indicated that masculinity (and femininity) was fluid and malleable and called into question binary oppositions, such as between strong and weak, active and passive and hard and soft, that have been used to set masculinity and femininity apart and to distinguish hegemonic and subordinate masculinities. He is also the author of five books and many articles on the sociology of religion and ethnicity. His research on popular cinema has focused on the relationship between representations of class and gender in popular cinema.