Categories | Film Entertainment |
---|---|
Founded | 1911 |
Final issue | 1980 |
Company | Macfadden Publications |
Country | United States |
Based in | Chicago |
Language | English |
ISSN | 0732-538X |
Photoplay was one of the first American film (another name for photoplay) fan magazines. It was founded in Chicago in 1911, the same year that J. Stuart Blackton founded Motion Picture Story , another magazine directed at fans. In 1921, Photoplay established what is considered the first significant annual movie award. For most of its run, it was published by Macfadden Publications. The magazine ceased publication in 1980.
Photoplay began as a short fiction magazine concerned mostly with the plots and characters of films at the time and was used as a promotional tool for those films. In 1915, Julian Johnson and James R. Quirk became the editors (though Quirk had been vice president of the magazine since its inception), and together they created a format which would set a precedent for almost all celebrity magazines that followed. By 1918 the circulation exceeded 200,000, with the popularity of the magazine fueled by the public's increasing interest in the private lives of celebrities.
Photoplay reached its apex in the 1920s and 1930s, and was considered quite influential within the motion picture industry. [1] The magazine was renowned for its artwork portraits of film stars, by such artists as Earl Christy and Charles Sheldon, on the cover. Macfadden Publications purchased the magazine in 1934. With the advance of color photography, by 1937 the magazine instead began using photographs of the stars.
Photoplay published the writings of Lillian Day, Sheilah Graham, Hedda Hopper, Dorothy Kilgallen, Hazel MacDonald, Louella Parsons, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Rob Wagner (later the editor and publisher of Script), and Walter Winchell, among others. The magazine was edited by Quirk until 1932; later editors include Kathryn Dougherty, Ruth Waterbury, and Adele Whiteley Fletcher. It also featured the health and beauty advice of Sylvia of Hollywood, arguably the first fitness guru to the stars.
Sidney Skolsky, a nationally syndicated gossip columnist for the New York Daily News and later the New York Daily Mirror , had a regular column in Photoplay called "From A Stool At Schwab's", the Hollywood drugstore he made famous; such was the magazine's popularity. [2]
In 1921 Photoplay established what is considered the first significant annual movie award, the Photoplay Magazine Medal of Honor. [3] An actual medallion produced by Tiffany & Co., it was voted on by the readers of the magazine and given to the producer of the year's best film, chosen with an emphasis on (according to Quirk) "the ideals and motives governing its production... the worth of its dramatic message." Though Photoplay only gave the single award for best film, its intentions and standards were influential on the Academy Awards founded later in the decade, and they overlap on Best Picture choices to some extent, though increasingly in the 1930s Photoplay's choices reflected its primarily female readership. By 1939 the Medal of Honor had declined in importance, and the award was discontinued that year.
From 1944 to 1968, Photoplay awarded a Gold Medal for film of the year based on polling done by George Gallup's Audience Research Inc. through the 1950s, and then voted on by the magazine's readers. It also awarded Most Popular Male Star and Most Popular Female Star based on actors' and actresses' popularity, not their performance. The awards were based on polling through the 1950s, and then on a vote by the readers, similar to the Gold Medal. [3] Bing Crosby and Greer Garson were frequently named the most popular film stars during the 1940s and later winners of the title included James Stewart, Jane Wyman, Alan Ladd, Marilyn Monroe, Rock Hudson, and Kim Novak. Most popular television stars were also named in the 1960s. In 1948, the Photoplay Awards were broadcast on network television as part of The Steve Allen Plymouth Show . [4]
Additionally, in September 1921, Photoplay began designating a handful of movies each month as the Best Pictures of the Month, providing a window into contemporary opinion at a time when movie coverage was not as extensive as it later became. The initial set of selections in the September 1921 issue were: [7]
In January 1923, Photoplay also added the category Best Performances of the Month. The initial selections for this award were: [8]
Actor | Film |
---|---|
Mary Pickford | Tess of the Storm Country |
Wallace Beery | Robin Hood |
Betty Compson | To Have and To Hold |
George Nichols | The Flirt |
Helen Jerome Eddy | |
Jackie Coogan | Oliver Twist |
Photoplay merged with another fan magazine, Movie Mirror, in 1941; and with TV-Radio Mirror in 1977, when the name became Photoplay and TV Mirror.
The magazine published its final issue on April 15, 1980. [9] In a sign of changing times, the cover photo featured not movie stars but two television actresses, Victoria Principal and Charlene Tilton. [9] The skeleton staff of six people were all transferred to Us magazine, which Macfadden Publications had recently acquired. [9] The president of Macfadden, Peter J. Callahan, said the decision to cease publication was made "very reluctantly", but also added the bald observation that "the day of the traditional movie magazine is over". [9]
A British version of Photoplay debuted in March 1950, and in April 1981 it was rebranded as Photoplay: Movies and Video. [9] It featured an equal mix of American and British films and stars, and ceased publication in 1989.
Gladys Marie Smith, known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian actress resident in the U.S., and also producer, screenwriter and film studio founder, who was a pioneer in the US film industry with a Hollywood career that spanned five decades.
Richard Semler Barthelmess was an American film actor, principally of the Hollywood silent era. He starred opposite Lillian Gish in D. W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1919) and Way Down East (1920) and was among the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927. The following year, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for two films: The Patent Leather Kid and The Noose.
Clara Gordon Bow was an American actress who rose to stardom during the silent film era of the 1920s and successfully made the transition to "talkies" in 1929. Her appearance as a plucky shopgirl in the film It brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl". Bow came to personify the Roaring Twenties and is described as its leading sex symbol.
Entertainment Weekly is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular culture. The magazine debuted on February 16, 1990, in New York City, and ceased print publication in 2022.
Modern Screen was an American fan magazine that for over 50 years featured articles, pictorials and interviews with film stars.
Norma Marie Talmadge was an American actress and film producer of the silent era. A major box-office draw for more than a decade, her career reached a peak in the early 1920s, when she ranked among the most popular idols of the American screen.
Us Weekly is a weekly celebrity and entertainment magazine based in New York City. Us Weekly was founded in 1977 by The New York Times Company, who sold it in 1980. It was acquired by Wenner Media in 1986, and sold to American Media Inc. in 2017. Shortly afterward, former editor James Heidenry stepped down, and was replaced by Jennifer Peros. The chief content officer of American Media, Dylan Howard, oversees the publication.
Frances Marion was an American screenwriter, director, journalist and author often cited as one of the most renowned female screenwriters of the 20th century alongside June Mathis and Anita Loos. During the course of her career, she wrote over 325 scripts. She was the first writer to win two Academy Awards. Marion began her film career working for filmmaker Lois Weber. She wrote numerous silent film scenarios for actress Mary Pickford, before transitioning to writing sound films.
A fan magazine is a commercially written and published magazine intended for the amusement of fans of the popular culture subject matter that it covers. It is distinguished from a scholarly, literary or trade magazine on the one hand, by the target audience of its contents, and from a fanzine on the other, by the commercial and for-profit nature of its production and distribution. Scholarly works on popular culture and fandoms do not always make this terminological distinction clear. In some relevant works, fanzines are called "fan magazines", possibly because the term "fanzine" is seen as slang.
May Allison was an American actress whose greatest success was achieved in the early part of the 20th century in silent films, although she also appeared on stage.
Dorothy Mackaill was a British-American actress, most active during the silent-film era and into the pre-Code era of the early 1930s.
Matinée idol is a term used mainly to describe film or theatre stars who are adored to the point of adulation by their fans. The term almost exclusively refers to adult male actors.
The New York Evening Graphic was a tabloid newspaper published from 1924 to 1932 by Macfadden Publications. Exploitative and mendacious in its short life, the Graphic exemplified tabloid journalism and launched the careers of Walter Winchell, Louis Sobol, and sportswriter-turned-columnist and television host Ed Sullivan.
Macfadden Communications Group is a publisher of business magazines. It has a historical link with a company started in 1898 by Bernarr Macfadden that was one of the largest magazine publishers of the twentieth century.
Humoresque is a 1920 American silent drama film produced by Cosmopolitan Productions, released by Famous Players–Lasky and Paramount Pictures, and was directed by Frank Borzage from a 1919 short story by Fannie Hurst and script or scenario by Frances Marion.
Motion Picture was an American monthly fan magazine about film, published from 1911 to 1977. It was lastly published by Macfadden Publications.
May Mann, born May Vasta Randall, was a Hollywood columnist and freelance writer. She wrote a syndicated column about Hollywood gossip and wrote articles on celebrities for fan magazines. Her "Going Hollywood" column was syndicated to 400 newspapers, and contributed to movie magazines Movie Mirror, Silver Screen, Movie Teen, Screenland, and Photoplay. Her columns often featured photos of herself with the celebrity she profiled. She befriended several celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and wrote books about Elvis Presley, Clark Gable, and Jayne Mansfield. She was known as "Hollywood Date Girl" since she wrote about parties that she attended with Hollywood celebrities.
James R. Quirk was an American magazine editor.
Cordelia D. "Delight" Evans was an American entertainment writer, editor, and film critic who was most widely known for her career as the editor of Screenland Magazine. Before accepting her career-making position at Screenland, Evans worked for Photoplay Magazine for six years. Screenland and Photoplay were both popular fan magazines that allowed fans to connect with movies outside the theaters. Some of the magazines' content consisted of movie reviews, movie promotions, and spreads of popular actors and actresses. Evans first started working for Screenland Magazine in October 1924 where she wrote reviews for various iconic films of that time. In 1929, Evans was promoted to Editor of the magazine. Nine years later in 1938, her success and ambitious attitude lead her to her own radio program, Food Secrets of the Movie Stars.
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