Stars on the Hustings

...The buzz of excitement was unmistakable...

...Even those in sympathy with liberalism must agree that its ends are best served by grounding its message and program in the quotidian realities that are meaningful to people in Forest Hills...

...Media critic Stuart Ewen has pointed out the stark incongruity of Ricci smoothing out the wrinkles in Rita's visage: "His eyes have been hollowed by hunger and humiliation...

...Shortly thereafter Michael Dukakis, sleeves rolled and all, made his appearance...

...After World War II, what had been an edifying diversion from filmmaking for many turned into the nightmare of investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee and blacklists...

...Or at least he didn't embarrass them...

...Maybe it was Cher that put him over the top, but somehow I doubt it...

...No politician did that better than John F. Kennedy, who projected a mind-bending mix of power and eros...

...Reviewed by Yehudah Mirsky Political consultant...

...In any case, celebrities alone cannot reverse the fortunes of a faltering national campaign...

...Would it help Ricci...

...No, not the candidate...

...Cher...

...rather, his presence and reputation unwittingly "allowed critics to connect the dots of Gary Hart's confusing behavior...

...Although movie stars certainly are citizens like the rest of us, they are largely insulated by virtue of their wealth, mobility and the less-than-earthbound elements of their universe...

...Yet what would happen if, Pirandello-style, Rita Hayworth descended from her poster and got up a petition urging better working conditions for poster-hangers...

...Hollywood's participation in politics actually dates to World War I, when Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin sold war bonds...

...Warren Beatty has used his skill at acting and directing to help craft compelling political messages in a number of campaigns...

...Their public strength is reinforcing a clearly stated message...

...have supported would be better for the people of this country than the alternatives...

...One of Ronald Brownstein's more interesting conclusions in this consistently interesting, thoughtful and sometimes brilliant book is that most Hollywood people who take to politics in one form or another do so to escape the pervasive, if well-paid, meaninglessness that hovers over their lives...

...Hollywood liberalism presents us with the spectacle of politics divorced from interest...

...Yet one need look no farther than Europe and England to see that entertainment can indeed discuss the concerns of the common man ostensibly trumpeted by Hollywood liberals and be better art for the effort...

...Why are the denizens of our film world on the whole politically liberal...

...Just as significant as JFK's infusion of glamour into politics was his President's Club, a firstof-its-kind fundraising operation that bypassed state party organizations and was run directly from the White House...

...At the margins, one would have to say yes— that is, if you believe the causes espoused by the candidates Rita & Co...

...Rita can offer a vision of plenty, she can lend a helping hand, but in the final analysis she really can't deliver...

...Substantively, stars are probably most effective in comparatively self-effacing, insider roles...

...but its fantasies are so much more appealing than those of the Right...

...When Loretta Lynn stood by her man at a rally for George Bush and announced that she could never bring herself to vote for someone whose name she couldn't pronounce, she merely said what the crowd had already been encouraged to think by James A. Baker III and Lee Atwater's carefully constructed, if shamelessly demagogic, strategy...

...That was made clear to me at a Democratic rally I attended in the fall of 1988 in Forest Hills, Queens, an archetypal New York Reagan Democrat neighborhood...

...Robert Redford devotes himself almost exclusively to conservation...

...Harry Belafonte has, since the early days of the civil rights movement, worked tirelessly at fundraising, publicity, dialogue, intergroup relations and lobbying...

...I recall reading a few years back that when Jack Klugman testified before a Congressional subcommittee on Tourette's Syndrome, one of the members asked him if "Quincy" had a last name...

...Not that the Left has a monopoly on self-righteousness...

...He uses his fame and auspices to bring together scientists, environmentalists and businesspeople in low-key seminars...

...he was drawn to Republicanism for the same reason his movies depicted a never-never America of white picket fences and blonde virtue: He desperately wanted to fit in, to be a respectable American...

...contributor, "Economist," "Washington Monthly," "Midstream" In Vittorio De Sica's classic film, The Bicycle Thief, Ricci, the desperate breadwinner for his impoverished family, finds a day's work plastering Rita Hayworth posters up and down the length of Rome...

...Behind-the-scenes activity, the author suggests, works best of all when focused on a single issue, rather than helping to elect someone...

...Through the 1930s, this widely shared Hollywood impulse to carve out a place in some overarching framework largely found expression in the language of Leftwing politics...

...His role in the fall of Gary Hart was not, Brownstein says, as tempter...

...Like other Jewish immigrant film moguls, Mayer had no discernible political beliefs himself...

...In these circumstances, not surprisingly, Hollywood's eager performers have been expanding their role...

...These involve the collapse of fame into celebrity, the role of the commercial media, the decline of parties, the politics of cultural symbolism, and, of course, the growing centrality of campaign financing...

...A prime example is Lew Wasserman of MCA, profiled at length by Brownstein, whose extensive political connections, one surmises, were not unwelcome during his negotiations with Matsushita for the purchase of his company...

...her breasts are swollen with a promise of infinite bounty...

...Hollywood people, attracted by the Left's self-image as History's vanguard and guilt-ridden over their own financial well-being during the Depression, offered money and publicity to a variety of causes—Dust Bowl victims, Spanish Civil War widows, Polish relief, and eventually the campaigns of Democrats...

...To be sure, a wholly politicized filmmaking industry would impoverish the marketplace of ideas, where gray is the richest color...

...Since then, the escalation of nationwide political fundraising and the growth of television campaigning have gone hand in hand—not simply because buying time on television takes a lot of money, but because politics has become increasingly abstract in the media age...

...The gulf separating Ricci from Rita is, in many ways, the stuff of politics...

...But it didn't become palpable until the legendary Louis B. Mayer threw his support behind the candidacy of Herbert Hoover in the 1920s...

...Grown men shrieked like bobbysoxers at a Frank Sinatra stage show...

...Yet ultimately the good society, if not quite the perfect society, will come from the unglamorous undertakings of Ricci's descendants themselves...

...rectitude and know-how, Gary Cooper and Walt Disney...

...The implicit message was that although he might look like just another dweeb from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, "Mike" was, in fact, oh so chic, oh so cool, as hip and knowing and subliminally erotic as the stars arrayed on the podium...

...As Brownstein says of Lauren Bacall's 1950s infatuation with Democratic Presidential standard-bearer Adlai Stevenson, "to make the star feel like a star, it took a politician...

...It is driven more and more by image and less by words or the local ward-heelers' deeds...

...They can pick and choose among the political positions they find most congenial, both esthetically and morally, with scant regard for the trade-offs that are an unavoidable part of the real world...

...On the image-building side, stars have been regularly adorning campaigns and publicizing issues by speaking at rallies and even testifying before Congressional committees...

...Gregory Hines did something appropriately called "A Dance for Mike Dukakis"— a series of mincing tap steps on a very narrow platform...

...His performance, Brownstein says, is "a textbook on the ways celebrities could meaningfully encourage political change...

...It turned out that Queens went for Dukakis, by 3-2...

...So, are Ricci's grandchildren in America better off for Rita Hayworth's successors having gotten down off the poster and done some politicking...

...Interestingly, unlike stars, Hollywood executives, who deal day in and day out with the harsh realities of business competition and government regulation, sprinkle their largess on both sides of the aisle, just to be safe...

...Brownstein says: "Compelled to constantly compromise in the making of films, Hollywood figures tend to veer toward the other extreme and become purists in politics as a sort of psychic compensation...

...Thefans were then treated to literally a busload of stars—Lauren Hutton, Holly Hunter, Ron Silver, to name a few—who told how only "Mike" could handle Third World debt, acid rain and the disrepair of the Interstate Highway System...

...That they have found themselves increasingly welcome over the years is the result of broad changes in the American political arena that are Brownstein's real concerns...

...The feverish political activity of prewar Hollywood subsided, but the hunger remained...

...Thenext President of the United States," got a polite reception...

...Following a few opening acts came the main event, and the crowd went wild...

...On the Right, the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Values was founded by the walking icons of U.S...

...On the financial front, groups likethe Malibu Mafia, Network and the Hollywood Women's Political Caucus have demonstrated their readiness to raise money for candidates they favor, making a trip to the film capital one of the first stops on a would-be office holder's itinerary...

...Or, one might add, without significantly altering the subject matter of their films...

...Stars may attract attention and provide shorthand recognition of who a candidate is and what he or she stands for, but involving them has its complications...

...There is, I think, something else...

...Brownstein eloquently and justifiably expresses his disgust with the sight of good men and women who have won their places in the political trenches being raked ? ver the coals for doctrinal purity by well-heeled liberals whose parlor meetings and fundraising luncheons enable them "to reaffirm their militant ideology without repudiating their comfortable lives...

...And why would she want to do a thing like that anyway...

...They cannot create a persona for a candidate, nor can they fill his empty policy vessels...