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For female stars, the returns are lower, but so are the expectations. Women's films exist in a ghetto, and so do women stars, including the most luminous. Everybody knows that Michelle Pfeiffer is a gorgeous star, but they know it from glancing at magazine covers, not from paying to see her films. Jane Fonda's latest projects (Old Gringo, Stanley & Iris) have been noble anonymities. Meryl Streep's name on a movie is like an objet d'art in a mogul's living room: it's there to impress people. Her inevitable Oscar nominations are a springtime balm for the corporate conscience and ego, but she is unlikely to make a studio much money: 1990's Postcards from the Edge is her only black-ink project in years.
Even when his or her ticket sales are robust, a star can be perceived to be in a slump. It's thought that Days of Thunder registered a career dip for Tom Cruise, yet it earned more money than his previous film, Born on the Fourth of July. Eddie Murphy's "disappointing" Another 48 HRS. did better than Harlem Nights. The reason for the bad-mouthing: Days and HRS. were costly pictures that had a hard time breaking even. This is do-or-die stuff for the industry but of no moment to moviegoers. "Audiences don't care how much a movie costs," says Tom Pollock, head of Universal Pictures. "They just want it to work."
The thing about movies is that nobody knows what works. The whole enterprise is make believe: a triumph of fantasy over fact. It's what makes the job exciting. A film out of nowhere, with a nobody star, can send people out happy -- and make the producers of Home Alone rich. Conversely, a blockbuster wannabe like Redford's Havana grossed less in the U.S. than, say, the Italian import Cinema Paradiso.
There will always be more Havanas than Home Alones; there always have been. But in Hollywood 50 years ago, the ceiling was lower and the floor more secure than in today's boom-or-bust industry. Back when moviegoing was a national habit and not an event, pictures would play for a week or two in the studio- owned theaters, and a hit might gross just twice as much as a flop. This even stream of pictures kept stars in their place; they could be signed to seven-year contracts, and if they balked, their bosses could suspend them and replace them with more docile creatures. "Every studio had a farm system," says Art Murphy of Variety. "They would be put in a B picture, and if the public responded to them, they would be put in an A picture. You got a constant transfusion of new blood for $125 to $200 a week per actor."
The farm was really a plantation; stars were slaves, handsomely paid but still indentured. This was bad for actors and great for audiences. "Fans felt loyal to the star," says George Christy, a Hollywood Reporter columnist. "Star power has dissipated, and fan power too, because stars make movies less frequently. Before Warren Beatty comes out with Dick Tracy, he has to go on Barbara Walters to reintroduce himself to the public" because he hasn't made a movie in three years.