Caution: Starlet contains much female nudity of the torso and derriere. The images are intended to be provocative, without being in poor taste. The book also contains occasional coarse words. If such things offend you, avoid this book.If Starlet had a larger page size and a lower price, this would be a five-star book. It contains the writing and photography to warrant a five-star rating.
Starlet's theme is how an aspiring young actress or actor goes about defining herself or himself to attract the attention of Hollywood producers, directors, and casting executives while then going on to grab a mass audience in the theaters.
In the days of the studio system, the studio hired hundreds of such youngsters and tried to build them into stars around a preconceived marketing concept. Today, the youngsters have to do the same thing, but by relying on their own resources. It makes the odds much more difficult to overcome.
Ms. Nancy Ellison's photography from 1970-1995 shows a remarkable ability to capture the uniqueness of her strivers, rather than putting them all into simple molds. Her results seemed best at capturing the subtleties of personality, body type, and acting ability of the subjects when women were involved. But a few of her male photographs are quite remarkable, too.
Ms. Ellison's opening essay on her philosophy is very well done, and explains her work quite well. "To the viewer, the starlet holds this problem, availability, surrender, and finally, possession." "With another woman, I choose to be in collusion with her -- to seduce the world with her beauty." "What has she got that no one else has?" "It is the imagery that creates the desirability of the subject." "Starlet is an homage to all those beautiful creatures who posed for my camera hoping for stardom, and to their youthful dreams."
As fine as her essay is, it is easily outshone by Mr. Paul Theroux's musings about what a starlet is. He begins by recalling his experience as a youngster spotting Marilyn Monroe in Scubba-Hoo! Scubba-Hay! listed in the credits as "girl in rowboat" (which was actually a canoe). From there he describes the Margot Peters character in Vladimir Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark. Mr. Theroux puts up many contradictory, but partially accurate, dictionary definitions. These ideas are contrasted with popular conceptions and how directors think about starlets. Ultimately, he feels that a starlet is many things including "the siren, the waif, the girl with screen potential, the babe, the expressive face, the eloquent [derriere] . . . ."
You will recognize and be interested in many of the photographs in the book. Most of the subjects went on to have noteworthy careers, but there are also unknowns who are probably out of the industry now.
My favorite female images were of Rosanna Arquette, Shari Belafonte, Jamie Lee Curtis, Geena Davis, Molly Ringwald, Jennifer Tilly, Grace Jones, Isabelle Adjani, Kim Bassinger, Catherine Hicks, Isabelle Huppart, Isabella Rosellini, Margot Kidder, Maud Adams, Heather Locklear, Sharon Stone, Glenn Close, and Arielle Dombasle. In terms of acting skill for the camera, Rosanna Arquette, Isabelle Adjani, Isabelle Huppart, Sharon Stone, and Glenn Close will make the biggest impressions on you. These women were all quite young in these photographs (although clearly over 18) so there's a dewiness that you may not have seen before. On the other hand, strong character is also clearly present in some of these women at quite a young age. In others, emotional maturity is evident also.
My favorite male photographs were of Pierce Brosnan (the best in my opinion), Christopher Reeve, River Phoenix, and Nicholas Cage.
The page size for these images should have had an area about 40 percent larger. The details would have reproduced much better if that had been the case.
In many cases, a two page layout has five or six images on it. These images are really too small to do justice to the work.
I would like to mention that the captions were excellent. Ms. Ellison discusses the subject, the issues involved with the shooting, and makes broader observations about starlets in these captions.
For the number of pages in this volume, I thought the price was excessive. The volume felt more like one that should have had a suggested retail price of $27.50 to me.
Despite my quibbles, most people who love to look at beautiful women and handsome men will find this to be an outstanding volume.
I suggest that you take out photographs of yourself at various ages, and look objectively to see what these images tell you about how you represent yourself. In which ones are you playing a role? In which ones are you being yourself? What lessons do you draw from these observations and from seeing Starlet about how you should portray yourself in the future?
Let the beauty of your soul shine through!
