Hello, I would need an audio version of this text to help my French 9th grade students listen and understand a little bit more about Hollywood. It is one part of a five-part lesson, so if you feel courageous... Please speak naturally and do enunciate as my students are lower-intermediate English learners... Thank you so much.
PART 5 : Hollywood’s Star System
Many stars live in Hollywood neighboring communities such as Beverly Hills and Bel Air. One of the first stars of Hollywood was Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was already a pretty big star by the start of the 1920s. Among his most famous movies were Modern Times in 1936 and The Great Dictator in 1940.
Hollywood’s star system was the method of creating, promoting and exploiting stars in Hollywood films. Movie studios would select promising young actors, glamorise them and create public characters for them, often inventing new names or new backgrounds.
These actors were repeatedly given leading roles, which inspired a massive fan base that perpetuated the system. If an actor was introduced to the “star system”, it literally changed his/ her career. Examples are actors like Audrey Hepburn or Cary Grant.
Women were expected to behave like ladies, and were never to leave the house without makeup and stylish clothes. Men were expected to be seen in public as gentlemen. Morality clauses were a common part of actors' studio contracts.
The restrictive aspect of the star system, manipulating images and reality, finally began to fail. By 1970 the star system which started in the 1920s, had disappeared.
Today the phenomenon of stardom has remained essential to Hollywood’s attractiveness but actors are more free to choose their own career.
A perfect work again. Thank you very much for this.