Contemporary Arts
Film Fever
9 WHAT is a fan? The films this
.A..R week being nothing much, in-
stead of writing about them I have been meditating on this individually despised and col- ,lectively cosseted appendage to 41 the film industry, a subject which has been exercising me for some ' time and that has led me (whom Nature clearly intended, so fascinating do I find other people's letters, for a postman) into rummaging through a fair number of the fan letters that turn up in their thousands from all corners of the earth in British studios. Their effect is cumulatively baffling. The longer I nose among them, the longer become the answers. What is a film fan? For practical and statistical purposes he is the writer of fan-mail. His more spectacular activities include the meeting of trains, the haunt- ing of Leicester Square on rainy premiere even- ings, the infiltrating of his person into any place where stars or near-stars (starlets, if you prefer it) may lurk; but his staple industry is the writing of admiring letters to people he has never met. Who is he? Like the general public, he may be almost anyone; but anyone, that is, in a heightened condition of the soul. Unlike the average member of the public, who is slow and reticent to state his views, the film fan is voluble, metaphorical, uninhibited. 'Oceans and oceans of ink,' I quote at random from the pile before me, 'and millions and millions of pens could not be able to express my regard for you'; 'I cry myself to sleep because I love you so much'; 'Honestly, if you'knew what an extraordinary and marvellous actress you are, you would be really pleased with yourself'; 'My hands as I write to'you are trembling visibly, my heart is palpitating audibly, and a cold sweat is breaking out all over me'; 'I have seen all your films, nearly. You're marvellous..1 go mad to see them and nearly faint.' Strange to see these outbursts rubber-stamped with the date of arrival and a curt 'list' or 'photo,' biography' or
'synopsis' scrawled across them. . • Fandom, Tannery, or whatever the. word may' be, is mild in scope in this country compared with, say, the States, where the business has thrived into a middle-sized industry. But it is enough to keep a number of people busy in every company. A British actor around the top may expect to get about 500 letters a week, perhaps more, depend-. ing on the number of films he has on general release, and on whether these are showing in epistolarily active parts of the world (like Ghana, for instance, where a film's arrival is greeted, as one of the fans put it, by 'a great rushing to witness' and a consequent great putting of pen to paper). Of these, 90 per cent. to 99 per cent. will be plain requests for a signed photograph.
Plain they may be but not (language being what It is and their geographical distribution being complicated and significant enough to provide material for a Ph.D. thesis a hundred years hence) dull. Why is it, what possible sociological reason can there be to explain that the regional-distribu- tion-of-fan-mail chart kept by the largest British Company shows, for its most recent four-weekly Period, 1,100 letters from Yugoslavia, with no other country in the world sending more than a hundred? All companies, all publicity men, con- firm the extraordinary exuberance of Yugoslavia
in the fan-mail business. Next in volubility comes Finland, next West Africa and South Africa. The Yugoslays send polite postcards : 'Dear Miss! !' they begin, or 'Dear Mister.' Dear Ladi' is rare and gracious. `Will you please bese kind and send me one of your photographed with autogramme,' they continue, or 'I saw you in the filmos wich were playing in the cinema, please send me your phOtographi, 1 gather my dearest stars.' Ghana sends more ceremonious appeals, without (you will notice) any split infinitives: 'I have the honour respectful to indite you this letter, please my wishers is that I want your free photograph.' The simple-minded amusement to be gained from the unskilled use of language is endless. Or, from foreign parts again, there are Servicemen, breezy, and between the lines autobiographical : 'I was wondering if you could oblige a home-sick Serviceman with an autographed photograph of yourself as a token of remembrance to a terrific girl in a terrific film'; often sending something in exchange.: 'I hope you will accept these photos 1 have taken during my time out here in the Med. The ship is the one I am serving on and 1 am very proud of her.' Continental girls often send photographs of themselves too, not, it appears, with any ulterior motive, but simply in friendly exchange. • But it is the 1 per cent. to 10 per cent. of letters over that provide the sobering, touching, be- wildering realisation, an individual rather than a numerical one, of what an actor may mean to his fan, an actress to hers. They are individual enough to defy sociological pigeon-holes, but nearly all; however .hackneyed their subject, however illiterate its expression, are written so directly from the heart that they become, in some way, eloquent. Nearly all are serious, in the sense that they expect to be taken seriously, and presume a • far -greater likelihood of the star's seeing them, taking them in and even answering them than is ever likely. Few offer constructive criticism, many ask for advice and interviews and answers, some are love-letters, some 'rave' letters from adolescents; a few beg. How they are answered in detail depends on the company's policy and the publicity manager's personality, but it is safe to say that very, very •few are dealt with, even remotely, by the star. Now stars are busy people,, and fans may be tiresome and persistent, but the amount of pleasure just a signature from the star would give (the letter could be written in the office just the same) seems worth the trouble, since the number of letters involved, when you whittle them down, is very small—far less than a busy businessman would expect to sign, and with such a dazzling deal of joy involved! The com- panies, of, course, are cunning, and a good pub- licity man, by saying 'Mr. — has asked me to thank you for your delightful birthday card and to send you the enclosed photograph of himself, which he hopes you will accept with his very best wishes,' will do much to give the impression that Mr. — has, in fact, got the birthday card stowed away in his wallet. But on the whole actors treat their fan-mail purely statistically; numbers, not sentiments, not even quality, are what count, and this attitude must surely come through in the answers, even to the least sophisti- cated.
Fans, of course, are a botincy breed, to be kept
(up to a point) at bay by any actor who values his private peace; but they are not such raging beasts as the remoteness of actors would seem to suggest. Film actors have taken on, we are con- stantly being told, mythological proportions in the modern world; and it has made them cor- respondingly mythological and remote. It is probably -harder to reach a film actor, even smallish fry, personally than it is to make contact with almost any other profes.sion, even in its higher reaches. This is probably the result of tire- some experience in the past. And yet, reading so many cris de cceur—some of them good-natured, sensible, lively, constructive' at moments, even charming—one is saddened to think of the face falling when the inevitable 'Miss has asked me to thank you for your letter' turns up. How easy it would be for the same office to put 'Thank you for your letter' and for the star to scribble a signature at the bottom! The bouncy fans per- haps get their deserts; but so many of these letters are humble. 'I don't suppose a famous girl like you would ever write to an ordinary chap like me,' writes a soldier to a very mediocre little actress. You're right, chum. She won't.
ISABEL QLJIGLY
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