America is a country with no aristocracy, no landed gentry, and ostensibly no barriers to rising in society. Of course, the paradox of American culture is that the above is true while at the same time being utterly false. If social differences are more fluid than in, say, Great Britain, they are still undeniably real. Yet even the most egalitarian of societies needs its heroes, as it needs the pageant of history to provide context, and in the twentieth century movies, and the movie stars who inhabit them, fulfilled that vital function, substituting for the heroes and villains once found in books. Onscreen and in anecdotal form (Hollywood history is told most often via the anecdote) movie stars comprise a class that is as close to Olympian as any collection of individuals has ever been. "Once there were no film stars," writes film historian Ronald L...