The actress Mae West captured the elusive magic of movie stars best: “It isn’t what I do, but how I do it. It isn’t what I say, but how I say it. And how I look when I do it and say it.” Stars are alluring but contradictory in nature, as much emblems of cinema’s intimate magic as they are products of their time and place. They have a certain oomph, that ephemeral “It” factor, a term popularized by the incandescent Clara Bow performance in the 1927 silent romantic comedy It . The history of cinema and stars are forever linked. But ultimately, it’s the audience — and the box office — that decides which performers become stars. And it’s time that decides which of them become legends.

In classic Hollywood, the best stars had a firm grasp of the filmmaking process. They were technicians, act

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