How do you get a star in Hollywood? You have to be nominated, have been in the business for over five years, and someone has to pay $75,000 on your behalf, along with a few other requirements as well.
There are currently 2,790 stars in Hollywood. This increases by 30 every year. They can’t all be on the street the idea was started in because they would take up too much space. They spread out along Hollywood Boulevard for 15 blocks, and they go up and down Vine Street for 4 blocks. Each star is set into a paving star and the majority of them are a simple pink star with a gold outline. They have the persons name at the top in gold and an emblem in the middle to show which category the star has been awarded in. The categories are motion pictures, broadcast television, audio recording, broadcast radio, theater. Recently, some people have been allowed to have stars that represent a brand that sponsors them. There are also a few stars that were awarded to people who don’t fit into any of those categories. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, for example, don’t fit into any of those categories and their stars are shaped like moons.
The idea for the Hollywood stars began with E. M. Stuart in 1953. He was the president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Nobody knows if the original idea was his, but he was the one that managed to get the ball rolling. He might have got the idea from the dining room of the Hollywood Hotel. It used to have painted stars on its ceiling and each star had the name of a celebrity on it. Or that could just be coincidence. Stuart said that the stars were a way of “maintaining the glory of a community whose name means glamour and excitement in the four corners of the world”. He created a committee to work out the details and they found an architectural firm to work out the logistics of whether it would be possible or not. It took him two more years to get all the permission he needed, and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce was on board. They took over the idea and ran with it. The Chamber of Commerce started the Hollywood Improvement Association and put a businessman called Harry Sugarman in charge of it. He is the person that got the first stars made. It took a few more years and some legal wrangling, but the first stars were laid in 1960. The main legal problem was that the businesses next to the street were made to pay for it, a cost of $85 a foot. We obviously know that the Hollywood stars bring about 10 million tourists a year to the area, but they had no way of knowing that back then.
So, how do you get a star on the walk of fame? First, the person has to be nominated. Anyone can do the nominating, but the nominee must agree to be nominated. They must be alive and active in their line of work and they must have been doing it for at least five years. They must also be available to attend the unveiling of their star. This was a system that was started in 1968 because there was not much publicity or interest in the stars and the area. By insisting that the stars attended, it brought both attention and crowds of people. Stars who have died can be nominated, but they must have been dead for more than 5 years. If the nominated person is selected, a fee of $75,000 for the installation and the upkeep of the star must be paid. This is almost always paid for by the group that nominated the star. It is doubtful that many celebrities would pay that much money to have their own name put on a star, but you never know. The nominating people are often film studios or record companies and they use the star as a form of advertising. Roughly 200 people are nominated every year and only 24 of them are selected. If a person isn’t selected, they will be pushed over to the next year and if they are not selected for two years in a row, they are dropped and have to be renominated.
There are four categories that someone can be nominated in today, but there were five categories in the early days. Only one person has a star in every category. That is an American actor who was a huge star from the 1930s to the 1960s called Gene Autry. Bob Hope, Muckey Rooney, Roy Rogers, and Tony Martin have four stars each. And this is what I learned today.
Photo by Ekaterina Belinskaya: https://www.pexels.com/photo/pink-stars-on-gray-tiled-street-sidewalk-4700108/
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Walk_of_Fame