The document discusses the star system in American cinema. It outlines the history of stars from the early 1900s, when the first star Florence Lawrence emerged, through the development of icons like Charlie Chaplin in the 1910s. It describes stars of the 1920s Jazz Age and the repression of the 1930s Depression. The rise of black stars followed the civil rights movement of the 1960s, with pioneers like Sidney Poitier and the Blaxploitation genre of the 1970s. The document notes there is a difference between acting persona, star persona, and real person in American cinema.