It was on this day, 30th April, in 1927 that the first movie stars stuck their hands and feet into wet cement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. First to get their mitts dirty were Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, then the most famous celebrity couple in the world, as well as partners in the Theatre itself. This was three weeks before the theatre officially opened with a screening of Cecil B. De Mille’s King of Kings. There are now more than two hundred pairs of hands and feet indented in the pavement outside the theatre, most recently those of Will Smith (though Jazzy Jeff is believed to be still awaiting his invitation). Grauman was an expert publicist to make a spectacle of the ground outside his venue, peppering it with permanent mementos of the world’s biggest movie stars, but I find that, instead of aggrandising those stars, it makes them seem smaller, more fragile, just a shallow impression underfoot. Perhaps that was the aim, to bring them closer to the people and get them to kneel.
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