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Edna Purviance on the cover of Photoplay magazine

Photoplay was one of the first film fan magazines. It was founded in 1911 in Chicago, the same year that J. Stuart Blackton founded a similar magazine entitled Motion Picture Story.

Photoplay began as a short-fiction magazine concerned mostly with the plots and characters of films at the time and was used as a promotional tool for those films. In 1915, Julian Johnson and James R. Quirk became the editors (though Quirk had been vice-president of the magazine since its inception), and together they created a format which would set a precedent for almost all celebrity magazines that followed. By 1918 the editors could boast a circulation figure of 204,434, the popularity of the magazine fueled by the public's ever increasing interest in the private lives of celebrities. It is because of this that the magazine is credited with inventing celebrity media.

From 1920-1939 and 1944-1968, Photoplay gave out awards. First called Medals of Honor and later, Gold Medals, they were given out for the best movie, most popular male star and most popular female star. Photoplay readers, not critics, voted on the awards which pre-dated the Academy Awards. During the 1940's, the Gallup Poll company ran polls that determined the winners. Bing Crosby and Greer Garson were frequently named the most popular film stars during the 1940s and later winners of the title included James Stewart, Jane Wyman, Alan Ladd, Marilyn Monroe, Rock Hudson, and Kim Novak. In 1977 and 1978, The Photoplay Awards were broadcast on network television as variety specials.

Photoplay reached its apex in the 1920s and 1930s and was considered quite influential within the motion picture industry. The magazine was renowned for its beautiful artwork portraits of film stars on the cover by such artists as Earl Christy and Charles Sheldon. With the advancement of color photography, the magazine began using photographs of the stars instead by 1937.

Photoplay published the writings of Hedda Hopper, Walter Winchell, Cal York, Sidney Skolsky, Adela Rogers St. John, Sheilah Graham, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Louella Parsons, among others. The magazine was edited by Quirk until 1932, later editors include Kathyrn Dougherty, Ruth Waterbury, and Adele Whiteley Fletcher.

Photoplay merged with another fan magazine, Movie Mirror, in 1941; and changed again in 1977, when the name became Photoplay and TV Mirror. The magazine ceased publication in 1980. A British version of Photoplay debuted in 1950, featuring an equal mix of American and British films and stars, and ceased publication in 1989.

• Original PHOTOPLAY interview with Greta Garbo - as told by her to Ruth Biery