Rising stars get a boost
Gorji’s research began with the construction of a massive database of film industry personalities and couples dating back to the late 19th century, at the inception of cinema. For this study, she limited her analysis to some 1,200 couples who were active between 1970 — toward the end of the studio system era and the birth of a more diffuse and independent Hollywood — to 2010. These subjects were considered core crew members, either in front of or behind the camera, and had established careers in the years prior to marriage.
Noting that the industry they are studying has a distinct hierarchy, the researchers designated one spouse as supporting and one receiving: one was leveraging his or her clout to support the other’s career. True to Hollywood’s reputation of being male dominated, the supporting spouse is more often male and the receiving female.
To determine the effects of the marriage on the careers of the subjects, the researchers studied data from five years prior to marriage to three years following it. They also tracked career roles, moving either upwards from acting into producing or directing, downwards from producing and directing into strictly acting, writing or other roles, or no change in role in the three years after marriage.
Controls for age at the time of marriage, gender and industry experience were considered in the data analysis. The receiver’s role type before marriage, marriage termination type, if any (separation, divorce or death) and Oscar wins before marriage were also controlled.
Closed groups get more work
They found that the size of a spouse’s professional network did have an impact on a receiver getting cast in more projects. But they benefitted more from access to networks that were tightly knit rather than those that were loose and wider cast.
“We often see content producers working recurrently with one another,” Carney says. “It’s like an ongoing team. We didn’t look for that, but we did find evidence that access to cliques or relatively closed networks was more helpful than having people who could bridge large numbers.”
They also noted that men were more likely to move into directing and producing after marriage than women. The researchers add that there was no evidence that women gained more from a marriage than men in moving up hierarchies into producing or directing.
“This paper is important because it brings up the idea of the hybridized family,” Gorji explains. “They are in the same business but do not own a firm. But they are helping each other get more projects. Their networks help them get those projects but not necessarily rise in the hierarchy.”
Read the cited paper: “Celebrity Couples as Business Families: A Social Network Perspective.”