Thank Carl Laemmle --or Maybe Blame Him : Stars: Who needs them, a classical record producer asks, but the authors of the ‘Encyclopedia of Pop Culture’ disagree.

In this season of large movies with big names and enormous budgets, credit “Uncle” Carl Laemmle, the pioneer studio boss, for inventing what grew up to become Hollywood’s star system and all that came with it.

Earlier in this century when film actors were both silent and anonymous, Laemmle came up with a slick marketing ploy. The future father of Universal Pictures stuck a human’s name up in lights where no movie actor’s name had been before.

He paid for it, too: an unheard-of $250 a week in 1910. The fee would become an unbottled economic genie. For eventually Laemmle’s idea of promoting a real human--of creating upper-case names--would slop over into all other forms of entertainment, infecting pop and classical music, television, dance, theater, even entertainment journalism, with an obsession with stardom.

Eighty years later, the values of the star system in our culture are still argued.

Writers Jane and Michael Stern contend we are better off because we have stars and celebrities and pop figures. They are our icons. The Sterns monitored the entertainment and social upheavals of our time for their new 593-page, over-size paperback treatise, “Encyclopedia of Pop Culture,” a gambol from Alda to Zappa, from “All in the Family” to zappers.

A different view of stardom comes from record producer Klaus Heymann. He wouldn’t let a star come anywhere near his studios. Stars lead only to high costs, hangers-on and inflated retail prices. Who needs “the three tenors” when you might get 33, maybe 333 tenors?

For the Sterns, much of the world is guided by our stars, especially those from mass entertainment. On our TV screens recently we saw one pop star, Tom Brokaw, reporting from Somalia and being asked when another pop star, Rambo, would land. “Our pop culture figures represent something to the world, a symbolic value,” says Jane Stern. “(Sylvester) Stallone’s Rocky and Rambo mean something that is bigger than Stallone. Our culture represents America to most of the world.”

Of the more than 200 listings in their book, more than half cover entertainers. The dominant figures are the obvious ones: Schwarzenegger, Madonna, Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Presley, Sinatra.

“Pop culture and its figures,” Michael Stern says, “are the very best reflection of who we Americans are and how we are changing. Pop culture is a true gauge of our democracy. High culture is elitist.”

The most significant recent changes in America’s pop culture, says Jane Stern, is how much interest there is in “Hollywood’s behind-the-scenes machinations. Just the fact that I know or Joe next door knows who (Disney Chairman) Michael Eisner is would not have been possible 20 years ago because of the rise of entertainment coverage in the press and other media. The making of movies, the incomes of stars, what ‘Malcolm X’ did at the box office is what everyone knows and wants to know. Information like that has become more interesting than some of the movies.

“Look what has happened in just the past few years. Now besides a batch of talk shows featuring celebrities we have movie and TV stars running talk shows. Then there are the tabloids, ‘Entertainment Tonight’ and similar programs. Everyone on television is hungry for guests, for names. It’s almost come to the point that no matter what you do in life someone will book you on a talk show.”

Pop celebrity, though, took a different turn this year, the Sterns say. Controversy replaced art. Whether it was Sinead O’Connor or Spike Lee or Murphy Brown, controversy sold. “Few people will leave a movie or listen to a record and talk about the beautiful experience or any good feelings they’ve had from it, unless it was a Disney product,” Jane Stern says. “People are going to the movies and listening to music to talk about something. Madonna is an example of that.” Same, too, the Sterns say, for some of the newer pop culture figures, people such as Howard Stern, the rock group Nirvana, Rush Limbaugh.

Shared shock sells.

For a different view there’s Klaus Heymann who believes in an equal-opportunity stardom: “There is an infinite supply of performers in the world, but they all suffer because of the star system.”

The problems with the depressed recording markets, he believes, have evolved because of star domination--the same names demanding the same high fees--and the excess overhead that comes with that.

His classical budget labels, Naxos, Marco Polo and Donau, feature no Domingos, no Mehtas nor do they yet have the same market share or counter space as Philips, Sony or PolyGram, but in 10 years his Hong Kong-based company has grown to annual sales of 5 million digital CDs annually, releasing 200 each year.

Heymann clearly represents the flip side of a star-driven business.

Because he doesn’t deal with name classical musicians or conductors and is almost a single-person operation, his labels provide something the bigger companies don’t always do:

* A chance for younger artists to be heard on a global scale.

* A chance for buyers to buy more, since his records sell from $5 to $7 rather than the $15 to $20 range of the bigger companies.

All CDs, he claims, cost the same. The naked disc costs 75 cents to make, the box, tray and booklet another 75 cents. Somewhere that $1.50 cost expands.

“It’s the overhead,” says Heymann. “I have no stars, no big fees. I don’t hold signing ceremonies every time a recording is made. There was a signing ceremony in England where the food and drink bill would have added up to what it costs me to issue one CD. I never have had a signing ceremony. I don’t hold multicourse dinners in fancy restaurants for 30 or 40 hangers-on. The idea is to put money into the recording by having quality producers and engineers and dealing with fine orchestras in concert halls. There are a lot of people who want to make good recordings.”

His artists--most are young from the ranks of international competitions--all receive “the same four-figure fee in U.S. currency,” Heymann says. He also saves on royalty payments. He doesn’t pay them. Nor does he deal in reissues.

He also doesn’t duplicate repertoire. “Whenever the majors sign a new conductor,” he says, “they let him do whatever he wants, often duplicating what they already have. So the conductor wants to do a Beethoven cycle even though the company has other recordings. The record buyer pays for the new one and the 10 the company still has sitting somewhere in a vault.”

What would happen if one of his artists hits star status, gets on the “Tonight Show,” is interviewed on “Entertainment Tonight,” shows up on a PBS pledge break?

“It’s happening,” Heymann says. “Our house pianist is Jeno Jando, who has made 20 albums for us and has become a best seller. If Jando gets a better offer I would say, ‘Jando, take it. Jando, sorry to see you go. I don’t want to stand in your way to make the big bucks. Take the offer.’ Now, if others want to make him even a bigger star I would sell more of his records because I still have the backup recordings with my budget prices. We’d sell his records like hot cakes. Then I would go find another house pianist.”

“Uncle” Carl would have loved it.