One of Mark Rappaport’s most recurring obsessions is with the classic era of cinema and its forgotten stars and actors. In this essay, he looks to Debra Paget, a prime example of a “contract player” – an actor at the beginning of his acting career, very attractive – to whom the big studios offered a contract in the expectation that they would become stars. These actors competed with and even replaced other stars who were growing old. Very few managed to establish themselves in films and sought refuge in television. From this supposition, Rappaport constructs a biography of Debra Paget based on the films in which she featured, her first appearance being at 14. The story of her film career is intertwined with the history of the classic era of Hollywood and the technical and thematic changes that took place. As in another of his films, Rappaport introduces an emotional element: imaginary commentary, in the first person, by Debra Paget herself. The actress played a medley of roles: the girl who marries an older man, an exotic princess, a young schoolgirl, an attractive singer and dancer. What the film implies is the versatility required of a contract player and their total submission to the demands of the studios. An example of this was the change to CinemaScope, a profound adjustment for the actors: instead of close-ups, long shots which favoured the landscape and the space left in the frame. Despite the pedagogical weight of his films, Rappaport never fails to connect to the nostalgia of the first screening and the capacity for guilty pleasure in the personal memory of the film buff. The film ends therefore by showing how Debra Paget became part of the juvenile imagination for certain generations. (DR)