In Sunset Boulevard, there is a kind of juxtaposition between the character of Norma Desmond and her guests. Sunset Boulevard, an American film directed by Bill Wilder and released in 1990, is a commentary on Hollywood Stardom and Norma Desmond’s, played by Gloria Swanson, attempts to get it back. The scene happens about 32 minutes into the film, where Norma is holding a party where three influential former stars at seated. The three are Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, and H. B. Warner. All well known in their own right but delegated to minor roles for this scene. They are on screen for only a few minutes, and don’t say much. In his paper, Scales of presence: Bess Flowers and the Hollywood Extra,” Will Straw brings up the ‘bigness’ of a picture can be decided on by the number of well-known faces in smaller roles. In this scene, it is not so much the pictures ‘bigness’ but rather Norma’s. In Norma’s mind her popularity has not decreased, so, in her surrounding herself with more Hollywood fame, her own has not diminished. Within the scope of the film, they are Norma’s Hollywood, Norma’s stardom, even as we see the current Hollywood reject her. Norma’s ‘bigness’ her once stardom is relegated to a side character, in much the same way the three card players are. The importance these characters have on the narrative is low, the viewer learns nothing about any of them in the brief scene other than their hand at cards. To Norma, however, they are anything but minor. They are characters in Norma’s world and as Alex Woloch writes in his paper “One vs. Many”, these card players “might disrupt the narrative if we pay them the attention they deserve.” Buster Keaton, Ana Q. Nilsson, and H. B. Warner are not small names, but Norma’s ‘bigness’ relegate them to side characters both in her life and within the film.
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