'In motion -picture land': A cultural history about the making of early Hollywood.
Item
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Title
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'In motion -picture land': A cultural history about the making of early Hollywood.
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Identifier
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AAI3187354
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identifier
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3187354
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Creator
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Hallett, Hilary-Anne.
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Contributor
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Adviser: David Nasaw
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Date
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2005
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Women's Studies
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Abstract
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This dissertation investigates the relationship between Hollywood's seemingly overnight development into the nation's first mass culture industry and women's roles as industry workers, fans, and social critics in shaping and defining the sexual and racial politics of postwar America. In doing so, it explores how the stories told about the creation of early Hollywood in the years between 1915 and 1921---in fan magazines, the periodical press, and by pioneering publicists like Louella Parsons---portrayed the industry's work environment and social climate as the nation's latest frontier; one wide-open to women adventurers eager to seek their fortunes out West. Responding to this image, women not only became the industry's biggest supporters, but many ventured to Los Angeles to emulate the fantastic success and power that screenwriters like Elinor Glyn and producer-actresses like Gloria Swanson, Alla Nazimova, and Mary Pickford wielded. Others sought to partake of the cultural ethos that Hollywood's films and publicity put on show---a progressively more sexy, glamorous, "Orientalized" display that depicted the fruits of the period's first sexual revolution and the rising influence the new immigrants. The Great War both abetted these changes and engendered a backlash against them. Increasingly, religious reformers, activist clubwomen in the General Federation of Women's Clubs, Henry Ford, argued that only state and federal regulation could preserve the nation's Anglo-Saxon moral values and protect its young womanhood from the new "Movie Trust" or "Hebrew Trust." These pressures exploded to create Hollywood's first sex scandal; an event that involved the death of actress Virginia Rappe following a party hosted by the slapstick comedy star, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Ultimately, the Rappe-Arbuckle scandal ended the industry's willingness to encourage young women's fantastical ambitions and precipitated tighter controls over the industry's image.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
