Women filmmakers in early Hollywood / Karen Ward Mahar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mahar, Karen Ward, 1960-

Series:

Studies in industry and society

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women in the motion picture industry--United States.

Women in motion pictures.

Motion pictures and women--United States.

Motion pictures and women.

Women in the motion picture industry.

United States.

Physical Description:

x, 291 pages, 26 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, [2006]

Summary:

This study explores when, how, and why women were accepted as filmmakers in the 1910s and why, by the 1920s, those opportunities had disappeared. In looking at the early film industry as an industry -- a place of work -- Mahar not only unravels the mystery of the disappearing female filmmaker but untangles the complicated relationship among gender, work culture, and business within modern industrial organizations.

Contents:

Introduction: Making Movies and Incorporating Gender 1

Prologue: "The Greatest Electrical Novelty in the World": Gender and Filmmaking before the Turn of the Century 9

Part 1 Expansion, Stardom & Uplift: Women Enter the American Movie Industry, 1908-1916 27

Chapter 1 A Quiet Invasion: Nickelodeons, Narratives, and the First Women in Film 29

Chapter 2 "To Get Some of the 'Good Gravy'" for Themselves: Stardom, Features, and the First Star-Producers 53

Chapter 3 "So Much More Natural to a Woman": Gender, Uplift, and the Woman Filmmaker 77

"Interlude": Women in Serials & Short Comedies, 1912-1922 101

Chapter 4 The "Girls Who Play": The Short Film and the New Woman 103

Part 2 "A Business Pure & Simple": The End of Uplift and the Masculinization of Hollywood, 1916-1928 133

Chapter 5 "The Real Punches": Lois Weber, Cecil B. DeMille, and the End of the Uplift Movement 135

Chapter 6 A "'Her-Own-Company' Epidemic": Stars as Independent Producers 154

Chapter 7 "Doing a 'Man's Work'": The Rise of the Studio System and the Remasculinization of Filmmaking 179

Epilogue: Getting Away with It 204.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [209]-276) and index.

ISBN:

0801884365

OCLC:

63178990

Publisher Number:

9780801884368

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description