Precocious charms : stars performing girlhood in classical Hollywood cinema / Gaylyn Studlar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Studlar, Gaylyn.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Girls in motion pictures.

Teenage girls in motion pictures.

Motion pictures--United States--History--20th century.

Motion pictures.

Child actors--United States--History--20th century.

Child actors.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (324 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In Precocious Charms, Gaylyn Studlar examines how Hollywood presented female stars as young girls or girls on the verge of becoming women. Child stars are part of this study but so too are adult actresses who created motion picture masquerades of youthfulness. Studlar details how Mary Pickford, Shirley Temple, Deanna Durbin, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Jones, and Audrey Hepburn performed girlhood in their films. She charts the multifaceted processes that linked their juvenated star personas to a wide variety of cultural influences, ranging from Victorian sentimental art to New Look fashion, from nineteenth-century children's literature to post-World War II sexology, and from grand opera to 1930's radio comedy. By moving beyond the general category of "woman," Precocious Charms leads to a new understanding of the complex pleasures Hollywood created for its audience during the half century when film stars were a major influence on America's cultural imagination.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Oh, "Doll Divine": Mary Pickford, Masquerade, and the Pedophilic Gaze

2. Cosseting the Nation; or, How to Conquer Fear Itself with Shirley Temple

3. "The Little Girl with the Big Voice": Deanna Durbin and Sonic Womanliness

4. Velvet's Cherry: Elizabeth Taylor and Virginal English Girlhood

5. Perilous Transition: Jennifer Jones as Melodrama's Hysterical Adolescent

6. "Chi-Chi Cinderella": Audrey Hepburn as Couture Countermodel

Conclusion

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780520955295

0520955293

9781283860369

1283860368

OCLC:

821216803