Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood
Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood 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.

In the early 1910s, the film industry followed a theatrical model, fostering an egalitarian work culture in which everyone—male and female—helped behind the scenes in a variety of jobs. In this culture women thrived in powerful, creative roles, especially as writers, directors, and producers. By the end of that decade, however, mushrooming star salaries and skyrocketing movie budgets prompted the creation of the studio system. As the movie industry remade itself in the image of a modern American business, the masculinization of filmmaking took root.

Mahar's study integrates feminist methodologies of examining the gendering of work with thorough historical scholarship of American industry and business culture. Tracing the transformation of the film industry into a legitimate "big business" of the 1920s, and explaining the fate of the female filmmaker during the silent era, Mahar demonstrates how industrial growth and change can unexpectedly open—and close—opportunities for women.

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Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood
Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood 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.

In the early 1910s, the film industry followed a theatrical model, fostering an egalitarian work culture in which everyone—male and female—helped behind the scenes in a variety of jobs. In this culture women thrived in powerful, creative roles, especially as writers, directors, and producers. By the end of that decade, however, mushrooming star salaries and skyrocketing movie budgets prompted the creation of the studio system. As the movie industry remade itself in the image of a modern American business, the masculinization of filmmaking took root.

Mahar's study integrates feminist methodologies of examining the gendering of work with thorough historical scholarship of American industry and business culture. Tracing the transformation of the film industry into a legitimate "big business" of the 1920s, and explaining the fate of the female filmmaker during the silent era, Mahar demonstrates how industrial growth and change can unexpectedly open—and close—opportunities for women.

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Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood

Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood

by Karen Ward Mahar
Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood
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Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood

Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood

by Karen Ward Mahar

Overview

Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood 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.

In the early 1910s, the film industry followed a theatrical model, fostering an egalitarian work culture in which everyone—male and female—helped behind the scenes in a variety of jobs. In this culture women thrived in powerful, creative roles, especially as writers, directors, and producers. By the end of that decade, however, mushrooming star salaries and skyrocketing movie budgets prompted the creation of the studio system. As the movie industry remade itself in the image of a modern American business, the masculinization of filmmaking took root.

Mahar's study integrates feminist methodologies of examining the gendering of work with thorough historical scholarship of American industry and business culture. Tracing the transformation of the film industry into a legitimate "big business" of the 1920s, and explaining the fate of the female filmmaker during the silent era, Mahar demonstrates how industrial growth and change can unexpectedly open—and close—opportunities for women.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780801890840
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date: 08/25/2008
Series: Studies in Industry and Society
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 332
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Karen Ward Mahar is an associate professor of history at Siena College, New York.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: Making Movies and Incorporating Gender
Prologue: "The Greatest Electrical Novelty in the World": Gender and Filmmaking before the Turn of the Century
Part One: Expansion, Stardom & Uplift: Women Enter the American Movie Industry, 1908–1916
1. A Quiet Invasion: Nickelodeons, Narratives, and the First Women in Film
2. "To Get Some of the 'Good Gravy' " for Themselves Stardom, Features, and the First Star-Producers
3. "So Much More Natural to a Woman": Gender, Uplift, and the Woman Filmmaker
Interlude: Women in Serials & Short Comedies, 1912–1922
4. The "Girls Who Play": The Short Film and the New Woman
Part Two: "A Business Pure & Simple": The End of Uplift and the Masculinization of Hollywood, 1916–1928
5. "The Real Punches": Lois Weber, Cecil B. DeMille, and the End of the Uplift Movement
6. A "'Her-Own-Company' Epidemic": Stars as Independent Producers
7. "Doing a 'Man's Work'": The Rise of the Studio System and the Remasculinization of Filmmaking
Epilogue
Getting Away with It
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index

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