Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-q6k6v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T22:58:31.708Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

True Womanhood in Hollywood: Gendered Business Strategies and the Rise and Fall of the Woman Filmmaker, 1896–1928

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Karen Ward Mahar
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Women flourished as producers, directors, screenwriters, and editors in the first quarter-century of the film industry. But by 1925 their presence in all but screenwriting was severely diminished. The argument of this essay is that the process of gendering the industry ultimately closed studio doors to female filmmakers. As studios moved from the artistic and entrepreneurial stage, conducive to the perceived qualities of women, to the corporate stage, the needs of the industry became masculinized and women were excluded. This process is explored by examining the assumptions regarding gender inherited by the early movie industry and the context in which gender was discussed within the industry, and by asking whether explicit assumptions about the fitness of women and men were ever factors in determining what and who a filmmaker should be.

Type
Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , March 2001 , pp. 72 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Enterprise and Society 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Abel, Richard, ed. Silent Film. New Brunswick, N.J., 1996.Google Scholar
Acker, Ally. Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema, 1896–Present. New York, 1991.Google Scholar
Balio, Tino, ed. American Film Industry. 1976, Madison, Wisc.; 1985.Google Scholar
Balio, Tino, United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars. 1976; Madison, Wisc.; 1985.Google Scholar
Balshofer, Fred F., and Miller, Arthur C.. One Reel a Week. Berkeley, Calif., 1967.Google Scholar
Baron, Ava, ed. Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor. Ithaca, N.Y., 1991.Google Scholar
Beauchamp, Cari. Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood. New York, 1997.Google Scholar
Bernheim, Alfred L. The Business of the Theatre. New York, 1932.Google Scholar
Blaché, Alice Guy. The Memoirs of Alice Guy Blaché. Ed. Slide, Anthony trans. Blaché, Roberta, and Blaché, Simone. Metuchen, N.J., 1986.Google Scholar
Blackford, Mansel G. A History of Small Business in America. New York, 1991.Google Scholar
Blair, Karen J. From Clubwomen to Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–1914. New York, 1980.Google Scholar
Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, , and Thompson, Kristin. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York, 1985.Google Scholar
Bowser, Eileen. Transformation of Cinema, 1907–1915. 1990; Berkeley, Calif., 1994.Google Scholar
Bradley, Harriet. Men’s Work, Women’s Work. Minneapolis, Minn., 1989.Google Scholar
Brownlow, Kevin. Behind the Mask of Innocence: Sex, Violence, Prejudice, Crime: Films of Social Conscience in the Silent Era. Berkeley, Calif., 1990.Google Scholar
Brownlow, Kevin. The Parade’s Gone By. . . . Berkeley, Calif., 1968.Google Scholar
Butsch, Richard. The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750–1990. New York, 2000.Google Scholar
Cott, Nancy. The Bonds of Womanhood: “Women’s Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835. New Haven, Conn., 1977.Google Scholar
Cott, Nancy. The Grounding of Modern Feminism. New Haven, Conn., 1987.Google Scholar
Clawson, Mary Ann. Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fraternalism. Princeton, N.J., 1989.Google Scholar
Dudden, Faye. Women in the American Theatre: Actresses and Audiences, 1790–1870. New Haven, Conn., 1994.Google Scholar
Edmonds, I. G. Big U: Universal in the Silent Days. South Brunswick, N.J., 1977.Google Scholar
Fell, John, ed. Film before Griffith. Berkeley, Calif., 1983.Google Scholar
Franke, Lizzie. Script Girls: Women Screenwriters in Hollywood. London, 1994.Google Scholar
Gamber, Wendy. The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860–1930. Urbana, Ill., 1997.Google Scholar
Hampton, Benjamin B. A History of the American Film Industry. New York, 1970.Google Scholar
Hansen, Miriam. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cambridge, Mass., 1991.Google Scholar
Hughes, Laurence, ed. The Truth about Movies by the Stars. Hollywood, 1924.Google Scholar
Inglis, Ruth. Freedom of the Movies: A Report on Self-Regulation from the Commission on Freedom of the Press. Chicago, 1947.Google Scholar
Izod, John. Hollywood and the Box Office, 1895–1986. New York, 1988.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Lewis. Rise of the American Film: A Critical History. 1939; New York, 1968.Google Scholar
Koszarski, Richard. An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915–1928. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Kwolek-Folland, Angel. Engendering Business: Men and Women in the Corporate Office, 1870–1930. Baltimore, Md., 1994.Google Scholar
Kwolek-Folland, Angel. Incorporating Women: A History of Women and Business in the United States. New York, 1998.Google Scholar
Lathrop, Rev. Charles N. The Motion Picture Problem. New York, 1922.Google Scholar
May, Lary. Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry. New York, 1983.Google Scholar
McArthur, Benjamin. Actors and American Culture, 1880–1920. Philadelphia, 1984.Google Scholar
Milkman, Ruth. Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II. Urbana, Ill., 1987.Google Scholar
Musser, Charles. The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Nasaw, David. Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements. New York, 1993.Google Scholar
Peiss, Kathy. Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York. Philadelphia, 1986.Google Scholar
Robinson, Alice M., Vera Mowry, Roberts, and Beranger, Milly S., eds. Notable Women in the American Theatre: A Biographical Dictionary. New York, 1989.Google Scholar
Schatz, Thomas. The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. New York, 1989.Google Scholar
Scott, Joan W., ed. Gender and the Politics of History. New York, 1988.Google Scholar
Slide, Anthony. The American Film Industry: A Historical Dictionary. Westport, Conn., 1990.Google Scholar
Slide, Anthony. Early Women Directors. New York, 1977.Google Scholar
Stein, Charles S. Vaudeville as Seen by Its Contemporaries. New York, 1984.Google Scholar
Wasko, Janet. Movies and Money: Financing the American Film Industry. Norwood, N.J., 1982.Google Scholar
Wright, Barbara, et al., eds. Women, Work, and Technology. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1987.Google Scholar
Carnes, Mark C. “Middle-Class Men and the Solace of Fraternal Ritual.” In Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, ed. Mark C., Carnes and Griffen, Clyde. Chicago, 1990, 37–52.Google Scholar
Corn, Joseph J. “Making Flying ‘Thinkable’: Women Pilots and the Selling of Aviation, 1927–1940.” American Quarterly 3 (Autumn 1979): 556–71.Google Scholar
Couvares, Frank. “Hollywood, Main Street, and the Church: Trying to Censor the Movies before the Production Code.” American Quarterly 44 (Dec. 1992): 584–615.Google Scholar
Ewen, Elizabeth. “City Lights: Immigrant Women and the Rise of the Movies.” Signs 5 (Spring 1980): S45–S60.Google Scholar
Fuller, Kathryn Hegelsen. “The Cook and Harris High Class Moving Picture Company: Itinerant Exhibitors and the Small Town Movie Audience, 1900–1910.” New York History (Jan. 1994), 5–38.Google Scholar
Fuller, Kathryn Hegelsen. “‘You Can Have the Strand in Your Own Town’: The Marginalization of Small Town Film Exhibition in the Silent Film Era.” Film History 6 (1994): 166–77.Google Scholar
Gamber, Wendy. “A Gendered Enterprise: Placing Nineteenth-Century Businesswomen in History.” Business History Review 72 (Summer 1998): 188–218.Google Scholar
Holland, Larry Lee. “Florence Lawrence.” Films in Review 31 (Aug.-Sept. 1980): 385–94.Google Scholar
Kerber, Linda. “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History.” Journal of American History 75 (June 1988): 9–39.Google Scholar
Kerr, Catherine E. “Incorporating the Star: The Intersection of Business and Aesthetic Strategies in Early American Film.” Business History Review 64 (Autumn 1990): 383–410.Google Scholar
Lewchuk, Wayne A. “Men and Monotony: Fraternalism as a Managerial Strategy at the Ford Motor Company.” Journal of Economic History 53 (Dec. 1993): 824–56.Google Scholar
McDonald, Gerald. “Origin of the Star System.” Films in Review 25 (Dec. 1974): 449–58.Google Scholar
Staiger, Janet. “Combination and Litigation: Structures of U.S. Film Distribution, 1896–1917.” Cinema Journal 23 (Winter 1985): 41–72.Google Scholar
Staiger, Janet. “Seeing Stars.” In Stardom: Industry of Desire, ed. Christine Gledhill. London, 1991, 3–16.Google Scholar
Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820–1860.” American Quarterly 18 (Summer 1966): 151–74.Google Scholar
Film Year Book, 1920–21.Google Scholar
Illustrated World. 1923.Google Scholar
Ladies Home Journal. 1920.Google Scholar
Literary Digest. 1925.Google Scholar
Motion Picture Magazine.Google Scholar
Motion Picture News.Google Scholar
Moving Picture Weekly.Google Scholar
Moving Picture World.Google Scholar
Nickelodeon. 1909.Google Scholar
Photoplay.Google Scholar
Sears, Roebuck, and Co. Catalog. 1898.Google Scholar
Silver Screen. 1933.Google Scholar
Universal Weekly. 1913.Google Scholar
Variety. 1974.Google Scholar
Village Voice. 1975.Google Scholar
Wall Street Journal. 1924.Google Scholar
Woman’s Home Companion. 1928.Google Scholar
Baker, Robert Osborne. “The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Operators of the UnitedStates and Canada.” Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1933.Google Scholar
Florence Lawrence Collection, Seaver Center for Western History, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.Google Scholar
George Kleine Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Holliday, Wendy. “Hollywood’s Modern Women: Screenwriting, Work Culture, and Feminism, 1910–1940.” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1995.Google Scholar
Mahar, Karen Ward. “Women, Filmmaking, and the Gendering of the American Film Industry, 1896–1928.” Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1995.Google Scholar
Morgan, Kathleen Anne. “Of Stars and Standards: Actress-Managers of Philadelphia and New York, 1855–1860.” Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1988.Google Scholar
National Board of Review Collection, Special Collections, New York Public Library.Google Scholar
Paper Print Collection, Motion Picture, Broadcast, and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Paramount Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Potamianos, George. “Hollywood in the Hinterlands: Mass Culture in Rural America, 1896–1948.” Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1998.Google Scholar
Smith, Albert E. “The Beginning,” unpublished MS, Albert E. Smith Collection, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar