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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.

Child actors --- Motion pictures --- Teenage girls in motion pictures. --- Girls in motion pictures. --- Children as actors --- Actors --- History --- Adolescentes --- Enfants acteurs --- Cinéma --- Au cinéma. --- Histoire et critique. --- actresses. --- american culture. --- audrey hepburn. --- child actors. --- child stars. --- cinema studies. --- classical hollywood. --- cultural history. --- cultural imagination. --- deanna durbin. --- elizabeth taylor. --- female stars. --- film historians. --- film history. --- film industry. --- film scholars. --- film studies. --- girlhood. --- historical. --- hollywood image. --- hollywood women. --- jennifer jones. --- mary pickford. --- new look fashion. --- personas. --- sexology. --- shirley temple. --- victorian. --- women and girls. --- youthfulness.