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Menus for movieland : newspapers and the emergence of American film culture, 1913-1916
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ISBN: 9780520286771 0520286774 9780520286788 0520286782 9780520961883 0520961889 Year: 2015 Publisher: Oakland, Calif. University of California Press

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Abstract

"At the turn of the last century, the main function of a newspaper was to offer 'menus' by which readers could make sense of modern life and imagine how to order their own daily lives. Among those menus in the mid-1910s were several that mediated the interests of movie manufacturers, distributors, exhibitors, and the rapidly expanding audience of fans. This writing about the movies arguably played a crucial role in the emergence of American popular film culture. Negotiating among national, regional, and local interests, it shaped fans' ephemeral experience of moviegoing, their repeated encounters with the fantasy worlds of 'movie land,' and their attractions to certain stories and stars. Moreover, in weekend pages and daily columns and film reviews, much of this was served up by women and consumed by women, including at least one teenager compiling a rare surviving scrapbook"-- Provided by publisher.


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Lois Weber in early Hollywood
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ISBN: 9780520284463 9780520241527 9780520960084 0520284461 0520241525 0520960084 Year: 2015 Publisher: Oakland, Calif. University of California Press

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Among early Hollywood's most renowned filmmakers, Lois Weber was considered one of the era's "three great minds" alongside D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille. Despite her accomplishments, Weber has been marginalized in relation to her contemporaries, who have long been recognized as fathers of American cinema. Drawing on a range of materials untapped by previous historians, Shelley Stamp offers the first comprehensive study of Weber's remarkable career as director, screenwriter, and actress. Lois Weber in Early Hollywood provides compelling evidence of the extraordinary role that women played in shaping American movie culture. Weber made films on capital punishment, contraception, poverty, and addiction, establishing cinema's power to engage topical issues for popular audiences. Her work grappled with the profound changes in women's lives that unsettled Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century, and her later films include sharp critiques of heterosexual marriage and consumer capitalism. Mentor to many women in the industry, Weber demanded a place at the table in early professional guilds, decrying the limited roles available for women on-screen and in the 1920s protesting the growing climate of hostility toward female directors. Stamp demonstrates how female filmmakers who had played a part in early Hollywood's bid for respectability were in the end written out of that industry's history. Lois Weber in Early Hollywood is an essential addition to histories of silent cinema, early filmmaking in Los Angeles, and women's contributions to American culture.

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