Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood

Karen Ward Mahar

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781421402093
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Women in History
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction Making Movies and Incorporating Gender
• Prologue “The Greatest Electrical Novelty in the World”
• Part One Expansion, Stardom & Uplift
• Interlude Women in Serials & Short Comedies, 1912–1922
• Part Two “A Business Pure & Simple”
• Epilogue Getting Away with It
• Notes
• Essay on Sources
• Index