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 industrya place of workMahar 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 everyonemale and femalehelped 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 openand closeopportunities for women.
PrefaceIntroduction: Making Movies and Incorporating GenderPrologue: ""The Greatest Electrical Novelty in the World"": Gender and Filmmaking before the Turn of the CenturyPart One: Expansion, Stardom & Uplift: Women Enter the American Movie Industry, 190819161. A Quiet Invasion: Nickelodeons, Narratives, and the First Women in Film2. ""To Get Some of the 'Good Gravy' "" for Themselves Stardom, Features, and the First Star-Producers3. ""So Much More Natural to a Woman"": Gender, Uplift, and the Woman FilmmakerInterlude: Women in Serials & Short Comedies, 191219224. The ""Girls Who Play"": The Short Film and the New WomanPart Two: ""A Business Pure & Simple"": The End of Uplift and the Masculinization of Hollywood, 191619285. ""The Real Punches"": Lois Weber, Cecil B. DeMille, and the End of the Uplift Movement6. A ""'Her-Own-Company' Epidemic"": Stars as Independent Producers7. ""Doing a 'Man's Work'"": The Rise of the Studio System and the Remasculinization of FilmmakingEpilogueGetting Away with ItNotesEssay on SourcesIndex
""Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood differs from most recent work on the topic... The general idea here is one of several bold suggestions that merit (and will hopefully spark) serious consideration and further investigation.""
