Glamour in a Golden Age: Movie Stars of the 1930s PDF
Preview Glamour in a Golden Age: Movie Stars of the 1930s
Glamour in a Golden Age S T A R ★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩ AMERICAN CULTURE / AMERICAN CINEMA D E C A D E S Each volume in the series Star Decades: American Culture/American Cinema pres- ents original essays analyzing the movie star against the background of contempo- rary American cultural history. As icon, as mediated personality, and as object of audience fascination and desire, the Hollywood star remains the model for celebrity in modern culture and represents a paradoxical combination of achievement, talent, ability, luck, authenticity, superficiality, and ordinariness. In all of the volumes, star- dom is studied as an effect of, and influence on, the particular historical and indus- trial contexts that enabled a star to be “discovered,” to be featured in films, to be promoted and publicized, and ultimately to become a recognizable and admired— even sometimes notorious—feature of the cultural landscape. Understanding when, how, and why a star “makes it,” dazzling for a brief moment or enduring across decades, is especially relevant given the ongoing importance of mediated celebrity in an increasingly visualized world. We hope that our approach produces at least some of the surprises and delight for our readers that stars themselves do. ADRIENNE L.McLEAN AND MURRAY POMERANCE SERIES EDITORS Jennifer M. Bean, ed., Flickers of Desire: Movie Stars of the 1910s Patrice Petro, ed., Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s Adrienne L. McLean, ed., Glamour in a Golden Age: Movie Stars of the 1930s Sean Griffin, ed., What Dreams Were Made Of: Movie Stars of the 1940s R. Barton Palmer, ed., Larger Than Life: Movie Stars of the 1950s Pamela R. Wojcik, ed., New Constellations: Movie Stars of the 1960s James Morrison, ed., Hollywood Reborn: Movie Stars of the 1970s Robert Eberwein, ed., Acting for America: Movie Stars of the 1980s Anna Everett, ed., Pretty People: Movie Stars of the 1990s Murray Pomerance, ed., Shining in Shadows: Movie Stars of the 2000s Glamour in a Golden Age Movie Stars of the 193 0 s ★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩ EDITED BY ADRIENNE L. McLEAN RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Glamour in a golden age : movie stars of the 1930s / edited by Adrienne L. McLean. p. cm. — (Star decades : American culture / American cinema) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–8135–4904–0 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978–0–8135–4905–7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures—United States—History—20th century. I. McLean, Adrienne L. PN1993.5U6G53 2011 791.430973'09043—dc22 2010013761 A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. This collection copyright © 2011 by Rutgers, The State University Individual chapters copyright © 2011 in the names of their authors All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu Manufactured in the United States of America For Larry and my parents, and with dearest love always to Cary Grant C O N T E N T S ★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩ Acknowledgments ix Introduction:Stardom in the 1930s 1 ADRIENNE L.McLEAN 1 Not of Hollywood:Ruth Chatterton,Ann Harding, Constance Bennett,Kay Francis,and Nancy Carroll 18 MARY DESJARDINS 2 Shirley Temple:Making Dreams Come True 44 KATHRYN FULLER-SEELEY 3 Gary Cooper:Rugged Elegance 66 COREY K.CREEKMUR 4 Bette Davis:Worker and Queen 84 LUCY FISCHER 5 Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo: The Sexy Hausfrau versus the Swedish Sphinx 108 ALEXANDER DOTY 6 Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford:Rivals at the Glamour Factory 129 DAVID M.LUGOWSKI 7 Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland:Romancing through History 153 INA RAE HARK 8 Jean Harlow:Tragic Blonde 174 SUSAN OHMER 9 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers:Modernizing Class 196 ADAM KNEE 10 Myrna Loy and William Powell:The Perfect Screen Couple 220 JAMES CASTONGUAY 11 Clark Gable:The King of Hollywood 245 CHRISTINE BECKER In the Wings 267 ADRIENNE L.McLEAN Works Cited 273 Contributors 281 Index 285 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩★✩ This book would not have been possible without the con- tributors whose work it contains, and I am deeply grateful to them and for the wonderful passion with which they approached their subjects—and a heartfelt thank you to those who went out of their way to make my job smoother and less onerous than it could easily have been. Additional thanks to Mary Desjardins for her kindness and generosity in sharing copies of her documentation of the 1938 “box office poison” issue, and to Kathy Fuller-Seeley for her expertise in all things relating to Motion Picture Herald. I send loud and fervent huzzahs to my series co-editor, Murray Pomerance, for his energy and enthusiasm, and for being such a great colleague and friend. Finally, the staff of Rutgers University Press was, as usual, superla- tive in every way, and I thank Marilyn Campbell and Leslie Mitchner for their continued patience and good humor and for guiding the project through in peerless fashion; special appreciation goes to Eric Schramm for his expert copyediting and to Ann Weinstock for the wonderful cover design. It is simply an unalloyed pleasure, and always has been, to work with everyone at Rutgers, and I am filled with gratitude for their help. ix
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