Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: Making Movies and Incorporating Gender
Prologue: "The Greatest Electrical Novelty in the World": Gender and Filmmaking before the Turn of the Century
Part One: Expansion, Stardom & Uplift: Women Enter the American Movie Industry, 1908–1916
1. A Quiet Invasion: Nickelodeons, Narratives, and the First Women in Film
2. "To Get Some of the 'Good Gravy' " for Themselves Stardom, Features, and the First Star-Producers
3. "So Much More Natural to a Woman": Gender, Uplift, and the Woman Filmmaker
Interlude: Women in Serials & Short Comedies, 1912–1922
4. The "Girls Who Play": The Short Film and the New Woman
Part Two: "A Business Pure & Simple": The End of Uplift and the Masculinization of Hollywood, 1916–1928
5. "The Real Punches": Lois Weber, Cecil B. DeMille, and the End of the Uplift Movement
6. A "'Her-Own-Company' Epidemic": Stars as Independent Producers
7. "Doing a 'Man's Work'": The Rise of the Studio System and the Remasculinization of Filmmaking
Epilogue
Getting Away with It
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index

About the Author

Karen Ward Mahar is an associate professor of history at Siena College, New York.

Reviews

Accessible and informative, this volume is for all who are seriously interested in the study of women in film. Choice With meticulous scholarship and fluid writing, Mahar tells the story of this golden era of female filmmaking... Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood is not to be missed. -- Samantha Barbas Women's Review of Books Mahar views the business of making movies from the inside-out, focusing on questions about changing industrial models and work conventions. At her best, she shows how the industry's shifting business history impacted women's opportunities, recasting current understanding about the American film industry's development. -- Hilary Hallett Reviews in American History A scrupulously researched and argued analysis of how and why women made great professional and artistic gains in the U.S. film industry from 1906 to the mid-1920s and why they lost most of that ground until the late twentieth century. -- Kathleen Feeley Journal of American History Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood offers convincing evidence of how economic forces shaped women's access to film production and presents a complex and engaging story of the women who took advantage of those opportunities. -- Pennee Bender Business History Review A fascinating entry into the formative years of the American film industry and how its doors opened and then closed on women directors. -- Anne Cremieux Cercles Adds significantly to the growing field of feminist film studies. -- Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 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. -- Jon Burrows Early Popular Visual Culture