Go West, Young Women The Rise of Early Hollywood [Hardcover]

In the early part of the twentieth century, migrants made their way from rural homes to cities in record numbers and many traveled west. Los Angeles became a destination. Women flocked to the growing town to join the film industry as workers and spectators, creating a New Woman. Their efforts transformed filmmaking from a marginal business to a cosmopolitan, glamorous, and bohemian one. By 1920, Los Angeles had become the only western city where women outnumbered men. InGo West, Young Women, Hilary A. Hallett explores these relatively unknown new western women and their role in the development of Los Angeles and the nascent film industry. From Mary Pickfords rise to become perhaps the most powerful woman of her age, to the racist moral panics of the postWorld War I years that culminated in Hollywoods first sex scandal, Hallett describes how the path through early Hollywood presaged the struggles over modern gender roles that animated the century to come.

Hilary Hallettis Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University.

List of Illustrations

Part I. Along the Road to Hollywood

Prologue I. Landscapes
1. Oh for a girl who could ride a horse like Pearl White: The Actress Democratizes Fame
2. Women-Made Women:
Writing the Movies before Hollywood

Part II. Melodramas of Hollywoods Birth

Prologue II. The Postwar Revolution in Morals and Manners, Redux
3. Hollywood Bohemia
4. The Movie Menace
5. A Star Is Born: Rereading Hollywoods First Sex Scandal

Conclusion: The Girl from Hollywood

Filmography
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

An outstanding and well-researched work,Go West, Young Women!adds a fresh interpretive framework to the study of women in early Hollywood. Each chapter is a jewel; Hilary A. Hallett's lively writing is perfectly matched to her unique re-reading of the female role in el#-