Description
Book SynopsisDuring the early era of cinema, moviegoers turned to women editors and writers for the latest on everyone's favorite stars, films, and filmmakers. Richard Abel returns these women to film history with an anthology of reviews, articles, and other works. Drawn from newspapers of the time, the selections show how columnists like Kitty Kelly, Mae Tinee, Louella Parsons, and Genevieve Harris wrote directly to female readers. They also profiled women working in jobs like scenario writer and film editor and noted the industry's willingness to hire women. Sharp wit and frank opinions entertained and informed a wide readership hungry for news about the movies but also about women on both sides of the camera. Abel supplements the texts with hard-to-find biographical information and provides context on the newspapers and silent-era movie industry as well as on the professionals and films highlighted by these writers. An invaluable collection of rare archival sources, Movie Mavens reveals women's
Trade Review"Juxtaposing biographical information found through archival research with samples of film criticism transcribed from local papers, Abel throws a much-needed light on the female columnists who originally mediated the pictures for a mass audience increasingly defined by young women and girls." --
Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film"With a scholar's knack for detail, Abel provides context for this crucial period of cinema history. An illuminating combination of scholarship and nostalgia." --
Library Journal"A revelation! From snarky hard-talking dames to tartly respectable scholars, Movie Mavens recovers the diverse and compelling voices of the legions of newspaperwomen who wrote about movies during the tumultuous 1910s and early 1920s. An invaluable resource from a model film historian."--Laura Horak, author of
Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934
