Idols of Modernity
328 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
50 photographs
Paperback
Release Date:04 Mar 2010
ISBN:9780813547329
Idols of Modernity
Movie Stars of the 1920s
Edited by Patrice Petro; Introduction by Patrice Petro
Rutgers University Press
With its sharp focus on stardom during the 1920s, Idols of Modernity reveals strong connections and dissonances in matters of storytelling and performance that can be traced both backward and forward, across Europe, Asia, and the United States, from the silent era into the emergence of sound.
Bringing together the best new work oncinemaand stardom in the 1920s, this illustrated collection showcases the range of complex social, institutional, and aesthetic issues at work in American cinema of this time. Attentive to stardom as an ensemble of texts, contexts, and social phenomena stretching beyond the cinema, major scholars provide careful analysis of the careers of both well-known and now forgotten stars of the silent and early sound era—Douglas Fairbanks, Buster Keaton, the Talmadge sisters, Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, Greta Garbo, Anna May Wong, Emil Jannings, Al Jolson, Ernest Morrison, Noble Johnson, Evelyn Preer, Lincoln Perry, and Marie Dressler.
Bringing together the best new work oncinemaand stardom in the 1920s, this illustrated collection showcases the range of complex social, institutional, and aesthetic issues at work in American cinema of this time. Attentive to stardom as an ensemble of texts, contexts, and social phenomena stretching beyond the cinema, major scholars provide careful analysis of the careers of both well-known and now forgotten stars of the silent and early sound era—Douglas Fairbanks, Buster Keaton, the Talmadge sisters, Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, Greta Garbo, Anna May Wong, Emil Jannings, Al Jolson, Ernest Morrison, Noble Johnson, Evelyn Preer, Lincoln Perry, and Marie Dressler.
A collection of fascinating, stellar essays on the emerging culture of celebrity during the 1920s. Highly recommended.
Incisive, elegantly crafted essays chronicling the major figures in the first years of the star system. Idols of Modernity is a rigorous, insightful, and refreshing look at the stars of the 1920s, the world in which they lived, the directors, producers and studios who shaped their public image, and the audiences who flocked to see their films.
A collection of fascinating, stellar essays on the emerging culture of celebrity during the 1920s. Highly recommended.
Incisive, elegantly crafted essays chronicling the major figures in the first years of the star system. Idols of Modernity is a rigorous, insightful, and refreshing look at the stars of the 1920s, the world in which they lived, the directors, producers and studios who shaped their public image, and the audiences who flocked to see their films.
PATRICE PETRO is a professor of English and film studies and vice provost for international education at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, she is the author and editor of numerous books on film, culture, and internationalization, among them Global Cities: Cinema, Architecture, and Urbanism in a Digital Age (Rutgers University Press).
Douglas Fairbanks : king of Hollywood
Buster Keaton : comic invention and the art of moving pictures
The Talmadge sisters : a forgotten filmmaking dynasty
Rudolph Valentino : Italian American
An appetite for living : Gloria Swanson, Colleen Moore, and Clara Bow
Greta Garbo : fashioning a star image
Anna May Wong : toward Janus-faced, border-crossing, "minor" stardom
Emil Jannings : translating the star
Al Jolson : the man who changed the movies forever
African American stardom inside and outside of Hollywood : Ernest Morrison, Noble Johnson, Evelyn Preer, and Lincoln Perry
Marie Dressler : thief of the talkies
In the wings
Buster Keaton : comic invention and the art of moving pictures
The Talmadge sisters : a forgotten filmmaking dynasty
Rudolph Valentino : Italian American
An appetite for living : Gloria Swanson, Colleen Moore, and Clara Bow
Greta Garbo : fashioning a star image
Anna May Wong : toward Janus-faced, border-crossing, "minor" stardom
Emil Jannings : translating the star
Al Jolson : the man who changed the movies forever
African American stardom inside and outside of Hollywood : Ernest Morrison, Noble Johnson, Evelyn Preer, and Lincoln Perry
Marie Dressler : thief of the talkies
In the wings
Related Titles
Beyond Globalization
Making New Worlds in Media, Art, and Social Practices
Edited by A. Aneesh, Lane Hall, and Patrice Petro
