Independent Stardom
Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System
Bringing to light an often-ignored aspect of Hollywood studio system history, this book focuses on female stars who broke the mold of a male-dominated, often manipulative industry to dictate the path of their own careers through freelancing.
Runner-up, Richard Wall Memorial Award, Theatre Library Association, 2016
During the heyday of Hollywood’s studio system, stars were carefully cultivated and promoted, but at the price of their independence. This familiar narrative of Hollywood stardom receives a long-overdue shakeup in Emily Carman’s new book. Far from passive victims of coercive seven-year contracts, a number of classic Hollywood’s best-known actresses worked on a freelance basis within the restrictive studio system. In leveraging their stardom to play an active role in shaping their careers, female stars including Irene Dunne, Janet Gaynor, Miriam Hopkins, Carole Lombard, and Barbara Stanwyck challenged Hollywood’s patriarchal structure.
Through extensive, original archival research, Independent Stardom uncovers this hidden history of women’s labor and celebrity in studio-era Hollywood. Carman weaves a compelling narrative that reveals the risks these women took in deciding to work autonomously. Additionally, she looks at actresses of color, such as Anna May Wong and Lupe Vélez, whose careers suffered from the enforced independence that resulted from being denied long-term studio contracts. Tracing the freelance phenomenon among American motion picture talent in the 1930s, Independent Stardom rethinks standard histories of Hollywood to recognize female stars as creative artists, sophisticated businesswomen, and active players in the then (as now) male-dominated film industry.
Carman upends conventional wisdom in this valuable and informative historical study of the business practices of freelance actresses during the 1930s.
Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System (published by University of Texas Press) tells a story that can shift perspectives on how Golden Age Hollywood operated.
Carman’s work is important, not only as an alternative history of Hollywood labor, but also as guide for working on workers in early cinema.
Carman's book . . . gives new insight into the gendered workings of the dream factory.
Carman’s study revises common conceptions of Hollywood stardom as a top-down process in which studios controlled stars and constructed their images and governed their labor with iron fists. Through really smart and sharp archival work, Carman fully reworks this picture and shows how a number of women stars in the 1930s were able to pretty much take control of their careers (what films to be in, what image to present to the public, etc.) and make of Hollywood a site of personal entrepreneurship as much as corporate strategy. This is a very important rewriting of Hollywood film history.
Emily Carman is an assistant professor of film studies in the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University.
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Independent Stardom Is Born
- Chapter One. 1930s Hollywood: The Golden Age for Talent
- Chapter Two. The [Freelance] Contract in Context
- Chapter Three. Labor and Lipstick: Promoting the Independent Persona
- Chapter Four. Independent Stardom Goes Mainstream
- Appendix One. Key Freelance Deals of Independent Stardom Case Study Stars, 1930–1945
- Appendix Two. Motion Picture Archives and Library Materials Consulted
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Edna Ferber's Hollywood
American Fictions of Gender, Race, and History
By J. E. Smyth; Introduction by Thomas Schatz
