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Romancing The Fan-Girl: Early Film Fan Magazines And American Girls’ Longing For Stardom., Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

Looking at “Beauty and Brains,” the first nationwide beauty competition issued by a film fan magazine (Photoplay Magazine) and a producing company (World Film Co.), this paper explores how early American cinema was shaped by female adolescence. In 1904, American psychologist G. Stanley Hall first described the “budding girl” as psychologically impermanent, malleable, and lacking self-awareness. A decade later, as the film industry became organized under an institutionalized star system, the figure of the growing girl linchpined the cult of the individual movie star.

I argue that, throughout the 1910s, adolescent girls were not only some of the best paid …

Romancing The Fan-Girl: Early Film Fan Magazines And American Girls’ Longing For Stardom., Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

No abstract provided.