American Studies Commons^™

Blue Bloods, Movie Queens, And Jane Does: Or How Princess Culture, American Film, And Girl Fandom Came Together In The 1910s, Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

This article explores the complex relationship established between young film actresses and their adolescent female fans during the second decade of the twentieth century. In the 1910s, popular press often promoted movie stars in their teens—such as Mary Pickford, Shirley Mason, Mae Marsh, and Lila Lee—as rag-to-riches Cinderellas released from urban squalor due to employment in the motion pictures. Fan magazines also presented these girl stars as blue-blooded princesses, whose royal bloodline enriched American stardom. Such press pageantry invited girl fans to identify with girl stars’ mythologized biographies.

However, the depiction of female movie stars as manufactured blue bloods also …