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When you need meal time inspiration, it's worth shopping Kroger. For thousands of appetizing ingredients that inspire countless mouth-watering meals. And no matter what tasty choice you make, you'll enjoy our everyday low prices. Plus extra ways to save, like digital coupons worth over $600 each week, and up to $1 off per gallon at the pump with points. So you can get big flavors and big savings. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Fuel restrictions apply. Welcome to the new books network. Welcome to new books and film, a podcast series on the new books network. I'm your host, Pete Kunze. My guest today is Emily Carmen, an associate professor of Film and Media Studies in the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University and the author of Independence Stardom, Relance Women in the Hollywood Studio System. The book was published by the University of Texas Press. Good afternoon, Emily, and welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? I will. Thank you for having me. The pleasure is mine. As we get started, could you just tell us a little bit more about your background and your training? Yeah, of course. So I am an American film historian or media historian in the parlance of our field right now. I came to film history and the academic work on film history by way of being a stan. I don't think I knew when I was 11, 10 years old. I first got into old movies, like really old movies if they tell my students now. I didn't know that there were professors of film and professors of film history. I came to film history through my grandmother and watching movies on Disney Channel, a very different incarnation of Disney Channel than it is now. The Turner and what began Turner Classic Movies when American movie classics still showed movie classics. My grandmother would take me to the library, to the video store when those were still around, and would check out biographies on famous actresses. For me, it was mostly actresses. Katherine Hepburn was the first one that started this current rabbit hole that I'm still in. She really nourished that. That's also why I ended up starting this dedicated to my grandmother because I don't know if I'd be sitting here talking to you right now without her. And I went to UCLA, which also, I, a wonderful and amazing scholars are there. But I wanted to go there for the archive, for the Moving Image Film and Television Archive. And I, again, when I was there, I thought I'd be an archivist. Staving celluloid, you know. And I did a little bit of that, but I found that doing primary research in the archives, which is, UCLA also has wondrous primary collections. Los Angeles in general has awesome special collections from film and television. So I found that this was more interesting to me and, and frankly, more rewarding than being a purveyor of the archives, which is a very important job and I have wonderful colleagues who helped me along the way with an independent start on them with other research projects. But I felt like I was a kid in the candy store who was giving away all the candy and never got to enjoy it. So then I thought, okay, well, maybe I'll do this PhD thing and here I am. So one of the things that always fascinates me as film historians is I think there's this impression by others who don't do archival research that kind of we go into the archive with questions and with a topic. But of course, the archive always kind of shapes our topic, right, and what we find. So I'd love to hear more about maybe what was the soft idea you had when you started going through archival materials and the way that the archive shaped your project. Yeah, that's a really good question. I can tell that we had a mentor in common too. Yeah, exactly. And I'm always telling my students to teach primary research and I'm quite passionate about it and things like the media history digital library lets us do that in a way that I'm sure you and I couldn't do it in the same way as undergrads. I did use in primary research and undergrad, but that was on my co film, which is not nearly as maybe it's sexy now, but my students look at me like, what are you talking about when I talk about the microphone collections that we have. Yeah, I always have to be open, right, because the archive will give you answers and directions, but often not at all what you are hoping to find or aiming to find or it's almost the opposite way we teach to do critical writing in humanities, right, you have a thesis and you supported with evidence and you start with the thesis, which I even still sort of do to my writing now, but often I'm doing primary research, you have to have an idea hypothesis is probably the better way to go about it. And then you're going to go in different directions and that absolutely happened with independent stardom. The whole project started when I was talking to my, then a historiography professor who became my dissertation advisor Vivian subject. And I didn't have a topic. We're the UCLA programs and I needed studies and actually the whole UC system, except Berkeley, it's on the corner system, so things move so fast that you don't have an idea by week five like you're frankly screwed so I was panicking. I didn't have an idea, you know, I had to be in the archive was the requirement for this geography. One impress her was the first time I worked with her, and I was talking to her in office are meeting lamenting how I just come out being a TA and history of the American Russia picture, which is a big class that brings in a lot of students across the UCLA campus. Like, I don't know why I have to teach this thing, you know, James Stuart being the first actor to freelance rookie blue Wasserman because I know Carole Lombard and other people were doing it in the 30s. And she said, that's a really good project. Why don't you do that for historiography. Like, I'm okay. But I only knew this through secondary sources because I mentioned I read biographies, mostly on Hollywood actresses from the Golden Age, prolifically as a teenager. So, I knew this reading both Carole Lombard biographies and also Clark Gable biographies. That was another interesting work around that I did in my youth, and that I still do it since it's a historian. And I find that a lot of my students who are interested in writing on women in Hollywood history, you have to go through the men, right, to get the primary researcher story about the women they're involved with. But I just saw my cooking. Well, those aren't going to work for his derogatory paper UCLA. So, I was like, I gotta find these contracts, right? That's, that's what this is about. And when I only had by this by probably less than five weeks to cough out a 15-page summer heart paper. So, I went to brought the then special collections librarian at the wondrous academy of ocean pictures and sciences library, the Margaret Harry Library. And I said, I asked about contracts, and I threw up Carole Lombard. I don't even know where I came up with Barbara Stanwick and Maryam Hopkins. Anyway, I liked them. I still like them. But somehow I also had an inkling that they were freelancing through whatever sources I had read, whether legitimate scholarly sources or biographies or being a kind of film nerd. So, I started with those names and Barbara Hall came back to me and he's like, well, I don't necessarily have contracts for you within the time limits, but I do have some interesting interviews that these actresses did with this woman Gladys Hall, who was a journalist who published a theme magazine at the time, the major publicity engine for film culture and the 30s. Great, you know, let's go there. And that's what led me to this sort of image persona presentation of independent started where the discourse of independence was coming through in their image presentation in their publicity being marketed, like as much as the makeup, right, or whoever they were dating or, you know, gowns, I'm trying to think about the things that were could come up in them magazines. And at the time, this is around the early the guy to old almost 20 years ago, what I was starting the PhD at UCLA. And it almost seemed like those conversations of the people doing the so called industrial film history. Again, Tom shots, Debesco Ray, Tito Ballo, Rick Jule, it seemed like those historians, and they were mostly male, were on this industrial side working with with industry documents studio collections. And then there was the historical term which had a lot of the feminist film historians, often looking mostly at silent film history. And the women directors and editors and screenwriters, who had been written out of the first arc of film history, and they were a lot of fan magazines as primary tax of ganton studlars where Maryam Hansen, Jennifer Bean, and then probably leading out a myriad of other people. These books are behind me on my bookshelf but those conversations weren't together so it mean that it may seem I think sort of like done now because I think this is more common. And maybe through, I don't want to be self important, but I need to work like mine and many other colleagues I respect, the idea that you could find information about people's labor and work through fan discourses. And vice versa that the fan discourses and publicity and marketing could be informed from so-called industry documents or studio memos and texts that those could mutually inform each other, but those conversations I found were not happening. So I remember that paper was really exciting to write, I use this interview, it's time for my prospectus defense, you know, well, you still have to get those contracts like some of the committee members were like, well, you know, well, we can't like we can't trust the fan magazines, those kind of things. But what was interesting is that you could in my case, and I think those materials also were maybe originally marginalized because of access. We didn't have a media history to do library, but also they were feminine culture, they were marketed to young women, who's going to do that seriously, right? I mean, that's the work that the feminist film historians did mining the 20s. So, that was maybe a long winded answer, but that's how I came to it. And the fan part with the end chapter, the image analysis was secondary, like I didn't even think that's what it was going to, that's what I needed, you know. And what also came out of that, when this became an dissertation project is, I started with those three women, again, thinking of more traditional dissertations coming out, maybe coming out of like the 80s. And in the 90s, you have your three studies, right, and you look at them and these different chapters. I found more, I found more women, more women. And I remember being really stressed out about that as I went to the Warner Brothers archive, and then also that they were here, and some center, David, the Selznex archives are really important because he worked with a freelance artist and a couple personal papers of actors that were in and around Los Angeles, also Charles Feldman's papers that are at the AFI Library, I think they're still there. I was like, what am I going to do? I have all these other people, and I was so stressed out about this, and I remember being Kathleen McEw at UCLA, who said Emily, like, come come in about this, let's talk, like, this is not a problem. This is amazing, like, this is going to strengthen your argument even further. You're not looking at outliers, you're looking at a significant trend. And it was mostly women, which is, you know, at a time when, in the civic sphere, by comparison today, a lot less women and places of power. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Hollywood. I mean, and to think about how that's that ebbed and flowed, right? I think even when we talk to our students, they often think that, like, women have been historically marginalized within the industry from the beginning, and of course, what work like your own and Shelley Stamp and Jane Gaines have done is really pointed to know that there have been these ebbs and flows that we need to pay more attention to and how we conceptualize agency, which is one of the things I think your project does so powerfully. You mentioned its intervention into industry history, right? It's predominantly male pursuit, although, of course, Janet Stiger and Jane Gaines were doing work like that as well. And then feminist film historians. I'm wondering, too, if you could talk a bit about star studies as a field and how your project is kind of offering another approach to the star and the way that they've functioned. And the way that they've functioned in film and media studies? Absolutely. It's still in my favorite sub areas of our field. So when I taught film theory a couple of years ago, I made sure there was a whole week on stars, then when they're right from previous colleagues. And that's something that I came, I think that's such an interesting, I think it's a similar conversation where the seminal work started, I mean, the field started to Richard Dyer. And stars and signs, it's semiological signs and studying what they mean as cultural texts. And that's where I think the fan ephemera would make, it was and still is a part of that. But I think, again, kind of bringing in those different discourses of the so-called industrial histories alongside the cultural text of stardom. I think those conversations were also happening parallel and not coming at merging, because the Richard Dyer was the Richard Dyer work and Jackie Stacey's work, I love the stargaming. Those, yeah, I love that book. And those books were, at least from my memory of them, not working as much with documents, like contracts, brought you by Jean J. Gains, who pass in your career, how she goes, I mean, what area has she not touched. You know, we have contested culture, which was looking right at the contractual side of stardom and how that could frame the image you're watching. But I absolutely would think of my work to fit into star studies and, but bringing to it more this contractual framing to show, like, for instance, one thing that I always think about was when I was in, was it women in film, like, a fem, like, undergrad feminist film class, I think it was called women in film. And we were watching Marlene Dietrich, I don't know, about Lynn Blondenas or something, against where she comes out with the ape costume. So we're reading Laura Moby and the two of you looked at this and, you know, the visual pleasure narrative cinema, right, like feminist film theory 101. And I'm just saying, I don't buy this, like, I don't see her being objectified at all, like, like she is amazing right now, like, if anything, she's in command. And what's really, and I think there are star studies analyzing those aspects of someone like Dietrich as well. So it's really exciting with some of like Dietrich and Garbo, and I mean, we can go off a myriad of women who are working in the 30s, many of them have been certain. What's so exciting, I know for Dietrich, for Dietrich, like, she did have agency over her image presentation off screen. Like, she was very astute to how she was photographed and what camera person was going to be filming her and her makeup and how she would be lit and just so. And it was contractually written into her contracts at Paramount. And that conversation sometimes I think was not in the original star studies works as well as feminist film theory. And again, I think that goes back to access. There weren't primary collections in the same way in the 70s that we have now, let alone digital repositories. So people went to the text that they could. But I think that's what's really exciting is being able to put those. A different grounding into the agency that you see in analyzing the semiotics of stardom, right? But, for me, it was exciting to contribute to that discourse and be able to go beyond just the textual analysis. I wanted to have text analysis in this book, actually, in the dissertation. My committee actually, funny, I guess, like, a premonition of her films going. It was like, you know, that's not the interesting part of your book. How do people go to a dissertation, perspectives defense with them coming out, like getting rid of a chapter? Like, I think that was the major thing. Like, you don't need this chapter. Like, it probably did be a favor in terms of labor, too. But so bring it kind of expanding star studies into a historiographical framework that could bring in primary documents to aid those semi logical patterns to study. Yeah, I have a lot of solidarity with you on that. I was also told, "What's this textual analysis doing in the middle of your industry history?" I don't think I ever fully convinced them that creative decisions are business decisions, but, you know, onward, nevertheless. I wanted to point out another strain here that I feel like I've seen as someone who was a few years behind you as an industry historian, which is the increasing importance of the contract as a historiographical document, right? And that not to say that we hadn't paid attention to them, but I feel like there's been so much rich work in particular in the last five, ten years that has really kind of gone to legal archives or has invoked the contract as perhaps even the central document that is kind of illuminating the history that the historian is writing. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. I don't know if I want to say turn, but let's say revitalization or renewed energy in the legal dimensions of film history. I agree with you. Yeah, I think it's an it's an enlivened return. Yeah, there's, we are both students at Tom shots and people like Tom and Rick Jule, Tina Ballium, many scholars who I respect and regard their work did this and still do. But I think, again, it goes back to Vivian and Ruby Vians, heading into the law library, you see. And I remember being asked, I think I want to make committee members think it might have been Janet Bergstrom's like, I'm a pushing method for going through these contracts. I don't know what I said in the hot seat, but I just, I had no method. I just started looking at them. I had no, I have no legal background. I don't think I ever will be beyond my, my research and coming at it from from a Hollywood industry standpoint, media industry standpoint. But I think I just started looking at them as many as I could. And I wish we had more because I think something that's become apparent to me through my work as an archivist and using archives and even talking to fellow industry historians. And you might concur in this piece is the studios don't, they still don't work the same. I mean, there's new players, right? There's legacy studios, new tech studios. But even in the studio era, they think people like Tom shots of Rick Jule pointed out very well, but that they don't work the same. So we don't, we only had the Warner Brothers archive in only 40 years of that for when the Warner Brothers own that studio. But just for looking at that, you went beat the red loanouts or when it seemed, what I found is I could get, I was able to live at Columbia and Sam Goldman documentation and probably some other studios. But you could, like when the agent was shopping around and the client, I guess it would be because Mary, I don't know if, I don't know if this was, you know, Jack Warner trying to make sure he had to pay more money. That would be a copy of their previous agreement at the previous producers studio or what that. And the documents were not, I mean, the industry contract was industry contract, but you'd notice different things and different nuances. And just like with memos, you know, like I love reading Jack Warner's memos are hilarious. Same with baby no cells neck, like there's personas and different approaches, I think, to writing those contracts, the agents themselves. Charles Sullivan, my own cells neck, those are the two big agents in the 30s, but you start to notice this level of nuance that I think in writing those first history suggest give us a grasp of how the American studio system worked, right? And just again, I'm thinking more about Thompson Steiger and their approach is very, the cosical cinema. They're elated that because they don't care. It's just like they have, they're writing, they're, they're just getting the grand narratives there. We have these frameworks. So I think what makes this contractual work exciting is that there is nuance and variability that gives it lends itself to new original viewpoints. And I'm also thinking of some like Eric Koitz work who it's fascinating to look at you people suing each other, right? His deadly versus rather essay, like is using LA secure court documents. And that's why now most Hollywood suits, right? They get settled because otherwise they know it's going to become public record and they don't want people looking at their business dealings, right? But more people sued each other in the first path of the 20th century, I guess. But I think it's also exciting to see negotiations of deals, the back and forth and how those agreements come together because particularly as an artist gets more economic cloud, they can ask for more and there is more of a back and forth. And you can't see that stuff as they sort of referring to most suits don't go to trial, but also these are, these are the media assets, right? But the media conglomerates don't let this stuff out. That's why I think the Sony hack was so fascinating in the last decade because like, oh, suddenly this stuff is out online, but you can't get this, you know, I mean, I didn't really go to, I don't even know where you went to go look at that stuff. But I remember I just seen massive like thing and we were all talking about it. So to be able, we don't, I get sad sometimes thinking that it's hard. How do we do this comparative work in terms of gender or in terms of any sort of media industry framework contractually in the conglomerate media industries. When you need mealtime inspiration, it's worth shopping Kroger for thousands of appetizing ingredients that inspire countless mouthwatering meals. And no matter what tasty choice you make, you'll enjoy our everyday low prices plus extra ways to save, like digital coupons worth over $600 each week and up to $1 off per gallon at the pump with points. So you can get big flavors and big savings, Kroger, fresh for everyone, fuel restrictions apply. Thank you! I couldn't have completed this project without a little extra coffee. And since I brushed with Colgate's Pro Series toothpaste with an expert level whitening for a vibrant glow, I could show up to set each day camera ready and smiling wide. Well, Kelly, looks like a little Colgate gave you a lot of confidence. Colgate off to white. Find it at all major retailers. Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating to think about, especially because I think one of the things you mentioned too in your end notes as someone who loves reading end notes, right, is how 20th Century Fox's legal paperwork was rescinded in the time between you looking at it and the time you published this book, which I didn't know because I don't work on classical Hollywood, usually in my own archival work, I work on conglomerate era. But I mean, to think about the kind of the fragility of access, right, and Tom Schott's dealt with this as well as you likely know, when he was doing stuff on Universal and then all of a sudden Universal was resold and they were like, "What is this guy doing looking at this material?" So, I mean, it raises these interesting questions and the legal dimension as I think Eric has a great contribution to a roundtable in the spectator that Lucy Arzola and Kay Fortmuller did, right, where he basically says, like, because of disclosure, often there's these rich industry materials waiting for us in the legal archive. And, you know, obviously such a crucial dimension to creativity and yet one that at times can be undervalued by different areas of film and media studies. This is all a very long tirade to set up my real question to you, which is to talk about Carol Lombard's contracts. And I don't know if it's too granular to say that the 1941 was particularly exciting in reading your book, but I mean, can you get this kind of a sense of like, I remember the first time I met you at SCM has, I think I came up to you fanning out a bit. I said, "I never knew Carol Lombard was such a badass. I mean, full beat me." But I mean, you know, obviously on screen she's such a badass, but I mean behind the scenes. I really think you offer us a way of thinking about her not only as a performer, but as an entrepreneur, as a business woman, right, that's really exciting in this book. I was hoping you could give the listener just a sense of how your research allowed you to kind of offer us a different side of Lombard's labor in Hollywood. Yeah, with pleasure. And he's just talk about Carol Lombard, the woman who graces my cover, which I was really happy that worked out because I really felt as I opened up with the intro, she was the vanguard of independent stardom. And I think one of the, and the reason, I think there's two main reasons why that legacy was obfuscated until, I think, my book. And there's an interesting biography that came out, it will be a Kirikou as well, and just a reframing of her. But she died, she was barely 34. That's so young. So, so she died before she had offspring, before she had an estate, before she had the opportunity to maybe donate papers or even think about a legacy. So, and she was known as a comedian, and I don't think this was the case at all in the 30s and 40s, in fact, and most of the women in independent stardom got their most established their critical reputation and respect in the industry. And the industry got Oscar nominations, including Lombard, for doing comedy. So, I think that is switch, we're now comedians in Hollywood have to do serious drama to get Oscar nominations or win Oscars. So, I think that may have also, that reputation switch, right? Like, well, comedians, they don't take them up seriously when I still think then as is now, it's really hard to beach media, make people laugh, right? Whereas the drama tends to get the critical respect and the awards. But, so I think her, you know, victim of her own success, you say it, like, you know, the screwball girl, like the term screwball comedy, screwball, which is revered, I think, by any classical Hollywood affectionatos, or if you do a little bit of digging, it's still sort of a genre that's there in bits and pieces. That term comes from her, right? It was coined by Life Magazine in 1937. It was part of the marketing campaign with Nothing Sacred, of which she was also a part of that orchestration with Russell Burwell. So, in so many ways, she did set the model for kind of contemporary celebrity, where you're not working, you know, a studio is not engineering it for you. I mean, I think of, I'm not really, really following the influencers, so not really, I mean, I'm on Instagram, but I joined for the filters, I never, that never, my Instagram was filtered, because that's how I did it. Yeah, so, like, I never knew it was going to become this thing, and I have too many things distracting my time. So, I'm not active on Instagram, but if there was ever going to be a celebrity that would have valued in being an influencer and commodifying, like, once they're Hollywood celebrity, is perhaps, you know, aged out in terms of being a romantic lead, how she would have brought that into all these different branding, marketing, company opportunities. They'd give people, like, a lot of Gwyneth Paltrow, right? Among others, like, she would have, she would have been there, like, that she understood that she had to be her own representatives, both on the industrial side and the publicity, you know, public relations side. And to be a successful free agent, I still think this is very much at play now, but certainly in the 30s, if you, and that's where some of them and I write about didn't understand that balance as well. And if you were going to not have a Jack Warner or a Louis B. Mayor, although that's by example, because those freelancers were working at MGM. But, you know, if you were going to have a big, like, a derelict Zannick or a Jack Warner or Walter Wanger, you know, managing your career for you, could basically go up what locals did in a way, or, you know, you could have a failure. It'd be all right, we're just going to put you in a different movie and it's fine. That could really take you. So you needed to have a good reputation, not just within the industry, with the craftspeople, with your colleagues, but with the journalists, right, with the publicity, with the public, with the public. You need to have your own publicist, one of the first actors to do that, to have their own publicist. And so that's what enabled her to kind of weather her own, you know, mixed success as a freelance artist. I think it's heartbreaking that she died right after to be or not to be, because that's a film when I share that movie to my students, like, it's one of those films that does just get better. Like, the Lubitsch touch lives, but Lubitsch and Lombard, I mean, it was, it was just such a, it was, it's a green movie and you see that she was really far from stopping. And also in show that she was interested in becoming more about as a producer, and I think she would have gone that direction as she was going to get closer to 40. I think just like people like Virginia down up and Joan Harrison. I could have seen her staying active in the industry, but on the other side of the screen, it was pointing that way, but, you know, we don't know because we lost her too soon. But she just, I do like her films a lot. I mean, I think my man God 3, I just taught that the string. So, and, like I said, to be not to be, walk some water. But I like her more, like, always talk about the women in Penn Start, and there's some that I like more for them off screen and certainly Lombard, and then there's some where I do like their movies more. That would be Barbra Stanley, whereas off screen. Well, in the 30s, she's different, you know, in the 40s, the QA grain, the black. I was about to say, we're going to talk about her, her republicanism. And it's where it's like, you know, but, but she ages really well. I mean, Stanley is dynamite to teach these days, I think, to, to the new generations. But Harold Lombard, you know, she checks everything off. Even if I think some of her films are maybe lesser known. And again, like, she didn't make films after 1940, barely 42. I think I think it's going to be the 42 release. And that's like one film. So, she didn't have the opportunity, right, to reinvent herself with filmed wire. Like, maybe she would have, like, Stan, like, right, you know, maybe she would have become an war icon, who knows, or my ginger Rogers reinvents herself as a, as a dramatic and comedian actress after the Stair Rogers Act. So, or Katherine Hepburn is a really good example. There's a whole other interesting career in the, in the fifties. So, anyway, thank you. I'm glad that you recognized Lombard's legacy. If I, if I did that well, let's focus. I'm extremely proud. Yeah, I mean, I think it really reinforces this kind of larger trajectory of women's agency as performers and producers, or one who would have maybe ended up there, right? I mean, if we look at someone like, you know, what Mary Pickford was doing with United Artists, right? And then when Carol Lombard does this period, and then you also touch upon Ilopino, I mean, and even now, you know, someone who teaches contemporary Hollywood talking to my students about like, what is Reese Witherspoon doing? What is Blake Lively doing about, you know, developing these projects and, you know, and the need to do so, right? I mean, that kind of entrepreneurial necessity, right, and how it, how it emerges and with someone like Lombard, right? There's another book to be written about the kind of the, the entrepreneurial comedian, right? I mean, Lucille Ball, the next generation, right? Yeah, so... As someone who never got, like, RKO couldn't figure out what to do with her, right? She had to figure out herself what to do. Yeah. Yeah, complete, complete fascination and admiration for what these, these women were able to accomplish. One of the things that also kind of struck me in reading your book is the way that you kind of underscore the connection between the power of these, these women stars for the studios in terms of who the audience was for this product and how the studios understood who the audience was for this product. Can you talk a little bit more about the importance of women, not just on screen and behind the screen, but in front of the screen? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's another talking point that rivet students like, what? Like, the female audience was, was the most valued marketing demographic. And in the classic era, and that's something where I think that the feminist historians who really spend the time establishing the legacy of women in Hollywood in the silent era. And that's where I think I was first familiar with this, but it doesn't stop, right, but the tradition to sound, whereas, you know, the female directors and more prevalent screenwriters and the force behind the scenes and writing and directing did stop a bit with the tradition to sound with the emulation was with Hollywood becoming a big business enterprise. Let's make it look like Wall Street. What didn't stop, I think this is what's a really, which gives pause. I work in a film school, so most of my students who intersect with me, the majority of them are wanting to work in its own immediate industry and some shape or form. So I think what I was thinking about, yeah, how does that hurt people too? I will find an audience. Those are important questions, but I think what, what seems to me to be a lot different from today versus the third, the classic era 30s and 40s or 20s, even, is that if you, like women's pictures, for example, were as important about war important than male oriented genres, like the biggest, I mean, the biggest pictures of the 30s were women's pictures, blocks off this picture. Michael Crete is, for example, he makes got the Blanca, he directs Milder Pierce, he directs charge of the light brigade, he directs the Seahawks, I mean, he has everything, right, but women's pictures, that would have been, and of course he's going to be making women's pictures, right, because those are important and valued films, so having male talents develop strong women's portrayals on screens is, I think, something that it seems, sometimes I feel like the female helmed picture, I'm just sort of generalizing right now, but I think he's like, oh, well, of course the woman's director, woman's story, and that's what's going to be important to them, and then, you know, dudes are going to make like marble franchises I mean, I think that that's the overall valuing that the female audience led to those projects being helmed by the most important men of the lot, as well as the biggest female star that's going to star in it, or someone like Kalambard is going to negotiate to be in that and that's because it was presumed, if any men were going to the movie theater, it was their wife, their mother, their sister, and a girlfriend, grandma, right, that the women were the ones making the choice, so for a film to be successful, it had to appeal to both genders, but the women superseded the men, so that's why even And like, I always go to test pilot that like, you know, romance movie with Spencer Tracy and Carkevel, and they were in a bunch, you're like San Francisco, they were in a couple of like, you know, dude movies for their you know, like the thirties version of broads, like our prom parents, romances, rather, but they'd always be a strong female lead with them, you know, they'd be John Crawford, they'd be Myrna Loy, right there, it was never just them, there was always a limit or in the case of the freelance women I write about, I think that's why there are more of them, because there are more roles, A-list roles for women being developed at all the studios, independent producers, and studios versus N, the big, the big five Because that's what was the successful formula, and that to say that there were the Cary grants and trebric marches and Ronald Coleman's, but there you go, right, that's three, and out those three men, like they kind of had their own niches within the Hollywood systems And the presumed female audience led really to a valuing of female driven genres and the strength of female roles, even if the patriarchal systems don't leave, or let me shut it over, even if patriarchy is still something that's at play in a lot of these narratives I think it was, there's an essay Linda Williams wrote, I think about Stella Dallas, like the ending doesn't matter, because if 90 minutes, you know, Betty Davis is pushing against the patriarchy, like don't you think you were, you know, viewers are, they see all this challenging back, even if the ending might restore marriage, or prioritize romantic union and marriage, and the things that might be in seeing to be a value to a female audience member in the 30s or 40s, and I'm generalizing, but I think that the strength and value that the female audience brought in terms to the development of pictures and Hollywood at the time can't be underestimated and then, you know, went about what these women were doing off screen getting back to Carole and Bird and other, you know, they were hardly living a life constructed by patriarchy, you know, I mean, I think they experienced that, you know, unless everybody in my book, I think except for Irene Dunn and Kathy Hepburn ever got married, but you know, had a themed relationship relationship, I was Spencer Tracy for a long time, right, right. Yeah, so these women were leading pretty unconventional lines, and sometimes they were also being cast and pretty unconventional parts that were all again to appeal to the women in the audience and that's that changes, post World War II, and I don't think it's, I still think that's, that's how true, even it's, it's still good to like an ally. Wow, look at like a Wonder Woman with how much money it may be, like, I probably could keep making money, you know, like, so, yeah. Well, I mean, as someone who follows musicals in particular, right, there was a while there where the most successful film ever directed by a woman was Mamma Mia, right, but, you know, my students were like Mamma Mia, and it's like, yeah, because they don't, they don't think of the success of Hollywood films as a global pursuit, right, and it's like, globally that film is huge so that's another issue, but we, what I wanted to kind of kind of follow in the thread of what you've just said is I think your book also makes this kind of powerful corrective of this kind of, let's say perception of Hollywood is this kind of patriarchal capitalist factory, right, that kind of is this all-consuming monolith, and you kind of crack that image, right? I mean, can you, can you talk a little bit about this idea that I think there's maybe a popular perception that, that, and maybe this is fueled in part by, say, all the mythology around Betty Davis and Jack Warner, right, but just kind of the woman constantly having to kind of fight back against these, these male figures, and that certainly is a key part of the Hollywood history too, but this offers us an additional parallel narrative, perhaps one that's, hopefully others will agree, one that is this more empowering, but, you know, how does this kind of reshape kind of common perceptions about gender, power, and film production? Yeah, absolutely, I can, I can respond to that, and I do think you bring up a Davis, maybe we both write the same essay, right, the star, any Davis and the star, and the star is marketing something in the previous system, it's in one of the, it's in one of the industry readers from the, is it Tom's essay on Jezebel? No, but I love that essay, trying to get you a great title. No, this is a, it's something the star in marketing is marketing something, Kathy Calpro, but that is the essay I'm ever reading that, and it, again, it gets my chance to talk about the contract documents, like, it was sort of like, here is the case study where he's Betty Davis, and this is the example for all of stars, men and women in the studio system in the 30s, just using her example and a very narrow part of her career, I mean she was a Warner Brothers for 20 years, and did some after that too, but using it like okay so here's how like the star as indentured servant, right? And that certainly was, and could be the case, and but even if you're betting Davis, it's like that essay leaves out like, what about like, you know, and this is where I think Tom's essay, we're talking about does a good job bringing that up, like, well she may have lost the battle, but she won the war, right, because then they make a whole unit, like the best women's pictures at Warner Brothers was a result of Betty Davis at that trial. Where they didn't be like, okay, we're done with her and goodbye, and we're not wasting our money on you, it was like, wow, like we're going to now develop the pictures that you've been saying you deserved, and it worked out for Betty, right? You know, I think it was in the eye of the Pinot who famously said I'm a poor man's body Davis, because she kept getting all the extra reject, like her and in Sheridan and Olivia to have one, got all the rejected Davis roles, but so I don't want to like extol that it was, it was a great situation for all the women working at Warner Brothers. Clearly, I think I'm playing on the opposite in my book, so, but I think what I like to show in this is like, you know, yes, there were women who end in, but more, we've heard the narrative of women who were exploited or not able to, you know, transcend their, the strictures of the system, but what if, so if you can't get rid of the system, right, if you don't want to go be an alternative artist, you know, or, you know, like Maya Darren, for example. Sure, sure, yeah, that's why I thought it would be. Yeah, you're an artist, and if you want to work in the business, right, we are a capitalist country. How can you lasso that system to work to your advantage? Because I think, and that's something, whenever I, I sometimes get asked to talk about contemporary Hollywood, and especially after the, the Me Too movement and just like, and I felt like the journalist, it's almost like, we were talking about where our students, if you don't know this, or these ebbs and flows of women and power in Hollywood, and I'm just like, I can't talk to you. Sometimes I just, you know, I'm not going to deal with it. So, like, I'm going to spend like half the interviews. Okay, like, this is not how it's always been. And in fact, like, there are probably even some examples of the temper hellage you mentioned Reese Witherspoon, where if you were women can make the system work more for them as opposed to be oppressed, you know, and, and downtrodden by it. So I think that's, it was really exciting for me was to see the, the dozen or so women who I wrote about, who in the face of oppression or disappointments, or in the case of someone like Carol Elbert or Janet Gaynor, I've also, it was known for playing like a diminutive kind of angel women. And she's like, wow, like from behind the screen, you know, they can have a whole other ability to use that marketing power because they were valued and in demand by female audiences, and then use that celebrity to get approval through your co-star, get a story approval, a camera person of choice, makeup artist of choice, fashion designer of choice, right to approve your publicity campaigns, or thinking of a, the one that I think is thinking about Barbara Stanwick, it's crazy that she picked babyface. You know, I think now that's become a go-to text that we teach. I mean, every right, right. I'm telling my students, like, she picked this. She had control. She collaborated on the script, really with Daryl Elbert Stanwick, the last original screenplay credit he got. Also, crazy that movie came from him, because he was not a feminist, right? Yeah. But her, that's that whole, so the Stanwick experience, Carol Lumbard's deal, freelance deal 1937 at Warner Brothers. As Betty Davis is battling Jack Warner and not getting, you know, getting her value, not being recognized and, and equally invested in as her male colleagues at the studio. Well, what about these freelance artists who were making pretty interesting deals concurrent with the Davis struggles. And you had the flip side, right, because Kay Francis came, and the thing, the star rating deal of 1931 came over to Warner Brothers from Paramount, and The Catch Read Terribly by Warner Brothers. But Contra Davis, who when I got on suspension campaign for loan outs, he says, so her talent can be seen. Francis dutifully showed up and just appeared in these subpar movies. It was very professional, you know, but that didn't do her any papers in terms of her long term viability in the studio. But, you know, she, I think it's, I think, looking, when you can look at these contracts for different artists, it does show you how the system was so far from lonolithic. I mean, I think of Rick Joel's work here, like both his books and RKO, and also the essay about bringing it baby and Howard Hawks. It's as much as the, as Hollywood, I think, aspired to some sort of fortist fantasy in the 30s. That's just not like humans work, right. And so the contract system, I think really illuminates that. And if we had the full gamut, if you were able to look at, you know, all the other major studios contracts, and not just for, for above the line talent, would it be fascinating to kind of see. I mean, I'm assuming, like I should, I should know this, because I worked with one of those archives, but like the janitors, right. And, and the carpenters, right. This sucks people, like all of the myriad of people who are employed in the studio system is like, well, they probably all had contracts of some sort, but the studio better. I'm taking of an idea, an excuse to go back to the Warner Brothers archive, but I think that that's hopefully what independent stardom can show and, and then there's some people who've had counterpoints to what I've shown them thinking Aaron Hills work like I can't just say that. Yeah, it was great. We did it in the 30s, because, you know, the women I'm looking at were, you know, a list stars, you know, probably doesn't get much better than that if you are the top of your game. So, for women assistance and women working more at the secretarial level and in the below the line positions in the 30s, we can't maybe tout that they're working visions were the same. But I do think that's what's interesting, hopefully, with our field that you get these these counterpoints. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Overnight, Duncan's pumpkin spice coffee has sent folks into a cozy craze. I'm Lauren LaTula, reporting live from home in my hand net turtleneck that my Nana made me. Mmm, cinnamon-y. The home with Duncan is where you want to be. ABC Thursdays. Welcome back. Crazenatomy is all new. Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant? The drama going down. Bunchy jumper from the bridge is cord snapped. You need all hands on deck. Is unbelievable. Do you think your gods give to this hospital? You're just another doctor. My relationship with Katherine is complicated. I'm going to sue you. Your lawyers know where to find me. You're unbelievable. Crazenatomy. Only Thursdays, 10/9c on ABC and stream on Hulu. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's what you said. No, no, no, I mean, I think it kind of sets up my next question, right? Because I think your study does this great job of showing us that while it was not representative, right? It also was not negligible that there were above the line women talent who were able to kind of push for demand, make happen, creative and business deals that we might otherwise not realize, right? And I think even just for those folks who aren't in our field who might read this to get them to think about Carol Lombard as a business woman, as Katherine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, as business women, I think is really kind of useful for thinking about all the work that goes into being a star and the kind of the sub-industry, right? We often see this in popular discourse with stars when they're talking about their pay. And they're like, yeah, you think that money all goes to me, but it goes to an agent. It goes to a manager. It goes to makeup artists, public publicists, right? That's why we demand what we demand. A-wise. Of course, that's not my question next. That's just kind of a commentary on what you're saying. But you mentioned Aaron Hill, and I thought one of the pleasures of having a chance to talk with you today is getting you to kind of think about the resonances of this project and where work on Hollywood history, and in particular on women in Hollywood history, has gone since the publication of Independence Stardom. And do you have any thoughts on kind of where the field is and kind of, I don't want to say trends, but currents and themes that have really kind of shaped this work in the last few years, in part because of this book? Yeah, to look back and to have opportunity to look back and I'm a sick opportunity. And thank you for including me to think that my book is still sort of new-ish because it came out in 2016, so there's been time and gestation to think about it. But hopefully it's still lots of the beauty of historical work, right? It can always be new. But I do think, just because I teach historiography, I teach as much as I can, any variations of the studio system or, you know, genre classes and mostly film, I feel lucky I can do that because it is my first love. I still have, we saw like a film-specific classes. So I'm always looking, right, for what's out there and what's new. And I'm always thinking about gender and the gender dynamics in Hollywood. And I think since Independence Stardom has come out, or even since I was in graduate school, I think there is just more attention to archibally-based studies that are helping us and live in and expand the experience of, like, the historical experience is, there's still a lot of women. And I think what's also exciting is, right, people of color as well. Like, I don't know if it's out there yet. I feel like Lucy Wurzell would be a good person to ask. But James Wong-Hao, like, that's someone who, I want to get a book and so I can have that in my class, right? Like, there's, just thinking about their- The cinematographer to those who don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the only, right, Chinese-American A-list cinematographers who, I mean, who worked for four decades, like, so, but I think this is the awareness that we can go back. Like, for thinking back when I was an undergrad, I remember my advisor at the time, Wila, who was a great mentor, telling me, like, well, classical Hollywood Emily is kind of dead, and you'll need to find something new if you're going to be able to go to grad school. And I was like, oh, so. Yeah. Like, yeah, that's just so not true, because I think of, right, there's Christian Elaine's book that came out recently on Joan Harrison, which is, that's what I think is interesting with people like Hitchcock, right? There's so many books in Hitchcock. And Hitchcock is still important to teach. Like, I don't want to throw the baby out of the bathwater, as they say. But we can still think about Hitchcock, but what about the women he worked with? Like, someone like Joan Harrison, who was basically mentored by him and went to go produce his Alfred Hitchcock Presents and TV. Also, she worked in film and television, sort of setting the frame, the road map for how you kind of want to be doing both and contemporary Hollywood. I think of my, my, my, a sparkler's book in another, like, dude era for Hollywood movies, like '70s era Hollywood, like the Hollywood Renaissance. It's like, where are, where were the women? Like, okay, I guess they were not. Well, she's like, oh, they were there. There weren't a lot, right? Like, who had a major, like her, her, her, her criteria was they had to have, like, had to be released by a studio necessarily to develop. But she found that, like, they, they were there, even if they weren't, you know, romanticized and easy writers reaching problems. And I'm thinking also mentioned Aaron Hillsberg, who's looking at the flip side, right? Like, what about those global line workers and, and the Hollywood industry? Or Gee Smith's book, which I love. Nobody's Girl Friday, like, going beyond, like, making us kind of rethink the executive commentary and the level of input, um, uh, thinking of care for her name, but it's the one who worked out, um, her Libby Mayer and MGM. Oh, yeah. Um, I know. It's summer back there. But, and also, like, you know, Margaret Booth, who lives, you know, the head editor who, you know, would be in the screening room with Irving Falberg, right? And could have as much input and sway on how a film was cut and, um, distributed. So, and Edith Head, like, just looking at these other occupations that even though if they became feminized to a certain extent in the industry, how, within that niche, just like acting is, like, you mentioned, like, lively and Reese Witherspoon. Um, you know, and I'm thinking of Angela Jolie, who's also dappled in directing. Um, and Rebecca Hall, like, acting still is the way you can leverage your power into other avenues for what you want to do. Jody Foster, um, it, it does. So thinking of editing or acting for women or costume design or makeup, these, like, feminized, traditionally feminized occupations within Hollywood. But within that, how do you, a niche, um, develop, right? Your piece of a pie and, and the Hollywood system. Um, also thinking, right. Keep formulas work, looking at extras, right? And the acting as an industry because, yeah, for every, they're all not going to be, um, you know, A-list actors negotiating. So how is this working, um, from the level of extras, um, and unions? Like, I think, uh, she starts it in, um, people really start to set in her book that's on Texas Proves. Maybe below the stars. And Kate also has a great essay on Edith Head, I believe, right? Yes. Yes. So, yeah. Um, but her and Lucy Marzola have a forthcoming apology come out on unions, right? Um, so I think, um, I think what I've seen since when the pen stardoms come out is just that those stories still mean to be told. Um, so need to be told, uh, are just, we're getting more of those, particularly along the gender or different perspectives of looking at how the industry works in unions. Um, different parts of the industry that maybe, you know, beyond, or rethinking authorships through these different, um, I think Edith Head versus, or, um, Joan Harrison, both of whom who worked with the pitchcock. Um, I think that that's what I'm excited about. And, and I feel proud of independent start. Um, I know that if independent start them helped, um, open up doors or can be in the discourse with a lot of those, those authors and books that that's like, if I'm in company with the scholars, like, wow, thank you. Um, but I think, and I hadn't ever thought to say it now that I feel like it left my brain. Um, oh, I know I was going to bring up is hopefully, I did a manuscript review, which I hope this book is coming out on Texas at some point for it. Um, and I remember I won't quite be like, well done there. There's some anthology that you mount Lupino, um, a couple of years ago. And there was, it's by Julie Grossman and I think Teresa Grishman. Um, and it's great. But then I remember, like, I just did like a comparison. Like I put in, I think like a John Ford, like all the books that come up a line. I'm like, you know, until I had a Lupino gets as many books as I see John Ford and I had a Hitchcock and Howard Hawks. And let me just keep, you know, until there's as many books about her and Joan Harrison and Caroline Baird and, you know, and Elaine May. I mean, just loose your ball and we just keep going. Um, down the list of important Hollywood women. Like then I'll be say, like, we don't need any more books. I have a, I had to like, you know, stop my topic. Of course we need more books on idol Lupino. Of course, it's bucket and it is a great manuscript. So I hope that book. Um, I see it from Texas frets in a couple of years, but. This December, I just Googled it. Oh, really? This, yeah. Alexandra Sarah's. Yeah. What's the title to store anyone's listening? It's Ida Lupino, a forgotten not tour from film noir to the director's share. And, uh, Alexandra, if you're listening, I might be reaching out to you soon. You should because it's a really good book. So that's awesome. Um, but, uh, I think hopefully books, like in a pen stardom and some of the other scholars and work we were talking about can, um, just generate within, uh, there's still, I think it was, um, Rick Jule and I having conversation about when I, I wrote a piece in the Warner Brothers archive. Um, like the archive is subject, but I think he was like, there's still hundreds of thousands of, of stories and research and come out of one of those archive. And did you amplify that with all the other primary collections? Maybe not as, you know, a, a, one stop shopping organized disappointed by this archive, but there are still so many stories to unearth, um, from Hollywood history, uh, that will enliven and show us a different, um, perspective on what has been presented at the monolithic, you know, patriarchal and, um, capitalist machine that doesn't leave much room for, for, well, his, that's one side of the story. You know, hopefully it's a conversation that we can, we can dig a little deeper and, um, particularly see different perspectives. Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, when I read book reviews of academic books, one of the things that always is a peppy for me is when someone says, but they don't talk about this. And it's like I think all of us who've written a book know that there are so many darlings we killed and so many tens of thousands of words we didn't get to include. Um, but I guess in some way it always leaves a room for more books to be written. Yeah. I, I think I have a folder I know for this book, um, like cut portions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so the last question is, what are you working on now or? Um, yeah, I am. Thank you. It's nice to be able to plug for what will be the actual new book. I'll just film, hopefully, um, not. Oh, I don't know. I think I'm hoping for 2026. Uh, let's, let's hope to that. Um, I'm working on a book on the misfits, John Houston's the misfits, which, um, I, most people know who mailman Rowans, right? So certainly aren't your listeners, but mailman rose last movie. Also Clark Gables last movie. Um, and I'm looking at the book as a, or I'm presenting the book rather, um, to examine the film as a transitional film between old and new Hollywood. And I'm doing that through the array of primary materials that exist. Um, for the book through like the John Houston papers, the Arthur Miller papers. You lay a wall like papers, the artist papers that are, um, at Wisconsin, the Frank Taylor papers that are Indiana. Um, he was the producer. He's more of a literary agent, but he produced his film. Um, and then, you know, just the treasure trove of interviews and biographies and secondary journalistic, um, sources that surround this film. But, um, has been mostly known as a, as a, if you look up, I mean, I was just reading in some biography. I think, and I have a bunch of John Houston buns. I've come across lately, but at the film, um, was a disappointment. Um, critically speaking. And that's not necessarily untrue, but, uh, the film actually has, uh, a dip. When it came out, an interesting story about its economic history, but I think delving beyond, um, the film itself, the, the making of that film, um, can help us see the, the freeway from the studio era to, to New Hollywood. Um, I think like independent stardom, I'm interested as a historian in framing, um, the, the evolution of Hollywood, not as just ruptures and breaks, you know, like Hollywood in the 50s antiquated, didn't, you know, flip-flopping in the face of more artsy films coming from Europe and television. They didn't know what they were doing. And then at a 67, right comes all these, you know, Bonnie and Clyde, and the graduate and everything cool. It's like, well, that one is really true. And especially if you look at the late 50s, nearly 60s, there's some really interesting films happening, um, in Hollywood. And I think the Misfits is one of those. Um, and that's what I'm, I'm literally working on that right now. I'm on sabbatical. So, uh, that is, that is where my brain is at the moment. So, great, great. Well, hopefully you'll come back when, when the book is ready. Um, and, and that's just that. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Thank you so much for your time today, Emily. It's been a real pleasure having a chance to, to chat with you about independent stardom, freelance women in the Hollywood studio system, which is available from University of Texas press, uh, and other online booksellers. Um, we won't say which one, but the one that has a, a river name. Um, this has been Pete Konzi. Uh, this will remain being Pete Konzi. Um, and this has been new books in film on the new books network. Thank you for listening, and we hope you'll join us again next time. [Music] [MUSIC PLAYING]
