The actress as photographic icon: from early photography to early film

Mayer, David

doi:10.1017/ccol9780521846066.005

Cited by 27 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…1,2). 52 Meanwhile, throughout her early acting career, which she referred to as "only sort of a side line," Rowland continued to write personal publicity for actors and developed her stock-in-trade comedic "cartoon-o-logues" or "polylogues" 53 -topical monologues about women's foibles or burlesques of legitimate shows in which Rowland played all of the characters-on major vaudeville stages. By the early 1910s, Rowland worked for the United Booking Office (UBO) as a press and booking agent; she also represented Bert Williams, the Bahamian-American star of the Ziegfeld Follies.…”

Section: A Woman's Theatre Forestalledmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Behalf of the Feminine Side of the Commercial Stage: The Institute of the Woman's Theatre and Stagestruck Girls

White¹

2018

Theat Surv

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By Mabel Rowland's public accounting, the Institute of the Woman's Theatre helped hundreds of so-called stagestruck girls realize their ambitions by providing a safety net for the pitfalls of the commercial theatre. The organization, officially established in 1926 and in operation until roughly 1930, was said to have begun years earlier, “the outgrowth of a group which was formed in 1910 and used to meet in the Fitzgerald Building.” As president, Rowland—a press agent, well-known comedic monologist, and all-around theatre factotum—was supported by society women and a cadre of famous female writers and performers, including Florence Reed, who served as Vice President, and charter members Julia Arthur, Irene Castle, Rachel Crothers, Helen Hayes, Violet Heming, Elsie Janis, Anita Loos, Mary Pickford, and Mary Shaw, plus about a dozen more. At the time of its official founding, the institute announced that it would undertake three activities. First, it sought to establish a professional Broadway theatre as exclusively a women's operation, employing female playwrights, designers, directors, managers, producers, box-office staff, and so forth: “The only men who will be connected with the enterprise … are the actors and stagehands.” Second and third, the institute would give “aid and advice to girls from out of town who think they have something to offer the theater, read scripts and give opinions thereon, and in other ways labor in behalf of the feminine side of the stage.” The institute's goal of a theatre in tandem with discovering talented women looked to create a meaningful shift in women's inclusion and power within commercial theatre.

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Section: A Woman's Theatre Forestalledmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Behalf of the Feminine Side of the Commercial Stage: The Institute of the Woman's Theatre and Stagestruck Girls

White¹

2018

Theat Surv

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“…56 Had she been a touring actress, it is likely that there would have been more, as photographs became a vital means of generating publicity for performers at each venue and for securing new employment contracts. 57 The most widely disseminated photograph of Lane is probably the one that was given away with the Saturday Programme on 29 April 1876 (Figure 8). With its plain background and the sitter's demure plaited hair style, the decorous image looks like a family portrait with nothing to suggest Lane's professional life.…”

Section: Sara Lane As Performermentioning

confidence: 99%

Picturing Nineteenth-Century Female Theatre Managers: the Iconology of Eliza Vestris and Sara Lane

Norwood¹

2017

New Theatre Quarterly

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and Sara Lane (1822-99) were two pioneering women in nineteenth-century theatre history. Both were accomplished singers who made their names initially in comic and breeches roles and, during periods when theatrical management was almost exclusively confined to men, both ran successful theatre companies in London. Despite these parallels in their professional activities, there are substantial disparities in the scrutiny to which their personal lives were subjected and in how their contemporaries and posterity have memorialized them. In this article, Janice Norwood examines a range of portraits and cartoons of the two women, revealing how the images created and reflected the women's public identities, as well as recording changes in aesthetic practice and social attitudes. She argues that the women's iconology was fundamentally shaped by the contemporary discourse of gender difference. Janice Norwood is Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Drama, and Theatre Studies at the University of Hertfordshire. She has published on various aspects of nineteenth-century theatre history and edited a volume on Vestris for the Lives of Shakespearian Actors series (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011).

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“…Mayer (2007) incisively argues that as a genre the actress was the first photographic icon. This is significant because aesthetics and, especially the socially constructed nature of beauty, play a significant part in the construction of success in the careers of individual divas.…”

Section: Conducting Internet Research To Locate the Constructmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From a trawl of internet search engines, it was possible to locate hundreds of examples of famous Divas from different creative genres including opera; outstanding non-operatic singers; iconic actresses; and supermodels. Mayer (2007) incisively argues that as a genre the actress was the first photographic icon. This is significant because aesthetics and, especially the socially constructed nature of beauty, play a significant part in the construction of success in the careers of individual Divas (Table I Being a "Diva" is also associated with "attitude".…”

Section: Conducting Internet Research To Locate the Constructmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Diva storyline: an alternative social construction of female entrepreneurship

Smith

2009

International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship

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PurposeMany “Divas” despite possessing destructive character traits ironically become successful entrepreneurs thus illustrating an alternative “storied” social construction of entrepreneurship. This influences how female entrepreneurs are perceived in the popular press and can be manipulated as an alternative entrepreneurial reality. The purpose of this paper is to build upon research into entrepreneurial identity introducing the “Diva” concept.Design/methodology/approachThe qualitative methodological approach involves an analysis of biographies of famous Diva's to identify common themes; and an internet trawl to identify supplementary micro‐biographies and newspaper articles on “Divas”. This tripartite approach allows rich data to be collected permitting a comparative analysis.FindingsThis empirical paper presents the socially constructed nature of entrepreneurial narrative and the “Diva storyline” demonstrating the influence of journalistic licence upon how successful women are portrayed. The paper adds incremental credence to power of male‐dominated journalistic practices to vilify enterprising behaviour to sell newspapers.Research limitations/implicationsAn obvious limitation to the work is that the sample of articles and biographies selected were chosen via search parameters which mention the word “Diva”. Nevertheless, there is scope for further “more detailed” research into the phenomenon to flesh out the model built in this preliminary paper.Practical implicationsAn important implication for scholars and journalists is the need to reconsider how we tell and decode entrepreneur stories. As researchers, we need to recognise that there are other avenues for women to become entrepreneurs than to become businesswomen and that it is alright for women to reject the “entrepreneur” label.Originality/valueThis paper informs our understanding of the socially constructed nature of how we tell, understand and appreciate entrepreneur stories. It thus makes a unique contribution by illustrating that the storylines which constitute the “Diva cycle” are constructed from the same storylines that we associate with entrepreneur stories but narrated in a different order. It provides another heuristic device for understanding the social construction of gendered entrepreneurial identities making it of interest to feminist scholars of entrepreneurship and to social constructionists alike.

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The actress as photographic icon: from early photography to early film

Cited by 27 publications

References 0 publications

In Behalf of the Feminine Side of the Commercial Stage: The Institute of the Woman's Theatre and Stagestruck Girls

In Behalf of the Feminine Side of the Commercial Stage: The Institute of the Woman's Theatre and Stagestruck Girls

Picturing Nineteenth-Century Female Theatre Managers: the Iconology of Eliza Vestris and Sara Lane

The Diva storyline: an alternative social construction of female entrepreneurship

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