| “Making Reputations” presents a model for understanding cinema's impact on American culture. Using evidence not only from literary and cinematic texts, but also from such ancillary sources as letters and fan magazines, I investigate cinema's influence upon six individuals who tried to enhance and perpetuate their reputations through the motion picture industry. The archival and interpretive case studies contained in this project—Wyatt Earp, Jack London, Clara Bow, Gertrude Stein, Ida Lupino, and Andy Warhol—represent a range of complex relationships to Hollywood. Together they suggest the changing nature of representation over the course of the twentieth century and the degree to which American life has been defined by cinematically derived notions of identity and accomplishment. By addressing the cultural shifts triggered by the invention and proliferation of the cinematic medium, I demonstrate the ways in which being “known” has become synonymous with being filmed.; “Making Reputations” contributes to the existing critical literature on each of these figures while also forging an interdisciplinary model to demonstrate the ways in which literary, film, and cultural studies might productively co-exist in the study of cultural phenomena. Following an introductory chapter that establishes cinema's far-reaching impact on American culture, Chapter One engages with Wyatt Earp's perception that making his reputation (last) could best be facilitated by an on-screen version of his life. Chapter Two argues that Jack London, who became embroiled in the business of Hollywood, changed his conceptualization of authorship to reflect his desire to succeed in the culture of the moving image. Chapter Three situates actress Clara Bow in relation to a crucial star-making development of the 1920s—the fan magazine—to reveal the interrelatedness of female fandom and consumer culture. Chapter Four moves away from studio manufactured spectacle to consider the nature of Gertrude Stein's unrealized Hollywood aspirations. Chapter Five uses Ida Lupino's career shift from actress to director to analyze her strategies for self-representation in the exclusively male field of Hollywood direction. The Epilogue concludes by briefly considering the revisionary star-making of Andy Warhol, who redefined both filmmaking and fame to challenge the omnipotent mythology of Hollywood. |
