The Stardom Film

Creating the Hollywood Fairy Tale

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by Karen McNally

Type: Studies
Subject: Sociology
Keywords: sociology, ideology
Publishing date: 2020
Publisher: Wallflower Press
Collection: Short Cuts
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 160 pages
5 ½ x 8 ¾ inches (14 x 22 cm)

ISBN

978-0-231-18401-4

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Book Presentation:
Since the earliest days of the movie industry, Hollywood has mythologized itself through stories of stardom. A female protagonist escapes the confines of rural America in search of freedom in a western dream factory; an ambitious, conceited movie idol falls from grace and discovers what it means to embody true stardom; or a fading star confronts Hollywood’s obsession with youth by embarking on a determined mission to reclaim her lost fame. In its various forms, the stardom film is crucial to understanding how Hollywood has shaped its own identity, as well as its claim on America’s collective imagination.

In the first book to focus exclusively on these modern fairy tales, Karen McNally traces the history of this genre from silent cinema to contemporary film and television to show its significance to both Hollywood and broader American culture. Drawing on extensive archival research, she provides close readings of a wide range of films, from Souls for Sale (1923) to A Star is Born (1937 and 1954) and Judy (2019), moving between fictional narratives, biopics, and those that occupy a space in between. McNally considers the genre’s core set of tropes, its construction of stardom around idealized white femininity, and its reflections on the blurred boundaries between myth, image, and reality. The Stardom Film offers an original understanding of one of Hollywood’s most enduring genres and why the allure of fame continues to fascinate us.

About the Author:
Karen McNally is senior lecturer in film and television studies at London Metropolitan University. She is the author of When Frankie Went to Hollywood: Frank Sinatra and American Male Identity (2008), editor of Billy Wilder, Movie-Maker: Critical Essays on the Films (2011), and coeditor of The Legacy of Mad Men: Cultural History, Intermediality, and American Television (2019).

Press Reviews:
The Stardom Film is a lively and insightful introductory account of this genre from its early days to the present. In following that history, Karen McNally offers original and well-researched readings of familiar and rarely studied works. Recommended reading for anyone interested in stardom and the many complex ways Hollywood has treated it on film. Steven Cohan, author of Hollywood by Hollywood: The Backstudio Picture and the Mystique of Making Movies

The Stardom Film is an engaging, lucid, and comprehensive study of a narrative mode that continues to exert fascination not only in U.S. cinema but around the world, both in the past and the present. McNally convincingly argues for the significance of several previously neglected films and makes the book a valuable resource for anyone interested in the tropes by which celebrity and stardom remain intertwined with our social and professional identities. Adrienne McLean, author of Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom

A well-compiled work of research and analysis on the stardom mythology in Hollywood that dives deep into the obsession with fame, youth, and beauty. Film Matters

See the publisher website: Wallflower Press

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