Lois Weber: The Director Who Lost Her Way in History (Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture) [Hardcover]

Anthony Slide (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0313299455 | ISBN-13: 978-0313299452 | Publication Date: September 30, 1996 | Edition: 1St Edition

A major contribution to film scholarship and women's studies, this is the first critical biography of America's first native-born female director. It fully documents the career of Lois Weber as a director from 1908 through 1934 and notes the impressive number of short subjects and feature films that she made. Largely forgotten and often maligned, Lois Weber has received scant attention in recent years, yet this study points out that she was one of the cinema's genuine auteurs, not only directing, but also writing and often starring in her films. She was one of the first committed filmmakers who utilized the motion picture to express her views on subjects as varied as birth control, abortion, capital punishment, hypocrisy, and racial intolerance. Lois Weber's career is an extraordinary one, arguably unsurpassed by any other woman director before or since. Acclaimed film historian Anthony Slide presents us with an important reminder of the role women played in the American silent film industry and places Weber's preeminence in film history.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Slide has written a very professional study of one of the great directors of the silent screen....Most useful to the researchers in film and in the history of ideas.

About the Author

ANTHONY SLIDE is the author or editor of more than 50 books on the history of popular entertainment.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Greenwood Press; 1St Edition edition (September 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0313299455
• ISBN-13: 978-0313299452
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,441,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Concise Bio of a Mostly-Forgotten Cinematic Pioneer, June 29, 2004

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Polkadotty (Mountains of Western North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lois Weber: The Director Who Lost Her Way in History (Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture) (Hardcover)

This slender book provides us the basics of the life of Lois Weber, one of a remarkable group of women pioneers active in silent cinema. Before the establishment of the studio system in the Twenties, women directors figured prominently, writing and producing literally thousands of films. Miss Weber was a giant among them, reknowned for her subject matter, which ranged from controversial social issues including birth control and abortion, ('Where are My Children' ~ 1916), to religious hypocrisy, ('The Hypocrites' ~ 1915), and intellectual domestic drama, ('Discontent' ~ 1916, 'The Blot' ~ 1921). Miss Weber brought to her films much of her own background, including that of a stint as a street corner evangelist singing hymns in the slums of New York and Pittsburgh, and her up-and-down marriage to Phillips Smalley, which appeared a great driving force and sustenance to her until their divorce, from which she never quite fully recovered. Miss Weber approached filmmaking as one might a platform, expressing 'a great desire to convert [her] fellow men' to her way of viewing and questioning the world around her. Miss Weber prefered to use real locations over sets, and strove to provide her viewers a sense of compelling realism, down to the smallest of details. Her singular attention and careful craftsmanship earned her great respect among her contemporaries, and much critical acclaim. Works such a 'Hypocrites' and 'The Blot' retain the power to move audiences of today. It is high time Lois Weber is rediscovered, and her existing films made more readily available.