In the history of cinema, many film genres have gained and lost popularity with the changing times, but one has maintained its supreme reign -- the royal biopic. In Royal Portraits in Hollywood: Filming the Lives of Queens, authors Elizabeth A. Ford and Deborah C. Mitchell follow the lives of historical queens as depicted on film from the 1930s to the present. Women as diverse as Catherine the Great, Cleopatra, Mary Stuart, and Marie Antoinette have been represented on the silver screen, dominating the masculine world of politics while maintaining their femininity. During the golden age of American film, these roles gave Hollywood a means of portraying powerful women without threatening the patriarchal social order. Depictions of the lives of queens have progressed from idealized and romanticized portraits to the more personal, complex portrayals of modern Hollywood. By walking the line between fact and fiction, these royal portraits of queens reveal just as much our society as they do about the historical periods they represent. Audiences are drawn to the theaters year after year because the lives of queens promise good drama and attract some of the most talented actresses. The success of Hollywood's leading ladies in playing queens further solidifies the link between Hollywood royalty and authentic royalty. Actresses such as Bette Davis, Judy Dench, Helen Mirren, Elizabeth Taylor, and Greta Garbo have done more than influence the way we imagine historical queens -- they also have changed how we perceive women in powerful positions today. Royal Portraits in Hollywood analyzes seventy-five years of films about queens as well as the lives of the actresses who starred in them. Combining biographical sketches and excerpts from letters and journals, Ford and Mitchell show how filmmaking and our society's perceptions of gender have changed. The authors compare Hollywood's on-screen portrayals to the historical records, often drawing connections to the actresses' careers and personal lives. This comprehensive analysis provides a more complete picture of the lives that take place behind the thrones -- both real and fictional. The spectacle of a woman dressed in the full regalia of power remains a compelling image in our society. Hollywood actresses and the queens they portray are women who wield power, and by examining the lives of these women, the authors reveal not only society's perceptions about female power but also how those perceptions continue to evolve.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
""Royal Portraits in Hollywood investigates cinema history's perennial fascination with the figure of the female monarch from early sound cinema to the present. The book is contemporaneous with critical work that seeks to understand the cinematic attributes of fame, celebrity, and stardom."--Marcia Landy, author of Stardom, Italian Style: Screen Performance and Personality in Italian Cinema" --
""Elizabeth Ford and Deborah Mitchell's book studies the first major female biographical films and evaluates them as biography. They emphasize the importance of the women and how their lives are dissected for the audience."--Eileen Karsten, author of From Real Life to Reel Life" --
""Royal Portraits in Hollywood is an impressive achievement--ambitious, complex, and multi-layered. Ford and Mitchell explore the actresses playing these royal women, as well as the Hollywood studio system with each era, not to speak of of the various TV series and made-for-television movies dealing with the same subjects. And they do all this (and more) in an accessible and readable writing style. This book is a juicy read."--Louis Giannetti, author of Understanding Movies" --
""The text reads well both a as a cursory but well supported historical study of the queens and as a discussion about acting, character interpretation, and cinematic techniques in telling their stories.... All in all, a rewarding read for anyone interested in royalty or film." --Craig Smith, Santa Fe New Mexican" --
""A worthwhile resource on a subgenre treated here for the first time." --Choice" --
""Royal Portraits is a well-researched and highly readable study of the biopic's relations to history making. It converges with current critical work that engages with the need to reevaluate how film represents the world of the past through a newer, visual, if different, mode of history making." --Biography" --
""[Royal Portraits] investigates the ways in which films about the lives of queens reproduce history and represent women. Ford and Mitchell follow the evolution of queens on film from the 1930s to the present." --New Castle News" --
""Combining biographical sketches and excerpts from letters and journals, Ford and Mitchell show how filmmaking and our society's perceptions of gender have changed....by examining the lives of these women, the authors reveal not only society's perceptions about female power but also how these perceptions continue to evolve." --magbooks.com" --
About the Author
Elizabeth Ford, professor emeritus of English at Westminster College, is coauthor, along with Deborah Mitchell, of The Makeover in Movies: Before and After in Hollywood Films, 1941--2002.Deborah Mitchell, associate professor of English at Westminster College, is author of Diane Keaton: Artist and Icon.
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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