A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960 [Paperback]

Jeanine Basinger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1995

In this highly readable and entertaining book, Jeanine Basinger shows how the "woman's film" of the 30s, 40s, and 50s sent a potent mixed message to millions of female moviegoers. At the same time that such films exhorted women to stick to their "proper" realm of men, marriage, and motherhood, they portrayed -- usually with relish -- strong women playing out liberating fantasies of power, romance, sexuality, luxury, even wickedness.

Never mind that the celluloid personas of Bette Davis, Myrna Loy, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, or Rita Hayworth see their folly and return to their man or lament his loss in the last five minutes of the picture; for the first eighty-five minutes the audience watched as these characters "wore great clothes, sat on great furniture, loved bad men, had lots of sex, told the world off for restricting them, even gave their children away."

Basinger examines dozens of films -- whether melodrama, screwball comedy, musical, film noir, western, or biopic -- to make a persuasive case that the woman's film was a rich, complicated, and subversive genre that recognized and addressed, if covertly, the problems of women.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When film experts talk about the "woman's picture," a Hollywood genre that flourished in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, they often squabble over whether these films were liberating or constraining. Jeanine Basinger argues that they were both at the same time. She maintains that they freed their female protagonists to break social bonds while also punishing any women who seemed too free and feisty. This lively and exceedingly thorough book covers every major aspect of this fascinating film genre, including the roles female stars were expected to play, the fabulous clothes they wore, the social behaviors they were condemned to adopt, the ways they responded to and were treated by men, and the ideals of femininity Hollywood producers tried to impress upon their audiences. --Raphael Shargel

From Publishers Weekly

Full of sharp and entertaining insights, this exhaustive study analyzes dozens of "women's films"-- The Man I Love , My Reputation , Women's Prison , etc.--which presented the contradiction of covert liberation and overt support for women's traditional roles. Basinger, chair of the Film Studies Program at Wesleyan Univeristy, mostly avoids citing interviews and fan magazines, relying instead on her own perceptions. She offers clever epigrams--the constrained choices of the woman's world are a "Board Game of Life"--as she explores issues including men, marriage, motherhood and fashion. The film Jezebel , the author suggests, deserved a subtitle: "How Society Forces Bette Davis to Conform by Making Her Change Her Dress." Basinger's gimlet eye generates several schema, from the basic rules of film behavior to the four kinds of mothers. And while observations like one that finds similarities between women in prisons and in department stores are amusing, they also hit home. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 542 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan; 1st edition (May 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819562912
• ISBN-13: 978-0819562913
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #732,241 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When Women Ruled the Screen, April 30, 1998

By 

Sandy Douglass ([e-mail]) (Gotham) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960 (Hardcover)

Jeanine Basinger is to be congratulated for shedding light on a too-little studied aspect of Hollywood history. She puts the movies and the stars she discusses in the context of how movie-going women perceived them at the time. In doing so, she concentrates not on the "greatest" stars, but rather on secondary figures like Kay Francis, Ann Dvorak, and Loretta Young, women who had (sometimes surprisingly) immense popular appeal while they were making movies but whose careers either faded, made the transition to character rather than leading-lady status, or moved to television. She reminds us that the "woman's picture" was far more than the drama of suffering and renunciation (like "Now, Voyager", "Back Street", or "Autumn Leaves") we most commonly think of today. She broadens her definition to include virtually any film that either focused on a woman as its central character or concerned itself with traditionally "women's" concerns.

What she makes clear is that, despite the pronounced limitations of the world view of the woman's picture, it represented a varied and vigorous film culture in which (as she writes) "on the screen ... the woman will decide. She is important. She matters. She is the Center of the Universe."

"A Woman's View" is that rare thing -- a scholarly examination of mostly obscure figures and works that is at the same time an excellent and entertaining read.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Now I know why I enjoy this type of film so much., September 14, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960 (Hardcover)

This book articulates for me why I have always loved this genre of film. The author highlights the work of many fine actresses of the period whose work is overlooked in many film books. Although the ideas they espoused may be dated, the desire of women to see the concerns of their private lives played out on screen still exists. I believe that the next century may bring a resurgurce of this type of film.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Any Book That Will Quote A Cleo Moore Film Deserves 5 Stars, September 10, 2005

By 

Tee (LA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960 (Paperback)

This is one of the most enjoyable "film studies" I have ever come across, essentially about "soap opera" 'women's pictures' of the 1930's and 1940's but expanding into the 1920's and 1950's a bit and touching on other types of films and the great women stars from this time period. From Kay Francis (who is the cover girl and Basinger's main muse for this tome) to Rita Hayworth, this is a wonderful book for any one obssessed with films from the era, it's like finding a new best friend to talk about these classic films. Basinger writes informatively yet in plain academic-free language making the book a pleasuer to read - and she knows when to crack wise and when to be serious, no mean feat. It's a skill a lot of "movie historians" don't have.