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A fascinating biographical look at seven of our great British child stars from the world of film, stage, TV and song.
This in-depth look at the psychological effects of being a former child star includes an examination of the life of Dana Plato, and includes interviews with former child actors who appeared on various television shows. Color and bandw photos.
Breaking every prescription of ideal femininity, American actresses of the mid-nineteenth century appeared in public alongside men, financially supported nuclear and extended families, challenged domestic common law, and traveled the globe in the transnational theater market. While these women expanded professional, artistic, and geographic frontiers, they expanded domestic frontiers as well: publicly, actresses used the traditional rhetoric of domesticity to mask their very nontraditional personal lives, instigating historically significant domestic innovations to circumvent the gender constraints of the mid-nineteenth century, reinventing themselves and their families in the process. Nan Mullenneaux focuses on the personal and professional lives of more than sixty women who, despite their diverse backgrounds, each made complex conscious and unconscious compromises to create profit and power. Mullenneaux identifies patterns of macro and micro negotiation and reinvention and maps them onto the waves of legal, economic, and social change to identify broader historical links that complicate notions of the influence of gendered power and the definition of feminism; the role of the body/embodiment in race, class, and gender issues; the relevance of family history to the achievements of influential Americans; and national versus inter- and transnational cultural trends. While Staging Family expands our understanding of how nineteenth-century actresses both negotiated power and then hid that power, it also informs contemporary questions of how women juggle professional and personal responsibilities—achieving success in spite of gender constraints and societal expectations.
In this magical, bewitching debut, Molly and Gene Myers' marriage is on the brink of collapse. Then a child arrives, with a remarkable appearance. Will he bring them together, or tear their whole world apart? Molly and Gene Myers were happy, until tragedy blighted their hopes of children. During the years of darkness and despair, they each put their marriage in jeopardy, but now they are starting to rebuild their fragile bond. This is the year of Woodstock and the moon landings; war is raging in Vietnam and the superpowers are threatening each other with annihilation. Then the Meteor crashes into Amber Grove, devastating the small New England town - and changing their lives for ever. Molly, a nurse, caught up in the thick of the disaster, is given care of a desperately ill patient rescued from the wreckage: a sick boy with a remarkable appearance, an orphan who needs a mother. And soon the whole world will be looking for him. Cory's arrival has changed everything. And the Myers will do anything to keep him safe. A remarkable story of warmth, tenacity and generosity of spirit, set against the backdrop of a fast-changing, terrifying decade.
In Precocious Charms, Gaylyn Studlar examines how Hollywood presented female stars as young girls or girls on the verge of becoming women. Child stars are part of this study but so too are adult actresses who created motion picture masquerades of youthfulness. Studlar details how Mary Pickford, Shirley Temple, Deanna Durbin, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Jones, and Audrey Hepburn performed girlhood in their films. She charts the multifaceted processes that linked their juvenated star personas to a wide variety of cultural influences, ranging from Victorian sentimental art to New Look fashion, from nineteenth-century children’s literature to post-World War II sexology, and from grand opera to 1930s radio comedy. By moving beyond the general category of "woman," Precocious Charms leads to a new understanding of the complex pleasures Hollywood created for its audience during the half century when film stars were a major influence on America’s cultural imagination.
British children's films have played a part in the childhoods of generations of young people around the world for over a century. Until now, however, their cherished status has remained largely unexplored. In this book, Noel Brown relates the history of children's cinema in Britain from the early years of commercial cinema to the present day, to reveal the reasons behind its acclaim in international popular culture.Drawing on multiple sources, Brown provides in-depth analysis of a range of iconic films, including The Railway Children, The Thief of Bagdad, Bugsy Malone, the Harry Potter films,Mary Poppins, Nanny McPhee, Paddington, Oliver!, and Aardman's Wallace and Gromit series. Futhermore, he investigates industrial and commercial contexts, such as the role of the Children's Film Foundation; and includes revealing insights on changing social and cultural norms, such as the once-sacred tradition of Saturday morning cinema. Brown challenges common prejudices that children's films are inherently shallow or simplistic, revealing the often complex strategies that underpin their enduring appeal to audiences of all ages and backgrounds.In addition, he shows how the films allow a privileged access to historic cultures and the nation's political past. In doing so, Brown firmly establishes children's cinema as an important genre not only for students and scholars of film studies but also for those interested in socio-cultural history, the production and reception of popular entertainment and anyone looking for entertainment, escapism and nostalgia.
The first Indian to become an international film star, Sabu rose to fame as a child actor in Elephant Boy (1937), and subsequently appeared in a succession of British pictures before relocating to Hollywood, where he died in 1963. Repeatedly cast in orientalist extravaganzas and jungle thrillers, he was associated with the 'exotic' and the 'primitive' in ways that reflected contemporary attitudes towards India and 'the East' more generally. In this captivating study, Michael Lawrence explores the historical, political, cultural contexts of Sabu's popularity as a star, and considers the technological and industrial shifts that shaped his career – from the emergence of Technicolor in the late 1930s to the breakdown of the studio system in the 1950s. Attending to the detail of Sabu's distinctively physical performances, Lawrence shows how his agency as an actor enabled him to endure, exceed and exploit his unique star image.
Broadway star Ethel Merman's voice was a mesmerizing force and her vitality was legendary, yet the popular perception of La Merm as the irrepressible wonder falls far short of all that she was and all that she meant to Americans over so many decades. This marvelously detailed biography is the first to tell the full story of how the stenographer from Queens, New York, became the queen of the Broadway musical in its golden age. Mining official and unofficial sources, including interviews with Merman's family and her personal scrapbooks, Caryl Flinn unearths new details of Merman's life and finds that behind the high-octane personality was a remarkably pragmatic woman who never lost sight of her roots. Brass Diva takes us from Merman's working-class beginnings through the extraordinary career that was launched in 1930 when, playing a secondary role in a Gershwin Brothers' show, she became an overnight sensation singing "I Got Rhythm." From there, we follow Merman's hits on Broadway, her uneven successes in Hollywood, and her afterlife as a beloved camp icon. This definitive work on the phenomenon that was Ethel Merman is also the first to thoroughly explore her robust influence on American popular culture.