All That Hollywood Allows: Rereading Gender in 1950's Melodrama (Gender and American Culture)

287 Pages·1991·9.58 MB·English

by  Jackie Byars

All That Hollywood Allows

Jackie Byars
All That Hollywood Allows
Re-reading Gender in 1950s Melodrama
Routledge
London
© 1991 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
First published in Britain in 1991
by Routledge
II New Fetter Lane
London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
available on request
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence
and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines
for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN 0-203-39738-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-39768-1 (Adobe e-Reader Format)
ISBN 0-415-07116-X (Print Edition)
ISBN 0-415-07117 8 pbk.
TO CARL

Contents

Acknowledgments, viii

Introduction Saying What Can’t Be Said, Reading What Must Be 1

Read: Feminist Criticism, Melodrama, and Film Studies,
Chapter Cultural Studies: An Alternative for Feminist Film Studies, 18

One
Chapter Re-reading Sociological Criticism: Roles, Stereotypes, and Popular 48

Two Film Melodramas of the Early 1950s,
Chapter Re-reading Narrative Structure and Gender: The “Social Problem” 77

Three Film in the 1950s,
Chapterzvviii Re-reading Psychoanalysis for Feminist Film Studies: The “Family 95
Four Romance” and “the Gaze” in Female-Oriented Film Melodramas of
the 1950s,
Chapter Race, Class, and Gender: Film Melodramas of the Late 1950s, 164

Five
Epilogue
Reflections, 202
Notes, 207
Bibliography, 230
Filmography, 242
Index, 256
Acknowledgments
Rituals survive because they continue to be personally and socially valuable; the practice
of acknowledging and thanking those people important to the development of a book
project remains common because it allows us to express gratitude in a public and formal
way that admits to the ultimately collaborative process of intellectual labor. There are
many people I want to thank for various kinds of help I received as I developed this book.
First, I would like to thank a few people who have been especially important to me,
personally and intellectually, over the past few years, the period during which I wrote and
rewrote this book. I have been privileged to share both ideas and good times with each of
them, and to each of them I owe a great debt: Mary Layoun, Alda Blanco, Janice
Radway, and Horace Newcomb.
Several people read early versions of this book and gave me invaluable intellectual,
political, and personal help during the course of my early formulations, for which they
have my gratitude. They are Jim Kinneavy, Doug Kellner, Horace Newcomb, Tom
Schatz, and Gayatri Spivak. Other friends were particularly helpful and supportive during
that period and have remained so; I want to thank Ellen Draper, Pat Singleton, and Kay
Sloan.
I spent a year as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Bryn Mawr College, for
which I particularly thank former Dean of Graduate Studies Barbara Kreutz; that time
allowed me to reconceptualize the direction of my manuscript. My students at Bryn
Mawr, especially Amy Villarejo, deserve credit for allowing me to think through my
redirection as a part of their courses, as have my students in the Women’s Studies
Program and in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison; I want to thank, particularly, Chad Dell, Ann Leighton, and Jane Shattuc, and
my former colleagues Lynn Spigel and Tom Streeter. In addition, Christine Gledhill’s
commentary on my work on melodrama was particularly reassuring at a time when my
own faith was flagging. Similarly, Stuart Hall’s faith in and commentary on my work
enabled me to continue working in the face of adversity. And the University of North
Carolina Press’s conscientious readers offered rigorous critiques and suggestions that
helped me to strengthen my arguments.
I also am grateful to those who have actually helped in the research for and the
production of this book. Barbara Humphries and Emily Sieger, of the Library of
Congress, were particularly helpful during two different periods of intense research. Chad
Dell helped prepare the first full computerized draft of my manuscript while remaining
faithful, competent, and almost always cheerful. I thank my editors at the University of
North Carolina Press—Iris Tillman Hill, Kate Torrey, Sandra Eisdorfer—and my
copyeditor, D.Teddy Diggs, for their patience and for their attention to my manuscript.
Finally, my husband, Carl Michel, and Carla PommertCherry—my student at Texas
Christian University—gave generously of their time to help me through the final stages
of preparing the manuscript.
Our loved ones are usually the ones who most deserve gratitude for the patience with
which they surround and support our intellectual labor. I want to express my gratitude to
my parents, Charline and Jesse Byars, and my parents-in-law, Jean and Mike Michel, for
believing in me, and to my husband, Carl Michel, for living with me and with this book
project, because, in the words of David Letterman, “We all know how painful that can
be.” I dedicate this book to him, with love.
Finally, I thank this book project for pulling me back to where I want to be and for
allowing me to articulate that locale.