Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. G. M.Anderson: “Broncho Billy” among the Early “Picture Personalities”
2. Mary Pickford: Icon of Stardom
3. Lillian Gish: Clean, and White, and Pure as the Lily
4. Sessue Hayakawa:The Mirror, the Racialized Body, and Photogénie
5. Theda Bara: Orientalism, Sexual Anarchy, and the Jewish Star
6. Geraldine Farrar:A Star from Another Medium
7. George Beban: Character of the Picturesque
8. Pearl White and Grace Cunard:The Serial Queen’s Volatile Present
9. Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle: Comedy’s Starring Scapegoat
10. Douglas Fairbanks: Icon of Americanism
11. Charles Chaplin:The Object Life of Mass Culture
In the Wings
Works Cited
Contributors
Index

About the Author

Jennifer M. Bean is the director of the cinema studies program and an associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Washington. She is coeditor of A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema and a recipient of the prestigious Katherine Singer Kovacs Essay Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Reviews

"Finally, in the ongoing series 'Star Decades,' arrives the volume on the delightful and original decade of the 1910s--a book that takes the reader back to yesteryear for the earliest luminaries of the celestial Hollywood heavens, even before Hollywood. Bean wraps up this fascinating study of the historical evolution of these cinematic icons with previews of coming stars. Highly recommended."
*Choice*

"Finally, in the ongoing series 'Star Decades,' arrives the volume on the delightful and original decade of the 1910s--a book that takes the reader back to yesteryear for the earliest luminaries of the celestial Hollywood heavens, even before Hollywood. Bean wraps up this fascinating study of the historical evolution of these cinematic icons with previews of coming stars. Highly recommended."
*Choice*