Katharine Hepburn: Star as Feminist / Edition 1995

by Andrew Britton, Robin Wood

Overview

Of all the major Hollywood stars, Katharine Hepburn was the least conventional, conforming to none of the stereotypes of female superstardom. She was not an exotic outsider in Hollywood like Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich; nor was she a victim of the studios like Judy Garland or Marilyn Monroe; and she was certainly not a creature of the system like Joan Crawford and Lana Turner. Instead, she always appeared intelligent, willful and independent, able to develop her own persona within the confines of the studio system.

Andrew Britton proposes a feminist reading of Hepburn's films, arguing that her persona raises problems about class, female sexuality, and women's oppression that strain to the limits the conventions of a cinema ultimately committed to the reassertion of bourgeois gender roles. Hepburn's work is also used to explore more general issues, such as the functioning of the star system. This is one of the very few analyses of American cinema to focus on a film star rather than a director or a genre and as such is essential reading for anyone interested in the movies.

First published in the United Kingdom twenty years ago, this lavishly illustrated new edition features a foreword by the noted film critic Robin Wood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231132763
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	12/30/2003
Series:	Film and Culture Series
Edition description:	1995th Revised ed.
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Andrew Britton lectured in film studies at the Universities of Warwick, Essex, and Reading. He also taught at Queens and Trent Universities in Ontario, Canada, and was a guest lecturer at other universities in Britain, Canada, and the United States. He died in 1994.Robin Wood is a founding editor of CineAction and author of Hitchcock's Films Revisited, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan... and Beyond, and Sexual Politics and Narrative Film. He is professor emeritus at York University and the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Cinema Studies.

Table of Contents

Foreword, by Robin Wood
Why Hepburn?
An American Princess
Publicity
Fathers and Daughters
Gender and Bisexuality
The Female Community
Stars and Genre
Hepburn and Tracy
The Old Maid
A Note on Crying
Epilogue: The Star as Monument
Filmography
Bibliography
Programme Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

Hepburn's film persona challenged expectations of class and gender, while her strong self-assurance defied the strictures of Hollywood studios during her career. According to Britton, a British film lecturer before his death in 1994, Hepburn's public image was replicated in part by her film roles. Yet that same brash confidence, coupled with the social conventions of the day, dooms her onscreen characters, who are validated only when they find contentment with men. Britton combs Hepburn's oeuvre for signs of subversive feminism and points out the studios' successes at undermining them. But his thesis doesn't live up to his title. Although a close examination of such films as Sylvia Scarlet, Stage Door and Woman of the Year impart some insight into the gender politics of the day, much of Britton's analysis is labored and his conclusions are strained (and, at times, overwrought, as when he claims that casting Hepburn as the controlling mother in 1959's Suddenly, Last Summer was a reaction to her role as a daughter rebelling against patriarchy in 1932's A Bill of Divorce). The book, published in England in 1984, displays Britton's encyclopedic knowledge of film. He assumes his readers are similarly familiar with everyone from D.W. Griffith to Hal Ashby. In addition, he expects them to know Jacques Lacan's writings, Marxist politics and sophisticated gender identity theories. Academics may not mind Britton's leaden prose, but researchers will be frustrated by his lack of attribution. B&w photos. (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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