Stars, Fan Magazines and Audiences: Desire by Design

by Tamar Jeffers McDonald (Editor), Lies Lanckman (Editor), Sarah Polley (Editor)

Overview

Stars, Fan Magazines and Audiences focuses on movie magazines, publications first produced in 1911 for movie fans in the United States, but soon reaching movie fans on a global scale. Bringing together scholars from different disciplinary and international contexts, this collection considers fan magazines as objects of material and visual history. The designer’s toolkit aided movie magazines in seducing their readers, with visual elements, such as fonts, photographs, and illustrations, plied across both editorial content and advertisements. In this way, each issue was subtly designed to stir desire in readers and moviegoers alike. By focusing on the visual aspects of fan magazines, a key pleasure for readers, this collection provides detailed examples of how visual elements engendered aspiration and longing, thus putting the visual contents of the fan magazines at the heart of every chapter.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399505918
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	02/28/2025
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Tamar Jeffers McDonald is Professor of Film History, and Dean of the School of Art and Media, at the University of Brighton

Lies Lanckman is a Senior Lecturer in Film at UWE Bristol

Sarah Polley is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Kent

Table of Contents

Introduction

Section One: Single Magazine Issues
Section Introduction
Never the Twain Shall Meet: Touch, Double-Sidedness, and Race in the Pages of Picture Show - Joel Casey
The Paradoxical Glamour of the Phoney War: Examining the Design of Picturegoer - Carolyn King
Mid-century masculinities: presentation as subtext in Photoplay January 1955 - Lisa Hood
Dorothy Dandridge the Invisible Star: racial segregation in Hollywood fan magazines in the 1950s - Cathy Lomax
Section Two: Fan Magazines and Regular Contents
Section Introduction
Tyrone Power: International ‘Cover Boy’ - Gillian Kelly
Leafing Men and Ladies: Fan Magazines and Reading Strategies - Sarah Polley
A Star is Drawn: Media Hybridity and Ordinary Cinephilia in ‘La Passion de Dora’ - Dominic Topp
Wielding the Scissors: industry politics and play in movie magazines, 1933-34 - Tamar Jeffers McDonald
Section Three: Fan Magazines and Related Publications
Introduction
Universal Horror and the Universal Weekly: The Visible Invisibility of the Invisible Man - Rahul Kumar
‘She Can’t Put Tears In Her Voice, So She Has To Put Them In Her Eyes’: A Performance Studies Perspective On Fan Magazine Images And Silent Film Acting - Jennifer Voss
‘[They charge members] about four shillings a year for the privilege of receiving a photograph and regular printed gossip’: Context, content and form in 1940s British film star fan club publications - Ellen Wright and Phyll Smith
The Missing Piece: Imaginary Audiences in the Ecran Fan Magazine of the 1940s - María Paz Peirano and Claudia Bossay
The Silver Screen and the Golden Land: Hollywood and ‘hereness’ in the pages of Film- Nayes (1936-1938) - Lies Lanckman
List of Figures

Biographical Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

This innovative collection of essays provides new perspectives on the film fan magazine. The wide-ranging case studies demonstrate that fan magazines around the world offered readers important and alternative means of consuming films and film stars. It is an engaging, scholarly contribution to a burgeoning field of interest.

Mark Glancy

Stars, Fan Magazines and Audiences is a highly engaging volume that reflects the newest trends in scholarship on fan magazine and stardom. Combining the concerns of film history with those of periodical studies, the book shifts our understanding of fan magazines: rather than simply historical sources, here they are treated as material objects, worthy of study in their own right.

Agata Frymus