Reframing Vivien Leigh: Stardom, Gender, and the Archive

by Lisa Stead

Overview

Reframing Vivien Leigh takes a new look at the laboring life one of the twentieth century's most iconic stars. Author Lisa Stead reframes the dominant narratives that have surrounded Leigh's life and career, offering a new perspective on Vivien Leigh as a distinctly archival subject. The book examines the collections and curatorial practices that have built up around her, exploring material documents collated by her own hand and by those who worked with her. The book also examines the collection practices of those who have developed deep, long-standing fandoms of her life and work. To do so, the book draws upon new oral history work with curators, archivists and fan collectives and examines a variety of archived correspondence, items of dress and costume, script annotations, photography, press clippings, props and memorabilia. It argues that such material has the potential to produce a new interpretation of Leigh as a creative laborer. As such, the book casts new light on the labor of archiving itself and the significance of archival processes and practices to contemporary feminist film historiography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190906511
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2021
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Lisa Stead is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. She has published in the areas of adaptation, interwar women's cinema and literature, fan magazines, location filming histories, and cinemagoing histories. She is the author of Off to the Pictures: Women's Writing, Cinemagoing and Movie Culture in interwar Britain (2016), and co-editor (with Carrie Smith) of The Boundaries of the Literary Archive (2013). She is Principle Investigator of AHRC Early Career Fellowship project Reframing Vivien Leigh: Stardom, Archive and Access (2019-2020).

Table of Contents

List of illustrations
Note on sources
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Into the archives
Part I: Stardom, Gender and the Archive
Chapter 1: 'A consummate actress, hampered by beauty': archiving stage and screencraft
Chapter 2: Collaboration, adaptation and unmade projects
Chapter 3: Documenting other roles: alternative star labor
Part II: Archival Legacies
Chapter 4: 'Her sort of trouble': archiving breakdown
Chapter 5: The Posthumous archive: collecting, collectors and memorabilia
Chapter 6: 'The Vivien Leigh Room': memorializing a local star
Afterword
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Most importantly, Vivien Leigh is presented here as a much more complex, intelligent woman than the generally accepted image of Screen Goddess, Tormented Beauty, and Great Lady of the Stage. Ms. Stead has created an unforgettable portrait of a professionally triumphant, privately tragic life." — Vaughan Edwards, Stage and Cinema

"Through a fascinating 'reframing' of Vivien Leigh, one of the most well-known performers of the mid-twentieth century, Lisa Stead provides a model for how feminist historiography might transform star studies. Looking beyond Leigh's glamorous image, Stead reveals her work behind the scenes as a creative collaborator and activist. All the while, Stead remains attentive to the challenges of documenting the work of female stars, examining a range of archives, popular and scholarly, where traces of Leigh's life and work might be glimpsed" — Shelley Stamp, author of Lois Weber in Early Hollywood

"Lisa Stead re-frames Vivien Leigh as an archive in motion, defying reduction and fossilisation, and demonstrates the constellation of stories, memories, items and relationships that constitute the star's presence in archives. Stead's inventive and inquisitive approach has produced a fresh framework at the vanguard of star studies: inclusive, interdisciplinary, and pioneering." — Lucy Bolton, Reader in Film Studies, Queen Mary, University of London

From the Publisher