Title: A woman's view : how Hollywood spoke to women, 1930-1960 /
Authors: Basinger, Jeanine.
Publisher: Knopf : Distributed by Random House,
Year: 1993
Subjects: Motion pictures for women.; Women in motion pictures
Abstract: Now, Voyager, Stella Dallas, Leave Her to Heaven, Imitation of Life, Mildred Pierce, Gilda ... these are only a few of the hundreds of "women's films" that poured out of Hollywood during the thirties, forties, and fifties - films that not only delivered on their inherent promise to entertain but also opened a door to the Other, the Something Else, that audiences came to the theater yearning to see and feel, if only for a couple of hours. Films widely disparate in subject, sentiment, and technique, they nonetheless shared one dual purpose: to provide the audience (of women, primarily) with temporary liberation into a screen dream - of romance, sexuality, luxury, suffering, or even wickedness - and then send it home reminded of, reassured by, and resigned to the fact that no matter what else she might do, a woman's most important job was ... to be a woman.^
Contents: The genre -- The woman herself -- Duality: "My God! There's Two of Her!" -- Fashion and glamour -- The stars who play her -- Ways of seeing her -- The woman's world -- Men -- Marriage -- Motherhood -- The woman in the man's world -- Proof: Kitty and Angie and Janet -- Appendix: Women at the box office.