Go West, Young Women!

An outstanding and well-researched work, Go West, Young Women! adds a fresh interpretive framework to the study of women in early Hollywood. Each chapter is a jewel; Hilary A. Hallett's lively writing is perfectly matched to her unique re-reading of the female role in early cinema. -Lary May, Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin CitiesHere is a surprising look at a great westward migration-the steady stream of star-struck and hard-working young women who followed the movie industry into Southern California. Hilary A. Hallett's smart book changes our thinking about the writers, directors, producers, designers, artists, and actresses who shook off old conventions, created Hollywood, and ushered in the twentieth century. -Ann Fabian, author of The Skull Collectors: Race, Science and America's Unburied DeadAn outstanding and path-breaking work of scholarship that re-reads the role of women in Hollywood as part of broader U.S. social and cultural history. This work is exemplary of the historian's art: to go deeply and broadly into primary sources, original documents, and ephemeral materials in order to paint a fresh picture and tell a different story. -Robert Sklar, author of Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American MoviesHilary A. Hallet provides an exceptional history of women in early Hollywood, moving them once and for all from the margins to the center. Engagingly written and meticulously researched, Go West, Young Women! is essential reading for anyone interested in the beginnings of the American movie industry, celebrity culture, and histories of women in the western US. -Shelley Stamp, author of Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the NickelodeonBold and fresh, Hilary Hallett's study demonstrates that the history of women, female sexuality, and mass culture is not a closed case. Important as the first feminist examination of the 1921 Fatty Arbuckle scandal, this book radically revises ideas of the post-World War I Hollywood industry as well as cultural histories of the time. By looking at the underside of the 1920s in a way never dared before, Hallett further reconfigures our understanding of motion picture censorship in the 1930s. -Jane M. Gaines, Professor of Film, Columbia UniversityHilary Hallett vividly captures the magnetic appeal of Hollywood for the many young women in the early film industry. With a knack for translating theoretical issues into memorable practical form, Hallett offers colorful stories and reconstructs the cultural history of an industry experiencing incredible upheaval and growth. Early Hollywood will never look the same again. -Jackson Lears, author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920