The popularity of television in postwar suburban America had a devastating effect on the traditional Hollywood studio system. Yet many aging Hollywood stars used television to revive their fading careers. In Recycled Stars, Mary R. Desjardins examines the recirculation, ownership, and control of female film stars and their images in television, print, and new media. Female stardom, she argues, is central to understanding both the anxieties and the pleasures that these figures evoke in their audiences’ psyches through patterns of fame, decline, and return. From Gloria Swanson, Loretta Young, Ida Lupino, and Lucille Ball, who found new careers in early television, to Maureen O’Hara’s high-profile 1957 lawsuit against the scandal magazine Confidential, to the reappropriation of iconic star images by experimental filmmakers, video artists, and fans, this book explores the contours of female stars’ resilience as they struggled to create new contexts for their waning images across emerging media.
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter One: “The Elegance . . . Is Almost Overwhelming”: Glamour and Discursive Struggles over Female Stardom in Early Television
- Chapter Two: Norma Desmond, Your Spell Is Everywhere: The Time and Place of the Female Film Star in 1950s Television and Film
- Chapter Three: Maureen O’Hara’s “Confidential” Life: Recycling Hollywood Film Stars in the 1950s through Scandalous Gossip and Moral Biography
- Chapter Four: After the Laughter: Recycling Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as a Star Couple
- Chapter Five: Star Bodies, Star Bios: Stardom, Gender, and Identity Politics
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
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