Valuations of Femininity in 1920S Stage Adaptations from Women's
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Capital Complex: Valuations of Femininity in 1920s Stage Adaptations from Women’s Culture By Bethany Wood A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Theatre and Drama) at the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON 2012 Date of final oral examination: 10/15/12 This dissertation is approved by the following members of the Final Oral Committee: Mary Trotter, Associate Professor, Theatre and Drama Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker, Professor, Theatre and Drama Michael Vanden Heuvel, Professor, Theatre and Drama Julie D’Acci, Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies Jonathan Gray, Professor, Communication Arts © Copyright by Bethany Wood 2012 All Rights Reserved i Acknowledgements I am truly grateful for the generous personal and institutional support I have received throughout the research and writing of this dissertation. I am deeply indebted to my advisor, Dr. Mary Trotter, for her careful reading and insightful comments and questions, which inspired and directed this dissertation. Her advice and queries consistently push and guide my work in productive directions, and I am thankful for her mentorship. I would also like to express my appreciation for my dissertation committee, Dr. Julie D’Acci, Dr. Aparna Dharwadker, Dr. Jonathan Gray, and Dr. Michael Vanden Heuvel, whose suggestions helped hone my initial proposal and advance the complexity of my analysis. I am grateful for their insights and inquiries. Financial support from several institutions assisted with the research and completion of this study, including the Mellon-Wisconsin Summer Fellowship, which enabled me to complete the final draft of this dissertation. The Helen Krich Chinoy Dissertation Research Fellowship from the American Society for Theatre Research as well as the Vilas Travel Grant from the University of Wisconsin-Madison supported travel to numerous archives, including the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library, and Bryn Mawr College Library’s Special Collections. The librarians and archivists at each of these institutions were extremely helpful, and I would specifically like to thank Marianne Hansen and Eric Pumroy for their assistance with the Margaret Ayer Barnes Papers and Arlene for her invaluable assistance in using the Billy Rose Theatre Collection. Several individuals have been particularly generous with their time and resources in supporting this project. I especially wish to thank Julie Goldsmith Gilbert for her scholarly work ii as well as her personal insights into the work and life of her great aunt, Edna Ferber. I am similarly grateful to Richard Ziegfeld for his wonderful resource The Ziegfeld Touch, which he wrote with Paulette Ziegfeld, as well as his generosity in discussing and sharing his research. Jonathan Bank of the Mint Theatre Company provided invaluable assistance in locating the script for The Age of Innocence. I am also indebted to Cari Beauchamp for her assistance in locating materials related to Anita Loos and to Lonna Morouney for her kind provision of materials on the Sidell Sisters. I would also like to thank Dr. Judith A. Sebesta for her advice on my initial research on Show Boat as well as her aid in applying for funding throughout the project. I would also like to thank Aralene Callahan, Annie Giannini, and Megywn Sanders- Andrews for their careful readings and constructive suggestions for my initial drafts. Janet and Joel Ristuccia and Willow Osborn opened their homes to me during travel to New York, which helped immensely, and numerous friends provided encouragement during the various stages of this project. Most importantly, I am humbled by and forever grateful for the loving support of my husband Ken Wood. iii This dissertation is dedicated to Julie Vogt, an amazing scholar, mentor, and friend I dearly miss. iv Table of Contents Abstract vii Introduction - Show Business: Gender Business 1 Commodification and Femininity 2 Objectives and Theory 5 Historical and Critical Context 10 Methodology 17 Chapter One - The Modern Girl in Modern Media: Women’s Magazines and Broadway Theatre Commodify Cultural Ambivalence 22 Anxiety and Ambivalence 23 Women’s Magazines and Broadway Theatres 25 Sex and the Modern Girl 33 Beauty, Consumerism, and the Modern Girl 45 Actresses and Capital 62 Chapter Two - Ol’ (Wo)Man River?: Broadway’s Gendering of Edna Ferber’s Show Boat 67 Ferber’s Show Boat 70 Show Boat and the Woman’s Home Companion 73 Show Boat and Ziegfeld’s Broadway 80 Adapting Race and Gender in Show Boat 84 Female Practitioners 93 Expanding the Ziegfeld Brand 97 v Chapter Three - From Criticism to Compliment: American Gender in The Age of Innocence 118 Edith Wharton and the Pictorial Review 121 Competing Femininities 126 Framing Wharton’s Serial 132 Adapting The Age of Innocence 139 Adapting Masculinity, Class, and Nationality 143 Adapting Racial Others 153 Casting, Contracts, and Capital 160 Cornell’s Capital 168 Wharton’s Modified Critique 176 Chapter Four - Ignorance is Marketable: Feminine Fatuity and the Currency of Fun in Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 181 Femininity and Fatuity 186 The Beginnings of Blondes 193 Satirizing Shopping and Smartness 197 Constructing Culpability 208 Casting and Capital 216 Conclusion – Continuing Issues of Capital 227 vi List of Figures 1. Sidell Sisters’ Apache Dance from Show Boat 104 2. Illustration for The Age of Innocence 135 3. Katharine Cornell in The Age of Innocence 171 4. Katharine Cornell in The Age of Innocence 175 5. Anita Loos 189 6. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 210 7. Mildred Macleod 217 8. June Walker as Lorelei Lee 219 vii Abstract American theatre sustains itself through the commodification of live bodies and the gender ideologies they represent, particularly through commercial displays of women. While numerous studies in cultural theory and theatre research examine the commodification of women in entertainment, few studies investigate precisely how practitioners in commercial theatre calculate and compound the value of this complex asset. This study offers a productive method for examining the entertainment value—the presumed appeal and revenue—of femininity in mainstream entertainment. Through an analysis of 1920s stage adaptations, this dissertation investigates the capital concerns, economic, cultural, and ideological, at play in determining, manipulating, and maximizing the value of specific femininities in for-profit entertainment. Using this study, I conceptualize such concerns as a complex of capital, a theoretical tool for understanding and challenging dominant valuations of gender in for-profit entertainment. I examine this capital complex through three case studies exploring the practical aspects of calculating and compounding entertainment value in the constructs of femininity. Specifically, I examine the influence of capital on the commodification of femininity in three 1920s stage adaptations from women’s magazine serials: Show Boat (1927), The Age of Innocence (1928), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1926). As women’s magazine serials composed and adapted during a time of shifting cultural expectations, each of these texts emerged as a strong commentary on modern femininty. This central theme serves to highlight valuations of gender in the transformation of each narrative from a women’s magazine serial to a popular Broadway show. viii In addition to analyzing issues of capital and valuations of gender in commercial theatre, this dissertation expands current scholarship on 1920s entertainment and gender by analyzing productions with female stars and women writers, an area in which women wielded more influence than anywhere else in the industry. In addition, this study considers the symbiotic relationship between commercial Broadway theatre and women’s magazines during the 1920s, an underexplored area of cultural intersection in shaping gender during this time. Placing these media in conversation with each other expands existing theatre scholarship, which overlooks the serial versions of these plays, thus isolating these narratives from their gendered origins. Introduction Show Business: Gender Business She never saw him again. —Show Boat by Edna Ferber He slowly takes her in his arms—He hasn’t quite the courage to kiss her. She kisses him. —Show Boat by Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Florenz Ziegfeld When Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.’s musical adaptation of Edna Ferber’s Show Boat debuted in 1927,1 Broadway audiences witnessed a romantic finale far removed from the concluding scene in Ferber’s novel. Ferber’s narrative, which debuted in 1926 as a women’s magazine serial and appeared as a novel later that year, concluded with the widowed Magnolia alone aboard her show boat, waving to her daughter Kim as Kim heads off to start a theatre company. In contrast, Kern, Hammerstein, and Ziegfeld closed their musical version of Ferber’s tale with a scene depicting Magnolia and her husband Ravenal reuniting, holding each other in a loving embrace as Kim looks on approvingly from off stage.2 Aware of the financial risks involved in producing a Broadway musical, Kern, Hammerstein, and Ziegfeld altered Ferber’s ending, as well as several other aspects of her narrative, in order to create what they viewed as a more commercial version of Show Boat. In doing so, the adapters reformulated the femininity in Ferber’s narrative to communicate a more dependent, and, therefore, they believed, more marketable