UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Working Girls: The History of Women Directors in 1970s Hollywood Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8ck097nj Author Smukler, Maya Montanez Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Working Girls: The History of Women Directors in 1970s Hollywood A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements of the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television by Maya Montanez Smukler 2014 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Working Girls: The History of Women Directors in 1970s Hollywood by Maya Montanez Smukler Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Janet L. Bergstrom, Chair This dissertation examines the relationship between the feminist movement and Hollywood during the 1970s, specifically as it impacted the hiring practices and creative output of women directors working in the film industry. Due to the activism of the feminist movement, in particular the feminist reform efforts of the Women’s Committees of Hollywood’s professional guilds—the Directors Guild, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Writers Guild—the number of women directors in 1970s Hollywood began to increase compared to previous decades. From the mid-1930s till the mid-1960s, only two women filmmakers had careers as directors in Hollywood: Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino. This research reveals that between 1966 and 1980 there were at least fifteen women making movies in the commercial film industry: Karen Arthur, Anne Bancroft, Joan Darling, Lee Grant, Barbara Loden, Elaine May, Barbara Peeters, Joan Rivers, ii Stephanie Rothman, Beverly Sebastian, Joan Micklin Silver, Joan Tewkesbury, Jane Wagner, Nancy Walker, and Claudia Weill.
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