Female Sexuality Taste and Respectability
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Female Sexuality, Taste and Respectability: An Analysis of Transatlantic Media Discourse Surrounding Hollywood Glamour and Film Star Pin-Ups during WWII. Ellen Wright A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of East Anglia School of Film Television and Media May 2014 © This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there-from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Abstract: This thesis examines the cultural politics surrounding public femininity in Britain and the United States between 1939 and 1949 in relation to glamour and the figure of the film star pin-up. Using Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth – the era’s most popular Hollywood pin-ups - as its case studies, the study reveals the issues of taste, class, national identity, modernity and propriety which informed the wider reception of the film star pin-up in wartime Britain and America. A range of primary sources including magazine and newspaper articles, trade publications, promotional materials and advertising tie-ups, as well as contemporaneous surveys of public opinion which engage with these stars and with pin-up and with glamour are discussed with a view to exposing the varied and nuanced discourse surrounding female sexuality in circulation in Britain during this era and exploring the translation, understanding and acceptance of American mores when such products are imported into differing cultural contexts. Informed by Bourdieu’s theorisations surrounding taste and cultural capital, Skeggs’ work on glamour and working class respectability, Buszek’s discussion of pin-up and sexual agency, Moseley’s notion of resonance and Dyer’s work upon star personas this study elaborates upon existing discussions (from the 1930s up to the current day) regarding Hollywood’s female representations at large and the Hollywood pin-up in particular as either objectifying and oppressing its female subjects and audiences within a wider discourse of patriotic ‘beauty as duty’ or offering a potentially radical and empowering form of female sexual agency. This study therefore forms part of a wider reassessment of the film star pin-up and Hollywood glamour at large and of two popular Hollywood stars in particular, whilst contributing to revisionist histories of British and American women in the Modern era, of the study of class and taste, of transatlantic cinema audiences in the Second World War more generally. Contents: List of Illustrations Page 1 Acknowledgements Page 3 Introduction: Making a Public Spectacle... Page 5 Case Study One: Discourse Surrounding Betty Grable Chapter One: A Yank at the ABC: Grable, American-ness and the Pin-Up in 1940’s Britain Page 68 Chapter Two: A Passive Patriot? Unpacking the Powolney Pin-Up and the Grable Myth Page 92 Chapter Three: ‘Batty about Betty’: Discussing Grable’s Appeal in Wartime Britain Page 118 Case Study Two: Discourse Surrounding Rita Hayworth Chapter Four: ‘How Do I Look?’: Hayworth, Public Femininity and the Discourse of Respectable Desirability Page 163 Chapter Five: The ‘Triple Threat Singing Dancing Glamor Star’: Cultural Capital in the Landry/Life Pin-Up Page 196 Chapter Six: ‘Do as glamorous Rita Hayworth does…’: The Pin-Up, the Tie-Up, the Politics of Glamour and of Female Purchasing During WWII Page 210 Implications and Conclusions Chapter Seven: ‘From Muscles to Mammary Glands’?: Reconsidering the Issue of Post-War Pin-Up Page 237 Conclusion Page 278 Bibliography Page 289 List of Illustrations: 1 Albums of the John Player cigarette card series ‘Film Stars’ Page 17 2 Life article on pin-up in British magazines Page 22 3 Picture Post feature ‘An Experiment in Taste: What is a Pin-Up Girl?’ Page 75 4 Picture Post feature ‘Big Hopes in Scanty Swimsuits’ Page 83 5 Picture Post image accompanying the reader’s letter ‘Film Stars Wedding: A Disgrace in War Time.’ Page 90 6 Frank Powolney/Betty Grable pin-up Page 100 7 Taxi Potts and the Powolney/Grable pin-up in Guadalcanal Diary Page 102 8 All Star Bond Rally two-sheet poster Page 113 9 American Pin Up Girl/Crown Cola advertising tie-up Page 115 10 Kine Weekly advertisement for Sweet Rosie O’Grady Page 139 11 Picture Post cover story ‘Most-Looked-at Face of 1943’ Page 143 12 Comparisons to Grable in a British postcard circa 1945 Page 149 13 Picture Post feature ‘Betty Grable’s Nursery Conga’ Page 154 14 Grable’s laughable excess Page 155 1 ! 15 Picturegoer article ‘Glamour Means More Than Pin-Up Lines says Ginger Rogers’ Page 188 16 Bob Landry/Rita Hayworth pin-up Page 198 17 Max Factor/ You Were Never Lovelier tie-up Page 216 18 Max Factor ‘An apology and a promise’ tie-up Page 217 19 Unendorsed Max Factor advert Page 217 20 American Crown Cola advertisement Page 221 21 Hollanders Furs/Cover Girl tie-up Page 224 22 American Hayworth/Lux advertising tie-up Page 232 23 American Coney Island/Lux soap advertising tie-up Page 234 24 Working Girl Investigator does Cheesecake Page 264 25 American The Shocking Miss Pilgrim/ Remington typewriter tie-up. Page 265 26 The front cover of the Shocking Miss Pilgrim British campaign book Page 268 2 ! Acknowledgements. This PhD was made possible due to a schools studentship and bursary. Additional thanks must also go to the staff at both The British Film Institute, the Mass Observation archive at The University of Sussex, and to my secondary supervisor Melanie Williams for her advice and support and for working with me on our offshoot Grable project together for the HJFRT. I’d also like to say thanks to Carol Dyhouse for taking time to chat with me, to my previous secondary supervisors Yvonne Tasker and Rayna Denison and my especially to Mark Jancovich for putting up with the disorganisation, the constant insecurities, the repeated blind panic and the all-too-frequent tears. Thanks also to Suzanne, Dave and Tim Neave for the fake VIVA, to Tim Snelson and Rachel Moseley for a very pleasant real VIVA, to Tim Neave also for the final read through and help with punctuation, and my partner Phyll Smith for his constant support, the reading of endless drafts and the daily discussions. Your faith in my ability has been much appreciated, even if it hasn’t always seemed that way. Finally, thanks must go to my Mum. In just one generation, look how far women like us can come when given both the tools and the opportunity. I wrote this for you and I’d like to think that if you were here, this would have made you proud. 3 ! Introduction: Making a Public Spectacle... Ellen Wright Introduction ! INTRODUCTION: Making a public spectacle... This thesis is, in many ways, concerned with women who make a spectacle of themselves. That this is something that ‘nice’ girls are invariably told not to do and what is said about those who do is of particular pertinence here, as this thesis is also concerned with issues of taste and of class and with the politics of public femininity and feminine performativity within a very specific historical context - this being the wartime period of 1939 to 1949. The classic women’s liberation catchphrase ‘the personal is political’ is particularly applicable to Britain in this exceptional era, as during this time the both the British and American state sought to infiltrate the ‘feminine’ domestic enclave and draw women en masse into the public sphere; this traditionally being the domain of the ‘masculine’ and of less respectable femininity - making these women increasingly vulnerable to attack for ‘inappropriate’ behaviour. The similarity of the term ‘public femininity’ – a term which is used throughout this study to refer to modes of femininity (lived, representational, and discursive) in circulation within the British and the American public sphere throughout the war era - to the notion of the ‘fille publique’ – a French term for prostitute which gained common parlance in the 1800’s - is also pertinent here as both terms evoke an inevitable negotiation of propriety1undertaken by any woman who increases her public visibility and who exercises or makes evident her sexual agency within that public sphere.2 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1In the case of nineteenth century French womanhood, these negotiations were between the unclean, disreputable and ultimately suspect ‘fille publique’ and her apotheosis, the ‘fille honnete’ or ‘honest woman’. 2Writing on women’s experience between 1830 and 1880 Dorothy Mermin notes that ‘Any venture into public life by a woman risked being greeted as a highly sexualized self-exposure: the morals of women who went on the stage were notoriously suspect, and ‘public woman’ (in French, ‘fille publique’) is an old term…for a prostitute.’ Mermin Godiva’s Ride: Women of Letters in England 1830 – 1880 (Bloomington, In: Indiana University Press, 1993) p.xiv 5 ! Ellen Wright Introduction ! A key source of feminine spectacle during this era was Hollywood films and their associated promotional materials; their female stars offered apparently fantastic examples of modern, self-possessed (and during the war period, fervently patriotic) Western femininity which both repelled and attracted spectators. One of the most public and spectacular of feminine spectacles, which constantly negotiated the boundary of the sexually acceptable, was the film star pin-up. What follows therefore, is a study of the negotiations inherent within ‘appropriate’ public femininity through the prism of the film star pin-up and the transatlantic discourse surrounding glamorous femininity, (using the specific examples of Columbia studios’ biggest star Rita Hayworth and Twentieth Century Fox’s biggest box office draw Betty Grable), its purpose being to offer us a coherent means through which to explore wider wartime debates regarding female sexual agency, taste, class and national identity.