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Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2014 America's Lollipop Licking Tease: The Eroticization of the Female Child in 1930s Film Susan Jennings Lantz West Virginia University Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Lantz, Susan Jennings, "America's Lollipop Licking Tease: The Eroticization of the Female Child in 1930s Film" (2014). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 461. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/461 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you must obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in WVU Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports collection by an authorized administrator of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. America's Lollipop Licking Tease: The Eroticization of the Female Child in 1930s Film Susan Jennings Lantz Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Dennis Allen, Ph.D., Chair Laura Brady, Ph.D. Anna Elfenbein, Ph.D. John Lamb, Ph.D. Janice Spleth, Ph.D. Department of English Morgantown, West Virginia 2014 Keywords: 1930s film, children in film, feminist film criticism, Shirley Temple, Stella Dallas, Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, eroticization of children, Great Depression and Film, Hays Code, Scarlett O'Hara, Dorothy Gale Copyright 2014 Susan Jennings Lantz ABSTRACT America's Lollipop Licking Tease: The Eroticization of the Female Child in 1930s Film Susan Jennings Lantz This dissertation examines the eroticization of female children in film during the 1930s as a mechanism for concealing troubling realities of the Great Depression in the United States. The repressed sexuality embedded in the plots of Post-Hays Code movies featuring Shirley Temple and characters such as Stella Dallas, Dorothy Gale, and Scarlett O'Hara serve to suture over a crisis of masculinity triggered by changing roles in gender, race, and class. By attempting to invoke the image of a "little girl" in place of that of a grown woman, some films (such as Gone With the Wind, and Bright Eyes) do a better job of masking these abruptions than do other others (such as Stella Dallas and The Wizard of Oz). DEDICATION To Max and Murry. Someday when you set off to follow your own dreams, I hope you are surrounded with as much love and support as I have been. Besides,who knows? You might just save the world! iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are a number of people who helped me pull this off. I hope I have remembered to acknowledge every one of them, because I am indebted to so many people for so much support. There were friends like Amie Langfitt Johnson, Tonya Paugh, Bobbie Brandt, the late Tim Martin, Anna Allen, and Charlotte Green who volunteered to babysit so I could go to class or write or relax for an evening. There were other friends like Jennifer Cullison Stanford, Chelle Adams, Kelly Diamond, and Bernadette Jungblut who read chapters and gave me feedback and didn't find my obsessive interest with Shirley Temple weird at all. (Or at least they pretended not to.) There was Laura Little who has pretty much read everything I have written since 1987 when we met at Arnold Hall, and who can still out-think me any day (and usually out-talk me, if she deems it necessary.) There were my committee members who taught me things about film (Anna Elfenbein), genre (John Lamb), the origin of the flapper (Janice Spleth) and feminist criticism (Laura Brady). They also spent time reading drafts, and listening to me prattle on about little girls and the Great Depression far longer than they probably cared to. There was my chair, Dennis Allen, who has been a mentor and coach during this project. Without him I would have thrown in the towel years ago. Instead, my life has blossomed into something about which I could only have dared dream. I don't know what I am going to do next summer when I don't have "discussing Shirley Temple" as an excuse to sit on his front porch, drink coffee, and think out loud. There was my mother, who from my very first book report on Harriet the Spy (in the fifth grade) until now has served as a sounding board, a critic, and my biggest fan. I have never known her to be without a good book or a witty comment, and she continually serves as an inspiration to me and my life. She was also the first person to point out the obvious eroticization of Shirley Temple and her suggestive short dresses. To paraphrase E.B. White, "It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer." Iris is both. Then of course, there is the man who said the sexiest words anyone could possibly say when I started this project: "I'll do whatever I can to help you make this happen." Craig Collins Lantz, you are my partner, my Mr. Incredible, and my co-conspirator. Thank you for encouraging, supporting, complimenting, and taking care of me and our family. You. Freaking. Rock. And finally, there are my muses. Max and Murry, your humor, wisdom, and affection brings joy, perspective, and balance to my life. I wish I could say, "Never change." But in light of my dissertation topic, that would be way too creepy. Just always know that Mommy loves you more than life itself. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: "A Babylon Revisited": The Women and Girls Carried out Screaming..........................................1 Chapter 2: Shirley Temple: Bright Eyes and Dark Men..................................................................................40 Chapter 3: Stella Dallas: I Don't Believe there is a Man in the World Who Can Get Me Going Again.........71 Chapter 4: The Wizard of Oz: Are You a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?..........................................................96 Chapter 5: Gone With the Wind: Before War and Poverty Had Done Things to You....................................130 v Introduction He would come back again some day; they couldn't make him pay forever. But he wanted his child and nothing much was good now, besides that fact. He wasn't young anymore with a lot of nice thoughts and dreams to have by himself (Fitzgerald 230). Published in 1931, F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story Babylon Revisited would serve as a prophetic metaphor for the image of film in the United States for the next decade. The story concerns a man seeking atonement and respectability in order to gain custody of his daughter; meanwhile Jazz Age ghosts of the 1929 Stock Market Crash haunt his days. For Charlie, attainment of his child represents reconciliation with past dalliances into a world of excess, and a world in which individual lives aren't nearly as important as the party. But Charlie Wales, the protagonist, discovers, or probably already knows, that expiation isn't so easily achieved, and that children tend to be elusive prizes to catch at best. Keeping them, of course, is impossible. Charlie has lost his innocence, so has America, and soon his daughter will, too. Influenced partly by the life of Fitzgerald, who like Charlie, had great success in the 1920's, but whose life was damaged by drugs, a foundering marriage, and questionable parental fitness, Babylon Revisited's central theme indicates that Charlie's loss wasn't as much money he lost when the market crashed, but the moral corruption he witnessed and on which he was a willing participant during the preceding decade. At the end of the piece, Charlie tells the bartender that he lost everything important in the "boom" before the crash. The bartender suggests the cause to be "selling short." Charlie, ironically, replies that it was "something like !1 that." While selling short in the world of finance may mean the investor will profit from the loss of value on his net asset, and such practices can yield high gains, doing so is risky and can also yield staggering losses. Ultimately, this sort of trading can bankrupt not only individuals, but entire banks and even countries. The practice of selling short was one of many factors that led to the stock market crash of 1929, and it was eventually banned for nearly eighty years in the United States. Charlie's behavior and life in Paris before the crash consisting of “champagne dinners and long luncheons that began at two and ended in a blurred and vague twilight" contrasts sharply with the life in the "warm" home of his sister-in-law who cares for his daughter and where "the children felt very safe and important: the mother and father were serious, watchful" (215 and 226). Just as investors in the United States had sold the country short by counting on a profit from loss of value before the crash, Charlie had sold himself short by not investing in the love, affection, and future of his wife and daughter. Charlie hadn't been "serious" and "watchful," and neither Charlie's daughter nor wife had felt "safe and important." Instead he had invested in the jocular, moneyed, and decadent lifestyle of the expatriates in Paris during the Roaring Twenties.

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