Promoting and Containing New Womanhood in the Pages of Photoplay: The Case Of "Little Mary" Pickford and Her Mediated Alter Egos on the Cusp of the Roaring Twenties
Promoting and Containing New Womanhood in the Pages of Photoplay: The Case Of "Little Mary" Pickford and Her Mediated Alter Egos on the Cusp of the Roaring Twenties

Summary/Abstract: Actress Mary Pickford is perhaps best remembered for her silent-screen persona “Little Mary.” But there was another important aspect to her Hollywood career that is frequently overlooked today: Pickford’s rise to power and fame corresponded with the era of the “New Woman” in U.S. society. This article explores the mediated construction of new womanhood as communicated through the coverage of Pickford’s career between 1918 and 1921 in the pages of the fan magazine Photoplay. It demonstrates how Photoplay used coverage of Pickford to promote the ideal of new womanhood until 1919, when she became the most powerful woman in American moviemaking by co-founding United Artists with three men. After that, at the start of the Roaring Twenties, the magazine sought to contain new womanhood by presenting Pickford almost exclusively as a child, without continuing to acknowledge her abilities as a savvy movie mogul and grown woman as it had regularly done in the past—until significant changes in her personal life required another noteworthy shift in the magazine’s coverage patterns of this star.

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