Winnie Lightner: Tomboy of the Talkies
2016년 12월 · Univ. Press of Mississippi
eBook
288
페이지
eBook 정보
Winnie Lightner (1899–1971) stood out as the first great female comedian of the talkies. Blessed with a superb singing voice and a gift for making wisecracks and rubber faces, she rose to stardom in vaudeville and on Broadway. Then, at the dawn of the sound era, she became the first person in motion picture history to have her spoken words, the lyrics to a song, censored.
In Winnie Lightner: Tomboy of the Talkies, David L. Lightner shows how Winnie Lightner's hilarious performance in the 1929 musical comedy Gold Diggers of Broadway made her an overnight sensation. She went on to star in seven other Warner Bros. features. In the best of them, she was the comic epitome of a strident feminist, dominating men and gleefully spurning conventional gender norms and moral values. So tough was she, the studio billed her as “the tomboy of the talkies.”
When the Great Depression rendered moviegoers hostile toward feminism, Warner Bros. tried to craft a new image of her as glamorous and sexy. Executives assigned her contradictory roles in which she was empowered in the workplace but submissive to her male partner at home. The new persona flopped at the box office, and Lightner's stardom ended. In four final movies, she played supporting roles as the loudmouthed roommate and best friend of actresses Loretta Young, Joan Crawford, and Mona Barrie.
Following her retirement in 1934, Lightner faded into obscurity. Many of her films were damaged or even lost entirely. At long last, this biography gives Winnie Lightner the recognition she deserves as a notable figure in film history, in women's history, and in the history of show business.
In Winnie Lightner: Tomboy of the Talkies, David L. Lightner shows how Winnie Lightner's hilarious performance in the 1929 musical comedy Gold Diggers of Broadway made her an overnight sensation. She went on to star in seven other Warner Bros. features. In the best of them, she was the comic epitome of a strident feminist, dominating men and gleefully spurning conventional gender norms and moral values. So tough was she, the studio billed her as “the tomboy of the talkies.”
When the Great Depression rendered moviegoers hostile toward feminism, Warner Bros. tried to craft a new image of her as glamorous and sexy. Executives assigned her contradictory roles in which she was empowered in the workplace but submissive to her male partner at home. The new persona flopped at the box office, and Lightner's stardom ended. In four final movies, she played supporting roles as the loudmouthed roommate and best friend of actresses Loretta Young, Joan Crawford, and Mona Barrie.
Following her retirement in 1934, Lightner faded into obscurity. Many of her films were damaged or even lost entirely. At long last, this biography gives Winnie Lightner the recognition she deserves as a notable figure in film history, in women's history, and in the history of show business.
저자 정보
David L. Lightner is professor emeritus of history at the University of Alberta. He is the author of Slavery and the Commerce Power: How the Struggle against the Interstate Slave Trade Led to the Civil War; Asylum, Prison, and Poorhouse: The Writings and Reform Work of Dorothea Dix in Illinois; and Labor on the Illinois Central Railroad, 1852-1900: The Evolution of an Industrial Environment. He became interested in Winnie Lightner because of their shared surname, but he is not related to her.
이 eBook 평가
의견을 알려주세요.
읽기 정보
스마트폰 및 태블릿
노트북 및 컴퓨터
컴퓨터의 웹브라우저를 사용하여 Google Play에서 구매한 오디오북을 들을 수 있습니다.
eReader 및 기타 기기
Kobo eReader 등의 eBook 리더기에서 읽으려면 파일을 다운로드하여 기기로 전송해야 합니다. 지원되는 eBook 리더기로 파일을 전송하려면 고객센터에서 자세한 안내를 따르세요.
