Abstract:

In the 1930s, male "moguls" ran the Hollywood studio system, exerting almost absolute control over all elements of film production, and a key to maintaining this dominance was the option contract, which enabled the studio to exploit a star's career for seven years. Nonetheless, in the context of this coercive system, select female film stars used their contractual labor to achieve professional autonomy as freelance artists.

This dissertation examines how female film stars used their contractual labor to challenge the patriarchal business structure of Hollywood by taking an active role in shaping their careers through freelance labor practice when producers and moguls presumably manipulated stardom for their own economic gain. Their decision to work autonomously was risk-taking for the period, when a long-term contract guaranteed secure employment and prestige associated with a powerful major studio. They sought professional independence in the following ways: they worked with independent producers and talent agents, signed non-exclusive and non-option contracts with special creative and financial provisions, received a cut of their films' distribution profits, or made a limited number of pictures at a variety of studios. By doing so, they achieved what I classify as independent stardom --the individual agency that these stars attained in the studio system as freelance artists rather than as long-term studio contractees before it became standard film industry practice during the postwar era.

This study also argues how these stars' freelance labor conspicuously shaped their public personae in popular discourses. Their independent stardom became a significant characteristic of their off-screen image that, in turn, coded them in the press as "modern" working women. In this way, the project blends together an industrial and cultural framework comprised of archival research that consults primary historical texts (contracts, legal documents, publicity material, and fan magazines) so as to understand stardom in relation to film business practice.

This dissertation not only reveals new findings about professional women working in the 1930s, but also allows scholars to rethink standard film histories of gender, labor, and stardom in a more nuanced way, one in which actresses are recognized as active agents gaining economic power through their freelance labor much earlier than has been acknowledged previously.