Download Capital Complex: Valuations of Femininity in 1920s Stage

Capital Complex: Valuations of Femininity in 1920s
Stage Adaptations from Women’s Culture
By
Bethany Wood
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(Theatre and Drama)
at the
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
2012
Date of final oral examination: 10/15/12
This dissertation is approved by the following members of the Final Oral Committee:
Mary Trotter, Associate Professor, Theatre and Drama
Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker, Professor, Theatre and Drama
Michael Vanden Heuvel, Professor, Theatre and Drama
Julie D’Acci, Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies
Jonathan Gray, Professor, Communication Arts
© Copyright by Bethany Wood 2012
All Rights Reserved
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Acknowledgements
I am truly grateful for the generous personal and institutional support I have received
throughout the research and writing of this dissertation. I am deeply indebted to my advisor, Dr.
Mary Trotter, for her careful reading and insightful comments and questions, which inspired and
directed this dissertation. Her advice and queries consistently push and guide my work in
productive directions, and I am thankful for her mentorship. I would also like to express my
appreciation for my dissertation committee, Dr. Julie D’Acci, Dr. Aparna Dharwadker, Dr.
Jonathan Gray, and Dr. Michael Vanden Heuvel, whose suggestions helped hone my initial
proposal and advance the complexity of my analysis. I am grateful for their insights and
inquiries.
Financial support from several institutions assisted with the research and completion of
this study, including the Mellon-Wisconsin Summer Fellowship, which enabled me to complete
the final draft of this dissertation. The Helen Krich Chinoy Dissertation Research Fellowship
from the American Society for Theatre Research as well as the Vilas Travel Grant from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison supported travel to numerous archives, including the Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the
New York Public Library, and Bryn Mawr College Library’s Special Collections. The librarians
and archivists at each of these institutions were extremely helpful, and I would specifically like
to thank Marianne Hansen and Eric Pumroy for their assistance with the Margaret Ayer Barnes
Papers and Arlene for her invaluable assistance in using the Billy Rose Theatre Collection.
Several individuals have been particularly generous with their time and resources in
supporting this project. I especially wish to thank Julie Goldsmith Gilbert for her scholarly work
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as well as her personal insights into the work and life of her great aunt, Edna Ferber. I am
similarly grateful to Richard Ziegfeld for his wonderful resource The Ziegfeld Touch, which he
wrote with Paulette Ziegfeld, as well as his generosity in discussing and sharing his research.
Jonathan Bank of the Mint Theatre Company provided invaluable assistance in locating the
script for The Age of Innocence. I am also indebted to Cari Beauchamp for her assistance in
locating materials related to Anita Loos and to Lonna Morouney for her kind provision of
materials on the Sidell Sisters. I would also like to thank Dr. Judith A. Sebesta for her advice on
my initial research on Show Boat as well as her aid in applying for funding throughout the
project.
I would also like to thank Aralene Callahan, Annie Giannini, and Megywn SandersAndrews for their careful readings and constructive suggestions for my initial drafts. Janet and
Joel Ristuccia and Willow Osborn opened their homes to me during travel to New York, which
helped immensely, and numerous friends provided encouragement during the various stages of
this project. Most importantly, I am humbled by and forever grateful for the loving support of my
husband Ken Wood.
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This dissertation is dedicated to Julie Vogt, an amazing scholar, mentor, and friend I dearly miss.
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Table of Contents
Abstract
vii
Introduction - Show Business: Gender Business
1
Commodification and Femininity
2
Objectives and Theory
5
Historical and Critical Context
10
Methodology
17
Chapter One - The Modern Girl in Modern Media: Women’s Magazines and
Broadway Theatre Commodify Cultural Ambivalence
22
Anxiety and Ambivalence
23
Women’s Magazines and Broadway Theatres
25
Sex and the Modern Girl
33
Beauty, Consumerism, and the Modern Girl
45
Actresses and Capital
62
Chapter Two - Ol’ (Wo)Man River?: Broadway’s Gendering of
Edna Ferber’s Show Boat
67
Ferber’s Show Boat
70
Show Boat and the Woman’s Home Companion
73
Show Boat and Ziegfeld’s Broadway
80
Adapting Race and Gender in Show Boat
84
Female Practitioners
93
Expanding the Ziegfeld Brand
97
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Chapter Three - From Criticism to Compliment:
American Gender in The Age of Innocence
118
Edith Wharton and the Pictorial Review
121
Competing Femininities
126
Framing Wharton’s Serial
132
Adapting The Age of Innocence
139
Adapting Masculinity, Class, and Nationality
143
Adapting Racial Others
153
Casting, Contracts, and Capital
160
Cornell’s Capital
168
Wharton’s Modified Critique
176
Chapter Four - Ignorance is Marketable: Feminine Fatuity and the
Currency of Fun in Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
181
Femininity and Fatuity
186
The Beginnings of Blondes
193
Satirizing Shopping and Smartness
197
Constructing Culpability
208
Casting and Capital
216
Conclusion – Continuing Issues of Capital
227
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List of Figures
1. Sidell Sisters’ Apache Dance from Show Boat
104
2. Illustration for The Age of Innocence
135
3. Katharine Cornell in The Age of Innocence
171
4. Katharine Cornell in The Age of Innocence
175
5. Anita Loos
189
6. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
210
7. Mildred Macleod
217
8. June Walker as Lorelei Lee
219
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Abstract
American theatre sustains itself through the commodification of live bodies and the
gender ideologies they represent, particularly through commercial displays of women. While
numerous studies in cultural theory and theatre research examine the commodification of women
in entertainment, few studies investigate precisely how practitioners in commercial theatre
calculate and compound the value of this complex asset. This study offers a productive method
for examining the entertainment value—the presumed appeal and revenue—of femininity in
mainstream entertainment. Through an analysis of 1920s stage adaptations, this dissertation
investigates the capital concerns, economic, cultural, and ideological, at play in determining,
manipulating, and maximizing the value of specific femininities in for-profit entertainment.
Using this study, I conceptualize such concerns as a complex of capital, a theoretical tool
for understanding and challenging dominant valuations of gender in for-profit entertainment. I
examine this capital complex through three case studies exploring the practical aspects of
calculating and compounding entertainment value in the constructs of femininity. Specifically, I
examine the influence of capital on the commodification of femininity in three 1920s stage
adaptations from women’s magazine serials: Show Boat (1927), The Age of Innocence (1928),
and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1926). As women’s magazine serials composed and adapted
during a time of shifting cultural expectations, each of these texts emerged as a strong
commentary on modern femininty. This central theme serves to highlight valuations of gender in
the transformation of each narrative from a women’s magazine serial to a popular Broadway
show.
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In addition to analyzing issues of capital and valuations of gender in commercial theatre,
this dissertation expands current scholarship on 1920s entertainment and gender by analyzing
productions with female stars and women writers, an area in which women wielded more
influence than anywhere else in the industry. In addition, this study considers the symbiotic
relationship between commercial Broadway theatre and women’s magazines during the 1920s,
an underexplored area of cultural intersection in shaping gender during this time. Placing these
media in conversation with each other expands existing theatre scholarship, which overlooks the
serial versions of these plays, thus isolating these narratives from their gendered origins.
Introduction
Show Business: Gender Business
She never saw him again.
—Show Boat by Edna Ferber
He slowly takes her in his arms—He hasn’t quite the courage to kiss her. She
kisses him.
—Show Boat by Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Florenz Ziegfeld
When Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.’s musical adaptation
of Edna Ferber’s Show Boat debuted in 1927, 1 Broadway audiences witnessed a romantic finale
far removed from the concluding scene in Ferber’s novel. Ferber’s narrative, which debuted in
1926 as a women’s magazine serial and appeared as a novel later that year, concluded with the
widowed Magnolia alone aboard her show boat, waving to her daughter Kim as Kim heads off to
start a theatre company. In contrast, Kern, Hammerstein, and Ziegfeld closed their musical
version of Ferber’s tale with a scene depicting Magnolia and her husband Ravenal reuniting,
holding each other in a loving embrace as Kim looks on approvingly from off stage. 2
Aware of the financial risks involved in producing a Broadway musical, Kern,
Hammerstein, and Ziegfeld altered Ferber’s ending, as well as several other aspects of her
narrative, in order to create what they viewed as a more commercial version of Show Boat. In
doing so, the adapters reformulated the femininity in Ferber’s narrative to communicate a more
dependent, and, therefore, they believed, more marketable portrayal of American womanhood. 3
Rather than Ferber’s representation of strong and independent femininity, the musical version of
Show Boat depicted women as emotionally and financially dependent on male counterparts.
The alteration of Show Boat for theatre audiences illustrates the effect of commercial
concerns on theatrical representations of gender in American entertainment. The for-profit
2
business model adopted by several American theatres establishes show business as a gender
business dependant on producing and marketing profitable representations of gender in order to
survive and thrive financially. 4 Accordingly, issues of capital, both cultural and economic, play a
pervasive and powerful role in shaping the gender ideologies circulated through commercial
entertainment, including magazines, fiction, film, and theatre.
Commodification and Femininity
American theatre sustains itself by producing and selling displays of live bodies and the
gender ideologies such bodies represent. Historically, this commercialization has centered on
presentations of female bodies. According to theatre historian Faye E. Dudden, the
commodification of women operates as a foundational tenet of modern American entertainment.
In her study of the beginnings of the modern theatre industry in America, Dudden traces the
commodification of the female body in entertainment, a practice “neither natural nor inevitable,”
to the modernization of theatre as a commercial endeavor (4). As Dudden states, “The same
commercialization that took the stage to a mass audience pushed the objectification inherent in
stage representation a step further, into commodification. It converted women’s bodies into a
realizable asset” (8). 5 The issues of capital influencing representations of gender in entertainment
thus particularly influence displays of women’s bodies.
While I agree with Dudden, I would like to expand her claim and argue that not merely
women’s bodies, but also femininity itself converted into a realizable asset in this foundational
transaction. The body of the female performer becomes a realizable asset specifically through its
display as a female body, a body always already imbued with cultural understandings of
femininity. In conjunction with the female body, femininity thus operates as an asset in
entertainment, commodified and sold in a similar manner. In performance, femininity accrues
3
not only through the actress, but also through the characters she plays, creations similarly
operating within cultural constructs of gender. Thus, in production, both in theatre and film, the
femininity of actress and character function as an interrelated asset, exemplifying what the
modern entertainment industry considers marketable, profitable, and, therefore, valuable in
femininity.
In discussing “femininity” in this study, I refer to sociocultural understandings of specific
characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors as essential qualities of female individuals. Because
understandings of femininity form within sociocultural biases and prejudices, they imbricate
constructs of gender with stereotypes and preconceptions based in concurrent social constructs,
such as race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, etc. Constructs of femininity thus incorporate social
understandings of hierarchy as they intersect with such prejudices and biases. Accordingly,
dominant constructs of femininity often reflect prevailing prejudices and lend preeminence to
forms of femininity that reify hegemonic ideals. Hegemonic ideals thus influence the value a
form of femininity carries in society as well as in entertainment.
While social and entertainment value influence each other, they do not correlate directly.
Entertainment operates as a liminal sociocultural space, related to but also removed from the
social transactions of everyday life. Cultural value does not, therefore, directly coincide with
entertainment value. Transgressive behavior, for example, often carries value in entertainment
that it does not share with the same behavior in social interactions. Due to this disconnect in
value, gender as staged in entertainment carries the potential to challenge and expand hegemonic
valuations of femininity.
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In spite of this potential, the femininities represented and promoted in commercial
entertainment maintain an unmistakably close relationship with social understandings and
hegemonic valuations of gender. The affinity between cultural and entertainment value in
representations of gender results from the fact that, in for-profit entertainment, the ability to
embody and/or portray a form of femininity carries capital only when legitimated by financial
profit. 6 This legitimation through financial gain creates a symbiotic relationship between
culturally sanctioned forms of femininity and those carrying capital in entertainment.
Accordingly, entertainers reflecting hegemonic gender ideals generally receive more and moreprominent roles in commercial entertainment. Due to this positioning, such entertainers also
draw larger audiences and earn higher wages than performers challenging or existing outside
these ideals. 7 Commercial entertainment thus perpetuates a system of remuneration and
representation privileging individuals and depictions exemplifying hegemonic ideals—
problematic ideals founded in prejudiced stereotypes of class, race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality,
etc. 8
In spite of these parallels, culturally legitimated forms of femininity do not necessarily
correlate to those carrying capital in entertainment. Entertainers, particularly in theatre, often
exploit the liminal quality of performance to deliberately transgress and challenge culturally
legitimate forms of femininity in order, among other things, to generate revenue. As long as such
performances create financial profit, they remain legitimate forms of gender in entertainment.
However, in spite of entertainment’s expansive range of legitimate gender performances,
performances venturing outside accepted boundaries or hegemonies often carry a higher risk of
financial loss. 9 Accordingly, the entertainment value of femininity rests within a delicate balance
5
of challenge and containment in for-profit ventures, a balance carefully calibrated by accruing
and adjusting the cultural capital of each performance. 10
Objectives and Theory
While numerous studies in cultural theory and theatre research examine the
commodification of women in commercial entertainment, few studies investigate precisely how
practitioners in for-profit entertainment calculate and compound the value of this complex asset.
Numerous scholars, including Dudden, analyze individual performers’ manipulations of
femininity and value in entertainment, but examining the direct relationship between gender
performance and monetary value in a broad sense remains an uncomfortable and difficult task.
This discomfort relates, in part, to the fact that in commercial entertainment some femininities
and, by extension, some bodies are literally more valuable than others, a fact revealed in the
continuing disparity in pay between male and female Hollywood stars as well as white actors and
actors of color. 11 In commodifying female bodies and feminine gender, commercial
entertainment brings the intersectionalities of female identity into uncomfortable proximity with
monetary value.
This study seeks to engage with this topic by offering a productive method for examining
the entertainment value—the presumed appeal and revenue—of femininity in mainstream
entertainment. In doing so, this study works to build on gender and media studies focusing on
issues of representation by parsing out the material and non-material influences of capital on
representations of identity, particularly gender, race, class, and sexuality, in for-profit venues. In
addition, this dissertation seeks to question trends in feminist and adaptation studies, which often
position revised versions as progressive versions of reiterated narratives. While feminist authors
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and playwrights have established a strong and productive practice of queering and questioning
canonical works and traditional tropes, retellings can reify as ably as they undermine, and
commercial concerns often play a determining role in directing and dampening reinterpretations.
A method for examining entertainment value thus facilitates analysis for scholars examining
gender, media, adaptation, and representation in for-profit entertainment, including publication,
television, radio, film, and theatre.
Although ultimately economic, the factors creating entertainment value are largely
immaterial, stemming primarily from non-material forms of capital carried by both the actor and
the character. Industry professionals, including actors, writers, producers, etc., create
representations of femininity in entertainment based on their assumptions about the appeal and,
thus, revenue each representation will generate. These professionals base many of their
assumptions on assessments of non-material capital as they work to evaluate and manipulate this
capital in order to create the most profitable representations possible.
Due to the numerous and varied forms of capital affecting each performance of
femininity in commercial entertainment, it seems productive to consider the entertainment value
of femininity as value formed within a capital complex—an interrelated system of material and
non-material capital informing understandings of value. 12 In entertainment, this system includes
non-material cultural capital, as detailed below, as well as material economic capital. While it is
relatively easy to trace the economic aspects of this complex in commercial entertainment, for
example the salary of one actress as compared to that of another, the non-material forms of
capital at work in this system are more difficult to track. Theatre historian Joseph Roach notes
this difficulty in relation to the accrued value or “patina” that contributes to the elusive yet
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valuable quality known as “it.” As Roach notes, “despite its [patina’s] tangible materiality, its
value seems intangibly negotiable, like that of time itself” (154). This intangible and negotiable
form of value depends largely on non-material capital.
Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of cultural capital thus prove useful for studies of intangible
value since they provide a means for considering the accumulation and influence of non-material
capital. His theories thus assist in analyzing the non-material forms of capital at play in creating
entertainment value. 13 Bourdieu posits that just as individuals accumulate and exchange financial
capital, they similarly accumulate and employ cultural capital, which, although socially valuable,
does not directly or readily convert to cash. Bourdieu divides cultural capital into three subtypes:
embodied, “long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body”; objectified, displays of cultural
capital in objectified form, such as paintings, musical instruments, or books in multiple
languages; and institutional, associations with institutions that increase value by acting as
guarantees (“Forms” 282). Both actresses and characters carry these forms of cultural capital. An
actress’ figure, fashionable couture, or good reviews, for example, act respectively as embodied,
objectified, and institutional cultural capital. They cannot immediately and directly convert to
cash, but, in certain conditions, including the conditions of commercial entertainment, these
aspects of her person convert to economic capital. 14
Actors participate and profit in this system by accruing embodied capital through exercise
and diets as well as education and training, activities intended to improve their marketability as
bodies employed in entertainment. For women, such activities often correlate with conforming to
cultural ideals of femininity, for example, cultivating a figure, appearance, or means of
movement or speech linked with female gender. As stated earlier, these ideals of femininity often
8
reflect hegemonic ideals of class, race, etc., which determine the degree of cultural capital
carried through the particular kind of appearance, figure, speech, movement, etc. the actress
develops. Much like an actress, female characters also carry non-material capital through their
portrayal of femininity. In addition, characters carry non-material capital through their origins in
media and genre, the reputation of their authors, critical responses and reviews, popularity, etc.
Producers work to maximize this capital by selecting well-known writers and stories, generating
hype about a particular character, and reworking characters in order to appeal to audiences. In
staging female characters, the cultural capital of the performer and the cultural capital of the
character, as well as capital from the overall project, 15 aggregate into a commercial product
promoting particular understandings of femininity.
While Bourdieu’s concepts facilitate a study of capital and its operation in relation to
gender and entertainment, his theories also present some potential hazards. As several feminist
scholars, including Judith Butler, Terry Lovell, and Beverley Skeggs, have noted, Bourdieu’s
theories tend to reify institutional power and gender binaries. In her book Excitable Speech: A
Politics of the Performative, Butler criticizes Bourdieu for ascribing absolute power to
institutionalized authority and thus ignoring the power of individual resistance. 16 In addition,
Lovell’s article, “Thinking Feminism with and against Bourdieu,” criticizes the heteronormative
nature of Bourdieu’s model of capital in which husbands provide economic capital for the family
while wives display this capital by transforming it into symbolic capital (20). Similarly, in her
essay contextualizing the collection Feminism After Bourdieu, Skeggs takes issue with Bourdieu
for failing to examine how embodied capital works differently in relation to gender (22). Skeggs
also accuses Bourdieu of reproducing the categories his theories endeavor to critique by relying
9
on binary gender divisions (28). Bourdieu’s theories thus carry the potential hazard of portraying
representations of femininity in entertainment as institutionally and essentially determined. 17
This study works to avoid such pitfalls by focusing on particular instances of individuals’
interactions with the institutionalized authority of the entertainment industry, specifically, the
institutions of the women’s magazine industry and Broadway theatre, both flourishing,
predominantly male-managed sources of mainstream entertainment in the 1920s. I will examine
individual negotiations of the capital complex in these markets through three case studies
analyzing the initial creation of a representation of femininity for a women’s magazine and the
alteration of that representation in an adaptation for the stage. For each of these transformations,
I will consider the capital concerns of specific individuals and their particular impact on each
adjustment. In doing so, my dissertation acknowledges the power of institutional authority while
also underscoring individual agency within these institutions. Institutionalized authority remains
dominant in these particular cases, but my focus on individual actions reveals areas where
resistance remained possible if not always successful in challenging hegemonic depictions of
femininity in 1920s magazine fiction and Broadway theatre.
In addition, this study troubles Bourdieu’s heteronormative model by investigating
instances in which women consciously leveraged their own symbolic capital to accrue economic
capital, often taking the “husband’s” role as well as the “wife’s” in this system of value. This
study also troubles the gendered binary of male creator and female creation, a popular formula
carried over from the late 1800s and early1900s when, according to historian Kim Marra, male
managers realized they could make more money by promoting female, rather than male, stars
(xv). As Marra explains, “The Pygmalion or, more particularly the racially marked Svengali
mode of star making became a key theme of the era [1865-1914]” (xv), and, I would argue,
10
carried into understandings of theatre production in the 1920s. The trope of male creator/female
creation informed 1920s theatre practice and remains a pervasive construct in current studies of
1920s theatre. 18 This dissertation troubles this construct along with the binary of male
producer/female consumer, a binary solidified by the advertising industry during the 1920s, 19 by
demonstrating that both men and women participated in creating, commodifying, and consuming
the femininities for sale in women’s magazines and Broadway theatre. 20
Historical and Critical Context
1920s America provides a particularly productive context for a study of the capital
complex in relation to femininity since the cultural shifts in women’s gender performance during
this period destabilized the entertainment value previously carried in established representations.
This disruption served to foreground concerns of capital in industries, such as women’s
magazines and commercial theatre, working to commodify femininity during this decade. This
proved particularly difficult during the 1920s as the sea change in understandings of femininity
began to impact entertainment value.
The New Women of the late 1800s and early 1900s instigated this change by ushering
women into the public sphere through their efforts to promote women’s suffrage, birth control,
and prohibition. In the 1910s and 1920s, young women rejected the militancy associated with the
New Woman but relished the acceptance of women in the public sphere, entering the work force
and higher education in unprecedented numbers. No longer confined to their separate sphere of
home and family, modern women directly influenced social and political issues, public concerns
formerly controlled primarily by men. Female leadership seemed to flourish in the passage of the
Eighteenth Amendment in January 1920, which established Prohibition, a cause widely
11
constructed as feminine through the support of organizations such as the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union and cultural perceptions of women as the moral authorities of the nation.
Later that year, women gained unprecedented political power with the ratification of the
Nineteenth Amendment, in August, which granted women the right to vote.
In addition to their increasing political and social influence, women of the 1910s and
1920s also adopted more “modern” attitudes about sex, shamelessly acknowledging female
desire and demanding equal standards for men and women in relation to sexual morality.
Women’s fashions reflected this new frankness as hemlines receded and middle-class women
began using cosmetics, a practice formerly associated with prostitution. As historian Kathy Peiss
observes, the resulting cosmetics industry “reshaped the relationship between appearance and
feminine identity by promoting the externalization of the gendered self” (“Making Faces” 157).
According to Peiss, this trend “foregrounded the notion that one’s ‘look’ was not only the
expression of female identity but its essence as well” (italics added “Making Faces” 165).
Although Peiss refers specifically to the cosmetics industry, her observation articulates a broader
sea change in cultural understandings of femininity during this period.
As chapter one will address in detail, women’s increasing public presence, political
influence, open sexuality, consumerism, and focus on fashion marked a distinctly modern
redefinition of femininity in America that solidified in the late 1910s and 1920s. Society split in
its opinion of “the Modern Girl,” 21 as she was often called, with individuals alternately praising
and lamenting her influence on American culture. Some celebrated her frank interest in sex,
shopping, and short hemlines, while others believed her makeup and immodesty indicated the
moral denigration of the nation. This ambivalent cultural response made assessments and
12
calibrations of capital difficult for editors and producers working to market femininity to modern
consumers. Editors and producers struggled to adjust their products in order to attract modish
audiences without losing their conservative markets. As I will discuss in chapter one, both
Broadway producers and women’s magazine editors faced this situation in the midst of
increasingly competitive markets. Financial concerns thus steered commercial representations of
femininity in these media as never before.
The cultural and market conditions women’s magazines and Broadway theatre
encountered during the 1920s thus offer a particularly productive period of study for examining
the influence of capital on femininity in entertainment. Several recent studies examine the effect
of social changes on representations of women in women’s magazines, including historical
surveys by Mary Ellen Zuckerman, Kathleen Endres, Therese Lueck, as well as Jennifer
Scanlon’s detailed look at the Ladies’ Home Journal during this period. In addition, several
scholars, including Angela Latham, Susan A. Glenn, and Linda Mizejewski, have provided close
analyses of the impact of cultural shifts during the late 1910s and the 1920s on representations of
women in theatre, particularly in relation to, sex farces, the chorus girl, and, more specifically,
the iconic image of theatrical femininity, the Ziegfeld girl. Such studies provide invaluable
information and insight into cultural concerns and representations of femininity in entertainment
during this era. However, none of these studies provides a detailed analysis of the
interrelationship between women’s magazines and theatre during this decade.
In addition, the numerous theatrical studies focusing on permutations of the chorus girl
during this decade underscore the need for an exploration of theatrical genres in which women
wielded more influence during the 1920s. While the Ziegfeld girl and chorus girl phenomena
13
warrant close examination, due to the collective characteristic of these icons, such studies remain
limited in what they can discuss as far as particular instances and individual agency.
Contemporary constructs of the chorus girl as a monolith produced myriad discussions of chorus
girls in groups with few critics focusing on individual circumstances or experiences.
Accordingly, studies of the ubiquitous chorus girl image offer an ironically myopic view of
women in theatre in the 1920s by omitting areas of entertainment in which women played a
substantial role in directly crafting commercial portrayals of femininity, influencing scripts,
casting, production choices, costume decisions, etc.
In order to construct a more complete picture of 1920s theatre, studies must build upon
this work by including the role of women as formative shapers and determinants of culture and
the female image in both performance and writing in order to avoid creating a false perception of
1920s commercial theatre as a medium uniformly containing and suppressing female agency
through male domination. It is thus particularly important to examine productions, such as those
adapted from stories by female authors, through which women worked to contest the sexual and
servile images promoted through numerous Broadway shows. It is equally important to consider
instances in which women assisted in creating and proliferating problematic portrayals of
femininity in commercial entertainment.
Examining commercial plays with female stars and women writers reveals an area of
commercial theatre entertainment in which women wielded more influence than anywhere else in
the industry at this time. A study of such productions is thus particularly important given that
other popular genres of this era, particularly the sex farce, musical comedies, and revues,
uniformly squelched women’s influence in shows created and sustained through diminishing the
importance of the individual woman and her performance skill. In addition, at this time, almost
14
all commercial Broadway producers and directors were men, meaning that acting and
playwriting remained some of the few areas regularly open to female influence in the creation
and depiction of femininity on the commercial stage. 22 Examining adaptations of femalecentered narratives by women writers provides the opportunity to analyze women’s roles in
creating commercial depictions of femininity through writing as well as production and
performance decisions in theatre during the 1920s. An analysis of such productions reveals
women’s influence, through the cultural capital they exercised, in forming narratives for
commercial theatre and the impact and mitigation of that influence, through other concerns of
capital, on the final production. Accordingly, this study suggests ways in which expanding
definitions of “authorship” in theatre and cultural studies might contribute to more accurate
understandings of women’s role in the production and shaping of meaning in entertainment.
In order to examine the complex of capital influencing representations of gender in
entertainment, this study focuses on the creation and adaptation of three narratives, Show Boat
(1926), The Age of Innocence (1920), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925). 23 These works offer
particularly productive case studies for several reasons. First, each originated as a serial in an
American women’s magazine during the 1920s, a time of radically shifting standards and intense
social scrutiny of femininity in America. Their authors, Edna Ferber, Edith Wharton, and Anita
Loos, wrote from within this cultural shift, addressing personal concerns about the freedoms and
frustrations of modern American femininity in narratives crafted for America women. Their
narratives appeared in women’s magazines, publications printed and sold as products of
women’s culture, culture created specifically for women.
In examining these narratives as products in and of women’s culture, this study draws on
the theories of cultural historian Lauren Berlant. Berlant classifies women’s culture as “an
15
intimate public,” which she defines as “a porous, affective scene of identification among
strangers that promises a certain experience of belonging and provides a complex of consolation,
confirmation, discipline, and discussion about how to live as an x” (viii). American women’s
culture proliferates understandings of how to live as an “x” where “x” represents an American
woman. During the 1920s, women’s magazines and Broadway theatre acted as some of the many
“affective scene[s] of identification” centered on confirming, disciplining, and discussing how to
live as a female in American. These entertainments grew in popularity as this particular “x”
became an increasingly unstable variable.
While Broadway shows were created for and marketed to both male and female
audiences, women’s magazines created and marketed an “affective scene of identification”
specifically for women (Berlant viii). Each of these narratives thus originated as a product
created for and by American women. Femininity, particularly concerns about shifting definitions
of femininity, thus played a central role in both the writing and marketing of these serials,
making an analysis of their origins particularly productive in examining the considerations and
construction of value in commercial representations of femininity. This central focus also forced
producers, playwrights, and actresses to grapple with issues of femininity and marketability
when adapting these narratives for the stage, thus providing rich material for an analysis of the
influence of capital in shaping representations of gender.
In addition to their focus on femininity, each serial provides a prime example of
representations of femininity shaped by capital concerns in a competitive commercial market. At
this time, women’s magazine fiction was an especially profitable genre for writers and
magazines, generating fees well beyond those provided by general audience periodicals and
attracting numerous readers to specific publications. Women’s magazines catered to specific
16
audiences by clearly defining the femininity promoted through their publication. As narratives
crafted for and sold in these publications, each story thus provides a prime example of a
successfully commodified form of femininity finely tuned to a particular area of the women’s
magazine market. A study of the writing and editing processes shaping these representations of
femininity thus elucidates the capital concerns at work in the construction and marketing of
femininities in this specific genre.
In conjunction with their characteristics as women’s magazine serials, Show Boat, The
Age of Innocence, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes facilitate a productive study of capital and
gender in entertainment through their use in adaptations. During the 1920s, Show Boat, The Age
of Innocence, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes each served as source material for acclaimed
Broadway stage adaptations. Adaptations form from series of changes, or exchanges, between
the original and the adaptation, a characteristic making adaptations particularly useful in studies
of value. As Skeggs states, “in the moment of exchange . . . value is made visible” (28).
Adaptations thus facilitate studies of value since each permutation of the work forms from
myriad moments of exchange exposing the value of multiple versions of a narrative or character,
or, specifically for this study, a representation of femininity. Because these adaptations
originated in the same culture and decade as their source material, 24 the shifting values in each
version illuminate the influence of capital in creating entertainment value rather than
demonstrating shifts in this value stemming from intercultural differences or social changes over
time. 25 While 1920s American culture did not exist as a monolith, the relatively
contemporaneous aspect of the serials and stage productions in this study facilitates a focus on
issues of capital rather than the impact of cultural and historical shifts on representations of
femininity.
17
Finally, Show Boat, The Age of Innocence, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes offer
productive texts for this study since both the literary and stage versions of their stories were
commercially successful during the 1920s. The periodicals Woman’s Home Companion and
Pictorial Review employed Ferber and Wharton’s fiction to attract and keep customers, and
Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes proved so popular that sales of Harper’s increased steadily
throughout the run of the serial. Moreover, at a time when one hundred performances qualified a
production as a success, 26 each of the stage adaptations in this study easily exceeded this mark
on Broadway while also generating profitable touring productions. 27 As stated earlier, economic
capital legitimates representations of femininity in for-profit entertainment. The financial success
of these serials and shows thus establishes the femininities they present as exemplary models of
the entertainment industry’s values in representations of femininity during the 1920s. These case
studies thus offer fecund examples of the femininities valued and, therefore, promoted through
the entertainment industry, particularly through the women’s magazine and commercial theatre
industries. Through their focus on femininity, their contemporaneous development as
adaptations, and their commercial success, Show Boat, The Age of Innocence, and Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes provide ideal case studies for an examination of the capital complex and its
influence on representations of femininity in for-profit theatre.
Methodology
In order to examine the relationship between gender and capital in each case study, I
analyze the development of femininity in the serial and then trace the evolution of this femininity
through the process of stage adaptation, closely examining the capital concerns shaping each
representation. Chapter one provides the historic and political context for this study by detailing
the dramatic shifts in cultural understandings of femininity taking place during the 1920s. This
18
chapter also explores the affect of these shifts on entertainment value in both women’s
magazines and Broadway productions. Specifically, I analyze shifts in understandings of female
sexuality, beauty, and consumerism as well as the issues of race, class, and power informing
these constructs. I also examine the deep-seated ambivalence that changing constructs
engendered and the impact of this ambivalence on attempts by publishers and producers to
commodify femininity. Specifically, I explore responses of the magazine industry in relation to
advertising, fiction, and marketing and the reaction of the theatre industry through sex farces,
revue shows, and star vehicles.
Throughout this analysis, I discuss the symbiotic relationship between commercial
Broadway theatre and women’s magazines during the 1920s, an underexplored area of cultural
intersection in shaping gender during this time. Placing these media in conversation with each
other in these particular instances expands existing theatre scholarship, which often overlooks
the serial versions of these plays, and, in the case of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Age of
Innocence, neglects the initial 1920s dramas altogether. Such lacunae isolate these iconic
theatrical narratives from their specifically gendered origins, thus ignoring gender and the
manipulation of gender in the inter-medial facets of adaptation. Comparing serial and stage
versions of each narrative, in conjunction with the historical analysis of these particular
productions, serves to augment existing theatre scholarship on these productions as well as the
role of women in 1920s theatre.
In each of the following chapters, I investigate these issues in detail through close
historical and literary analysis of specific serials and their adaptation into successful Broadway
productions. This analysis highlights the capital concerns at play in creating representations of
women in these particular entertainment products and industries. Chapter two, for example,
19
follows the initial publication and adaptation of Edna Ferber’s Show Boat, beginning with its
debut in Woman’s Home Companion and tracing the changes and exchanges in femininity as the
work evolved into the seminal Broadway musical. This chapter details how Companion editor
Gertrude Battles Lane enabled Ferber to construct complex portrayals of independent and
steadfast America women, known as Ferber’s “iron women.” In Show Boat, this resulted in the
portrayal of several strong female characters representing various versions of American
womanhood. The chapter then analyzes the impact of producer Florenz Ziegfeld’s trademark
form of commodified femininity, as exemplified in the Ziegfeld girl, on the adaptation of
Ferber’s “iron women” into stereotypes prevalent in musicals and revues, specifically, in the
musicals and revues produced by Ziegfeld. In this chapter, I argue that Ziegfeld asserted his
aesthetic of male-controlled femininity in order to use this aesthetic as a commercial and moral
guarantee for the marginalized femininity he also commodified in Show Boat. Due to capital
concerns, Ziegfeld employed Show Boat to expand his brand of femininity, momentarily, to
include culturally marginalized ideals of womanhood embodied by African American chorus
girls and erotic specialty dancers.
Chapter three examines the commercial viability of femininities created to critique
dominant gender constructs. I investigate the entertainment value of such representations by
comparing the femininity in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, as framed in its debut by the
Pictorial Review, with the femininity created in the play adaptation by Margaret Ayer Barnes
and Edward Sheldon. Wharton’s The Age of Innocence presents a scathing critique of American
gender constructs through its two female protagonists, the American May Welland and her
European cousin Ellen Olenska. Through these women, Wharton’s serial exposes the social and
personal hypocrisy produced in a culture Wharton often criticized for infantilizing women and
20
then limiting their opportunities due to their culturally-enforced inexperience. Both the Pictorial
and the playwrights recognized the capital inherent in Wharton’s characters, but both editors and
adapters understood that capitalizing on this entertainment value required mitigating the
narrative’s negative portrayal of American femininity.
In this chapter, I analyze the development and publication of the serial in conjunction
with the adaptation and performance of the stage play to reveal the superior entertainment value
attributed to complementary rather than critical representations of American femininity. In
addition, I examine the values Barnes chose to espouse through Wharton’s characters in order to
demonstrate the affect of the capital complex in positioning maternity, nationalism, and selfsacrifice as valuable female qualities. This chapter also examines the capital concerns
influencing aspects of casting and marketing related to femininity through a historical analysis of
The Age of Innocence as a star vehicle for Katharine Cornell. Investigating Cornell’s concerns
illustrates how actresses managed their individual capital and positioned themselves as
marketable commodities while maintaining their agency in a male-dominated industry.
In chapter four, I examine the influence of the entertainment industry on Anita Loos’s
iconic representation of femininity in Lorelei Lee, the protagonist of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
As both the writer and adapter of this immensely popular narrative, Loos wielded tremendous
influence in decisions impacting the portrayal of femininity in both the literary and theatrical
versions of her work. Accordingly, the evolution of her satirical heroine into an alluring, rather
than alarming, stage incarnation of female vacuity reflects issues of capital stemming from media
and industry demands rather than authorial or production disputes. In this chapter, I detail the
aspects of live performance that allowed Loos to sharpen her critique. However, the tremendous
success of the serial and novel versions of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes forced Loos to work with a
21
character already imbued with significant entertainment value, and I also explore the affect of an
audience highly familiar with her heroine in frustrating Loos’s efforts to hone her criticism. This
chapter also explores the impact of actresses’ capital concerns on portrayals and publicity
through June Walker’s interviews concerning the role of Lorelei and her use of the role and
publicity to increase her capital in an industry privileging women portraying characters
exemplifying bigoted ideals of race and class. The conclusion will address the continued
circulation of these narratives in American culture, through revivals as well as film adaptations,
and the implications of the capital complex for current issues in American theatre, television, and
film.
Through this study, I hope to provide a productive model for analyzing the practical
aspects of assessing and commodifying femininity in commercial entertainment. As theatre
theorist Jill Dolan observes, “Since dominant cultural meanings both constitute and are
reconstituted by representation, deconstructing performance from a feminist perspective entails
uncovering the ideological determinants within which performance works” (41). In for-profit
entertainment these ideological determinants bow frequently to commercial concerns, making a
method for examining these concerns crucial to deconstructing the meanings entailed in
representations created and sold by the entertainment industry. This issue is increasingly crucial
as government and independent funding declines and for-profit models continue to dominate
theatre, television, and film in the United States. It is my intention that this study will raise
productive questions in regard to relying on and engaging with for-profit systems of
entertainment.
Chapter 1
The Modern Girl in Modern Media: Women’s Magazines and Broadway
Theatre Commodify Cultural Ambivalence
In 1922, college student Nelle Weathers responded to a series of articles in the women’s
magazine Pictorial Review on the benefits and drawbacks of modern femininity. In her response,
Weathers balked against contemporary cultural scrutiny of her gender and generation, inquiring,
“Why all this furor and argument about the modern girl? Why is she the favorite theme for
writers, lecturers, and reformers of every kind? Why pick on us? We rise to ask. Why not talk
about the modern father or the modern mother or the modern child or the modern young man?”
(22). As Weathers’ queries indicate, during the 1920s, no social group was either half so
interesting nor half so influential as the modern girl, whose radical departure from traditional
values reputedly threatened to destroy the nation’s social system. Weathers’ comments on the
popularity of this topic, as well as the Pictorial’s series in which they appeared, further indicate
the entertainment value of the modern girl and the conflict she provoked.
While Americans debated the modern girl’s moral values, the entertainment industry
exploited her commercial appeal, capitalizing on the pervasive fascination and fear surrounding
modern femininity by producing countless magazines, newspapers, novels, films, as well as radio
and stage productions centering on the subject. However, conflicting cultural attitudes regarding
modern femininity made the marketability of such portrayals difficult to determine. This chapter
considers the affect of cultural ambivalence towards the modern girl on entertainment industries
built on commodifying femininity, specifically women’s magazines and commercial Broadway
theatre, during the 1920s. I begin my discussion by considering the milieu of ambivalence
surrounding modern femininity at this time. Following this, I contextualize the women’s
magazine and theatre industries of this era and explore the symbiotic relationship between these
23
enterprises in cultural discussions and depictions of femininity. I then offer a detailed analysis of
specific shifts in understandings of femininity during this era, particularly in relation to sexuality,
beauty, and consumerism. For each of these shifts, I examine the political issues, including race,
class, and power, at stake in modern redefinitions of femininity as well as the strategies women’s
magazines and commercial Broadway entertainments employed in capitalizing on these shifts
through commodified representations of femininity.
Anxiety and Ambivalence
During the late 1910s and the 1920s, much of the social anxiety over gender stemmed
from perceptions of modern American femininity as a particularly radical rejection of past
traditions and the uncritical embrace of values associated with industry, mass production, and
consumerism. According to historian William Leach, such values began to characterize society
after 1890, creating “a culture almost violently hostile to the past and to tradition, a futureoriented culture of desire that confused the good life with the goods” (xiii). Modern femininity
exemplified such attitudes by elevating youth, sexual appeal and desire, consumerism, and
independence while sidelining maternity, maturity, modesty, and purity, characteristics prized in
the Victorian construct of ideal femininity known as “true womanhood.”
Some women, such as home economics lecturer and consultant Christine Frederick, 28
celebrated such changes, expressing gratitude for the vast difference between past and present
generations. In 1929, Frederick applauded women’s newfound freedoms explaining,
This change came about through a release from several cramping pressures of
tradition, which have made her [the modern American woman] much less
suppressed and less fretted with a sense of social, religious, political, sex and
mental inferiority such as women of the last generation suffered from. The present
24
generation of women are not bound much by religious controls, nor by the
controls of social position and caste, nor by the feeling of being below men in
political rights, mental ability or sex inhibition. (23)
While many, like Frederick, celebrated this shift, others interpreted the advent of the
modern girl as the death knell of American culture and morality, leading many to express a
nostalgic longing for feminine virtues of the past. Author Marion Harland, known for her
women’s fiction and household manuals, voiced such sentiments in her 1920 article “What Shall
We Do with These Young Girls?” which appeared in the Pictorial Review. 29 Harland expresses
her own disapproval of the modern girl confessing, “I love her, yet I deplore the fact that her
liberty means a selfish freedom, one that absolutely ignores the rights of others” (17). Harland
then adds an assessment from a modern father who praises his daughter’s sophistication, but
laments, “‘she has lost something she had as a child, something the modern girl loses by the time
she is well in her teens, the soft sweetness that young women of my day had—the sweetness,’ his
voice dropping, ‘that her mother still has’” (17). This father’s distress echoes Harland’s as each
yearns to exchange women’s modern sophistication for old-fashioned innocence and return to the
rigid gender boundaries of their generation. Frederick and Harland’s conflicting interpretations
of the modern girl exemplify the social ambivalence permeating American culture in regard to
shifting ideals for modern women.
While some unequivocally embraced or rejected the construct of the modern girl, most
Americans remained ambivalent in their response. Many women simultaneously resisted modern
redefinitions of femininity while also rejecting Victorian standards, expertly navigating
conflicting cultural attitudes delineating gender performance in the 1920s. Weathers, for
example, repudiates a monolithic construct of femininity in her article on the modern girl.
25
Specifically, Weathers rejects the type of femininity associated with the iconic image of 1920s
women—the flapper. Weathers warns, “the ‘flapper’ is a type of modern girl, but don’t mistake
this for the type,” and expresses disdain for the flapper by claiming, she “is valuable [only] as
showing the rest of us how not to do things” (22). Soon after this, however, Weathers defends
her bobbed hairstyle and her use of cosmetics, fashions associated with the flapper. Weathers
advocates this modern look as well as modern behaviors, including smoking cigarettes, but
rejects the promiscuity and alcohol consumption also associated with modern femininity. “Some
people talk as if bobbed hair is always a sign of a bobbed moral code,” she explains, but, she
argues, this is not always the case (22). 30 Weathers’ simultaneous performance of traditional and
modern femininity exemplifies the ambivalent attitudes and values many individuals maintained
in regard to womanhood in the 1920s. Such ambivalence made it difficult for Broadway
producers and women’s magazine editors to assess the entertainment value of femininity during
a critical time for both industries.
Women’s Magazines and Broadway Theatres
Not surprisingly, the demand for women’s magazines increased during the 1920s as
women sought advice, discussion, and a sense of community while negotiating a sea of rapidly
shifting gender ideals. As products purporting to provide these services, women’s magazines
sales increased from eighteen million journals sold in 1910 to thirty-one million in 1930
(Zuckerman , History 130). 31 The Ladies’ Home Journal, the first women’s magazine to achieve
a readership of one million, attracted the most readers throughout this period, becoming known
as the “monthly Bible of the American home” (Scanlon 4). 32 Along with Woman’s Home
Companion, Pictorial Review, Good Housekeeping, McCall’s, and Delineator, Ladies’ Home
Journal led the field of women’s magazines in a cohort dubbed “The Big Six.” The Big Six
26
offered readers fiction, articles on fashion and political issues, as well as advice on domestic
concerns and child rearing. In addition to The Big Six, Vogue and Harper’s Bazar 33 garnered
smaller but substantial readerships as “class magazines,” fashion magazines featuring photos and
articles concerning the latest trends in couture. While the Big Six occasionally carried articles on
the entertainment industry, class magazines regularly focused on the glamour of theatre and film
during this era and often carried photos of actresses along with discussions of the latest
productions. Through these various offerings, editors tailored each publication to a specific
female audience, thus commodifying a specific form of femininity in order to define their
publication in a competitive market. 34
Because readers generally remained loyal to one publication, publishers feared that the
significant rise in subscribership during this decade had saturated the market. Publishers thus
aggressively employed direct-mail campaigns, telephone marketing, reader-agents (readers paid
to sell to their acquaintances), 35 sales teams, and boy agents (young men and boys trained to sell
door-to-door or to women in public venues) in order to convince readers to switch publications
or add additional publications to their existing subscriptions. 36 Publishers also worked to keep
subscription rates and newsstand prices competitive while simultaneously improving the content
and visual appeal of their magazines.
Accordingly, as literary critic Henry Seidel Canby noted in his 1926 article “The
Magazine Industry,” by the mid-1920s, the popular magazine industry relied heavily on
advertising revenue. Canby points out that prior to discounted postage rates, magazines
endeavored to fund themselves through the sale of their content, and many editors viewed
advertisements as undignified (665). By the 1920s, however, advertising financed the magazine
27
industry. During what became known as “the golden age of advertising,” advertising budgets
soared, and, in 1925, the Thompson agency set a new world record by spending $230,000 to
place advertisements in a single publication, the Ladies’ Home Journal (Scanlon 172). 37 The
prevalence of ads became a defining characteristic of women’s magazines in particular, which
filled their pages with full-page color advertisements as well as smaller offerings running
alongside articles and stories. The cost of publishing women’s magazines rose during this period
as publishers tried to attract readers by expanding their page length and size, including color
illustrations, and providing quality fiction from famous, and often expensive, writers. 38 The cost
of such strategies forced women’s magazines to rely on large contracts with advertisers, and, as I
will discuss later, this dependence influenced the representations of femininity commodified in
their pages.
Broadway theatre also flourished as an industry commodifying femininity during this
period. According to historian Ronald Harold Wainscott, between 1919 and 1929, Broadway
theater was “the most prolific and profitable of the professional performing arts in American
life” (2). The 1927-1928 season proved the most prolific, offering audiences 264 productions
(Wainscott 4). 39 Theatre critic Brooks Atkinson later recalled that Broadway did not have
enough theatres during this time to accommodate the number of producers vying for space
(Broadway 179). In addition to their New York runs, Broadway offerings often prolonged their
profitability by touring to cities such as Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, and Los Angeles,
bringing popular plays to urban audiences throughout the country. 40 Until the end of the 1920s,
commercial Broadway theatre thus functioned as a powerful cultural force, proliferating
28
commodified images of femininity through New York runs as well as tours and, with the help of
women’s magazines, entertainment news and celebrity gossip.
Much like women’s magazine publishers, Broadway entertainers faced high production
costs in a competitive market. During this decade, the average Broadway drama cost $10,000 to
produce (Atkinson, Broadway 179), and revue shows, particularly the extravagant Ziegfeld
Follies productions, cost considerably more. For example, according to Variety, producer
Florenz Ziegfeld paid $265,000 to produce the Ziegfeld Follies of 1922 (Ziegfeld, Richard and
Paulette 254). As the decade progressed, theatres also faced increasing competition from film
and radio, which offered audiences dramatic narratives and, in the case of film, spectacles similar
to those presented on Broadway. Producers thus worked to attract audiences by staging lavish
productions with famous stars.
Audience appeal thus proved a crucial concern for both Broadway producers and
women’s magazine publishers in the 1920s. However, while advertising underwrote publishing
costs, Broadway shows covered expenses primarily through box office receipts. In addition, both
male and female spectators comprised Broadway audiences. These factors placed additional
pressure on theatre producers to cater to a broader range of tastes and opinions than women’s
magazine editors typically considered. In addition, Broadway producers encountered capital
concerns and opportunities specific to theatre as an embodied medium. While women’s
magazines discussed and depicted femininity, Broadway shows displayed it through actual
female bodies sharing real time and space with their audiences. Through this live presence, stage
productions possessed the inherent ability to tantalize in a more immediate and, therefore,
threatening manner than printed material. While this offered audiences an immediacy lacking in
print entertainment, it also prompted the need to control such performances through systems of
29
management, genre conventions, and legal restraints, such as the 1927 Wales Padlock Law,
which made theatre managers, producers, and actors liable for indecent content. 41 Producers thus
carefully considered and deliberately calibrated the representations of femininity sold in their
theatres in order to exploit new opportunities without offending public taste or inviting legal
action.
Although the Broadway theatre and women’s magazines operated in differing media and
catered to somewhat dissimilar audiences, they drew upon one another for content, particularly
in representations of femininity. Broadway dramas and comedies, which catered to mixed-gender
audiences and, primarily, male critics, drew on women’s magazine content for plots and
characters. Repeatedly during this period, playwrights and producers adapted fiction originating
in women’s magazines for the Broadway stage. Stories such as The First Stone, The Old Maid,
and Old Man Minick, made their way from the women’s magazine page to the Broadway stage
as producers searched for intriguing characters and plots to attract audiences. Women’s
magazine fiction, which featured complex characters and plots, presented promising material for
the stage while also confronting adapters and producers with several challenges.
In some ways, the medium of women’s magazines enabled editors to address more
controversial issues and portray more complex characters than producers could depict in
commercial theatre. The static nature of print media gave editors more control over content and
readers more control over how they engaged with this content than the live medium of theatre. In
addition, editors deliberately targeted an educated readership interested and involved in civic
issues while commercial shows, particularly musicals, revues, and comedies, often distanced
themselves from cerebral concerns. Furthermore, because they catered to a strictly female
30
audience, women’s magazine editors could address concerns culturally constructed as specific to
women, including birth control, children’s health, and marriage, without potentially alienating
members of their audience. Such differences affected the adaptation of women’s magazine
fiction for the stage, as adapters and producers adjusted the complex, women-centered material
of women’s magazine fiction for Broadway audiences.
Women’s magazines often published fiction by female writers, and the adaptation of
women’s magazines fiction, as well as other fiction by women, created several opportunities for
women writers to influence representations of femininity on the commercial stage. While men
dominated the production aspect of the entertainment industry, Broadway readily accepted any
writer, regardless of gender, whose work could turn a profit. Accordingly, the industry
particularly welcomed women who had achieved success in other commercial genres, including
women’s magazines, and could carry the capital of that experience and name recognition into the
new medium. Edna Ferber, for example, achieved recognition as a fiction writer, initially
through her incredibly popular Emma McChesney stories, 42 before collaborating with George S.
Kaufman on plays such as The Royal Family and Dinner at Eight; and Anita Loos became
famous as a film writer for Douglass Fairbanks, Sr. before she turned to writing stage comedy.
Due to the commercial success of their work, established women writers held sway in a largely
male-dominated industry and, subsequently, often contributed to depictions of femininity in
plays dependant on good writing. Women’s magazines and Broadway shows thus often shared
writers and narratives.
In addition to sharing content and writers, theatre and women’s magazines addressed
their audiences in a materially similar manner through theatre programs, which mirrored
31
women’s magazines in layout and content. Programs were often published by magazine
companies and laid out in a format typical of the Big Six. Although smaller in size than women’s
magazines, programs used similar paper and featured lavish cover illustrations followed by pages
of advertisements, photos of celebrities, and a closing full-page color ad—features characteristic
of popular women’s periodicals. Like women’s magazines, theatre programs embedded articles
and information about the corresponding show in a barrage of advertisements. This layout
echoed the ad-saturated format of women’s magazines and stood in stark contrast to general
interest magazines such as Scribner’s Magazine, which removed advertising from content by
relegating advertisements to a separate section. In addition, although some advertisements
addressed men, much of the content in programs targeted women, offering beauty and fashion
advice as well as advertisements for products such as cosmetics, silk stockings, and beauty
treatments. 43
Accordingly, theatre programs participated in what scholar Robin Bernstein refers to as
“‘enscription’ . . . interpellation through a scriptive thing that combines narrative with materiality
to structure behavior” (73). Combined with the narrative, in this case, the gendered content of the
advertisements, advice, and articles, the material aspects of theatre programs evoked the
instructional and consumerist aspects of women’s magazines. As Bernstein argues, “[scriptive
things] invite—indeed, create occasions for—repetitions of acts, distinctive and meaningful
motions of eyes, hands . . . These things are citational in that they arrange and propel bodies in
recognizable ways, through paths of evocative movement that have been traveled before” (70).
In using a form and layout similar to women’s magazines, theatre programs worked as citational
objects, “propelling” patrons’ hands and eyes in a manner evoking their previous experiences of
reading women’s magazines.
32
Such citational actions worked in conjunction with the content of the theatre programs to
interpellate female audience members as students and shoppers, thus establishing the theatre as a
place of instruction in gender performance for female patrons. As Broadway incorporated
women’s magazine culture into the theatre through programs and narratives, the philosophies
underlying this instruction bore a striking similarity to those informing the content in women’s
magazines. Much like the ad-filled magazines, theatre programs addressed female theatre goers
as consumers by framing the theatre experience with advertisements for beauty and home
products. In addition, both theatre and women’s magazines positioned the actress as an exemplar
of femininity for women to emulate. Advertisements in programs and magazines featured
actresses giving beauty advice and endorsing products that implicitly offered to aid women in
mimicking the actress’ appearance. June Walker, the wigged brunette starring as Lorelei in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, for example, advertised wigs in programs for the show, while ads in
Harper’s Bazar featured actress May Allison wearing glamorous furs. 44 Although
advertisements invoked the most overt correlation between actress and audience, articles, photos,
and interviews spotlighting actresses in women’s magazines, publications purporting to offer
instruction in femininity, also carried this ethos. 45 Such articles often detailed actresses’ habits
and tastes, implying that readers might wish to adopt them. Occasionally, correlations between
women in the audience and actresses on stage extended to the characters stars represented, as
popular characters often inspired trends in fashion.
By aligning actresses with female audiences in this manner, both Broadway and women’s
magazines reified modern understandings of femininity as an externalized feature primarily
maintained through purchasing. As I will discuss later, this ideology made modern femininity a
more precarious construct than Victorian understandings, which located femininity in
33
presumptions of female morality. Although women’s periodicals deliberately marketed
themselves as forums for instruction in femininity, American theatre also served as a venue of
instruction in this subject, and both media profited from a precarious construct that required
frequent instruction and consumerism to maintain. For this reason, as well as the nation’s interest
in the modern girl, both editors and producers saw profit in creating and marketing
representations of women engaging and embodying modern gender ideals.
Sex and The Modern Girl
As competitive industries commodifying femininity in the 1920s, women’s magazines
and commercial Broadway theatre faced the crucial task of creating marketable representations
of femininity in a time of dramatically shifting ideals and dynamically differing opinions
regarding gender in America. Both producers and editors worked to create marketable
representations of the modern girl while also attempting to attract conservative readers and
audience members. This task required careful calibrations in determining the entertainment value
of representations of femininity. Their continuous efforts during this era indicate the tremendous
commercial potential of the modern girl in entertainment as well as the acute understanding and
accurate assessment required to capitalize on the opportunities and anxieties she produced.
This proved particularly difficult in relation to the modern girl and sexuality, her most
marketable and controversial facet. The epicenter of change in modern femininity rested in
female sexuality, in particular, the modern girl’s open acknowledgement and display of her
sexual allure and appetite. Prior to 1920, social constructs equated displays of female sexuality
with baseness and corruption. Women expressing sexual longing, courting sexual attention, or
even acknowledging a basic understanding of the mechanics of sexual intercourse revealed a
34
nature morally inferior to the ideals of true womanhood. Constructs of true womanhood rested in
a gendered view of morality, which established women as the moral guardians of virtue,
including piety, domesticity, and, particularly, purity, as exemplified in virginity. Such
sentiments applied even in cases of married women with children, a socially lauded status
necessitating sexual experience but also requiring feigned ignorance of such experience in order
to maintain respectability. This value system excluded women with sexual experience from
“true” womanhood, classifying them, by implication, as false women deficient in their
performance of gender.
Such ideals also associated morality with whiteness and wealth, since wealthy women
could successfully distance themselves from associations with sex by maintaining separate
bedrooms and delegating child rearing to hired help. Due to discriminatory race and class
structures, non-white women had few opportunities to obtain the wealth required for this
distancing and, accordingly, for participating in true womanhood. Racist stereotypes of this
period also delineated African American women as hypersexual, further distancing black
American women from cultural constructs of an ideal femininity founded in sexual inexperience.
Based in racism, classism, and social prudery, this construct of femininity became entrenched
during the Victorian era and continued to permeate much of American society and, thus,
influence entertainment value during the early decades of the twentieth century.
The modern girl challenged Victorian ideals of true womanhood by placing female
sexuality and desire within the bounds of white, middle-class respectability. During the 1920s,
white, middle-class women flaunted their sexuality by shortening hems, bobbing their hair,
applying makeup, consuming alcohol (an illegal substance under Prohibition), and smoking
cigarettes. Such attitudes and practices were considered morally dubious during the Victorian era
35
but bore little to no condemnation in modern femininity. Before the 1900s, for example, mascara,
face powder, and rouge carried strong associations with prostitution, but, according to historian
Kathy Peiss, such perceptions shifted at the beginning of the twentieth century. As Peiss
explains, “Once marking the prostitute and the aristocratic lady as symbols of rampant sexuality
and materialistic excess, cosmetics became understood as respectable and indeed necessary for
women’s success and fulfillment” (“Making Faces” 143). Cosmetics started to appear in
fashionable stores, a presence which reified their respectability and established a new industry.
Toiletry sales at Filene’s department store, for example, rose from $84,000 to $552,000 between
1914 and 1926 (Leach 270). Modern women thus eschewed traditional ideals of modesty and
morality by exposing their limbs, accentuating and sexualizing their physical features, and
engaging in “masculine” behavior, such as drinking, smoking, and working.
Moreover, flirting began to flourish in feminine social interaction, behavior that flaunted
women’s sexual knowledge and signaled female desire. In her 1927 article “Feminist—New
Style,” Dorothy Dunbar Bromley unabashedly explained that the new type of feminist “either
talks with a man because he has ideas that interest her or because she finds it amusing to flirt
with him—and she finds it doubly amusing if the flirting involves the swift interplay of wits”
(556). 46 Such interaction and word play rejected the ignorance Victorian women performed in
order to indicate their sexual innocence. As Weathers, in “The Modern Girl Speaks for Herself,”
declares, her generation has “begun actively and fearlessly to throw off the robe of mock
modesty,” scorning the affected innocence of Victorian femininity (22). Rather than classing
women as base or coarse, overtly sexual attitudes, behaviors, and fashions accrued capital in
1920s constructs of femininity because they were seen as characteristics of knowledgeable,
cosmopolitan, and, most importantly, modern women.
36
The new cultural capital of female sexuality, however, extended only to white women.
Bigoted understandings of race and class continued to exclude women of color, immigrant
women, and women lacking economic resources from constructs of ideal modern femininity.
Several factors bolstered race prejudice at this time, including wide-spread belief in eugenics,
anxiety regarding increased numbers of eastern and southern European immigrants, and lingering
wartime prejudices against individuals from former enemy nations—prejudice fanned by fears of
Bolshevism. 47 Approximately twenty-three million immigrants, mainly from southern and
eastern Europe, entered the United States between 1880 and 1920 (Douglas 304-5). In 1924, the
Johnson-Reed Act effectively ended mass immigration, but prejudice against recent immigrants,
particularly those differing in appearance, language, ethnicity, and religion from white,
Protestant American ideals, remained high. News reports increased these tensions by
sensationalizing immigrant violence in cases such as the 1921 Sacco and Vanzetti murder trial
and the 1920 attack on Wall Street, an attack attributed to Bolshevists. Cultural historian George
Hutchinson discusses the interconnection between cultural and racial prejudices at this time
explaining that, during the 1910s and 20s, many individuals believed that “different racial types
(particularly Southern European, but African and African American as well) were suited to
different types of civilization . . . [and] only Northern Europeans were thought to have the proper
racial characteristics for assimilation to ‘the American way of life’” (65). Hutchinson further
explains the tie between such beliefs and the “science” of eugenics, saying that many “assumed a
close and even determining relationship between race and culture. Cultural differences, in other
words, could be largely attributed to genetic racial differences” (65). 48
Such “scientific” beliefs classified the numerous immigrants and African Americans
migrating to the nation’s cities as a threat to national culture. This construct of race excluded
37
non-white individuals from ideal citizenship and separated women of color, including southern
and eastern European women, from constructs of ideal American femininity. The whiteness as
well as the middle-class, native-born status of the ideal modern girl acted as a form of cultural
capital guaranteeing the respectability of her unconventional behaviors and attitudes, particularly
in relation to sex, while simultaneously excluding non-white women from similar social
sanction.
By uniting female sexuality with the social respectability of whiteness and wealth, the
modern girl stood as a potentially profitable construct for industries commodifying femininity.
Her entertainment value rested in the contradiction she embodied as a sexual and socially
acceptable woman. Many commentators found this combination unsettling and feared that the
modern acceptance and performance of female sexuality in society would dismantle social
institutions and moral boundaries. Anxiety over this issue centered on issues of marriage and
divorce as divorce rates more than doubled from 1914 to 1925. Due to her association with
female sexuality, many blamed the modern girl for this phenomenon, equating the advent of
modern femininity with the end of the American home. One Chicago editor summarized this
social chaos, lamenting the current “changed era in which . . . the old classification of women
into two groups—‘good’ and ‘bad’—[has been] abandoned” (“Without Offense”).
Although unsettling, this moral ambiguity proved particularly profitable in
representations of modern femininity in commercial entertainment. As cultural historian Lewis
A. Erenberg explains, “How far a good girl could go without becoming a bad girl became a
primary question that both men and women asked . . . movies and fiction [and plays] of the
1920s explored the dilemma: how much sex was too much” (222). Due to the titillating
38
ambiguity inspired by modern constructs of female sexuality, good girls behaving badly, usually
within a sexual context, carried high entertainment value in 1920s mainstream entertainment, a
value such characters maintained only in so far as their actions remained within the realm of
respectability, a realm increasingly more difficult to define.
Such constraints complicated the commodification of femininity and sexuality in 1920s
women’s magazines and Broadway productions. Both industries sought to capitalize on the
modern legitimization of female sexuality in the representations of femininity they created while
catering to audiences conflicted in their opinions of modern femininity, particularly in relation to
sexuality. While topics related to female sexuality, including extra-marital sex and divorce,
gained legitimacy in 1920s discourse, due to the persistence of Victorian constructs of gender,
they also retained a hint of immorality, which complicated their entertainment value.
The desire to draw both conservative and progressive readers heavily influenced
representations of women and sexuality in women’s magazine fiction, stories that often appeared
later as novels and, in many cases, stage and film adaptations. Women’s magazine fiction often
titillated readers with heroines contemplating transgressive behavior, usually an affair, but, often,
in the course of the narrative, discovering their innate preference for fidelity and traditional
gender norms. Such stories generally expose the character’s discontent, rather than her
circumstances, as the cause of her internal and domestic strife. The heroine in Wallace Irwin’s
short story “Ham and Eggs,” for example, becomes disenchanted with her lackluster husband of
ten years and attempts to restore her youthful vigor by starting an affair. After several failed
attempts to attract a suitable suitor, the protagonist realizes she is happiest with her husband
whom, she learns during her adventures, she has failed to admire adequately. Such stories
39
allowed magazines to capitalize on representations that portrayed modern flirtations and hinted at
adultery while maintaining the conservative depiction of the heroine’s fidelity and concern for
domestic stability.
Mary Heaton Vorse’s 1924 story “The First Stone,” 49 follows a similar course in its
depiction of a daughter who flirts with her mother’s middle-class suitor in order to hide her
mother’s affair from her working-class father. The mother’s “affair” never explicitly goes
beyond flirtation, but, once the enraged husband discovers the alliance, he throws her out. In a
twist reflecting the modern girl’s frustration with moral double standards, 50 the wife refuses to
leave, citing the numerous times she has forgiven him for similar indiscretions. The story ends
with the couple agreeing to remain married and continue to live together as a family.
Women’s magazines thus offered stories that both conservative and progressive readers
could enjoy since they portrayed female sexuality while containing such representations in a
conservative ideology of marriage and fidelity. Magazines maintained this approach by routinely
rejecting narratives with “immoral” topics such as unwed mothers and illegitimate children. The
Ladies’ Home Journal, for example, rejected Edith Wharton’s story “The Old Maid,” which
follows an illegitimate child raised by her aunt, saying it was “too vigorous,” and “powerful but
unpleasant” (qtd. in Lee 592). 51 Various editors also refused to publish Edna Ferber’s The Girls
unless she agreed rewrite the ending, which included an illegitimate child (Peculiar Treasure
264). Wharton’s editor Rutger B. Jewett delineated the constraints of various women’s
magazines in a letter to Wharton explaining that the Delineator and Ladies’ Home Journal were
equally conservative and would reject fiction “that deals too frankly with the sex problem” while
the Woman’s Home Companion was “not afraid of sex when handled in a serious way, especially
if some moral lesson is included” (qtd. in Lee 592). 52
40
These constraints allowed writers to address issues of sex and infidelity but ensured a
conservative approach to such subjects. 53 Such conventional narratives constructed women as
incapable of carrying through with transgressive behavior and conveniently eliminated the
potential consequences of sexual transgressions, such as pregnancy, venereal disease, or divorce.
Women’s magazine fiction thus portrayed both the incapable women and their inconsequential
behavior as harmless and allowed audiences to enjoy the transgressive nature of modern
femininity without fearing or considering the implications.
Broadway producers followed a similar tack with the genre of sex farces, which emerged
as one of the most successful theatre entertainments capitalizing on modern constructs of
femininity and sexuality. Sex farces attracted large audiences in the period just prior to World
War I and maintained their popularity into the early 1920s. According to Wainscott, during this
period, “America’s fascination with this genre was unequalled by any other Broadway
entertainment, with the exception of musical comedy” (54). Such farces centered on
contemporary anxieties regarding female sexuality as redefined in modern femininity. Play titles
such as The Naughty Wife, Getting Gertie’s Garter, and The Demi-Virgin attracted audiences by
inviting speculation about their heroines’ flirtatious and sexual behavior. By encouraging such
speculation, sex farces capitalized on anxieties issuing from modern revisions of the relationship
between female respectability and sexuality and the ensuing difficulty in determining the
difference between “good” and “bad” women.
Sex farces explored the question of how far a good girl could go without crossing into
ignominy by tantalizing audiences with outlandish scenarios requiring respectable women to
behave in seemingly immoral ways, bringing the women perilously close to the line of
immorality before avoiding sexual deviance and restoring moral conventions in the farce’s final
41
moments. In this manner, sex farces functioned similarly to women’s magazine fiction which, as
discussed earlier, often portrayed women contemplating and experimenting with transgressive
behavior before discovering they prefer and enjoy the conservative roles they nearly abandoned.
The potential for immorality thus formed the substance of sex farces, which operated in the
realm of socially unacceptable desires but then contained these desires through ridicule and,
ultimately, the restoration of traditional order.
In her book, Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers,
cultural historian Angela Latham offers a detailed analysis of the specific implications of one of
the era’s most popular sex farces, Charlton Andrews and Avery Hopwood’s 1920 hit comedy
Ladies’ Night in a Turkish Bath. A. H. Woods produced this Broadway hit which ran for 375
performances. Ladies’ Night pushes moral boundaries through a convoluted plot in which the
protagonist, a respectable, middle-class husband must hide out in a Turkish bath that his wife
also visits on ladies’ night. The play thus contrives the protagonist’s covert, and the audience’s
overt, observation of several scantily clad women in towels and bathing suits as well as various
instances of implied nudity. Although transgressive, all of these displays take place under the
guise of respectability since the immodestly-clad and unclad female characters believe there are
no men present. As one Chicago critic observed, “every leering or knowing allusion is
accompanied by its alibi of perfect purity” (qtd. in Latham 144). Ladies’ Night thus allowed
audiences this same alibi by staging their own voyeurism within the context of a respectable
viewing, at a cultural institution, of an innocent activity, a women’s-only bath.
The 1921 box-office success Getting Gertie’s Garter, carried a similar veneer of
respectability, depicting a husband whose quest to recover a garter given to a past flame leads his
wife to believe he is involved in an affair. Driven to despair, the wife pursues her own illicit
42
affair as an act of revenge. The truth emerges and order is restored before her affair can take
place but not before the plot contrives to rid the wife of her clothing, forcing her to appear clad
only in a blanket for nearly two acts (Wainscott 63). The play thus titillated audiences with the
appearance of the husband’s immorality and the potential for the wife’s sexual transgression and
nudity, but maintained cultural mores by mitigating any chance of real transgression or exposure.
Wainscott discusses how such plays, while reveling in risqué subject matter, reinscribed
traditional values by restoring conventional morality and marriages in their inevitably happy
endings (61, 67). After dallying in immorality, the modern women in sex farces uniformly return
to conventional roles and attitudes, learning they were mistaken in the assumptions with which
they justified their transgressions. Both male and female playwrights perpetuated this genre and
profited from the (im)moral possibilities embodied by the modern woman who could remain
respectable while flirting with, but never engaging in, extra-marital sex.
Sex farces also contained the transformative potential of female sexuality by restricting
transgressive behaviors to monolithic characters meant to reassure white, middle-class audiences.
As Wainscott explains, sex farces featured economically well-off female protagonists,
fashionably dressed, socializing with equally well-off and fashionable friends (61). In
accordance with racist Broadway conventions, which mirrored those in women’s magazines,
these heroines were also white and native-born. Racially and economically restricting
representations of respectable sexual behavior effectively delineated expressions of sexuality by
non-white or lower-class individuals as lurid and lewd. In addition, the centrality of female
desire in sex farce plots operated within strict social censure against homosexuality, creating
sexual yet heterosexual female protagonists. 54 Such constructs contained displays of desire and
desirability, and the possibility of acting on these longings, within the monolithic ideal of
43
American womanhood, precluding such displays, and the legitimacy implied by their presence in
mainstream entertainment, from immigrant women, homosexual women, and women of color.
Much like women’s magazine fiction, sex farces thus entertained audiences with the
transgressive behaviors associated with modern femininity while maintaining moral and social
conventions that rendered these behaviors powerless.
In addition to plotlines which undermined the female characters in the play, casting
conventions further discouraged serious consideration of female sexuality in sex farces. Such
plays, Wainscott explains, usually featured a respected actor in the male lead while offering a
beautiful yet talentless actress as the female principal (66). One farce, for example, featured
former Ziegfeld girls whom critics found beautiful but described as “well-drilled” and “tiresome”
(qtd. in Wainscott 63). Such casting practices reified modern understandings of physical
appearance as the most important factor in portraying femininity. In addition, as Wainscott
explains, “the practice of casting accomplished actors in the male roles [and less talented
actresses in the female roles] further undermined the integrity of the women presented in the sex
farces and underscored the patriarchal model, not only in the world of the play but also in the
production practice itself” (66). Sex farces also made it difficult for these inexperienced actresses
to advance their careers since the plays offered little opportunity for women to build complex
characters or acquire the skills needed to do so. Critics criticized sex-farce actresses for this lack
of skill while simultaneously praising them for their looks, indicating their appearance wielded
more weight in judging female contributions to the genre. In sex farces, neither the female
characters nor the female performers garnered much respect.
This sexual yet comically contained femininity endured in entertainment as long as it
proved profitable. A. H. Woods, known for producing numerous sex farces, indicated the
44
tremendous entertainment and economic value the sexualized femininity commodified in sex
farces when an interviewer inquired if he planned stage plays more appropriate for the grandeur
of his new theatre. As Woods succinctly replied, “I’m putting on the kind of plays that pay for
such grandeur . . . Ibsen wouldn’t buy a shampoo spray” (qtd. in Wainscott 79). Woods’
comment summarizes the difference between commercial and non-commercial portrayals of
female sexuality in the theatre during this decade. Farcical depictions made money; serious
representations did not.
As sex farces continued to push the boundaries of respectability, the genre waned in
popularity. Wainscott attributes the decline of sex farces to the fact that playwrights such as
Eugene O’Neill, Susan Glaspell, and Sophie Treadwell, playwrights working with noncommercial companies, began dealing with transgressive subject matter in a serious manner.
Companies such as the Provincetown Players, the Theatre Guild, and the Civic Repertory
Theatre eschewed commercialism in favor of experimentation and formed part of the “Little
Theatre Movement,” associated with the relatively small venues they utilized to avoid the high
production costs that placed economic concerns at the forefront of decisions in mainstream
theatre. Little theatres often operated through subscriber fees, volunteer labor, and donor funding
rather than producer support and box office sales. This funding structure freed non-profit
companies from the commercial concerns controlling expression in for-profit venues. The main
appeal of such companies rested on the quality of the dramatic writing, dramatic technique, and
ensemble work in their productions, which unflinchingly addressed harsh political and social
issues. While such “little theatres” drew loyal audiences, they rarely achieved the commercial
success of genres deliberately commodifying femininity for financial profit.
45
Wainscott also attributes the decline of the sex farce to the use of increasingly risqué
subjects and displays that began to offend public taste. Matters came to a head during the run of
Hopwood’s provocatively titled play The Demi-Virgin, which included a women’s game of strip
poker and a shocking scene of near-rape. 55 According to Wainscott, public protest over The
Demi-Virgin incited an increase in censorship that plagued playwrights and producers through
the rest of the decade. By straying too far outside the boundaries of respectability, sex farces,
ultimately, jeopardized the modern concept of respectable sexual women, and the public lost its
fascination with the genre. The demise of this genre demonstrates the importance of calibrating
representations of femininity with cultural standards in order to sustain revenue.
Beauty, Consumerism, and the Modern Girl
In conjunction with commodifying the respectable sexuality of the modern girl,
Broadway producers and women’s magazine editors worked to commodify her beauty—a
precarious ideal linked with consumerism and standardization in modern constructs of
femininity. As discussed earlier, modern understandings of femininity located female gender
performance primarily in issues of appearance rather than morality. The shift from
understandings of American femininity as a code of moral virtues to a matter of external display
worked to produce a femininity fundamentally more precarious than one founded on moral
character. If women could accentuate femininity through the quick and easy application of
powder and rouge or by donning the latest fashions and accessories, then, by extension, the
possibility existed that femininity could diminish just as easily. No longer anchored in a lifetime
of behavior, modern femininity fluctuated moment to moment, often hinging on the use of just
the right product at just the right moment.
46
By rooting femininity in appearance, modern constructs of gender created a culture in
which consumer acumen, which facilitated and ensured proficient performance, became a prized
characteristic for the modern woman. Rather than innate moral knowledge, modern constructs of
femininity linked women with inherent consumer savvy, shifting women’s sphere of knowledge
and expertise from the moral realm to the material realm. Such constructs thus portrayed female
intellect as a frivolous attribute focused only on the superficial.
Women’s magazines and, particularly, their advertisers capitalized on the modern
precariousness and consumerism of womanhood by fostering anxiety about the fragility of
femininity. Advertisers and, thus, magazines promoted this anxiety specifically in relation to
beauty in order to create demand for products, including magazines, that promised to produce
pulchritude. As publishers and advertisers grew increasingly aware of women’s purchasing
power, the precarious nature of femininity developed into a prevalent theme during this decade.
Advertisements in and for women’s magazines often warned female consumers of the impending
shame engendered by the unsightly appearance that would inevitably result if readers failed to
employ the advertised product. Ads for Harper’s Bazar, for example, indicated the importance of
the magazine’s fashion advice, which would protect readers from the humiliation of appearing in
out-of-date clothes. Cutex ads featured glamorous women socially ruined because of an
unsightly hangnail, and etiquette books warned of social censure if women did not purchase,
read, and heed their advice. 56
This sense of precariousness worked in tandem with ads, described earlier, in magazines
and theatre programs positioning actresses as beauty advisors for readers. Connecting female
readers and audience members with actresses encouraged women to think of themselves as
women on display, scrutinized by a critical audience. Women’s magazines advanced this
47
association through ads such as the one in Harper’s for Corticelli Fine Silk Hosiery. The ad
features an illustration of a woman dancing in front of an audience at eye level with her legs—
legs presumably clad in Corticelli stockings. The text accompanying this illustration indicates
that Irene Castle wears Corticelli silk while dancing and invites the reader to picture herself in
Castle’s place, saying, “Irene Castle’s experience will be your own” (Corticelli). Such ads, along
with articles and advertisements featuring actresses as examples of beauty furthered the idea of
femininity as a matter of precise appearance performed for public display and critique. This spirit
of scrutiny increased the importance of proper performance and, by extension, proper
purchasing.
Advertisers touted this construct of beauty as uniquely democratic, particularly in relation
to Victorian standards based in rigid class structures that reserved ideal femininity for the rich
(Peiss, Hope 121 & 146). Theatre historian Lewis A. Erenberg endorses this concept of beauty
specifically in relation to the 1920s chorus girl, arguing that “the chorus girl represented a
democratic model of beauty: cultivation, makeup, and dress all contributed to every woman’s
beauty” (219). Indeed, due to the increasing economic opportunities for women during this
period, more women could access the material goods required to create such beauty. According
to historian Linda Mizejewski, the number of women in professional careers rose 226% from
1890 to 1920 (72). Such numbers weakened social stigmas against women with careers and,
along with increased opportunities, allowed the modern girl to enter the work force more freely
and easily than women of previous generations. As more women worked, America prospered,
and overall purchasing power grew by an average of forty percent between 1910 and 1929
(Scanlon 12). Accordingly, women gained more power in the marketplace as advertisers
48
acknowledged their growing economic capital and authority in purchasing decisions. As
Frederick stated in Selling Mrs. Consumer, her 1929 book designed to help advertisers tap this
market, “Mrs. Consumer is the heart and center of the merchandising world, the great family
purchasing agent, who spends most of the money men earn” (43). Frederick argued that between
their family’s incomes and their own, women held much of the nation’s wealth and therefore
deserved “a dignity” previously denied them in the market place (86). Editors and advertisers
stood ready to oblige.
However, the economic and commercial “dignity” they offered applied only to white,
middle- and upper-class women. Women of color and immigrant women were regularly
excluded from employment opportunities and, therefore, the capital such opportunities provided.
Several white-collar industries employing women, including the telephone industry, specifically
prohibited the employment of black or Jewish women. Due to race restrictions and prejudice in
such industries, eighty percent of employed black women in 1920 worked as domestic help
(Scanlon 80-1). African American women with light skin tones sometimes circumvented this
system by supplying employers with false addresses in white neighborhoods so they could obtain
better paying jobs restricted to whites (Loos, A Girl 206-7). Racial prejudice in employment thus
reinforced similar prejudices in society by restricting the purchasing power required to perform
the “democratic” ideal of modern feminine beauty.
Advertisers reiterated such prejudices by largely ignoring women of color and immigrant
women in appeals to and depictions of consumers. Advertisers, particularly for products such as
cosmetics, women’s and children’s clothing, and prepared foods, pursued contracts with
women’s magazines because their readers constituted an ideal consumer base—white, middleclass women ready and able to purchase home and beauty products. Because this “ideal”
49
readership attracted advertisers, magazines prospered by building their readerships through a
deliberate process of inclusion and exclusion based on prejudiced understandings of beauty and
wealth.
As women’s magazine historian Mary Ellen Zuckerman explains, women’s magazines
constantly competed with each other to increase their number of readers during the interwar
years in order to meet advertisers’ demands (History 103). Advertisers did not subdivide markets
at this time and, therefore, demanded one demographic—middle-class, heterosexual, native-born,
white women (Scanlon 197-8). Magazines thus profited from portraying as well as pursing
white, middle- and upper-class women as their ideal readers. 57
In order to maximize the profit promised by a white, middle-class audience, publishers
closely monitored their marketing efforts to assure advertisers that their publications, and the ads
therein, reached the most desirable customers. As Zuckerman explains, magazines tracked sales
through studies assessing not only how many homes their materials reached but also what kind
of homes received their appeals. Good Housekeeping sponsored a 1928 study investigating the
reading habits of women in “better homes,” i.e. homes with incomes between $12,000 and
$45,000 (qtd. in Zuckerman, History 130). In addition to targeting “better” homes, magazines
worked to avoid homes in working-class and non-white neighborhoods, which advertisers found
undesirable. Zuckerman recounts how Curtis Co., which owned the Ladies’ Home Journal,
provided sales representatives with maps of subscriber areas divided into red, yellow, green and
blue sections according to property value (History 132). One salesman described how such maps
were used, explaining that he was instructed to “conduct circulation work in the better residential
50
areas . . .[but] He was forbidden to do work in areas colored blue (for the most part with foreignspeaking or colored residents)” (qtd. in Zuckerman, History 132). 58
Marketers avoided such areas because, in spite of evidence to the contrary, they
perceived immigrant and African American individuals as illiterate and poor. Scanlon reports
how the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency divided consumers into five categories:
“wealthy, upper middle, lower middle, poor, illiterate (negroes or foreigners)” (qtd. in Scanlon
221). According to Scanlon, the agency continued to associate immigrant and non-white
populations with illiteracy and lack of consumer power in spite of statistics provided by their
own studies which contradicted these assumptions (221-2). Because of such stereotypes, True
Story, a women’s magazine filled with sensational and purportedly true emotional tales,
maintained a circulation of over two million during the 1920s but encountered difficulty accruing
advertising revenue because of its largely working-class audience. True Story embraced its
association with immigrant and working-class populations by referring to its readers as “Judy
O’Gradys” (Scanlon 220), and continued to fight advertisers’ prejudices well into the 1950s
(Zuckerman, History 118).
Activists in the New Negro movement also combated such racist assessments by
destabilizing concepts of white supremacy through performances of middle-class black
consumption deliberately displayed in order to diminish myths of essential difference between
black and white middle-class Americans (Dossett 93). However, as historian Kate Dossett points
out, many African Americans understood this strategy as problematic and “refused black elites’
conflation of respectable consumption and race progress” (93-4). While disagreeing about
strategy, both sides acknowledged the inseparable connection between consumerism and race in
the modern America. However, each failed to recognize the gendered nature of this connection,
51
which rested in classed and racialized perceptions and portrayals of the primary consumer as the
white, middle-class, modern American woman.
By constructing women of color, working-class, and immigrant women as deficient
consumers, women’s magazines and their advertisers excluded such women from the distinctly
chic ideal of modern femininity. The femininity women’s magazines commodified thus
delineated non-white women as inherently unfeminine and, therefore, unattractive. This
construct worked to mitigate the perceived cultural threat of female economic power,
independence, and beauty by designating these traits the sole province of middle-class, white,
native-born women.
Women’s magazines furthered such constructs by excluding African American women
from illustrations in advertisements and fiction except when portraying them as servants or
exoticized Others. 59 In addition, women’s magazines removed African American women from
the consumerist construct of female beauty by uniformly prohibiting advertisements for beauty
products produced by African-American-owned companies or specifically for African American
women (Dossett 106). 60 Such policies thus hampered the efforts of African Americans
attempting to destroy racial stereotypes relating to middle-class consumerism and modern
definitions of beauty. Dossett explains how women such as A’Lelia Walker, Madam C. J.
Walker’s daughter, 61 circumvented such restrictions by creating a reputation and celebrity
lifestyle intended to generate interest, and thus publicity, in both the mainstream and African
American presses (106-7). However, through subscriber sales and advertising contracts,
women’s magazines continued to prosper from representing beauty as an exclusively white,
native born, middle- and upper-class characteristic.
52
The racially, economically, and sexually monolithic construct of American women
circulated by women’s magazines reflects the increasing standardization of beauty as facilitated
by consumerism during the 1920s. As modern gender constructs externalized the performance of
femininity, consumer culture standardized this performance through mass-produced products.
Products, such as cosmetics, women’s magazines, and ready-made clothing, made it possible to
coordinate gender performance in an unprecedented manner by encouraging and facilitating
uniformity. Due to growth in industry and mail-order businesses, 62 women anywhere in the
nation could acquire the same clothing, accessories, and cosmetics at roughly the same time.
Ready-made clothes became common during the 1920s as manufacturers adopted standard sizes
for the first time 63 and chain stores proliferated throughout the American landscape, making such
products available to women across the nation. The proliferation of ready-made clothing worked
to codify both women’s fashions and figures as bathroom scales and dieting came into vogue as a
way to help women conform to industry and cultural standards (Douglas 135-6). 64 Drugstores
also increased at this time, due in large part to growing cosmetics sales, enabling more customers
to receive and use the same cosmetics. Leach reports that in 1900, the nation boasted 25 chainlike drugstores, but, by 1927, the number had increased to 3,000 (274). In addition to crafting
uniform appearances, such practices also enabled women to create uniform homes by ordering
mass-produced appliances, food, and furniture. The advent of rural free delivery by the U.S. Post
Office allowed women across the nation to receive women’s magazines at roughly the same time
(Scanlon 12), prompting and enabling readers removed from urban areas to remain au courant
with styles and trends by arranging their homes, fashions, and bodies to conform with accepted
styles.
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Basing femininity in widely-available, mass-produced, consumer products in readilyavailable outlets codified standards of appearance and femininity while disseminating the means
to achieve these standards, thereby homogenizing femininity as never before. Such standards
applied even to women whose class and/or race designated them as irrevocably removed from
mainstream ideals of femininity. Ads for hair-removal products, for example, promised to make
southern and eastern European women more “American” while others indicated that women
could cross into higher class levels if they purchased pamphlets on how to dress properly (Peiss,
“Making Faces” 158). Making such products widely available furthered the idea that,
theoretically, all women, regardless of class or race, could achieve some measure of success in
meeting modern, “democratic” standards of femininity.
The perception of modern beauty as a democratic ideal, however, created further
problems in that it constructed adherence to the white, middle-class definition of beauty as a duty
as well as an ideal. Peiss discusses this phenomenon specifically in relation to the cosmetic
industry saying,
By making the complexion, rather than bone structure or physical features, more
central to popular definitions of beauty, it [beauty culture] popularized the
democratic idea that beauty could be achieved by all women if only they used the
correct products and treatment. This led to the assertion that every woman should
be beautiful—as a duty to her husband and children, in order to achieve business
success, or to find romance—and those who were not beautiful had only
themselves to blame. (“Making Faces” 148)
Although Peiss comments on this philosophy specifically in relation to cosmetics, such “duties”
also applied to women’s apparel, behavior, and figures, which “should” also conform to standard
54
ideals of beauty. In an era of increasing divorce rates and anxiety over the state of marriage in
America, women’s duty to be beautiful took on national import as marriage experts assigned
responsibility for maintaining marital bliss to the modern woman. 65 Adopting and performing
standardized ideals of appearance thus displayed a feminine as well as an American essence, and
women who for economic or racial reasons did not fit this standard, fell short as both women and
citizens.
Many women balked at this “duty” to conform, including Weathers, author of the 1922
article “The Modern Girl Speaks For Herself,” quoted at the beginning of this chapter. Weathers
addressed the difficulties young women faced in this atmosphere of uniformity complaining,
This is not a good age in which to be young. In America especially it is the age of
standardization. We girls are struggling against being standardized, and the great
difficulty is that no one can decide upon the pattern. Some think we should be as
our mothers were despite a very different environment. Some think we should be
“advanced” according to the already accepted meaning of the term. And amid all
of this advice and criticism and amid these differing opinions as to what we are
and what we should be, we are trying to find things out for ourselves. (106)
Susanah Keifer Robinson, writer Booth Tarkington’s wife, also decried the monolithic aspect of
modern femininity declaring in her 1928 Ladies’ Home Journal article entitled “We Needn’t Be
Robots in Our Dress,” “Sometimes I feel as though we were all robots, cut from the same
universal pattern, with no minds or personalities of our own” (qtd. in Latham 35). Like
Weathers, Robinson found modern uniformity oppressive. In her article, Robinson encouraged
women to dress as it suited them individually and resist the standardization of fashions she found
particularly impractical (Latham 35). As Weathers and Robinson demonstrate, numerous modern
55
American women actively resisted and repudiated codified constructs of modern femininity that
threatened to streamline individual women into a standardized ideal.
Musicals and the Modern Girl
In spite of this resistance, standardized images of female beauty maintained a high
entertainment value in women’s magazines and Broadway productions. While magazines
profited by commodifying uniform images of women for advertisers and readers, Broadway
producers worked to commodify the 1920s ideal of standardized femininity through an embodied
medium. Their efforts resulted in a genre of musicals and revues defined by spectacular
sexualized, standardized displays of numerous uniformly beautiful women—referred to
collectively as “chorus girls.”
While the revue genre originated well before this decade, the focus of revue-style shows
shifted during the 1920s to place more of an emphasis on female display rather than the shows’
comic material, making the chorus girl one of the defining icons of the decade (Glenn 48). Like
sex farces, such shows capitalized on newly permissive understandings of female respectability
and sexuality by featuring parades of provocatively dressed, alluring female beauties in shows
marketed to mainstream middle-class men and women. “Respectable” displays of female
sexuality formed the bulk of the content for revue shows such as the Schubert brothers’ Passing
Show, George White’s Scandals, John Anderson’s Greenwich Village Follies, and, most
famously, Ziegfeld’s Follies.
Purporting to “glorify the American girl,” the Follies emerged as the acme of lavish
theatrical displays of sexualized femininity, which codified in “the Ziegfeld girl,” a unique brand
epitomizing modern ideals of female sexuality, fashion, and consumerism. The Follies of 1923,
for example, featured a number with Muriel Stryker, an “exotic dancer,” clothed in gold material
56
and surrounded by women in costumes by French fashion designer Erté (Ziegfeld, Richard and
Paulette 257). Through the dancing, material, and fashions in this number, the women embodied
sexuality, wealth, and high fashion, a constant theme defining Ziegfeld’s Follies, which ran
every year from 1907 to 1927. 66 In 1915, Ziegfeld sought to increase his earnings by staging the
Ziegfeld Midnight Frolics. After Follies performances, audiences could repair to the roof top
garden above the New Amsterdam Theatre to enjoy the Frolics, which staged similar displays of
femininity in more intimate and interactive cabarets. Rather than remaining on stage, chorus girls
in the Frolics walked throughout the audience and invited audience members to interact with
their costumes by popping attached balloons or talking on telephones rigged to the women’s
clothes (Ziegfeld, Richard and Paulette 65). The Frolics also employed a glass walkway, which
allowed chorus girls to perform while suspended above the audience on a transparent platform.
Ziegfeld started the Frolics in 1915, and the genre lasted until the early 1920s when Prohibition
limited his ability to sell alcohol at these performances.
During the 1920s, musical comedies and revue shows bore many similarities, and
Ziegfeld echoed the aesthetic of the Follies and Frolics in the numerous musicals he produced.
Throughout the 1920s, revue managers and musical comedy directors imitated Ziegfeld’s
successful formula, which, accordingly, heavily influenced representations of femininity in both
musicals and revues. Ziegfeld’s influence thus carried directly into theatrical and cultural
definitions of female beauty. Due to the cachet of the Ziegfeld Follies and the iconic status of the
Ziegfeld girl, Ziegfeld frequently appeared in print as an expert on female pulchritude, clearly
defining the requirements for feminine beauty. In “Picking Out Pretty Girls For the Stage,”
which appeared in American Magazine in 1919, 67 Ziegfeld explained that female beauty exists
exclusively in young women. An inset entitled “How a Woman Begins to Show Her Age,”
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shares Ziegfeld’s insights on the subject of beauty and ageing women. Ziegfeld admits knowing
of a unique, thirty-six-year-old chorus girl who has maintained her job and her beauty, but
emphasizes that this is rare and that most women this age develop sagging cheeks, double-chins,
and “turkey-neck,” qualities disqualifying such ancient women from the ideal epitomized by the
Ziegfeld girl (34). 68 Photos of Ziegfeld girls accompany the article and feature captions
emphasizing the girls’ youth. Captions explain that four of the nine women are “only 17 years
old,” and Marilyn Miller, the current Follies star, “is only 18 years old—her mother still has to
sign her contracts” (35).
This final tidbit, along with Ziegfeld’s claim in the article that many girls bring their
mothers with them on tour, emphasizes the chorus girls’ youth, through their legal status as
minors, while co-opting the moral respectability of their mothers. Throughout the article,
Ziegfeld invokes the image of the manager mother in order to imbue his chorus girls, and thus
his productions, with an air of respectability by adopting the moral authority associated with
motherhood. In the context of this article, the presumption of maternal morality rests on the
assumed absence of sexual activity and appeal on the part of any woman old enough to be the
mother of a chorus girl. Ziegfeld’s shows thus worked within the ambivalence of 1920s culture
by capitalizing on the overt sexuality of the scantily clad, young, available, desirous, and
desirable Ziegfeld girl while simultaneously invoking the remnant of Victorian veneration for
maternal morality in order to sanction such displays. The maternal aegis Ziegfeld invoked
positioned the moral vulnerability implied by the girls’ youth as sweet innocence rather than
prurient prey, thus safeguarding the young girls’ entertainment value by rendering them morally
impeccable, and thus acceptable, for middle-class audiences.
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In addition to their youth, Ziegfeld stipulated standards for women’s figures. As
Mizejewski notes, Ziegfeld often discussed the selection of chorus girls in a manner echoing the
rhetoric and ideals endorsed by the “science” of eugenics (114). 69 In a 1922 article for The
Evening Journal, for example, Ziegfeld listed the specific measurements required for girls in the
Ziegfeld chorus, concluding, “The head should be four times the length of the nose. When the
arms are hanging straight at the sides they should be three-fifths of the body” (qtd. in Glenn
171). In another article, Ziegfeld described a “facial test” used to determine beauty by using “a
screen with figures marked on the frame. It is held before the applicant’s face,” he explains, “so
that I can determine whether the eyebrows are level, the eyes on a level with each other, and the
same distances from the middle of the screen” (qtd. in Mizejewski 114).
Invoking science and eugenics in this manner carried two important implications into
Ziegfeld’s, and, therefore, Broadway’s definition of beauty: first, that objective standards and
measurements existed for determining a woman’s beauty, and second, that assessments of beauty
entailed presumptions of white supremacy. Providing mathematical and “scientific” means for
determining beauty offered producers and, by extension, men in general the assurance that they
could objectively quantify a woman’s sexual appeal, thus submitting this alarming modern
phenomenon to male assessment and regulation. Due to the close relationship between beauty
and entertainment value and, thus, economic value, this understanding of female beauty as a
quantifiable quality offered a comforting construct for Broadway producers working to
commodify femininity in a competitive and risky market. Presumably, producers could use such
“objective” standards to accurately assess a woman’s beauty and, therefore, her potential to
generate financial profit. Accordingly, as Latham states, “A woman’s beauty was viewed by the
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entertainment industry as a commodity to which a price could be affixed,” and “unusually
beautiful” women could earn up to one hundred dollars per week, sixty dollars more than a wellpaid chorus girl of average appearance (Latham 114).
In addition, Broadway musicals and revues proliferated understandings of female
appearance as a quantifiable quality through ticket sales, which required male and female
audience members to participate in this system of valuation by connecting ticket prices to the
standard of beauty commodified in each production. Ziegfeld celebrated this economic
relationship between money and appearance in advertisements declaring “Ziegfeld Corners
Beauty Market,” implying that audiences could share in the profits of Ziegfeld’s business savvy
by purchasing tickets to view the beauties displayed in his shows (Ziegfeld 9 O’clock).
Ziegfeld’s advertisement continues, “If She Is Beautiful You Will Find Her Here,” tautologically
indicating that, if you do not find her here, she is not beautiful (Ziegfeld 9 O’clock). Since
Ziegfeld’s shows excluded mature, heavy, immigrant, and non-white women, this equation
necessarily devalued such women in capitalist society by implying that they were not worth
paying to see. Accordingly, chorus girls and, by extension, women who aged or gained weight
necessarily diminished in value. Latham discusses this “precarious, even ominous” system of
value in relation to Allyn King, a former Ziegfeld girl who suffered a nervous breakdown
because of her increasing age and weight, and committed suicide at the age of thirty (141-2).
Broadway’s definition of beauty assigned entertainment and monetary value to the chorus
girl’s age and figure as well as her race. Although Ziegfeld repeatedly asserted the possibility of
astonishing female beauty in “all the nationalities ever discovered,” it went without saying that
his assessment referred only to white women (“Pretty Girls” 34). While African American revue
shows, such as Shuffle Along (1921) and Dixie to Broadway (1924), featured black chorus girls
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and maintained popular runs on Broadway, critics and audiences perceived a strict segregation
between these entertainments and similar shows employing white performers. As one critic
explained, African American revues exhibited the “appearance of unpremeditated violence
which distinguishes them from the calculated and beautiful effects of Mr. Ziegfeld” (qtd. in
Mizejewski 127). In addition, cultural stereotypes of African American women as hypersexual
imbued theatrical displays of black chorus girls with more prurient connotations than similar
displays of white women. As Mizejewski demonstrates, Ziegfeld worked to emphasize the
whiteness of the women in his shows by offering two hundred dollars to chorus girls who
avoided tanning (100) and repeatedly claiming that the women in his chorus were native-born
Americans, an assertion Ziegfeld maintained in spite of its falseness (8). 70 As I will argue in
chapter two, Ziegfeld briefly considered expanding his definition of beauty to include African
American women later in his career. However, ultimately, the producer decided that the cultural
capital of female whiteness was more valuable to the brand of femininity commodified in his
Follies and Frolics than the potential capital of using black chorus girls in his iconic shows.
During the course of his career, Ziegfeld produced over eighty productions, mainly
revues and musicals, selling lavish displays of numerous women. 71 As several producers
attempted to mimic his success, Ziegfeld’s ideal of the young, white, native-born chorus girl
became an industry standard. Ziegfeld’s requirements indicated that chorus girls should all be
gorgeous, and that they should all be gorgeous in the same way. Directors thus deliberately
constructed homogeneity in musicals and revues by casting women of similar height, build, age,
and race, costuming them in identical dress, and directing them to move in a uniform manner.
As consumable collections of women uniform in age, shape, and hue, female choruses
embodied modern aesthetics of standardization and mass production, an aesthetic accented by
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the sheer number of similar girls dressed and moving in a similar manner. Advertisements and
reviews repeatedly touted the number of women displayed in each performance, playing to an
aesthetic linked with mass-production and the accompanying attitude that more is more. As one
critic explained, the Follies offers “girls, girls, girls; just bevies and bevies of wondrous,
beautiful [girls]” (qtd. in Glenn 157). The Ziegfeld Follies of 1922, for example, featured eightyfour chorus girls in extravagant costumes, and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927 included one number
with eighty performers, most of them women (Ziegfeld, Richard and Paulette 252, 263).
Choreographers presented such bevies of beauties in assembly-line-like rows performing
identical movements in a mechanical manner. Such movement patterns, exemplified by the kick
line, characterized chorus numbers and capitalized on the aesthetics of the industrial age by
featuring unison, mechanized movement. Historians Susan A. Glenn and Angela J. Latham both
explore how such choreography participated in fantasies of women as regulated types rather than
independent individuals. Glenn discusses this effect particularly in the work of Ned Wayburn,
Ziegfeld’s key choreographer, who boasted, “Ever since I have been a producer of girl shows I
have had to create the chorus girl. She is a creation as completely thought out, moved about,
wired and flounced, beribboned and set dancing as any automaton designed to please, to delight,
to excite an audience” (qtd. in Glenn 179).
The idea of the chorus girl as an automaton meshed with modern aesthetics idealizing the
uniform and mechanized aspects of industry and imposed these images of control and regulation
on the modern girl. Mizejewski, Latham, and Glenn discuss the fantasy of male control over the
female body promoted in this aspect of the revues which emphasized the female body and
femininity as a consumer product artfully crafted through male discipline and discernment. As
Mizejewski observes, because of her sexual appeal and position as an object of display for men’s
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pleasure, the Ziegfeld girl, and, I would argue, the chorus girl in general, served as “as a
comforting alternative to threatening female figures of the time: the New Woman, the suffragist,
the flapper, the vamp” (32). In addition, as Latham notes, such images of synchronized white
women worked in conjunction with understandings of blacks as primitive to reinforce racist
stereotypes (112). In stagings of the chorus girl, such stereotypes related specifically to women,
placing standardized, regulated white women in contrast to the “primitive” and uncontrolled
sexuality associated with black women in bigoted constructs of race and gender.
Actresses and Capital
While this racialized construct of streamlined femininity carried tremendous capital for
Broadway producers, this capital did not directly transfer to the chorus girls themselves. The
perception and practicality of the chorus girl as a male-controlled entity undermined the chorus
girl’s ability to craft her own performances. Such perceptions worked in conjunction with
cultural stereotypes to portray chorus girls, and young sexual women in general, as unintelligent.
According to Erenberg, constructs of sexual women as vapid proliferated during the 1920s
because they mitigated the threat of female sexuality by portraying “the sexually charged
woman as too stupid to pose a real threat” (222). According to Erenberg, such understandings
worked in conjunction with concepts of the modern woman as young, allowing both men and
women to view the overtly sexual modern girl as malleable and harmless (222). These
understandings also combined with modern constructs of women as shopping rather than moral
experts, which facilitated this stereotype by locating the female field of expertise in superficial
concerns. Representations of female vacuity thus carried capital in entertainments such as class
magazines 72 and Broadway musicals and revues, which commodified sexual displays of women.
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Perceptions of the chorus girl as vacuous, along with the practicality of her situation as
part of male-controlled chorus line, made it difficult for women in the chorus to employ the
capital they carried as performers in musicals and revues. In part, this difficulty arose from the
position of the chorus girl as part of a group of identical women since the capital she carried a
the member of the chorus diminished once she separated from the group. As one critic observed,
“the members of the chorus, . . . are parts of a whole and are theatrically useless when not
surrounded by other particles” (qtd. in Glenn 179). The chorus girl’s entertainment value thus
relied on her performance as part of a group, a currency carrying no equitable exchange should a
chorus girl attempt to develop an individual career.
Chorus girls thus relied on their producers and associates for their economic value.
Because their own names carried little currency, Ziegfeld girls often capitalized on the cachet of
the Ziegfeld name, billing themselves as former Ziegfeld girls when they attempted to pursue
individual careers. As Ziegfeld chorus girl Lucile Layton Zinman explains, in New York, chorus
girls paid in advance for this cachet by accepting lower wages in exchange for the prestige of
being a Ziegfeld girl (Ziegfeld, Richard and Paulette 257). 73 Allyn King, the star of Ladies’
Night, for example, used her cachet as a Ziegfeld principal to launch her acting career. However,
such transactions also had drawbacks since they prompted audiences and critics to continue to
view and evaluate former chorus girls as perpetual chorus girls. Reviews of Ladies’ Night, for
example, praised King who “looked just as well in this Turkish bath as she used to in Ziegfeld’s
‘Follies’” (“Ladies’ Night”), but also lamented the fact that her costumes in Ladies’ Night
exposed less flesh than Ziegfeld’s creations (Butler, S. 17). While King’s stint with the Follies
earned her the recognition associated with Ziegfeld and his girls, the standardization imposed by
Ziegfeld followed King into her separate stage career and limited the value of her acting ability
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by foregrounding her physical appearance as her primary asset. This valuation often
accompanied actresses in sex farces, which frequently starred former chorus girls and similarly,
as discussed earlier, associated women with a lack of ability. Due to the narrative of male control
and the lack of complex female characters, sex farces and revues gave women little opportunity
to develop or display individual talent.
Actresses circumvented this system through character-driven dramas and comedies that,
along with sex farces and revues, also generated respectable profits by commodifying femininity
in 1920s theatre. Such productions, including The Green Hat, The Constant Wife, and Dulcy,
centered on complex female characters specifically crafted to showcase the performer’s acting
ability. Accordingly, actresses, such as Lynn Fontanne, Ethel Barrymore, Helen Hayes, Jane
Cowl, Katharine Cornell and others, individually carried capital which they accumulated through
their abilities and reputations as talented artists.
Although comedies and dramas starring female celebrities capitalized on presentations of
femininity, the femininity they marketed differed drastically from that offered to audiences in
Follies and farces. Unlike the chorus girl, the Broadway celebrity attracted audiences through her
ability to stand out, to offer the audience something original and unique. Additionally, while
standards of race and class persisted, definitions of “beauty” were less rigid for celebrities who
did not need to match the look of other women in the production. While beauty played an
important role in her appeal, unlike the chorus girl, the star’s acting ability superseded the
importance of appearance. Rather than the flat characters and formulaic scripts associated with
sex farces and revues, star vehicles attracted audiences through intriguing plots involving
complex characters exhibiting dynamic emotions, all constructed to showcase the actress’s
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abilities. Because of this, star vehicles offered the most opportunity for complexity, in
characterization and cultural critique, in theatrical commodifications of femininity.
Critics and audiences valued the display of these abilities by stars in such productions,
often praising an actress’s acting while paying comparatively little attention to her appearance.
Reviews of The Age of Innocence, for example frequently mention Katharine Cornell’s beauty
but focus mainly on her rich voice and ability to convey emotion. The acting demands of star
vehicles thus linked an actress’s capital to her body as an instrument of talent and training, rather
than as an object primarily for display and desire.
In further contrast to the capital of the chorus girl, the star vehicle linked so closely with
the actress as an individual that audiences came to connect certain stars with specific roles. Such
affiliations could often last a lifetime. Theatre historian Marvin Carlson refers to such
associations as “ghostings,” which haunt a performer’s career by influencing audiences’
perceptions of subsequent performances. 74 Accordingly, ghostings carry capital. This factor
made script selection particularly important for Broadway stars who employed ghostings as a
means for managing capital. Actresses sought to build their capital through challenging roles,
and the subsequent affiliation with such roles, facilitating grandiose performances. While the
ghosting of one flop would not ruin a career, an actress’s next show needed to repair the damage
by providing a respectable specter.
Ethel Barrymore, for example, attempted a new challenge in Scarlet Sister Mary
appearing in the problematic role of Si May-e, which Barrymore performed in blackface while
using a Gullah dialect. As a performance of what was understood at the time as a lower race and
class fundamentally foreign to her own, Si May-e offered Barrymore the opportunity to display
her virtuosity through a radical transformation of self but also risked establishing a long-term
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association between her future roles and black and working-class women. Barrymore attempted
to mitigate this risk by refusing to be photographed in blackface. Scarlet Sister Mary, however,
failed to impress audiences, and ran for only twenty-three performances in New York (Botto
235). The poor reception prevented Barrymore from accumulating the capital she had hoped to
accrue through the role and prompted her to revive prior performances in an attempt to remind
audiences, and thus invoke the ghosts and capital, of her previously lauded roles (Peters 332-3).
In further contrast to the chorus girl, Broadway stars like Barrymore wielded a relatively
large amount of power in entertainment, selecting scripts, finding producers, choosing directors,
and, often, taking part in casting other actors. While the success or failure of a revue depended
largely on the producer and the success of a sex farce rested on the talents of the playwright, for
star vehicles, box office success depended largely on the actress. Celebrity actresses thus bore
more responsibility for a show’s success, but, when compared to the chorus girl and farce
comedienne, star actresses also carried tremendous influence in relation to their own
performances as well as the production as a whole. Accordingly, female Broadway stars operated
as some of the most influential women impacting depictions of femininity in commercial
theatrical entertainment.
The following chapters explore the interrelationship between women’s magazines and
Broadway theatre as producers, playwrights, and actresses attempted to capitalize on the
commercial potential of modern femininity in 1920s theatre while catering to an ambivalent
public. While formulas for commodification existed in the genres of sex farces, musicals, and
revues, practitioners constantly worked to thrill audiences with something new. In each of the
following case studies, practitioners attempted to achieve this by adapting the complex
characters and sharp social critiques characterizing the best women’s magazine fiction. Adapting
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Show Boat, The Age of Innocence, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for the commercial stage
forced playwrights and producers to evaluate the entertainment value of the femininity presented
and re-presented in each narrative. A historic and literary analysis of the adaptation process for
these serials thus reveals myriad capital concerns affecting the entertainment value of femininity
in commercial theatre during this period. These concerns determined representations of
femininity commodified in each production and, in the case of Show Boat and Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes, the femininity that continues to circulate in American theatre through these narratives.
Chapter 2
Ol’ (Wo)Man River?: Broadway’s Gendering of Edna Ferber’s Show Boat
Scholars often cite Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s 1927 musical Show Boat as
the seminal American musical. 75 Accordingly, the musical has received much critical attention,
and, due to its illustrious status, has eclipsed Edna Ferber’s 1926 bestselling novel in both
scholarship and popular culture. As Ferber’s great niece and biographer Julie Gilbert observes,
many people “think it [Show Boat] was born a musical” (Ferber 65). In addition to marginalizing
Ferber’s novel, recent scholarship has centered mainly on issues of race in Show Boat, due to the
spate of protests surrounding the 1993 revival. 76 Perception of the musical as an independent
work, combined with criticism’s recent focus on race, has served to deflect scholarship from
additional important issues in Show Boat, including the interrelationship between gender and
race in the musical and the impact of commercial concerns in constructing this relationship,
particularly in respect to the musical’s representations of femininity.
In adapting Show Boat for the stage, composer Jerome Kern, lyricist Oscar Hammerstein
II, and producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. worked to capitalize on the increasing entertainment value
of African American culture and performers in mainstream entertainment as well as the
continuing entertainment value of white femininity as a romantic and vulnerable construct
permeating 1920s Broadway musicals. This chapter examines the construction of femininity in
Ferber’s initial publication of Show Boat in the Woman’s Home Companion and then traces the
changes and exchanges in femininity that Kern, Hammerstein, and Ziegfeld performed in order
to adapt the narrative into a profitable Broadway musical. Specifically, this analysis
demonstrates how Kern, Hammerstein, and Ziegfeld altered Ferber’s commentary on American
womanhood and curtailed her empowering depiction of independent women to fit the
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emotionally dependent version of womanhood ubiquitous in musicals and revues, particularly
those Ziegfeld produced. Analyzing this process reveals the powerful influence of genre
expectations and Broadway producers on forming representations of women and femininity in
for-profit entertainment.
In addition, this study examines Ziegfeld’s impact on the femininities commodified in
Show Boat by considering the capital Ziegfeld’s brand of entertainment and femininity carried
into this project and the impresario’s efforts to expand this brand through representations of race
and femininity in the production. The conventional femininity Kern, Hammerstein, and Ziegfeld
created for Magnolia, Show Boat’s protagonist, carried cultural capital based in racist
understandings of white female sexuality and morality. The adaptors altered Ferber’s narrative in
order to increase this value, which acted as a guarantee for the musical’s middle-class values and
allowed the adapters to present more marginalized femininities in a respectable, and, therefore,
profitable, forum. Under the aegis of Magnolia’s respectable romance and sexuality, the musical
presented African American chorus girls and sensual dancers, including the Sidell Sisters and
Dorothy Denese, representing marginalized forms of female sexuality that carried less capital in
mainstream entertainment when presented on their own.
Finally, this chapter works to broaden existing scholarship on the musical version of
Show Boat by discussing Ferber’s role in creating the production, a role often overlooked in
existing studies. By examining the formation and adaptation of Show Boat, this analysis
demonstrates the influence of capital in creating and sustaining the construct of strong,
“independent” women who, ultimately, depend on men—a version of femininity continuing to
dominate American for-profit entertainment. Moreover, this study demonstrates how the capital
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from this construct works as a guarantee that legitimizes and assists in commodifying
marginalized forms of femininity in mainstream entertainment.
Ferber’s Show Boat
Edna Ferber’s Show Boat portrays three generations in a matrilineal line of theatre
practitioners, Parthy, her daughter Magnolia, and her granddaughter Kim, who deftly and
deliberately manage successful careers in the evolving American entertainment industry from the
1870s through the 1920s. The story details Magnolia’s childhood aboard the Cotton Blossom
Floating Palace Theatre, which her father purchases in the mid-1870s. The boat travels along the
Mississippi and its tributaries, carrying Magnolia’s family along with a company of actors who
stage emotional melodramas on the boat’s proscenium stage for rural American audiences.
Parthy abhors the immorality she believes inhabits both the theatre profession and its performers,
but young Magnolia grows to love the stage and its actors, particularly the company’s glamorous
leading lady Julie Dozier.
The most famous scene in the narrative occurs when Julie’s rebuffed admirer brings the
local sheriff aboard and accuses Julie and her husband of miscegenation. Julie, he claims, has a
black mother and has been passing as white, making her marriage to her white husband a crime.
Warned of the approaching sheriff, Julie’s husband slices her finger open with his knife and
sucks at the incision so that the couple can legitimately claim that they both have “Negro blood”
and, thus, avoid arrest (145). 77 The couple leaves the show boat in disgrace, breaking the child
Magnolia’s heart.
71
Years later, the boat’s new leading lady elopes with her lover, and Magnolia volunteers to
take her place until her father can hire a new actress. Magnolia, however, quickly becomes a
favorite with show boat audiences and remains in her role as premier actress. When
circumstances lead the company to hire riverboat gambler Gaylord Ravenal as their new leading
man, she and Ravenal fall in love. In spite of Parthy’s strenuous objections, the couple marries
and moves to Chicago. They soon have a daughter, Kim, who is still a child when Magnolia’s
father, Captain Andy, drowns in an accident during a storm, leaving Parthy to manage the show
boat. Magnolia and Ravenal encounter difficult times in Chicago as Ravenal gambles away their
money and borrows funds from a local madam. Upon discovering the source of these funds,
Magnolia returns the money to the madam’s “gray-haired” secretary with eyes “like dull coals”
and “ivory” skin that looks “Like something dead” (352). In the course of this transaction,
Magnolia realizes that the secretary is Julie. Julie recognizes Magnolia, flees in horror, and the
two women never see each other again.
Immediately after this encounter, Magnolia auditions at a variety theatre and obtains a job
singing African American spirituals she learned as a child from Jo, a black worker on the show
boat. Magnolia rushes to her apartment with this news only to find that Ravenal has left her.
Ravenal never returns, and, years later, Magnolia receives a telegram informing her of his death.
Heartbroken, but determined not to return to the Cotton Blossom in defeat, 78 Magnolia practices
her music and becomes famous for singing “coon songs,” (songs comprised of racist renderings
of African American speech), on the vaudeville circuit (362). 79 Her income supports Kim’s
convent education and eventual enrollment in a New York acting school. Kim soon becomes a
Broadway sensation, and she is in the middle of a backstage interview when she and Magnolia
receive a telegram saying that Parthy has died. Magnolia returns to the show boat and discovers
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that, before her death, Parthy had become one of the most successful show boat managers on the
river, amassing half a million dollars through her company’s repertoire of old-fashioned
melodramas.
Parthy, whose conservative attitudes and melodramas represent Victorian femininity,
leaves her theatre and fortune to Magnolia, whose “coon singing,” problematically, represents a
more sincere and less censorious femininity. Magnolia opts to give her inheritance to Kim,
whose orderly and well-regulated acting technique exemplifies the values of modern femininity,
so that Kim can use the money to start a theatre company. The narrative links the women’s
femininities with their theatre practice as well as the central image of the nation’s rivers. The
Narrative compares Kim with the “orderly, well regulated, dependable” Illinois river (393), and
associates both Parthy and Magnolia with the “untamed Mississippi” (10). Ferber’s protagonists
thus perform their femininity in conjunction with their dramaturgy, making the theatre, as well as
the waterways, a central metaphor for American womanhood in Show Boat. This metaphor
coalesces in the serial’s final image of Magnolia aboard the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace
Theatre waving to Kim as she drives off to found “The American Theatre,” a theatre eschewing
emotional melodramas and variety shows for the foreign classics of Shakespeare, Chekhov, and
Ibsen (396).
Through this matrilineal plot, Show Boat exemplifies the feminine themes of Ferber’s
fiction, which frequently centers on strong female characters, usually on their own, confronting
experiences particular to women, including child rearing, mother/daughter relationships, 80 and
romantic expectations. As literature scholar Ann R. Shapiro states, Ferber “was always writing
about . . . the strength of the American woman, who would persevere and survive alone even
when the man in her life deserted her” (54). Shapiro explains that Ferber frequently used “the
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term ‘iron woman’ to describe her heroines, who . . . work out their own destinies in the face of
enormous odds” (55). 81 Ferber’s Show Boat presents this “iron” femininity in both Parthy and
Magnolia, women associated in the serial with the indomitable Mississippi, who raise their
daughters and manage successful careers amidst difficult circumstances and personal
disappointments.
Show Boat and the Woman’s Home Companion
Ferber’s initial depiction of “iron” femininity in Show Boat owes much to Woman’s
Home Companion editor Gertrude Battle Lane, one of the few female editors in the women’s
magazine industry at this time. Founded in 1873, the Woman’s Home Companion established
itself as one of the earliest magazine publications for women, and, by the time the Companion
serialized Show Boat in 1926, it was also one of the largest, boasting a readership of 2 million
(Endres, “Woman’s” 447). While similar magazines held safely to conservative gender
ideologies during the 1920s, Lane led the Companion as editor-in-chief from 1911 until her
death in 1941 by openly addressing new challenges and realities that American women faced in
the first half of the twentieth century. Lane viewed her reader as “the housewife of today . . .
forever seeking new ideas” and understood it as her duty to this readership to “reflect the sanest,
most constructive thought on vital issues of the day” (qtd. in Zuckerman, “Pathway” 68). These
“vital issues” included domestic as well as political and social concerns. Lane used the Woman’s
Home Companion to advocate for women’s suffrage, promote the election of women into public
office, support child labor laws, and advocate for jobs for women, even amidst the depressed job
market of the 1930s (Endres, “Woman’s” 448-9). In addition, Lane encouraged women to use
their own political, domestic, and economic influence to improve public health, particularly in
regard to children. 82 Under Lane’s leadership, the Companion both advocated and marketed a
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civically-engaged femininity rooted in domestic and maternal issues while also interested in and
involved with political and social concerns.
Lane’s direct approach to women’s issues reflected Ferber’s own ideology and led to
their initial meeting. In 1920, Ferber sought to serialize The Girls, a novel about “three
generations of Chicago old maids,” the final generation containing Lottie, a young, unwed
mother (Ferber, Treasure 264). 83 While several editors offered to publish the story, they insisted
that Ferber omit Lottie’s baby from the ending, thus leaving Lottie’s virtue, and their
conservative representation of American womanhood, intact. Ferber refused to rewrite the
ending and approached Lane instead. Ferber asked Lane if she would insist on changing the
ending, to which Lane responded, “Certainly not . . . I’m the editor. The baby stays” (Ferber,
Treasure 265). Lane’s commitment to Ferber’s work extended beyond publication of The Girls
to the serialization of several stories, including Cimarron (1929), 84 Ferber’s Pulitzer-Prizewinning So Big (1923), 85 and Show Boat (1926), 86 all narratives centering on compelling
portrayals of American womanhood and reflecting the dauntless and domestic version of
femininity marketed in the Companion.
Commodifying this femininity through Ferber’s work proved so profitable for the
Companion that in March 1924, Lane wrote to Ferber offering to “publish practically everything
you write” (Letter to Ferber 27 Mar. 1924). Lane’s continuous support allowed Ferber to avoid
“Prudish editors” who favored and demanded conservative and vulnerable images of American
women (Ferber, Treasure 264). 87 Lane’s support was especially valuable to Ferber in developing
Show Boat, a narrative dealing with infidelity, abandonment, and miscegenation in an
atmosphere of alcoholism, addiction, and poverty. Rather than censoring Ferber’s work, Lane
enthused over early versions of the manuscript. Lane praised Show Boat as “a tremendous
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advance over ‘So Big’ and ‘The Girls’ as a piece of writing,” and especially lauded the
miscegenation scene (Letter to Ferber 20 Nov. 1925). Ferber later expressed her gratitude,
commenting, “Miss Lane’s enthusiasm for the manuscript encouraged me enormously when my
vitality was low” (Treasure 303).
Through Lane’s encouragement, Ferber developed Magnolia Hawks, a protagonist
exhibiting Ferber’s ideal blend of Victorian and modern gender values and echoing the
femininity commodified in the Companion. Disappointed and, ultimately, deserted by her
gambling, philandering husband, Magnolia preserves the Victorian values of motherhood,
fidelity, and sentimentality while incorporating them into her modern independence, candor, and
sophistication. Magnolia faces her situation alone, providing for herself and her daughter by
using her Victorian sensibility to portray convincing emotions, thus establishing a successful
career as a singer of African American spirituals. Magnolia appears both sentimental and selfsufficient, a successful amalgam of Victorian sensibility and modern independence. She thus
exhibits the dauntless yet domestic form of femininity marketed in the Companion, an appealing
combination for readers negotiating conflicting forms of femininity in contemporary culture.
As several scholars have noted, Ferber’s depiction of Magnolia’s Victorian sensibility is
highly problematic. In the serial as well as the novel, Magnolia’s sentimentality allows her to
create a successful career by appropriating African American songs and suffering. 88 Scholars
often point to the scene in the novel wherein Magnolia auditions at a variety theatre, singing
“Negro songs with a banjo . . . as Jo had taught her” (360, 361). Ferber describes how,
“Imitative in this, she managed, too, to get into her voice that soft and husky Negro quality
which for years she had heard on the river boats, bayous, [and] landings” (361). Magnolia’s
performance is so convincing that the “shrewd” manager abruptly asks “You a nigger?” (361).
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Magnolia turns red and says that she is not. “The scarlet receding from her face, leaving it paler
than before,” Magnolia starts to leave when the manager calls her back and offers her the job
(362).
Criticism regarding race in the novel and the musical often centers on the unquestioned
appropriation and assumed authenticity of Magnolia’s “Negro” performances. However, few
critics examine this appropriation in relation to Magnolia’s femininity. The presumptions and
assumptions of authenticity in Magnolia’s performance relate directly to women’s culture,
culture created specifically for women, which, according to cultural theorist Lauren Berlant,
reifies the authentic nature of sympathetic experience through a “very general sense of
confidence in the critical intelligence of affect, emotion, and good intention . . .” (2). This
confidence in “affect, emotion, and good intention” characterized the femininity reflected in
women’s magazines, particularly through the campaigns for social reform that filled such
publications by the 1910s. According to Zuckerman, each of the major women’s magazines
during this period promoted its own crusade against social ills, including venereal disease, infant
mortality, child labor, etc. (History 85-6). Such crusades relied on muckraking journalism and
dire descriptions of social evils in order to evoke sympathy and transform this emotion into
action. Although this style had begun to wane by the 1920s, the underlying understanding of
women’s emotion and good intention as inherently valuable remained. 89
This gendered confidence in “affect, emotion, and good intention” (Berlant 2) forms a
central tenet of the femininity Ferber idealizes in Magnolia, who loves the music and
sympathizes with the emotions that she appropriates. 90 Ferber’s serial positions the problematic
sympathy Magnolia employs in her performances as a characteristic of ideal American
femininity. Through Magnolia, Ferber equates the quality of theatre and femininity with the
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ability to embrace and absorb the unexpected, both good and bad, while preserving sincere
emotion—the same “sincerity” Magnolia demonstrates when singing African American music
and performing in show boat melodramas. Magnolia displays this sincerity as she listens to Jo
singing “Go Down Moses,” which she likes “because it always made her cry a little” (121), and
when she covers her stage fright during her debut show boat performance “by stressing her
emotional scenes” and producing “real screams of mortal fear” (167). Magnolia later affirms the
primacy of emotion in creating entertainment as she defends the quality of the show boat theatre
to her derisive husband. “Maybe we weren’t very good,” Magnolia admits, “but the audiences
thought we were; and they cried in places where they were supposed to cry, and laughed when
they should have laughed, and believed it all, and were happy, and if that isn’t the theatre then
what is it?” (314-5). For Magnolia, strong emotions form the primary component and product of
good theatre.
Through Ferber’s link between American theatre and femininity, this emotional quality
also stands as a primary component of ideal womanhood. Magnolia summarizes the serial’s
philosophy of femininity and theatre as she muses about Kim’s untroubled marriage, thinking,
“Wasn’t it [marriage] finer, more splendid, more nourishing when it was, like life itself, a
mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and
hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt?” (393). Magnolia’s musings serve
as a criticism of the artificiality inherent in both Victorian and modern femininity, which Parthy
and Kim represent, respectively—Parthy through her prudish censorship of the show boat’s
productions and Kim through her trained acting, which Magnolia finds sterile. For Magnolia, life
and theatre require a talent for authenticity and sincerity rather than prudery and polish. Rather
than mitigating life’s extremes through old-fashioned Puritanism or modern precision, Magnolia
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exemplifies Ferber’s ideal of American womanhood by relishing life’s turbulence and embracing
natural chaos rather than asserting artificial control.
Ferber uses Magnolia’s appropriation of African American music and suffering to
demonstrate this facet of her femininity. The oft-critiqued audition scene illustrates that, unlike
the stodgy Victorian or the modern fashion plate, Magnolia eschews a pristine and artificial
existence by leaving herself vulnerable to the harsh aspects of life, even when they are not
aspects of her life. Within the narrative, her appropriation of black culture and history, and the
emotions they produce, while unquestionably problematic, illustrates her choice to embrace life
even though this means leaving herself open to suffering. This decision, as well as Magnolia’s
ability to persevere through suffering, represents the serial’s ideal form of femininity—a form
celebrated as courageous and independent in Ferber’s narrative and a form that carried
entertainment value in the serial and novel publications of Show Boat. 91
Through Ferber’s use of theatre as a metaphor for femininity, Show Boat deals directly
with the relationship between race, gender, and entertainment value. Due to the narrative’s link
between American theatre and American femininity, the role of race in determining the
characters’ entertainment value in the narrative reflects the role of race in determining their
relationship to idealized forms of femininity. As stated earlier, Magnolia’s audition takes place
just after her encounter with Julie at the brothel. Whether through widowhood or divorce, Julie,
like Magnolia, is now without a husband. However, as Julie’s earlier expulsion from the show
boat demonstrates, she, as a mixed-race woman, has few employment options. Due to her race,
Julie holds no value in legitimate theatre and, instead, finds work as a secretary at Chicago’s
“most notorious brothel,” an enterprise commodifying women in a more illicit manner (356).
Magnolia, however, because she is white, holds tremendous entertainment value, particularly as
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a white woman appropriating and commodifying African American culture. Magnolia’s white
body allows her to profit from African American culture in a bigoted industry that prevents nonwhite performers from capitalizing on non-white culture. Because she is white, Magnolia can
safely embody and perform, in life and on stage, the suffering and the “sordid[ness]” that
ultimately destroys the mixed-race Julie (393).
Ferber’s descriptions in the serial underscore the centrality of race in determining
Magnolia and Julie’s cultural capital and entertainment value, an aspect eventually lost in the
musical. Ferber repeatedly describes Julie’s skin tone as “ivory” in the brothel and, after the
manager questions Magnolia’s race, describes the Magnolia’s flush “receding from her face,
leaving it paler than before” (352, 362). Only after Magnolia verbally and physically
demonstrates her whiteness can she receive a job as a singer. Ferber’s narrative purposefully
highlights the fact that Magnolia’s emotional sensitivity and her femininity carry value only in
conjunction with her racial whiteness.
Ferber’s narrative demonstrates this keen understanding of entertainment value and race
in relation to women in American theatre as well as women in fiction serials. Julie’s race, which
would have limited opportunities for an actual actress in 1926, renders her worthless in the
narrative’s fictional field of theatre. However, Julie’s race and position as a tragic, mixed-race
Other carried entertainment value with Ferber’s readers, a predominantly white, middle-class
audience. In the serial and novel, Ferber uses Julie to set Magnolia’s survival in relief to the
ignominious fate Magnolia avoids through her determination and iron qualities. Ferber employs
the cultural capital of the tragic mulatto stereotype, a capital problematically based in narratives
and histories of suffering, to increase Magnolia’s entertainment value as a heroic figure able to
both experience and overcome suffering. Ferber’s serial thus demonstrates the entertainment
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value of both a tragic, non-white femininity as well as a heroic, white form of womanhood in
1920s fiction, a medium void of real performers and racialized bodies.
Show Boat and Ziegfeld’s Broadway
Such representations of femininity carried entertainment value in 1920s American fiction
as well as 1920s American theatre. However, as an embodied medium, theatre entailed more
complex concerns regarding race and gender. When Ferber published her serial in 1926, the
traditional formulas of femininity and race comprising entertainment value were undergoing a
change in live mainstream entertainment. Throughout its early history, Broadway theatre
remained an almost exclusively white enterprise. While black characters often appeared on stage,
black actors did not. Most commonly, producers used white actors wearing blackface to portray
black characters. 92 However, in the 1910s and 1920s, such practices started to erode. In 1917,
Three Plays for a Negro Theater debuted as the first Broadway production featuring an African
American cast in serious roles, 93 and, in 1921, the cast of Shuffle Along demonstrated the
commercial appeal of black Broadway musicals and revues.
Due to the tremendous commercial success of Shuffle Along, which ran for over 504
performances, African American music, dance, and skin tones carried increasing entertainment
value in Broadway musicals and revues (Hill and Hatch 245), genres, as demonstrated earlier,
centered on commodifying femininity. Producers of white revues and musicals, particularly
Ziegfeld, faced increasing competition from musicals and revues presenting African American
performers, and, more specifically, African American chorus girls. Shows such as the Darktown
Follies (1913) and Strut Miss Lizzie (1922), advertised as “Glorifying the Creole Beauty,”
featured African American women in displays and musical numbers mimicking Ziegfeld’s iconic
aesthetic (qtd. Mizejewski 128). In addition, Harlem venues such as the Cotton Club and
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Connie’s Inn attracted white-only audiences with displays of light-skinned chorus girls, while the
Swanee Club offered separate revues by black and white performers, including chorus girls, in
order to appeal to the club’s “black and tan” 94 audience (“Black and White”).
Much like Magnolia and her manager, white producers worked to compete with and
capitalize on such trends by featuring African American music, dance, skin tone, and,
occasionally, African Americans themselves in Broadway shows. Ziegfeld, for example,
commented and capitalized on the popularity of African American revues and chorus girls
through the 1922 Follies number entitled “It’s Getting Dark on Old Broadway,” which described
the increasing presence of “pretty choc’late babies” on the Great White Way (qtd. in Glenn 172).
This number employed lighting techniques to make Ziegfeld’s white chorus girls appear brown.
As the stage lights dimmed, the women’s glow-in-the-dark costumes remained white to heighten
the contrast, maintaining the illusion that the women’s skin, rather than the lighting, changed
color (Ziegfeld, Richard and Paulette 254). Ziegfeld also hired African American comedian Bert
Williams to perform with the Follies, 95 and employed Ethel Williams, one of the dancers in
Darktown Follies, to teach some of her numbers to his white cast (Glenn 172). 96
As skilled practitioners and savvy businessmen, Kern, Hammerstein, and Ziegfeld
adapted Show Boat in order to capitalize on the increasing entertainment value of African
American culture and performers in mainstream entertainment, and, specifically, the increasing
popularity of the African American chorus girl. Their efforts resulted in a reformulated
femininity in the musical, which transferred the stalwart qualities of Ferber’s “iron woman” to
the character Joe and transformed Magnolia into a conventional and romantic heroine more
typical, and, thus, more marketable for an American musical. As a conventional, romantic
heroine, Magnolia presented white American femininity as sexually contained within a
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heteronormative, monogamous, marital relationship which countered the transgressive sexuality
Kern, Hammerstein, and Ziegfeld worked to commodify in the musical’s Other women—Show
Boat’s African American chorus girls and specialty dancers.
As histories of the musical recount, Ferber’s novel inspired composer Jerome Kern, who,
half-way through the book, attempted to obtain the rights for a stage adaptation. 97 Ferber “rather
resented the idea” of a musical adaptation and “thought he was being fantastic,” but she
eventually agreed (Ferber, Treasure 304). As they began their adaptation, Kern and
Hammerstein altered Ferber’s narrative with the underlying intent of attracting an illustrious
producer, specifically, Florenz Ziegfeld. On November 17, 1926, Kern purchased the rights from
Ferber in a contract specifically suggesting Ziegfeld as producer, although Ziegfeld had not yet
agreed to back the project (Kreuger, Story 19). 98 Thus, even before he signed on as producer,
Ziegfeld’s aesthetic influenced the adaptation of Ferber’s work, particularly in relation to the
musical’s depiction femininity.
Billing himself as the “glorifier of the American girl,” Ziegfeld achieved fame during the
early twentieth century for his extravagant revues which ran on Broadway every year from 1907
to 1928. 99 While they contained some comic routines, Ziegfeld’s Follies and Frolics shows were
known primarily for their breathtaking and expensive displays of beautiful women, individually
selected by Ziegfeld himself, in elaborate, and often scanty, costumes. Ziegfeld’s shows featured
“showgirls,” who primarily modeled exquisite costumes, as well as chorus girls, uniformly
attired and arranged in intricate dance routines. Ziegfeld adopted similar techniques in the
musicals he produced, which also featured spectacular choruses of beautiful women. Ziegfeld
branded the femininity featured in his productions through “the Ziegfeld girl,” an icon of
American womanhood vastly different from Ferber’s “iron woman.” Unlike the “iron woman,”
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defined by her ability to persevere amidst hardship, the Ziegfeld girl had no experience with
hardship and defined American femininity through racial whiteness, youth, sexuality,
exuberance, and physical beauty. 100
Rather than an image of female competence and individual accomplishment, the Ziegfeld
girl represented a femininity that flourished under male management. As discussed in chapter
one, theatre historian Susan A. Glenn sees the fantasy of “rationally controlled female bodies”
exemplified in the uniform choreography standard in 1920s musicals and revues (175). For
example, Show Boat choreographer Sammy Lee received praise for such choreography in
Ziegfeld’s 1927 musical Rio Rita. According to the American, the musical employed “100
beautiful girls” whom Lee molded “into a harmonious ensemble, into an organization that at one
moment moves like a fascinating machine—graceful, mobile, exactly co-ordinated” (qtd. in Ries
61). The fact that most choreographers were male 101 gendered the rigid and “rational” control in
such choreography as male. Moreover, behind the male choreographer, stood the male
impresario, managing and marketing masses of women in Broadway musicals and revues. These
male authorities regulated performers’ appearance, movements, and, even, emotions. As Ziegfeld
explained, dancers “always smile” because smiling “is as much a part of their ‘job’ as the steps
are . . . dancing is an expression of joy. So the professional dancer smiles” (“Picking” 120).
Ziegfeld further described how a dancer becomes less desirable for a producer if she “drops her
smile with her final bow,” indicating that his male management extended beyond the boundaries
of his dancers’ stage performances (“Picking” 120). Such impressions of the producer’s
omnipresent male management worked to portray the Ziegfeld chorus girl as both highly sexual
and highly controlled. Entailed in this image is the impression that women, particularly women
who engage in public performance as a profession, require and rely on male management.
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The Ziegfeld entertainment empire thus constructed and proliferated an image of
American femininity as emotionally and professionally dependent on male authority, and, in
particular, the American male theatre practitioner. This image stood in direct contrast to the
femininity and theatre artists Ferber portrayed in Show Boat. Accordingly, in order to attract
Ziegfeld to the project, and audiences to Ziegfeld’s show, Kern and Hammerstein incorporated
aspects of the Ziegfeld brand of femininity into Ferber’s story, particularly in adapting her
heroine Magnolia Hawks. For the stage version, Kern and Hammerstein created a heroine more
typical for a Broadway musical and Ziegfeld production, transforming Magnolia into a lovestruck young woman primarily concerned with romance and ultimately dependent on men for her
survival.
Adapting Race and Gender in Show Boat
In one of their earliest and most consequential acts in this process, Kern and
Hammerstein shifted the metaphor of the Mississippi River, and the independence and fortitude
it evokes in the serial, from Magnolia and Parthy to the character Joe, or “Jo” as he is named in
Ferber’s version. Kern and Hammerstein initially intended this role for Paul Robeson, a popular
African American actor and singer. As musical theatre scholar Scott McMillin demonstrates in
his analysis of the earliest known version of the Show Boat script, Kern and Hammerstein “built
Show Boat around Robeson . . . [who] was supposed to be at the center of the musical” (51,
52). 102 Although delays in production prevented Robeson from playing Joe in the original
musical, the focus on black masculinity, and the impact of this focus on white femininity,
remained in their adaptation.
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At the time Kern and Hammerstein started adapting Ferber’s novel, Robeson had
established his reputation as a talented and controversial actor. Robeson had starred in Eugene
O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (1925) 103 and All God’s Chillun Got Wings (1924) as well as Black
Boy (1926) by Jim Tully and Frank Mitchell Dazey, all shows inspiring public controversy over
depictions of African Americans in American drama (McMillin 64-5). 104 Robeson also
maintained a successful career as a singer, primarily known for his concerts featuring African
American spirituals. Kern and Hammerstein adapted Show Boat to capitalize on Robeson’s
reputation and skill by expanding the role of Joe and including a number in act two in which
Robeson played himself, as Joe’s son, and performed one of his own concerts. 105 In addition,
Kern and Hammerstein created what would become Show Boat’s signature song, a solo piece for
Robeson, composed in the style of an African American spiritual and entitled “Ol’ Man River.”
106
In creating this song for Robeson, the composer and lyricist significantly altered the
portrayal of femininity in the narrative by transferring the steadfast qualities Ferber attributes to
her white, female heroines to the musical’s central black male character—Joe. “Ol’ Man River”
centers on the image of the Mississippi River, an image Ferber purposefully connects in the
serial to the indomitable women of the Hawks family, particularly Magnolia and Parthy. 107
Ferber established this connection in the last page of Show Boat, which she composed before
starting the first (Ferber, Treasure 278). In the serial’s final scene, Ferber initiated the narrative’s
link between American womanhood, American theatre, and the American landscape in a closing
image that set the trajectory for these themes within the serial. As Kim and her husband Ken
drive off to the city, Magnolia stands:
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On the upper deck of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre, silhouetted
against sunset sky and water – tall, erect, indomitable. Her mouth was smiling but
her great eyes were wide and somber. They gazed, unwinking, across the sunlit
waters. One arm was raised in a gesture of farewell. “Isn’t she splendid, Ken!”
cried Kim, through her tears. “There’s something about her that’s eternal and
unconquerable – like the River.” (398)
After composing this final picture, Ferber placed a similar image in the middle of the
novel as Magnolia leaves Parthy, now proprietor of the Cotton Blossom after the death of her
husband Captain Andy. “Through her tears,” Magnolia sees Parthy standing on the upper
balcony of the Cotton Blossom:
Silhouetted against sky and water, a massive and almost menacing figure in her
robes of black – tall, erect, indomitable. Her face was set. The keen eyes gazed,
unblinking, across the sunlit waters. One arm was raised in a gesture of farewell.
Ruthless, unconquerable, headstrong, untamed, terrible. “She’s like the River,”
Magnolia thought . . . “She’s the one, after all, who’s like the Mississippi.” (264)
These parallel scenes depict Parthy and Magnolia standing determinedly over the theatre
they preserve while bidding farewell to the future of American theatre in the form of their actress
daughters. 108 While, as discussed earlier, Parthy and Magnolia differ in their dramaturgy and
femininity, both remain linked to each other, and the Mississippi, in their steadfast determination
to persevere through life’s hardships. 109
While marketable in a women’s magazine and a popular novel, Kern and Hammerstein
considered Ferber’s emphasis on these aspects of American femininity less commercial in an
American musical. Accordingly, Kern and Hammerstein began their adaptation by shifting the
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steadfast and determined qualities of Ferber’s heroines to their main male singer, Paul Robeson.
Theatre critic Alexander Woollcott relates that Kern completed “Ol’ Man River” two weeks after
meeting Ferber (124), and, according to Show Boat historian Miles Kreuger, Kern then showed
the song to Robeson in order to persuade him to accept the role (Story 20). Although Woollcott’s
dates are not precise, Ziegfeld announced Robeson as part of the production December 13, 1926,
less than a month after Kern signed the initial contract with Ferber. As these dates demonstrate,
Kern and Hammerstein shifted Ferber’s central metaphor from a symbol of intrepid, indomitable
and white femininity to an unchanging, longsuffering, “ol’ [black] man” as one of their first steps
in creating the adaptation.
McMillin attributes Kern and Hammerstein’s transfer of Ferber’s metaphor, as well as
their later inclusion of a black chorus in the production, to the adapters’ desire to address issues
of race in the musical, a desire based in social as well as economic motives. As McMillin points
out, Kern and Hammerstein “were tapping a market, and their inspiration was lined with
commerce” (63). Uniting the endurance and perseverance of the river with black masculinity in
“Ol’ Man River” allowed the adaptors to address themes of African American strife, themes
gaining traction in an industry that had traditionally treated black experience as an essentially
comic subject. Following the 1917 debut of Three Plays for a Negro Theater, the first production
to present African American actors on Broadway in serious dramatic roles, several noncommercial companies, such as The Province Town Players and The Theatre Guild, began
featuring African American subjects and actors in serious dramas. Several of these productions
achieved critical and financial success, including Paul Green’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning In
Abraham’s Bosom (1926), O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (1920) and All God’s Chillun (1924),
and Dorothy and DuBose Heyward’s Porgy (1927). 110
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For Show Boat, such commercial concerns resulted in expanded, although problematic,
portrayals of African Americans 111 and, in turn, a more standard and stereotypical representation
of white femininity. Through “Ol’ Man River,” Kern and Hammerstein separated the musical’s
representations of femininity from the strength and endurance associated with the river, an
alteration that allowed them to conform the femininity in Ferber’s narrative to a representation of
gender more in keeping with Ziegfeld’s brand as well as traditional representations of femininity
in Broadway musicals.
Typically during this period, Broadway musicals centered on romantic-comic plots that
loosely linked spectacular musical numbers featuring popular contemporary songs and bevies of
chorus girls. As musical theatre historian Bruce Kirle explains, at this time, “musical comedies
were often star vehicles . . . in which songs and comedy routines were devised to fit the
specialties and talents of unique performers. The songs were commonly strung together by a thin,
frivolous book [plot], filled with topical references and jokes” (15). Musicals thus operated
through character types and formulaic stories rather than complex characters and intricate plots.
As a genre based on commodifying femininity, the Broadway musical, and the Ziegfeld
production in particular, thus offered little beyond the young romantic ingénue and the facile
chorus girl—types far removed from Ferber’s “iron woman.”
Kern, Hammerstein, and Ziegfeld reformulated Ferber’s heroine to fit this genre by
portraying Magnolia as a woman primarily defined by romantic love rather than suffering and
endurance. Most significantly, the adapters kept Magnolia’s romantic interests alive by leaving
Ravenal alive in the musical and concluding the show with the couple’s happy reunion at the end
of act two. Reuniting the couple required that the adapters temper Ravenal’s character and, thus,
the hardship Magnolia suffers in the serial. 112 After they are married, Ferber’s Ravenal belittles
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Magnolia for her lack of sophistication, frequents brothels, and becomes moody and mildly cruel
when Magnolia exhibits any signs of independence. 113 Kern and Hammerstein omitted these
aspects from the musical by limiting the portrayal of Ravenal and Magnolia’s marriage to a brief,
and relatively happy, scene together during the Chicago World’s Fair. 114 Removing the day-today hardship of Magnolia and Ravenal’s marriage worked to portray the couple’s reunion at the
close of the show as a happy outcome and establish the narrative as a tale of the triumph of
romantic love and marriage rather than female perseverance.
In his review of the production, theatre critic Stephen Rathbun noted the genre
conventions dictating this ending as well as the pleasant perspective the couple’s reunion
imposed on the narrative, commenting, “Oscar Hammerstein, the librettist, has supplied a happy
ending not to be found in Miss Ferber’s novel. The married lovers are united in middle age to
spend the rest of their lives together. The urge of a happy ending rarely goes unheeded in a
musical play” (6). Kern and Hammerstein’s restructuring and foregrounding of the narrative’s
romantic theme conformed to genre concerns and also followed the pattern established in several
previous Ziegfeld productions, including Annie Dear (1924) and Betsy (1926), which centered on
courtship and marriage. 115 Just as readers of Lane’s Companion expected strong portrayals of
American women, audiences at Ziegfeld’s musicals anticipated beautiful women in comic,
uncomplicated plots ending in happy, heteronormative unions.
In the serial, Ferber specifically rejects this romanticized conclusion, and the emotionally
dependent femininity it entails. Ferber’s narrator clearly renounces any possibility of a fairy tale
ending by concluding the description of Magnolia and Ravenal’s wedding with the phrase: “And
so they lived h--- and so they lived . . . [sic] ever after” (228). Hammerstein, however, viewed
the musical’s romantic conclusion as an essential element of the story and the foundation for
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Magnolia’s character. Hammerstein expressed these views in a letter to James Whale, the
director of Universal’s 1936 film version of the musical. Hammerstein disliked Ravenal’s
appealing appearance at the end of the film and explained to Whale that, “The romantic interest
at the end of the picture is a reunion of lovers. . . Magnolia has always loved him [Ravenal]. She
―can’t help lovin‘ dat man. 116 She will always love him, no matter what he looks like,” or,
apparently, how he has treated her (qtd. in Axtell 208). Hammerstein argued that Ravenal should
look defeated at the end so that Magnolia’s “heart will go out to him. She will want to mother
him, take his hand, lift him out of his rut of failure and place him by her side where she feels he
has always belonged. That is the ending as written. I can see or feel no other.” (qtd. in Axtell
208).
Although Hammerstein viewed Magnolia as a woman who “has worked hard and
conquered life,” ultimately, she remained, in his view, a woman determined by her unending
love for “dat man” (qtd. in Axtell 208). 117 Music historian Katherine Axtell views
Hammerstein’s comments as evidence that he created “the manufactured reconciliation” between
Magnolia and Ravenal “with conviction rather than as a simple concession to convention” (208).
However, Hammerstein’s conviction that he could “see or feel no other” ending than one
reuniting Magnolia and Ravenal indicates the strength of the genre concerns that precluded him
from seeing or feeling the value of Ferber’s ending, which underscored Magnolia’s independent
perseverance.
Hammerstein’s comments highlight the entertainment value carried in conservative
representations of women as inevitably and faithfully devoted to marriage and family. According
to Hammerstein, Magnolia has little agency in her affection, which she “can’t help,” and, without
Ravenal, Magnolia, in the musical, is incomplete, missing something that “has always belonged”
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by her side (qtd. in Axtell 208). Based on their experiences with Broadway musicals and
Ziegfeld’s brand of femininity, Kern, Hammerstein, and Ziegfeld believed that this powerless
and emotionally dependent depiction carried more entertainment value than the independent and
indomitable femininity portrayed in Ferber’s Magnolia and, incidentally, her Mississippi. 118
Mitigating Magnolia’s emotional suffering produced a reductive portrayal of Magnolia’s
problems and, accordingly, a less triumphant version of her perseverance. This more
conventional femininity suited the traditional musical genre as well as the typical Ziegfeld show,
making Magnolia’s femininity a more recognizable commodity in these markets.
In addition to creating a more conventional picture of white femininity, restoring Ravenal
also drastically altered the narrative’s implications about female suffering and race. Returning
Ravenal, the white protagonist’s husband, relegated emotional suffering in the musical to Julie,
the mixed-race Other, whose husband remains absent. As discussed earlier, in the serial, Julie’s
forced departure from the show boat demonstrates the material limits she faces in a racist society.
In the serial, Julie’s mixed-race heritage precludes her from performing, a profession Ferber
specifically links to femininity. In Ferber’s work, Julie’s exclusion from, and Magnolia’s access
to, the field of entertainment thus mirrors and serves as a commentary on contemporary
definitions of ideal American femininity as exclusively white.
Kern and Hammerstein, however, altered the serial’s depiction of and commentary on
femininity and race in an effort to capitalize on the talents of torch singer Helen Morgan, who
played Julie in the musical. Rather than leaving Julie in a brothel, a scene extant in earlier
versions of the script, Kern and Hammerstein altered the narrative to make Julie the star singer at
the Trocadero, the variety theatre where Magnolia seeks employment. This alteration allowed the
adapters to add “Bill” to the score, 119 a song suited to Morgan’s signature style. However, Julie’s
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presence at the night club detracts from the social issues at play in the plot by eliminating the
racial barriers that restrict her options in the serial. Instead of social prejudice, the musical
attributes Julie’s romantic and employment difficulties to her alcohol addiction, a characteristic
manufactured for the stage version. This alteration capitalized on Morgan’s talent, fame, and,
according to Kreuger, Morgan’s own dissipation, which imbued her character with an authentic
sense of vulnerability. 120 The adaptors thus incorporated the entertainment value of Julie’s tragic
situation and enhanced this value by shifting responsibility for her adversity from society to the
individual, implying that Julie, the mixed-race foil to Magnolia’s whiteness, carries essential
qualities that cause her misfortune. 121 Exculpating white society in this manner proved a
profitable approach in catering to Broadway audiences, which were primarily white, and critics
uniformly failed to comment on this departure from Ferber’s plot. 122
In addition to capitalizing on the tragic mulatto stereotype, Kern and Hammerstein’s
version of this scene furthered the musical’s representation of white femininity as impotent,
elevated only through the sacrifice of racial Others rather than through self-determination and
hard work. By employing Julie at the Trocedaro, Kern and Hammerstein placed Magnolia in
competition with Julie. Unbeknownst to Magnolia, Julie is the star singer at the Trocedaro, and,
in order for Magnolia to receive a job, Julie must lose hers. Hidden from Magnolia’s view, Julie
overhears Magnolia’s audition and then quits, saying she is headed for a drinking spree, in order
to leave the position open for Magnolia. Kreuger praises this moment as “an ingenious invention
of Hammerstein’s . . . [which] substantially improves on the situation in the book” (Story 50).
However, the moment rehearses a troubling trope in constructions of race and femininity. By
invoking her alcoholism, Julie embraces the stereotype of the tragic mulatto and disappears into
her dissipation in order to facilitate Magnolia’s fortune. Julie’s abdication parallels her earlier
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ejection from the show boat, which, in the musical, opens the opportunity for Magnolia to
assume her roles as leading lady. 123 Kern and Hammerstein thus alter Ferber’s foils, placing
feminine whiteness in opposition to rather than in sympathy with the racial Other. 124 In addition,
the musical thus also renders female vulnerability as an innate aspect of gender rather than the
product of social constructs. Women’s determination and hard work become powerless in the
musical wherein Magnolia survives only through Julie’s self-sacrifice, her own luck, and her
ability, as she repeatedly sings, to “make believe.”
Female Practitioners
As intended, Kern and Hammerstein’s revised version of Ferber’s narrative appealed to
Ziegfeld, who held a keen understanding of the entertainment and commercial value of
conventional femininity and the romantic plot in a musical. Ziegfeld agreed to produce Show
Boat and later reiterated the importance of romance and comedy in the production in a telegram
Kern received March 3, 1927. Ziegfeld complained to Kern saying, “His [Hammerstein’s]
present lay-out too serious. Not enough comedy. After marriage remember your love interest is
eliminated” (qtd. in Bordman 282-3). Ziegfeld demanded that Hammerstein “fix the book,” the
musical’s script, presumably by adding more comedy in the second act in order to counter the
loss of a romantic plot until Magnolia and Ravenal’s reunion (qtd. in Bordman 282-3).
“Fix[ing] the book” to suit Ziegfeld translated into another major shift in the narrative’s
representation of femininity through the addition of several comic scenes depicting American
theatre as a male-managed industry. Such scenes eliminated Ferber’s link between American
theatre practice and American womanhood and further minimized Magnolia’s independence by
placing her performance, like the Ziegfeld girl’s, under male control. In the novel, Magnolia
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succeeds as a singer because of her instincts as a performer and her hard work. She searches for a
variety theatre, secures an audition, purchases a banjo, and practices late into the night (359). In
the musical, however, Frank Schultz, a show-boat friend played by Sammy White, obtains the
audition for Magnolia, who is too tongue-tied to request one for herself (Kern and Hammerstein,
Libretto 82). Rather than practicing diligently, Magnolia succeeds in the musical by following
Schultz and the business-savvy manager, who teach her a fast rag version of her audition song.
Kern and Hammerstein’s adaptation provided a comic bit for White, a seasoned vaudeville
performer, who danced into exhaustion and fell to the floor at the end of the scene, a stunt
lightening the second act as Ziegfeld requested (Kreuger, Story 45). 125 However, their adaptation
also divorced Magnolia from the dramaturgical authority she possesses in the serial by
submitting her performance to Schultz and the producer’s male expertise.
Kern and Hammerstein again sacrificed Magnolia’s proficiency for comic effect during
the scene of her Trocadero debut. Instead of the widowed Parthy finding Magnolia abandoned in
Chicago, Kern and Hammerstein staged a chance encounter between Captain Andy, who, like
Ravenal, remains alive in the musical, and his daughter Magnolia. Having left Parthy at their
hotel, Captain Andy discovers Magnolia as he rings in the New Year at the Trocadero on the
night of her debut. Magnolia falters in her performance, causing audience members to heckle,
but ultimately triumphs when her father coaches her from the audience. 126 Echoing Ziegfeld’s
instructions for his Follies dancers, Andy calls to Magnolia from the audience, telling her to
“Smile!” (Kern and Hammerstein, Libretto 92). This alteration offered Charles Winninger, as the
inebriated Captain Andy, an opportunity to exploit his talent for physical comedy and further
lightened the second act as Ziegfeld demanded. However, the scene also detracted from
Magnolia’s autonomy by placing her in continued theatrical and practical dependence on her
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father. Rather than relying on her own sensibility and performing the emotions she experiences,
Magnolia heeds her father’s advice and manufactures a smile for the audience. 127
In addition to reducing Magnolia’s professional prowess, omitting Captain Andy’s death
eliminated Parthy’s dramaturgical development by sustaining Andy’s presence at the literal and
artistic helm of the Cotton Blossom. Placing Magnolia’s performances under male authority and
maintaining Parthy as mistress rather than manager of the Cotton Blossom shifted the metaphor
of American theatre practice from an image of female gender and autonomy to a symbol of male
authority and expertise. The musical thus submitted Ferber’s link between American
womanhood and the American theatre to male management, an understanding consistent with the
Ziegfeld brand.
While it is tempting to read this male authority in the musical as a metaphor for Kern,
Hammerstein, and Ziegfeld’s adaptation of Ferber’s own material, Ferber herself played a key
role in creating the musical. Although Ferber claimed to have little to do with the dramatization,
as the creator of the musical’s source material, as well as an experienced playwright in her own
right, Ferber carried an influential voice in the production decisions for Show Boat. Due to the
novelty of creating a Broadway musical out of a serious literary work, Ferber monitored the
production process closely and attended rehearsals more frequently than usual (Gilbert,
Interview). Hammerstein, assisted by Ziegfeld and Kern, 128 directed the musical, and Ferber
consulted at various times with each of these practitioners. Ferber worked with Ziegfeld on
casting decisions, 129 and Kern and Hammerstein consulted Ferber on the script, incorporating her
suggestions into their final version. 130 Ferber also provided input on the historic accuracy of
Joseph Urban’s sets as well as John Harkrider’s costumes (Ziegfeld, Richard and Paulette 230).
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Although consulting closely with the production team, Ferber felt the effects of her status
as an outsider, a status she attributed, in part, to her gender. In a three-page critique of one of the
preview performances, Ferber acknowledged this issue to Ziegfeld and declared her
determination to overcome it. She began her critique stating, “there’s a kind of Masonic
clannishness about you men folks that sort of shuts a woman out—unless she’s very persistent
about what she wants to say, as I’m going to be” (Letter to Ziegfeld). Ferber preceded to critique
Howard Marsh’s, who played Ravenal, acting and costumes, both of which left her unenthused,
as well as Norma Terris’s, who played Magnolia, and Helen Morgan’s costumes (Letter to
Ziegfeld). Production photos indicate that Ziegfeld incorporated several of Ferber’s suggestions
into the final designs. 131 Ferber maintained her involvement with the musical even as she worked
on The Royal Family, a play she co-wrote with George S. Kaufman that premiered the day after
Show Boat’s opening night. 132 Shuttling back and forth between theatres, Ferber worked on both
productions as they neared their Broadway debuts.
While Ferber played a strong advisory role in the production of Show Boat, the aesthetics
and ideologies, particularly in relation to American women and womanhood, carried the distinct
impression of the Ziegfeld touch. Indeed, Ferber later described the adaptation process saying
she felt as if “Show Boat had been adopted by foster parents and was being educated to be a
glamour girl” (Treasure 316). As stated earlier, Ferber’s “iron woman” clashed with the
femininity idealized, commodified, and branded in the Ziegfeld girl. While the Ziegfeld girl was
a consistently profitable product, Ferber’s iron woman remained an untried commodity in a
Broadway musical. Apart from the Ziegfeld brand, Show Boat carried little capital as a potential
Broadway musical. Show Boat did, however, carry substantial risk as a Broadway musical
dealing with serious subject matter. Although centered on a romantic plot, Show Boat also
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portrayed miscegenation, alcoholism, and the disappointment of romance, albeit mitigated in
Magnolia’s case, topics audiences would not expect and might not appreciate in a musical,
particularly a Ziegfeld musical.
Expanding the Ziegfeld Brand
As Kern and Hammerstein worked on the adaptation, Ziegfeld grew increasingly
concerned about the production. 133 His secretary “Goldie” Stanton Clough recalls that Ziegfeld
sent numerous telegrams to the adaptors and demonstrated great displeasure during rehearsals
(Kreuger, “Goldie” 39-40). 134 Ziegfeld’s concerns about the Show Boat reflect the financial risk
incurred by producing a show of this size. Show Boat featured fourteen extravagant sets by
Joseph Urban, Ziegfeld’s principal designer for Follies, as well as elaborate costumes by John
Harkrider, who had designed Ziegfeld’s 1927 Follies show as well as his musical Rio Rita
(1927). Show Boat also featured thirty principal actors supported by a chorus of ninety-six
singers and dancers. According to Ziegfeld, the show required $31,000 in weekly operating
expenses (Kreuger, Story 70).
While accepting the risks of this massive new enterprise, Ziegfeld mitigated his potential
for loss by infusing the production with the tried and true aesthetics of the Ziegfeld Follies and,
in particular, the proven profitability of the Ziegfeld brand of femininity. 135 According to
Mizejewski, the femininity Ziegfeld’s showgirls embodied “worked as a powerful icon of race,
sexuality, class, and consumerist desires” (3). Ziegfeld infused this iconic aesthetic into the
production by casting Norma Terris, a former Ziegfeld girl, as Magnolia. 136 Ziegfeld’s original
contract engaged Terris “to appear in either Showboat [sic], Ziegfeld Follies or some other of my
productions,” a flexibility indicating Terris’s continuing embodiment of the Ziegfeld ideal as
well as the affinity between the musical version of Ferber’s heroine and the Ziegfeld girl (qtd. in
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Ziegfeld, Richard and Paulette 230). As a former Ziegfeld chorus girl, Terris conformed to the
strict and subjective standards Ziegfeld maintained in casting women in musical shows,
including “a pretty face,” “good figure,” and the ability to dance (Ziegfeld, “Picking” 34).
Through her Ziegfeld-approved body and her history as a Ziegfeld chorus girl, Terris imbued
Magnolia with the Ziegfeld brand of beauty based on youth, whiteness, and carefree energy, all
regimented through male control.
Programs for Show Boat underscored the affiliation between the femininity commodified
in the musical and that featured in Ziegfeld’s Follies by presenting audiences with numerous
photos of current Ziegfeld girls in elegant costumes and alluring poses accompanied by copy
inviting the audience to experience more such photos in the theatre’s lobby. 137 Some programs
also invoked Norma Terris’s history as a Ziegfeld girl, as well as the Ziegfeld girl’s association
with class and consumerism, through advertisements such as a General Motors’ interview with
Terris entitled “To Be Or Not To Be, a Chorus Girl” (“To Be”). After discussing Terris’s history
as a chorus girl, as well as her plans to purchase a Cadillac through installment buying, the
interview describes Terris’s Ziegfeld-approved body as she applies her make up: “Her eyes, as
mentioned, are warm brown, her well-shaped mouth, small; her features are rather delicate; her
figure, slender” (5). 138 The interview and the photos of chorus girls thus reminded audiences of
Terris’s standing as a female approved by the Ziegfeld empire and carried this approval, and the
gender values it entailed, into her portrayal of Show Boat’s heroine.
In addition to his leading lady, the Ziegfeld brand of femininity permeated the musical in
several production numbers that filled the stage with what critic Robert Coleman described as “a
chorus of 150 of the most beautiful girls ever glorified by Mr. Ziegfeld” (qtd. in Block 20).
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While Coleman overestimated the number of women in the chorus, Show Boat did contain sixtyfour chorus women, including sixteen black female singers and twelve black female dancers.
Coleman’s language, which adopts Ziegfeld’s slogan as “glorifier of the American girl,”
indicates the success of Ziegfeld’s marketing in presenting the women in Show Boat as an
extension of the Ziegfeld brand. Ziegfeld’s brand of femininity also surfaced in the chorus
delineations which divided the thirty-six white chorus women into twenty-four “Glorified
Beauties” and twelve dancers (qtd. in Ries 68). Ziegfeld worked directly on the aesthetics of the
femininity commodified in the production and dictated hairstyles as well as hat styles 139 while
fretting over the effect the modest period clothing produced on the actresses’ figures. As,
“Goldie” Stanton Clough recalls, Ziegfeld “hated to see the girls all dressed up in so much [sic]
clothes” (Kreuger, “Goldie” 39).
To counter this effect and further the Ziegfeld aesthetic, Kern, Hammerstein, and
Ziegfeld included several opportunities for spectacular Follies-like displays of the women in
Show Boat. 140 Their opening scene for act two, for example, exemplifies the extent of Ziegfeld’s
impact on representations of femininity in the production. Kern and Hammerstein set this scene
at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, extending Magnolia and Ravenal’s visit to the
exposition, an event receiving half of a sentence in the novel, 141 into a spectacular scene. Urban’s
lavish set depicted attractions emblematic of the Chicago’s World’s Fair, including the Ferris
Wheel, Dahomey Village, and Streets of Cairo. The scene opened as a barker invited fair patrons
to “come up and feel the fist” of the sixteen-year-old “strongest little lady known to/The world,”
and La Belle Fatima 142 followed this attraction with a hootchy kootchy dance so erotic women at
the fair scurry away while men follow Fatima into the Streets of Cairo (Kern and Hammerstein,
Libretto 64).
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According to theatre and dance scholar Frank W. D. Ries, sixteen “Ziegfeld Beauties” in
“elaborate costumes” entered at this point with their male escorts (73). Ries’s extensive analysis
of an annotated conductor’s score from the original production reveals much about the dances
Sammy Lee choreographed for the musical. According to Ries, at this moment, “Each male
circle[d] his girl twice, with kicks getting higher and higher as she slowly pivot[ed] in her finery”
(73). La Bell Fatima, played by Dorothy Denese, then entered and again performed her “Danse
Orientale” (Ries 73). An additional display of female pulchritude continued the scene as a
“Congress of Beauty” featuring “Diplomats of loveliness from every country in the peaceful
world” paraded across the stage (Kern and Hammerstein, Libretto 65).
The fair’s female attendees, the barker’s invitation to interact with the strong woman,
Fatima’s exotic erotic dance, and the parade of lovely “diplomats” echoed elements of Ziegfeld’s
iconic displays of femininity and worked in conjunction with Terris’s status as a Ziegfeld girl to
incorporate the ideology behind this icon into the musical version of Show Boat. As Mizejewski
demonstrates, Ziegfeld’s Follies constructed the image of the Ziegfeld American girl in
opposition to images of “ethnicity, racial difference, and comedy” and, I would add, overt
sexuality and physical strength (9). In the World’s Fair scene in Show Boat, the fair goers,
particularly Magnolia and the “Glorified Beauties” attending the fair, gave audiences the
ensemble of young, white, female beauties they expected from a Ziegfeld chorus (qtd. in Ries
68). Magnolia, as portrayed by a Ziegfeld girl, and this white, youthful, energetic female chorus
acted in counterpoint to the Other femininities represented on the Midway Plaisance, a space set
apart from the main exposition in 1893 and used to display exotic curiosities.
As a space designated as Other and represented in a show removed from Ziegfeld’s
iconic Follies and Frolics, the Midway in Show Boat offered Ziegfeld, Hammerstein, and Kern a
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setting in which to commodify femininities Other than those embodied by the Ziegfeld girl. The
displays of femininity in this scene thus functioned in a manner similar to the ethnic and
blackface acts Ziegfeld employed in his Follies shows to accentuate the difference between the
class, race, and sexuality presented in these acts and the class, race, and sexuality embodied by
the chorus and show girls. 143 Fatima and the “strongest little lady,” for example, function in this
manner at the opening of act two in Show Boat. Fatima’s “Danse Orientale” (Ries 73) was,
according to the libretto, a “couchie-couchie” (Kern and Hammerstein 66), or belly dance, a
dance associated in Western stereotypes with Middle-Eastern harem women and, thus, exotic
female sexuality. Ziegfeld had used similar associations in Follies numbers, including, “Arabian
Night,” 144 “The Palace of Beauty,” and “The Treasures of the East,” which centered on harem
themes (Mizejewski 8). Although such numbers employed white Ziegfeld girls, they titillated
audiences by presenting the women in foreign costumes and contexts which imbued their
respectable, white, middle-class bodies with the implication of non-white, hypersexuality
implied in stereotypes of the Middle East. Such foreign locales and themes also designated this
hypersexuality as Other, setting it in opposition to the male-controlled, middle-class, white
sexuality displayed in the Ziegfeld girl. The World’s Fair scene staged a similar antithesis as the
white women in the chorus flee Fatima’s performance, thus separating the hypersexuality of the
exotic Other from the respectable sexuality of the white women.
The “strongest little lady” functioned in a similar manner by setting female strength apart
as a quality separate from the middle-class white women attending the fair. Featuring female
physical strength as an attraction on the Midway Plaisance presented such strength as an exotic
curiosity, a quality Other from the women attending the fair. The musical continued this
association in a specialty adagio dance performed by the Sidell Sisters, a Wisconsin dance team
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hired for the show. Adagio dances were specifically choreographed for the purpose of
demonstrating the dancers’ strength. As Ries explains, “adagio dancing [was] a balletic form of
partnering that combined acrobatics, lifts, dramatic poses, and intermittent lyrical passages” (8).
Such dances were often performed by a male and female couple, with the male partner lifting
and supporting the female dancer. As a female team, the Sidell Sisters located this strength, in
their adagio, specifically in female bodies. Through Kern and Hammerstein’s alterations and
Ziegfeld’s staging, Show Boat minimized Magnolia’s strength, as exhibited in her ability to
survive suffering, reduced feminine strength to physical strength, and then constructed this
quality as Other by featuring strong women as novelty acts along the Midway Plaisance.
Lest viewers read such qualities as aspects of Ziegfeld’s iconic brand, the following
number on the Midway demonstrated the difference between the femininity embodied by Fatima
and the Sidell Sisters and the femininity displayed by the white chorus. Magnolia and Ravenal’s
song “Why Do I Love You?” which grew into a number including Andy, Parthy and the white
chorus, followed the Sidell Sisters’ adagio. “Why Do I Love You?” concluded with the white
chorus arranged with “eight chorus girls sitting on eight chorus boys’ knees in a semi-circle,
eight more chorus girls standing with their boyfriends in the spaces between, and the sixteen
Ziegfeld Beauties now posed on various platforms on the set” (Ries 74). This arrangement
stressed the heteronormative sexuality of the white women, who appeared either with a male
partner or alone. Unlike the same-sex partnering of the Sidell Sisters, or the hypersexual image
of Fatima pursuing every man in the audience at the fair, the women of the white chorus stood
either alone, implying availability, or with their male mate. This staging reinforced the
heterosexuality as well as the monogamy of the white women in the show. Since these women
served as a metaphorical extension of Magnolia, even serving as her bridesmaids in the wedding
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scene, their sexuality echoed and magnified Magnolia’s romantic attachment and fidelity to
Ravenal.
This normative portrayal of femininity and female sexuality served to contain the
transgressive sexuality implied in the Sidell Sisters’ adagio, Fatima’s belly dance, and, most
explicitly, the Sidell’s Apache dance at the beginning of the New Year’s scene at the Trocedaro.
Reputedly, the Apache dance, pronounced “apash,” originated as an entertainment among violent
Parisian street gangs in Montmartre in the 1890s (Kelly 11). Apache dances portray a violent
confrontation between a woman, sometimes depicted as a prostitute, and a man, often
representing her pimp. The form romanticizes battery against the female partner who, as one
practitioner put it in 1915, “did not seem to resent it” (qtd. in Kelly 12). In the Sidell’s version,
Billie Sidell played the role of the man, and Piera Sidell 145 played the girl. Their performance
thus queered the traditional performance of the dance by placing the erotic, violent sexuality in
two female, familial bodies. 146 According to one reviewer, the Sidell’s version was “an Apache
dance of more than average violence in which the girl who plays the man shows wonderful
strength in chucking her partner over one shoulder, while the other [dancer] has some fine
acrobatic tricks.” (qtd. in Harter 12). In the genre of this dance, such acrobatic tricks often
involve flying across the floor after a punch or a kick from the male partner. The Sidells ended
their Apache as Billie, dressed as the man, threw her sister Piera over a table and strangled her
while Piera screamed (Harter 12). 147 The dance was thus erotic and violent as well as acrobatic
and, particularly through the use of drag, transgressive, a combination that delighted audiences
(see fig. 1).
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Fig. 1 Sidell Sisters performing their Apache dance in Show Boat, Wisconsin
Historical Society, Image ID: 32721.
The Sidell’s dances, in conjunction with Fatima’s belly dance, worked to affirm the
heterosexuality and heteronormativity of the white chorus girls and, by extension, Magnolia. As
Mizejewski demonstrates, emerging studies of sexuality and, in particular, the identification of
lesbianism as a category of desire at this time lent urgency to the heterosexuality established in
mainstream industries commodifying femininity (87). Women’s magazines stopped carrying
stories of girls engaged in physical affection, and shows, such as Ziegfeld’s, emphasized the
heterosexual desires of the women they displayed (Mizejewski 85, 87). However, as Ziegfeld’s
use of Fatima and the Sidells demonstrates, transgressive female sexuality held high
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entertainment value on Broadway. As a show removed from his exclusive Follies and Frolics,
Show Boat allowed Ziegfeld to commodify this transgressive sexuality in an overt manner
palatable and marketable to middle-class audiences, yet distanced from his exalted “Ziegfeld
American Girl.”
In addition to capitalizing on sexually transgressive forms of femininity, Ziegfeld used
Show Boat to racially expand his brand of beauty. As discussed in chapter one, racial whiteness
formed a key component of Ziegfeld’s lucrative brand of femininity. However, Ziegfeld
recognized that “the public taste changes in regard to beauty, just as it does in other things”
(“Picking” 120), and, as the increasing popularity the black chorus girl demonstrated, 1920s
“public taste” included darker skin tones in definitions of beauty. As Mizejewski demonstrates,
“Ziegfeld’s revue, far from being entirely white, created a more complicated space of various
hybridizations, inclusions, and exclusions” (134). As described earlier, one such hybridization
occurred during the 1922 number “It’s Getting Dark on Old Broadway,” which employed
lighting effects to darken Ziegfeld’s white chorus girls. Through this effect, and numbers in
foreign settings, such as jungles or harems, as well as a blackface chorus number in the 1925
Follies, 148 Ziegfeld capitalized on the growing entertainment value of the non-white female body
while maintaining the racial whiteness his brand promised.
As a show outside of this genre, Show Boat enabled Ziegfeld to “glorify,” or commodify,
women racially excluded from the Follies and Frolics without compromising the white
femininity sold and branded through these iconic entertainment products of the Ziegfeld
empire. 149 Ziegfeld began this commodification by advertising in January 1927 for what Variety
described as “’Dark Brown’ Negresses” who were, according to Variety, more in vogue on
Broadway than the previously popular “’Hi Yaller’ Girls” (“Hi Yaller” 3). Variety proclaimed
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that, “In the new Flo Ziegfeld show, ‘Show Boat,’ there will be a number of Negresses, all ‘dark
brown,’ with the selecting passing over the light-skinned women” (“Hi Yaller” 1). According to
McMillin, Will Vodery, an African American musician who arranged music for Ziegfeld’s
Follies, likely played a major role in casting Show Boat’s black chorus (64). However, the
Variety article implies that Ziegfeld himself took part in casting women for the black chorus.
Ziegfeld detailed his methodical process of “selecting” and “passing over” women in several
articles explaining his criteria for choosing actresses for his shows. “On days of inspection,” he
related in 1919, “the girls pass through my office in long lines. As they pass I say ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’
That is all. Those to whom I say ‘Yes’ . . . reach my standard of beauty” (“How I Pick” 158).
Variety’s description of “the selecting [and] passing over” based on appearance indicates that
Ziegfeld employed a similar process in casting the African American chorus girls for Show Boat.
As the Variety ad indicates, skin tone, particularly female skin tone, was a primary
concern in casting and staging Show Boat. As musical theatre scholar Todd Decker explains,
Kern, Hammerstein, and Ziegfeld specified a shade for the African American women in Show
Boat because:
They anticipated, as any professional of the time would, that a Broadway
audience would judge the tone and intent of Show Boat in part by assessing the
relative lightness or darkness of the colored female ensemble members’ skin. By
casting “dark brown” women, the Show Boat “gals” would not be confused with
the “high yella” chorus lines filling the stages of stage and nightclub revues on
Broadway and in Harlem. Opting for darker skin tones for the black women in
Show Boat was an artistic decision, part of the larger goal of emphasizing
narrative and racial contrast over glitz and sex appeal in what was, after all,
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Ziegfeld’s Show Boat. 150 Given Ziegfeld’s reputation as a “glorifier of American
girls,” the Variety item describing the first colored chorus Ziegfeld had ever hired
says much for industry anticipation of Show Boat as a Ziegfeld production.
(“Black/White” 108)
As Decker notes, women’s skin tone acted as a signpost for audiences in interpreting
1920s Broadway productions. Since Ziegfeld’s entertainment empire rested on his signature
brand of femininity, a brand based on racial whiteness, this was especially true for the women in
his shows, particularly the women in his signature chorus numbers. However, rather than
eschewing an affiliation with the “’high yella’ chorus lines filling the stages of stage and
nightclub revues,” as Decker claims, I would argue that Ziegfeld encouraged this association, as
well as the “glitz and sex appeal” it evoked in Show Boat’s African American chorus, especially
the show’s African American female dancers (“Black/White” 108). Although Ziegfeld originally
advertised for “dark brown” female performers, the eventual Show Boat cast featured what one
reviewer described as a “high yeller” chorus (qtd. in Ries 66), while another described the
choruses in the show as “choruses white, choruses high yellow, brown and black, and all colors
strictly permanent” (“A New York” 248).
The femininity, and, specifically, the sexuality, commodified in the black chorus dancers
related directly to their “strictly permanent,” or authentic, racial designation as well as their
mixture of hues. According to Mizejewski, black female singers and dancers with Caucasian
features and mixed blood carried entertainment value, in part, due to the “forbidden sexuality”
entailed in their sex appeal (123). The illicitness of this desire stemmed from the implication of
cultural as well as legal transgression a mixed-race body evoked in a nation which, in 1927, had
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30 states with anti-miscegenation laws and eight additional states with similar laws pending
(Pascoe 181). Show Boat underscored this appeal through the miscegenation scene, which
foregrounded Julie’s mixed-race ancestry and the illegality of the relationship producing this
heritage.
Contrary to Decker’s claim, Ziegfeld deliberately subsumed Ferber’s narrative and
“racial contrast” in order to evoke the “glitz and sex appeal” as well as the desire associated with
night clubs and revues featuring light-hued African American chorus girls (“Black/White” 108).
In contrast to the description offered in the Variety ad, the Pittsburgh Courier, an established
black newspaper of this era, described the show’s African American female dancers as “the
light-skinned dancing contingent” (“Critic Says”), and the Courier’s theatre reviewer later
specified several of the black female dancers as “creole,” “inter-racial,” and possessing “beauty
typical of the Mediterranean Riviere [sic]” (Snelson). 151 As the Variety article indicates, Ziegfeld
purposefully managed the hue of the women in the black chorus, and the inclusion in the chorus
of several of the “light-skinned women” Variety claimed would be passed over must, therefore,
have been a deliberate and strategic choice (“Hi Yaller’”). Ziegfeld carefully cast the women in
the show’s African American chorus to deliberately elicit the glamour as well as the illicit desire
and sex appeal of the mixed-race chorus girl. Ziegfeld’s casting choices also emphasized this
appeal by leaving the twelve African American chorus dancers without male partners, 152 thus
facilitating the sense of availability so central to the chorus girl’s allure in Follies and Frolics.
Ziegfeld capitalized on the entertainment value of this taboo form of sex appeal
particularly through the World’s Fair scene at the opening of act two. While the women in the
African American chorus appeared in working-class and modest formal clothing for Act I, they
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donned more spectacular costumes for Act II, including revealing outfits reminiscent of the
Follies for the number “In Dahomey.” “In Dahomey” begins as “Two [white] Girls scream and
cross up L to DR followed by Dahomey ‘Savages’” from The Dahomey Village at the Chicago
World’s Fair (Kern and Hammerstein, Libretto 69). The black “savages” chant lyrics such as
“Dyunga hungy ung gunga” and menace the white fair goers, who decide to leave in order to
avoid becoming “a spearful” for the Dahomey villagers (Kern and Hammerstein, Libretto 70).
After their white audience leaves, the Dahomey performers express disdain for the stereotypes
they portray in their performance and sing longingly of their real homes in New York City.
While the Dahomey sequence satirizes white stereotypes of African and African
American culture, designer John Harkrider’s costumes reified stereotypes about African
American female beauty and sexuality. Harkrider clothed female singers in the Dahomey Village
in draped fabric with geometric patterns, echoing designs of Kente cloth. Female dancers wore
ankle bracelets, tight shorts, and short tops, exposing their legs and midriffs. 153 Such costumes
were designed to evoke African tribal dress and, thus, set the Dahomey women apart as foreign,
even as they longed for New York. In addition, the dancer’s costumes served as a sharp contrast
to the high-necked, floor-length dresses of the white women at the fair and, thus, designated the
black dancers as hypersexual. The midriff-exposing costumes further associated these dancers
with Fatima, the belly dancer, who presumably donned a similarly revealing costume for her
overtly sexual and foreign performance. In addition, the number involved “a very vigorous and
acrobatic dance for the twelve black female dancers,” movements setting them apart from the
graceful and controlled movements of the white chorus women (Ries 74). 154 The Dahomey
costumes and movements thus created a sharp contrast to the modestly-clothed, and well-
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controlled white female bodies which, fearful of African violence, and, by implication, sexuality,
flee the scene, recapitulating their earlier flight from Fatima’s sexual dance. 155
Although this scene separated African American women from depictions of white
femininity in the play, the scene functioned in a more complex manner within the broader
contexts of Show Boat and the Ziegfeld brand. As a spectacular chorus number featuring
attractive women in scanty clothes in a Ziegfeld show, “In Dahomey,” in conjunction with other
aspects of the musical, worked to construct the African American chorus girl as part of the
Ziegfeld brand of beauty. In addition to the Dahomey scene, the World’s Fair included the
“Congress of Beauty,” a Follies-like parade displaying “Diplomats of loveliness from every
country in this peaceful world” (Kern and Hammerstein Libretto 65). Given the availability of
several black chorus girls who conformed, albeit not racially, to Ziegfeld’s standards, it is
possible that this number included women from the African American chorus. The Congress of
Beauty presented, in the words of the barker, “Beautiful girls from near and far . . . From Peru/
Timbuctoo and Zanzibar/ Europe, Asia – They’ll amaze ya!” (Kern and Hammerstein, Libretto
65). Whether or not Ziegfeld employed women from his African American chorus to represent
“diplomats” from Zanzibar or other foreign locales, the barker’s lyrics discursively included
black women in this parade of beauty, a signature form of display from Ziegfeld’s Follies and
Frolics shows.
By including African American women, discursively and, perhaps, physically, in this
signature staging, as well as in a large female chorus typical of Ziegfeld’s shows, Show Boat
seemed to many to have extended the Ziegfeld designation of feminine beauty to African
American women. In an article entitled “Ziegfeld and Belasco Laud Our Show Girls,” William
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F. McDermott, critic for the black newspaper the Chicago Defender, praised the recent
opportunities for African American performers, specifically show girls, in Show Boat as well as
David Belasco’s production of Lulu Belle. McDermott hailed Show Boat as “a girl show in which
the majority of the beauties, the liveliest of the dancers and the most stirring of the singers are
African. Thus,” McDermott continued, “our blackamoor brethren are recognized with a
respectful flourish . . . by the most celebrated of the girl show impresarios” (6). McDermott’s
classification of Show Boat as “a girl show,” and his designation of the show’s producer as “the
most celebrated of girl show impresarios,” indicate the close association audiences recognized
between the musical and Ziegfeld’s Frolics and Follies, particularly in their commodification of
femininity. In addition, McDermott understood that, as a Ziegfeld production, Show Boat
included the black chorus girl in Ziegfeld’s brand of beauty, a designation heretofore reserved
for white women. 156
Not only did McDermott read Show Boat in this manner, but reports indicate that the
musical prompted Ziegfeld himself to consider expanding the boundaries of beauty in his Follies
shows, his iconic and exclusive productions. Show Boat closed in May 1929 after 575
performances, and, according to the Chicago Defender, Ziegfeld soon began considering African
American chorus girls for his 1931 Follies show, his first edition of the Follies since 1927. 157
Reputedly, Ziegfeld, or one of his representatives, approached several dancers from the Show
Boat cast, including Bessie Allison Buchanan, 158 Billie Cain, and Teresa Gentry, 159 about
appearing in the Follies. However, by May 1931, Will Vodrey announced that “the show was so
large that no spot could be found for the Race chorus” (“Ziegfeld Will”). The Ziegfeld Follies of
1931, which opened the following July, did, however, manage to find room for the Albertina
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Rasch Dancers, a white troupe that worked frequently with Ziegfeld. Their numbers for the show
included a “tom-tom dance” in an elaborate jungle setting, which ended with sculptured
elephants entering the stage with women in revealing costumes perched on their trunks (Ziegfeld,
Richard and Paulette 265). Ziegfeld had opted to continue capitalizing on the entertainment value
of non-white femininity in the Follies through exotic settings rather than non-white women. 160
Although Show Boat’s cast and staging seemed, momentarily, to extend Ziegfeld’s, and,
thus, cultural, definitions of beauty and ideal femininity, the show also reified boundaries
between African American femininity and idealized forms of American womanhood based in
racism and white supremacy. As “Diplomats of loveliness,” for example, the non-white women
referenced in the Congress of Beauty represented foreign countries and, thus, forms of female
beauty, by definition, not American (Kern and Hammerstein, Libretto 65). The Congress of
Beauty thus separated African American women from this construct of non-white pulchritude.
In addition, Show Boat relied heavily on stereotypes constructing African American
female sexuality as Other than the attractive and moral sexuality commodified in the Ziegfeld
girl. As historian Robert C. Allen explains, “Hers [the Ziegfeld girl’s] was the contained,
manageable, almost wholesome sexuality of the white middle-class girl next door” (246). In
Show Boat, the white female chorus, in their “so much clothes” (Kreuger, “Goldie” 39),
exemplified this wholesome type of sex appeal while the African American women, as well as
the show’s specialty dancers, exhibited a less “contained [and] manageable” form of female
sexuality through their revealing costumes, acrobatic movements, and overtly sexual dances.
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Show Boat countered the hypersexuality presented in these women, particularly the
African American chorus girls, with another stereotype of African American femininity in the
character Queenie, the Cotton Blossom’s cook. While Ziegfeld hired black performers for the
show’s chorus and African American singer Jules Bledsoe for the role of Joe, for Queenie,
Ziegfeld hired Italian-American Tess Gardella, who performed the role in blackface. At this
time, Gardella was famous for her vaudeville performances as Aunt Jemima, a rotund “mammy”
character she performed in blackface. Gardella became so closely associated with this character
that Show Boat programs listed Aunt Jemima, rather than Gardella, in the role of Queenie. This
conflation of actor and character continued offstage in the show’s salary lists, which also listed
Gardella, and which Gardella subsequently signed, as “Aunt Jemima” (Ziegfeld, Richard and
Paulette 146).
Gardella thus infused Queenie, and the femininity she represented, with stereotypes from
Aunt Jemima. As an iteration of the mammy stereotype, Aunt Jemima represented a black
femininity devoid of sexuality, a stereotype whites originally manufactured as a comforting
counterpoint to the constructs of black female slaves as hypersexual. Both stereotypes of African
American women proliferated during slavery when the alleged hypersexuality of black women
served as a salve for the consciences of white slave owners who sexually abused slaves. To
counter this stereotype, whites also manufactured constructs of African American women as
“mammies,” maternal figures, void of sexual allure and desire, and gladly engaged in domestic
work performed in support of white families. Such constructs of black femininity survived after
slavery, in part, through the entertainment value they carried in live performance and as
consumer icons. The Aunt Jemima character, for example, circulated through minstrels shows
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and, in 1889, became the marketing image for a new self-rising pancake flour, linking this
specific mammy character to food preparation performed in service to white consumers.
Gardella’s performance of Queenie worked on numerous levels to counter the alluring
and overtly sexual black chorus girls and specialty dancers in Show Boat. As “Aunt Jemima,”
Gardella imbued Queenie with a femininity specifically constructed as devoid of sex appeal. In
part, this related to Gardella’s size. Historian Ann Douglas describes the 1920s as “the age that
banned the full-figured woman, discovered calories, and invented the bathroom scale,” and
discusses how dieting campaigns and products constructed heavy women as unattractive (135).
Broadway entertainments located sexuality and beauty in the svelte chorus girl, while
constructing full-figured women as unattractive and comic. Through Aunt Jemima, Gardella
carried these constructs into Queenie, and, as the only black female character outside of the
chorus, Queenie communicated this construct as the musical’s central depiction of black
femininity.
Although Julie’s character was of mixed-race, she was played by a white actress, Helen
Morgan, and read as a white body. Audiences accepted Julie’s tragedy as the tragedy engendered
by her mixed-race origins but understood the intimate actions between Julie and her husband,
particularly his consuming of her blood, as an action performed by a white couple. This
understanding prevented the controversy engendered by a similar display of intimacy in
O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun (1924), which portrayed a white wife kissing her black husband’s
hand. 161 The absence of public protest surrounding Show Boat indicates that audiences read Julie
and her husband as white and Gardella as well as her character as black. The conflation of
Gardella and Aunt Jemima worked to prevent audiences from seeing Joe, played by African
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American actor Jules Bledsoe, and Queenie, played by Gardella in blackface, as an interracial
couple. This conflation also worked to convey Gardella’s portrayal of African American
femininity as an authentic representation of race and gender. Gardella’s performance thus carried
capital as a representation of race and gender just as “authentic” as that embodied by the black
chorus girl and, thus, effectively undermined any threat the white audience’s desire for the black
chorus girl might pose to hegemonic understandings of white supremacy. In this way,
Queenie/Gardella/Aunt Jemima facilitated Ziegfeld’s exploitation of the capital carried by the
black chorus girl’s sexuality in Show Boat.
The adaptation of Show Boat highlights several issues of capital influencing
representations of femininity in musicals during the mid-1920s, including the anxiety inherent in
depictions of female independence, the increasing entertainment value of black male suffering in
mainstream theatre, the appeal of the tragic mulatto, and the illicit allure of the black chorus girl.
Show Boat demonstrates the calibrations and manipulations of capital employed in
commodifying each of these aspects and reveals the role of material and non-material capital in
shaping representations of race, independence, competence, suffering, love, and desire in stage
portrayals of femininity.
While strong, independent, and steadfast female characters carried value in the Woman’s
Home Companion, so much so that Lane offered Ferber an open contract for creating such
characters, Show Boat’s adaptation reveals that such portrayals carried little value in musicals.
As this analysis demonstrates, the fantasy of a strong woman professionally and emotionally in
need of a man carried more entertainment value and, thus, proliferated more frequently in
musicals, than images of female independence. As discussed earlier, in Show Boat the musical,
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this value derived, in part, from the increasing entertainment value of black, male suffering in
1920s theatre. The musical version of Show Boat assessed and constructed the value of
vulnerable white femininity in relief to this suffering as well as the essential misfortune of the
tragic mulatto. Non-white suffering thus carried capital on Broadway as a means of highlighting
white, female success.
The original musical production of Show Boat also indicates the complicated capital of
female sexuality in the 1920s and the complexities of commodifying this quality in mainstream
entertainment, particularly in relation to race. Show Boat offered Ziegfeld, as well as Kern,
Hammerstein, Ferber, and others (including the performers) receiving money from the show, the
opportunity to capitalize on the increasing commercial value of the sexuality displayed through
the black chorus girl. In part, this increasing value resulted from shifting understandings of
respectability and sexuality. However, racial prejudices complicated this value by constructing
non-white female sexuality and desire as unwholesome and taboo. By staging this sexuality
within the frame of white romance and fidelity, Show Boat mitigated bigoted associations of
black sexuality with lewdness by staging as well as containing black sexuality within a white,
middle-class frame under the aegis of a respected brand. The production also mitigated this
bigotry through the counter, and equally racist, mammy stereotype, which represented black
women as asexual and undesirable. Show Boat thus demonstrates the capital representations of
Aunt Jemima stereotypes and white romantic triumph carried in mainstream productions
featuring black chorus girls. 162
For each of these representations, black male suffering, Aunt Jemima, white female
dependence, the tragic mulatto, etc., the value they carried in Show Boat relates to a wider
understanding of their value in commercial entertainment. Show Boat’s tremendous financial
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success as a musical prompted imitation and prevented criticism in relation to these
representations. As stated in the introduction, financial profit legitimates representations in forprofit entertainment. The economic value of these representations, as evidenced by the
production’s success, thus legitimated these representations in Broadway entertainment and
continues to sustain them in American culture. 163
In the following chapter, I will investigate the role women played in constructing and
assessing representations of femininity in the 1920s American entertainment industry by tracing
the development and adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. This chapter will
begin by studying the reframing of Wharton’s narrative by the Pictorial Review in an effort to
make the femininity in the serial more marketable for an American women’s magazine. The
chapter then explores the adaptation of the narrative into a stage production starring Katharine
Cornell. The substantial historic record of the adaptation process for this play reveals the
influence of women as playwrights and celebrities in this process as well as the constraints they
faced due to concerns of capital. This analysis will build on the preceding examination of Show
Boat by including an additional theatrical genre to this study of 1920s theatre—the dramatic star
vehicle. As I will demonstrate, representations of female sexuality also carried capital in
commercial dramas and were similarly calibrated through portrayals of this sexuality as a desire
subject to male control. Like the commodification of female sexuality in Show Boat, the
depiction of female sexuality in The Age of Innocence also intersected with stereotypes of nonwhite sexuality but, in this instance, in relation to immigrant men. This analysis will examine the
creation and representation of femininity in relation to race and nationality in The Age of
Innocence and consider how these representations affected the impact of Edith Wharton’s social
critique and the career of actress Katharine Cornell.
Chapter 3
From Criticism to Compliment:
American Gender in The Age of Innocence
In his column “Opening Nights,” critic Walter Winchell facetiously noted that The Age of
Innocence had set a record during its first matinee at the Empire Theatre by attracting only four
male audience members. Critics, Winchell intimated, had predicted this gender disparity in the
show’s appeal when they initially evaluated the work as “more of a woman’s play anyway,” due
to its focus on love and self-sacrifice in a sumptuous 1870s setting. Ironically, only six years
earlier, Edith Wharton’s novel, from which Margaret Ayer Barnes had adapted the play, received
the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for its presentation of “the highest standard of American manners and
manhood” (qtd. in Jewett 31 Mar. 1921). What Winchell viewed as a narrative inherently
uninteresting to American men, the male-comprised Pulitzer Committee deemed an exemplary
representation of American masculinity. As the contrast in their responses indicates, Wharton’s
social critique of American gender constructs in The Age of Innocence shifted drastically
between the original publication and the 1928 stage adaptation.
Wharton’s The Age of Innocence critiques American gender constructs through its
portrayal of the social and personal hypocrisy produced by a cultural system that infantilizes
women and then limits them because of the inexperience the system itself creates. The Age of
Innocence depicts this dilemma through two competing ideals of femininity, the experienced
woman, an ideal Wharton associated with European culture, and the innocent girl, an ideal
Wharton believed characterized and hobbled American society. Set in 1870s upper-class New
York, The Age of Innocence follows protagonist Newland Archer as he interacts with and
compares May Welland, his American fiancé and eventual wife, and her cousin the Countess
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Ellen Olenska, who has recently arrived from Europe. Young and naive, May epitomizes
American womanhood, as valued by old New York society, while the mature and worldly-wise
Ellen symbolizes Wharton’s view of European femininity. Old New York finds Ellen’s
femininity foreign and threatening, but accepts her in deference to May and her family, who risk
disapprobation by openly welcoming Ellen into their circle.
Promised to May but attracted to Ellen, Archer compulsively compares the women, and
the femininities they embody, as he struggles between duty and desire. Wharton details Archer’s
deliberations as he marries May and then plans an affair with Ellen, who initially agrees but then
deserts Archer upon learning that May, who has been one of her staunchest defenders, is
pregnant. Heartbroken, Ellen returns to the rich social and cultural atmosphere of Europe,
choosing personal integrity and intellectual stimulus over a hypocritical and vacuous existence as
Archer’s mistress. Ultimately, Archer fails to free himself from social constraints and resigns
himself to a respectable and uneventful life with May. In the end, the narrative’s only satisfied
character is May, who successfully maintains her home and family through a lifelong insistence
on her ignorance of any domestic or social disturbance. After May’s death decades later, Archer
discovers that she knew of his relationship with Ellen and, Wharton implies, deliberately lied
about her pregnancy in order to force Ellen to break off her relationship with Archer. The
innocence Wharton portrays as a prized characteristic of American femininity thus ends as a
grotesque farce, artificially contrived and maintained to preserve the façade of American
morality.
The Age of Innocence portrays two intriguing female characters negotiating a love
triangle, a formula teeming with commercial potential for entertainments commodifying
femininity in 1920, particularly women’s magazine fiction and Broadway drama. Both the
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Pictorial Review, where the serial debuted, and Margaret Ayer Barnes, who, with collaborator
Edward Sheldon, adapted the play, recognized the capital inherent in Wharton’s female
characters. However, both the Pictorial and the adapters understood that capitalizing on
Wharton’s characters required mitigating her negative portrayal of American femininity and
innocence. A tribute to worldly-wise European femininity might sell in literary magazines,
Wharton’s usual venue, but the Pictorial editors and Broadway playwrights doubted such foreign
sophistication, particularly when constructed at the expense of the moral American wife, would
carry capital with their audiences.
Concerns about the commercial appeal of Wharton’s critical approach to American
femininity in an American women’s magazine and on the American stage prompted both the
Pictorial and Barnes to reframe and reformulate Wharton’s critique to offer a more positive and,
therefore, more marketable portrayal of American femininity. This chapter analyzes The Age of
Innocence as it developed into a serial and stage play in order to highlight the issues of capital
informing and (re)forming Wharton’s critique, specifically in relation to the value of sexual and
social experience versus ignorance in representations of American femininity.
Additionally, a historical analysis of the adaptation process for The Age of Innocence
offers an incisive look into the influence of the adaptor in formulating and adjusting
representations of gender. As collaborators separated by distance—Barnes worked primarily in
Chicago while Sheldon remained in New York—Barnes and Sheldon communicated mainly
through letters and telegrams. Barnes, a novice playwright, relied heavily on Sheldon, a seasoned
professional with a clear understanding of what would succeed on stage. Accordingly, their
extensive communications regarding script changes, producers, casting, and contracts offer
invaluable insight into the considerations of capital at play, as well as the influence of a female
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playwright, in determining depictions of gender in 1920s Broadway theatre. Finally, this analysis
also illuminates actresses’ capital concerns and their impact on femininity in Broadway stage
plays. Through a historical analysis of The Age of Innocence as a star vehicle for Katharine
Cornell, this chapter investigates Cornell’s management of her individual capital as a Broadway
actress and the influence of her concerns on the final version of femininity commodified in The
Age of Innocence. Through this analysis, The Age of Innocence illuminates these aspects of the
capital complex and their function in shaping representations of femininity for the 1920s stage.
Edith Wharton and the Pictorial Review
From the beginning, commercial interests weighed heavily on The Age of Innocence,
which Wharton composed in order to finance renovations on the two residences she acquired in
France after World War I. Enamored with French life and culture, Wharton established
permanent residence in France in 1907 and, following the Great War, moved in to the Pavilion
Colombe near Paris and the Ste. Claire Chateau near the Mediterranean, residences she inhabited
until her death in 1937. At the time of acquisition, both properties required extensive
renovations, and Wharton, whose expensive tastes and design standards required financing, 164
approached these projects from a depressed economic state due, in part, to the war. 165 Wharton
thus responded with particular displeasure in 1919 when her publisher informed her that the
Pictorial Review wished to break their contract to serialize her latest work A Son at the Front, a
contract worth $18,000.
Previously, Wharton had published primarily in literary magazines known for the high
quality of their fiction, but, in an effort to accrue more funds, Wharton had recently entered into
an agreement with the Pictorial, one of her first contracts with a popular women’s magazine.
Wharton’s contract with the Pictorial resulted, in part, from her anger against William Randolph
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Hearst for his publication of “pro-Bosche” 166 propaganda during the Great War (qtd. in Lee
452). 167 Even though Hearst publications paid the highest fees for fiction, Wharton refused to
publish in any magazine he owned. Wharton’s prejudice against Hearst and her need for income
effectively limited her publishing options to the Pictorial Review, a fact that her editor Rutger B.
Jewett raised whenever difficulties arose between Wharton and the Pictorial’s staff. As Jewett
explained to Wharton, “I know of no other magazine (except Hearst periodicals) that can pay
these prices” (14 Oct. 1920). Such economic issues made Wharton tenacious in maintaining her
contract with the Pictorial. In 1919, her renovation projects made her particularly intransigent in
insisting that the publication fulfill its obligation to serialize A Son at the Front.
Pictorial editor Arthur Vance 168 originally contacted Wharton as part of his continuing
campaign, begun in the early 1910s, to attract subscribers by expanding and improving the
magazine’s fiction offerings. To this end, Vance had published numerous prestigious fiction
writers, including Zona Gale, Joseph Conrad, and Edna Ferber. His campaign proved successful,
and, by 1920, the Pictorial’s circulation had increased to two million, 169 surpassing McCall’s
and advancing the publication to the number two slot in women’s magazine sales (Zuckerman,
History 113). 170 This success allowed the Pictorial to raise annual subscription rates from $2.00
to $3.00, 171 and the resulting revenue enabled the publication to offer writers substantial fees, a
major attraction for writers such as Wharton.
As part of this campaign, Vance contacted Jewett, Wharton’s editor at D. Appleton and
Company. Wharton was an established and respected writer whose literary reputation, Vance
believed, would attract the educated audience coveted by advertisers and, thus, publishers.
Wharton provided Vance with a scenario of her most recent work, A Son at the Front, which
Vance agreed to purchase. 172 However, after receiving Wharton’s initial drafts, Vance contacted
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Jewett during the summer of 1919 and expressed concern over the narrative’s subject matter.
Although Vance had approved Wharton’s scenario, as the chapters arrived, he became
increasingly worried that publishing a war narrative so soon after the war would offend
subscribers. 173 Jewett affirmed his assessment and suggested that Wharton substitute another
piece, entitled Old New York, to fulfill her contract with Pictorial. Frustrated with the Pictorial
but intent on keeping her fee, Wharton agreed to sell Old New York to the Pictorial, provided
they pay the same rate offered for A Son at the Front. 174 Vance agreed, and Wharton sent him a
complete draft of Old New York by March 1920. In the midst of this exchange, Wharton
informed her publisher that the title of her new piece had changed to The Age of Innocence.
Wharton’s negotiations with the Pictorial illustrate the capital concerns directing Vance’s
editorial decisions regarding fiction. As a relatively progressive women’s magazine editor,
Vance promoted social reform, endorsed suffrage, polled readers on current issues, and used the
magazine as a forum for discussions about birth control. Vance related the Pictorial’s content
directly to social action, declaring in an editorial:
We appeal to women who want to think and to act as well as to be entertained. It
is a feminine age. Women are taking more and more part in affairs and our idea is
this: that a magazine correctly to represent women of this country must keep its
readers in close touch with questions of public interest, and guide and direct this
feminine activity in the most useful and practical channels. (qtd. in Endres,
“Pictorial” 275-6)
This reform mentality aligned the publication with socially-minded magazines like the Woman’s
Home Companion and separated the Pictorial from more conservative publications, such as the
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Ladies’ Home Journal, which opposed suffrage, and the Delineator, which attempted to address
suffrage without taking sides (Scanlon 112; Zuckerman, History 89-90).
While committed to political and social reform, Vance understood that his agenda relied
on the magazine’s ability entertain. Traditionally, women’s magazines addressed political and
social issues through editorials and nonfiction articles and presented their fiction offerings as
pure entertainment. According to women’s magazine historian Mary Ellen Zuckerman, “While
some nontraditional stories, some high quality narratives, and some tales defying conventional
mores appeared [in the interwar years], they proved the exception to the rule: stories focusing on
love, romance, fantasy, and escape” (History 180-1). While Vance often challenged his readers
regarding social issues, he hesitated to disrupt such genre expectations by addressing stark
subject matter in the magazine’s fiction. In the saturated women’s magazine market, introducing
traumas of the Great War into the Pictorial’s fiction section could turn subscribers to
publications offering lighter fare. A story involving a love triangle between members of old New
York’s upper-class elites thus seemed much more marketable to Vance who, at this point, did not
demur at the scathing social critique entailed in Wharton’s tale.
Although the Pictorial often carried critiques of American femininity, Wharton’s work
departed from the publication’s usual vein by unequivocally locating the blame for social ills in
American gender constructs. Traditionally, the criticisms carried in the Pictorial operated within
understandings of the general superiority of American women to women of other nations. 175 In
sharp contrast to this, Wharton specifically questioned American superiority, particularly in
relation to American femininity. Wharton’s continuous critique of nation as performed through
gender forms what Elizabeth Ammons calls Wharton’s “Argument with America,” her “public
argument with America on the issue of freedom for women over more than three decades” of her
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writing (Argument ix). As Americans simultaneously celebrated and decried new freedoms for
women in the early twentieth century, Wharton questioned their very existence. In her opinion,
unless society sanctioned new standards for women, new freedoms did not exist because social
customs precluded their practice. As Ammons explains, “Typical women in her view—no matter
how privileged, nonconformist, or assertive . . . were not free to control their own lives, and that
conviction became the foundation of her argument with American optimism for more than
twenty years”(Argument 3). 176
In addition to the practical obstacles restricting reputed American freedoms, Wharton
also critiqued the more pernicious restrictions perpetuated in American culture through its
preference for and production of childishly ignorant women. According to Wharton, patriarchal
American culture valued and produced women who neither desired freedom nor questioned
social restrictions because, like children, they were ignorant of its absence and blind to any
constraints. Wharton explicitly introduced this criticism in her fable “The Valley of Childish
Things” (1896) 177 and, as Ammons observes, continued to develop this theme in her fiction,
particularly in her novels The Fruit of the Tree (1907), The Children (1928), and The Age of
Innocence (Argument 11-2). 178 Wharton also expanded this critique in her non-fiction. Her
article “Is there a new Frenchwoman?” which appeared the Ladies’ Home Journal in April 1917,
explicitly blamed the American practice of dividing men and women into separate social spheres
for its effect on American women who, when compared with their European counterparts, were
“still in the kindergarten” (101). 179 Wharton reiterated this harsh criticism when she republished
the article as part of her book French Ways and their Meaning in August 1919, the year she
began completing The Age of Innocence for the Pictorial Review.
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Given the prevalence of this theme in Wharton’s previous work, it is not surprising that it
echoes strongly throughout The Age of Innocence. Although the narrative’s 1870 setting
precluded direct references to contemporary culture, as Wharton biographer Hermione Lee
points out, The Age of Innocence targeted the “America of the present, which she [Wharton] so
often complains about for its infantilism, naïve optimism, and parochialism” (562). 180 Wharton
saw these national qualities epitomized in American women, and, in The Age of Innocence,
unequivocally anchored her cultural critique in issues of gender.
Competing Femininities
When The Age of Innocence debuted in the Pictorial in 1920, it presented readers with
two types of femininity through Wharton’s characters May Welland and Ellen Olenska. For
Newland Archer, and, by extension, old New York, May represents the consummate American
woman, epitomizing American ideals and values. When contemplating his match to May, Archer
reflects how “in spite of the cosmopolitan views on which he prided himself, he thanked heaven
that he was a New Yorker, and about to ally himself with one of his own kind” (80). Archer thus
views May not merely as “one of his own kind,” but as one of his own kind who has preserved
him from the perils of uniting with someone different, someone Other. New York, in the novel,
represents the apex of American society and culture, and Archer and May are its best and most
authentic products. As “one of his own kind,” exemplifying New York, and thus American,
ideals, the blonde May is described by Archer as “whiteness, radiance, goodness” (74) and
“truth” (167). May’s individual virtues personify national values so perfectly that Archer
believes she resembles “a type rather than a person; as if she might have been chosen to pose for
a [statue of] Civic Virtue” (207).
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These national virtues, May’s goodness, radiance, and whiteness, flourish through their
foundation in May’s chief quality—innocence. As Ammons points out, May is, in many ways,
the eponymous heroine of the novel, positioning innocence as the essential quality of American
femininity (“Cool Diana” 212). This innocence encompasses May’s sexual inexperience, a
quality repeatedly underscored in the novel through comparisons between May and the virgin
goddess Diana (107, 210, 224), as well as her cultural and social inexperience. These facets of
innocence conflate in Archer’s mind as, early in the narrative, he observes May at the opera as
she watches the seduction scene in Faust. On stage, Faust convinces Marguerite to admit him to
her bedroom while, in the audience, Archer considers May:
“The darling!” thought Newland Archer . . . “She doesn’t even guess what it’s all
about.” And he contemplated her absorbed young face with a thrill of
possessorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation was mingled with a
tender reverence for her abysmal purity. “We’ll read Faust together . . . [sic] by
the Italian lakes . . . [sic]” he thought, somewhat hazily confusing the scene of his
projected honey-moon with the masterpieces of literature which it would be his
manly privilege to reveal to his bride. (60)
As a product of Old New York’s social system, May’s sexual purity intertwines with her cultural
naivety to form the maidenly innocence Archer values and desires. Archer thrills while
anticipating his “masculine initiation,” which entails the sexual induction of his virgin bride as
well as her social and cultural education. Archer’s delight in May’s “abysmal purity” conveys
Wharton’s indictment of such female purity as well as the society manufacturing it.
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Wharton repeatedly portrays May’s innocence as an artificial product meticulously
manufactured and maintained by the system of American culture and not, as Victorian ideals
would have it, a natural or innate quality. The novel unfolds through Archer’s musings, offering
no other character’s point of view, and, from the beginning of the narrative, Archer regards the
women in his society as “the product of the system” (61). Initially pleased with this product,
Archer grows wary of May’s innocence, ultimately recognizing May as “That terrifying product
of the social system he belonged to and believed in, the young girl who knew nothing and
expected everything” (88). As the novel progresses, Archer becomes increasingly ambivalent
about feminine innocence. Considering how American society prepares young girls for marriage,
Archer feels “discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence [of May’s] were
only an artificial product” (91). Archer’s musings underscore the manufactured nature of
feminine innocence, an unnatural quality created by generations of American women and culture
in order to please men who desire child-like brides and view knowledgeable women with
suspicion. Archer participates in this arrangement, experiencing the pride of “posessorship” (60,
119) whenever he contemplates May’s innocence, but, ultimately, Archer acknowledges the
failure of this system that renders May “incapable of growth” (329) and comes to resent the very
trait he requires in his bride.
Wharton criticizes American men for preferring ignorant women and simultaneously
indicts American women for catering to this preference. Archer articulates her indictment when
he faults the complicity behind “this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by
a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was
supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly
pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow” (91). Rather than a facet of civilized
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society, the “lordly pleasure” of dominating a sexually and culturally ignorant bride begins to
seem primitive and vulgar to Archer. 181 Archer compares the social customs surrounding his
engagement with May to those of “Primitive Man . . . [when] the savage bride is dragged with
shrieks from her parents’ tent” (90). His musings on the subject echo Wharton’s 1919 article
“Harems and Ceremonies,” which describes the child-like existence imposed on women
sequestered in Moroccan harems in order to satisfy the non-white, therefore read as primitive,
sexual appetites of the Sultans. 182 Archer’s observations expose May’s quintessentially
American characteristic of feminine innocence as vulgar ignorance, prized only in “savage”
societies (90).
May, through her innocence, exemplifies the ideals of old New York while old New York
functions as synecdochic symbol for American social values and mores. Wharton repeatedly
reinforces May’s Americanness by continually comparing her native wholesomeness with
Ellen’s foreign taint. When Ellen first appears, she is the subject of much speculation in New
York society due to her marriage to and separation from a Polish count. This foreign alliance is
an exotic aberration in old New York where established families defend against infiltration from
outsiders by marrying among themselves. Although Ellen is one of the esteemed Mingott clan,
her marriage to an Eastern European, combined with her unconventional childhood in Europe,
compromises her social position. In spite of her American heritage, Ellen’s upbringing, marriage,
and separation lead members of old New York to regard her as “the strange foreign woman”
(74), irrevocably “different” (304), and “foreign” (318).
If May’s defining American characteristic is her innocence, Ellen’s defining “foreign”
characteristic is her sexuality. Ellen’s sexual experience as an American expatriate married to an
Eastern European aristocrat, separated though not divorced, contrasts sharply with May’s chaste
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innocence. The novel’s opening scene establishes this contrast as Ellen sits next to May in their
Aunt’s opera box, which is situated across the theatre from Archer’s club box. As Archer’s peers,
New York’s arbiters of social form, ogle Ellen through their opera glasses, they discuss her
husband’s penchant for prostitutes, assume an affair between Ellen and her husband’s secretary,
and brand Ellen as a woman of indiscriminate morals—all the result, they universally agree, of
her European origins. The men discuss May only in alluding to her presence as a public symbol
of her family’s approval of Ellen. May’s heritage as a confirmed and upstanding member of old
New York shields her from the men’s slanderous speculation while Ellen’s amorphous past
exposes her to male aspersions and attentions, the latter especially from Archer, who, like several
of the other society men, finds Ellen’s ontology exotic and alluring. 183
Ellen affirms her essential difference as a European and endeavors to erase this quality
and assimilate into New York society. She declares to Archer, “I want to forget everything else,
to become a complete American again, like the Mingotts and Wellands and you” (106) and,
when frustrated in this endeavor, exclaims, “how I hate being different!” (142). Ellen’s desire to
be “a complete American” stems from her view of New York as safe and pure and good. Ellen
covets the protection she sees in a society that values virtue, trusting in the goodness of New
York’s Puritan morals which contrast with the European decadence that countenanced her
husband’s philandering. Wharton’s ironic commentary on womanhood emerges from the fact
that it is the foreign European woman who fully understands the value of the “American” virtues
at stake in the story and sacrifices herself to preserve the integrity of the American home. Unlike
May’s blind American bliss, ignorant of virtue’s failings, Ellen’s European life has forced her
into a harsh awareness of virtue’s frailty. Wharton’s narrative thus favors the “European” form
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of femininity which develops women who value virtue because they understand the bankruptcy
of life without it, not merely because they are kept artificially ignorant of the existence of vice.
Wharton thus establishes two distinct types of femininity competing for viability in
American culture, the child-like girl and the mature woman. 184 However, May and Ellen also
exhibit complexity and resists simple stereotypes. At the end of the novel, May resists the
simplistic characterization of complete innocence and demonstrates her deliberate and resolute
role in forging her own ignorance when she prematurely informs Ellen, whom she believes to be
Archer’s mistress, that she is pregnant. As May intends, her announcement prompts Ellen to
abandon Archer and return to Europe. Two weeks after her conversation with Ellen, May
becomes certain that she is pregnant and informs Archer. Only after May’s death decades later
does Archer learn the calculated nature of May’s announcement to Ellen. This manipulation
reveals that May is not as innocent, in the sense of being ignorant or lacking duplicity, as Archer
supposes. May’s machinations reveal her rigid determination to maintain her existence as a
child-like woman, and, after her death, Archer reflects that she succeeded in sustaining a “hard
bright blindness” to the end of her life (329).
Ellen also resists stereotyping as she selflessly sacrifices her personal desires in order to
preserve the purported values of old New York. Throughout the novel, Ellen challenges the
customs of old New York, attending unfashionable parties, living in a bohemian part of town,
and offering compassion to Mrs. Beaufort when her husband becomes disgraced by financial
scandal. However, Ellen abandons her desires for love and a life in New York by electing to
relocate to Paris after she learns of May’s pregnancy. Ellen’s decision comes immediately after
she has arranged to meet with Archer and consummate their affair, an appointment she never
keeps, and Archer, who knows nothing of May’s condition, is bewildered by her plans to move,
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seeing them as her last feeble attempt to resist their overpowering attraction. Ellen, rather than
Archer, actively preserves Archer’s fidelity by leaving New York. Even as she departs, Archer
attempts to arrange a tryst in Paris, which Ellen deflects by insisting he come with May.
Ultimately, it is European Ellen, rather than the native-bred New Yorkers, who preserves and
embodies the espoused morals of old New York. While Ellen sacrifices her life in America in
order to preserve May and Archer’s marriage, she preserves herself as well, a key difference
from the play, by refusing to return to her husband and immersing herself in the “stimulating,”
“rich atmosphere” of Parisian life (338). Ellen thus emerges as the courageous heroine of the
novel, capable of passion, integrity, and strength as well as creating a viable life for herself in
spite of numerous disappointments. 185
Framing Wharton’s Serial
When Wharton agreed to substitute The Age of Innocence for A Son at the Front in her
contract with the Pictorial, an American women’s magazine, her decision effectively carried her
criticism of American femininity directly to the audience she criticized. Although Wharton
frequently critiqued American society and femininity in her work, prior to The Age of Innocence,
she published primarily in literary magazines, such as The Saturday Evening Post, Scribner’s
Magazine, and McClure’s. As general interest publications known for fine literature and
marketed to both men and women, literary magazines framed Wharton’s critique of American
gender constructs in a very different manner than publications specifically intended for women.
For example, Scribner’s Magazine, which published both The Fruit of the Tree (1907) and The
Custom of the Country (1913) 186 framed Wharton’s work as high-quality literature 187 addressing
social issues of general interest and did not include illustrations or advertisements 188 with her
stories. Scribner’s readers thus encountered Wharton’s work in a manner visually reminiscent of
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a novel, without the distraction of illustrations and advertisements, which monopolized women’s
periodicals.
Illustrations played a central role in women’s magazine fiction, often dominating the
introductory pages of a serial with renderings of beautiful heroines in romantic settings and
situations. Wharton disliked such illustrations, but, as Jewett explained, “Their [women’s
magazine] subscribers demand these pictures and, when the editors pay a big price for a story
and announce it as a feature, custom forces them to carry out the whole scheme in the agreed
manner” (25 Sept. 1919). 189 In conformity with this “agreed manner,” dramatic illustrations and
captions accompanied each women’s magazine serial, underscoring the romantic tension with
illustrations of passionate moments and dialogue from the narrative. Captions including, “Her
Eyes Fled to His Beseechingly,” or “‘I Have Never Made Love to You,’ He Said, ‘and I Never
Shall, But You Are the Woman I Would Have Married If It Had Been Possible for Either of
Us’,” for example, accompanied illustrations for The Age of Innocence. 190
Women’s magazines thus hailed their readers as women appreciative of fine literature but
primarily focused on romance and beauty. This view of women’s magazine subscribers persisted
even at the progressive Pictorial where, Jewett reported: “Vance personally appreciates the
literary quality of ‘The Age of Innocence.’ He tells me, however, that he found it somewhat
above the head of his subscribers.” (14 Oct. 1920). 191 Jewett also found Wharton’s work superior
in quality to the type of fiction associated with women’s magazines and suggested that
McClure’s, a general-audience publication, offered “a more natural audience” for her work “than
the Pictorial, which is chiefly a woman’s magazine” (29 June 1920). 192 While Wharton’s literary
reputation carried capital in Vance’s campaign to attract readers, her literary style and social
critique did not. 193 Through its literary style and harsh criticism of American culture and women,
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The Age of Innocence presented the Pictorial editors with an intellectual social critique that
Vance feared might be too high-brow for his middle-class readers, the very readers he hoped to
attract.
In order to harmonize Wharton’s serial with readers’ expectations, the Pictorial framed
and marketed The Age of Innocence in a manner emphasizing the typical themes of women’s
magazine fiction—romance and the precariousness of marriage. The Pictorial highlighted
romantic themes through the lavish illustrations by W. B. King that framed the text of the serial.
By and large, King’s illustrations featured the Countess Ellen Olenska in exquisite 1870s gowns,
often in the act of submitting to the desiring gaze of a fashionable gentleman. While the lack of
illustrations in literary periodicals like Scribner’s allowed the reader’s imagination free rein,
King’s detailed illustrations in the Pictorial directed readers to focus on Ellen and her position as
a figure inspiring male desire.
King’s leading illustration for the first installment established this focus through its
depiction of Ellen in her first meeting with Archer after she arrives from Europe (see fig. 2). The
image portrays Ellen in an opera box with May, May’s mother Mrs. Welland, and their aunt Mrs.
Lovell Mingott, each elegantly dressed in cascading ruffles, trimmed in lace, and elegantly
coiffured. Only Ellen faces the viewer, framed by the other women as she looks up at Archer
who leans over her while gazing down into her eyes. Placing Ellen and Archer at the center of
this inaugural illustration and offering a full view of Ellen’s face alone invited readers to identify
with Ellen. In addition, King placed Archer above and between Ellen and May who are seated,
visually foreshadowing the forthcoming triangle of affection as May gazes up at Archer who
looks into Ellen’s eyes. The caption assists with this foreshadowing as it reiterates Ellen’s
recollection in the text of her childhood romance with Archer: “We Did Used to Play Together,
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Didn’t We? You Were a Horrid Boy, and Kissed Me Once Behind a Door,” Ellen recalls. This
inaugural illustration thus set the tone for the serial by directing readers to focus on the romantic
tension between Ellen and Archer. King’s illustrations and captions underscored Ellen’s
beautiful, fashionable, and desirable, aspects, thus demonstrating the Pictorial’s regard for
Ellen’s sexual allure as a form of capital carrying value in entertainment women’s magazine
fiction.
Fig. 2 W.B. King’s Opening Illustration for The Age of Innocence,
Pictorial Review July 1920, p. 5.
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This theme also dominated the Pictorial’s marketing campaign for The Age of Innocence,
which stressed Ellen’s seductiveness while positioning her sexuality as distinctly foreign. A June
advertisement attempted to entice readers to the upcoming serial by describing Ellen’s effect on
Archer. Archer, the ad explained, was “fond” of his wife, “But until Countess Olenska returned
from Europe he never knew what real love meant” (“The Age” June). The ad then describes
how, in the presence of this new émigré, “the banked fires in his heart burst into flame” (“The
Age” June). The Pictorial’s marketing contrasts the passion Ellen ignites with the cool
“fond[ness]” May inspires, while Ellen’s foreign ontology, along with her foreign title and
surname, align this difference in ardor with the women’s difference in nationality. The Pictorial
continued this emphasis in the September issue, which repeated this description in a teaser on the
magazine’s first page and, in an inset on the serial’s first page, summarized the plot by
contrasting Ellen, with “all the allure that European experience had given her,” to May, “sweetly
conventional . . . [and] girlishly conservative, so obviously the kind of woman he [Archer] ought
to marry” (20). Reiterating Ellen’s European origins positioned her sex appeal as enticingly
exotic and reassuringly foreign, simultaneously entertaining and separate. Positioning Ellen’s
passion as Other allowed the Pictorial to exploit the entertainment value of the sexually
experienced and desirous femininity she embodies while maintaining the dominant discourse of
American moral superiority in May, the woman Archer “ought” to want. In addition, this
framing reduced the characters’ essential differences to their ability to inspire Archer’s affection,
thus deflecting attention from the social issues Wharton worked to address.
The Pictorial’s marketing and illustrations framed The Age of Innocence within two
genres of women’s magazines—romantic fiction and domestic advice. In addition to offering
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escapist fiction, women’s magazines maintained their market niche by providing readers with
advice from purported experts on everything from household appliances to marital bliss. The
Pictorial’s marketing for The Age of Innocence highlighted May’s character in a manner meant
to play on readers’ anxieties regarding marriage and impress readers with their need for the
Pictorial’s instruction. 194 To this end, page one of the Pictorial’s June 1920 issue announced
Wharton’s upcoming serial with a bold heading inquiring, “Does Your Husband Really Love
You?” The text continued this interrogation by asking readers:
Honestly now, does he? Or does he just tolerate you? Has his love ever really
been tested? You may be in young Mrs. Archer’s position without knowing it.
Her husband was fond of her of course . . . But until Countess Olenska returned
from Europe he never knew what real love meant. Suddenly the banked fires of
his heart burst into flame. How would you have stood the test? How would you
have combated the other woman? These absorbing questions are answered in a
thrilling masterpiece of human characterization beginning in Pictorial Review
next month entitled “The Age of Innocence” by Edith Wharton. (1)
Through these questions, the Pictorial directed readers to picture themselves not as the alluring
Olenska, but as May, the wronged wife, a wife sorely in need of the periodical’s expertise. The
September issue introduced a description of The Age of Innocence with the heading “How Do
You Know Your Husband Loves You?” hinting, like that June ad, that the serial would answer
this burning question (1). Such copy implied that the serial would reveal the signs of
disingenuous domesticity and enable readers to detect and protect against such disturbances in
their own homes. The Pictorial thus enhanced the entertainment value contained in May’s
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situation by linking her dilemma, and, by extension, her femininity, directly to their readers’. In
assigning their readers the role of May, the Pictorial thus encouraged their audience to relate to
rather than reflect on the intractably and artificially innocent form of femininity Wharton wished
to critique.
The Pictorial continued this association by promoting Wharton’s narrative alongside the
magazine’s “Marriage Contest.” Under the heading “Tell Us What You Really Think about
Marriage,” the Pictorial asked readers to write in with their opinions and observations on the
current state of marriage (“Marriage”). The Pictorial positioned this contest alongside copy and
illustrations advertising The Age of Innocence, thus tying concerns about marriage in America to
May’s situation and prompting readers to scrutinize their own marriages while reading about
May’s. By associating readers with May, the Pictorial established May’s ultimate success in
preserving her marriage as a synecdochic success for their readers and a beacon of hope for
American women engaged in “combat[ing] the [O]ther woman” (“The Age” June). The
Pictorial’s framing of Wharton’s serial thus privileged the femininity protecting rather than
threatening the American home as symbolized in May and Archer’s white, upper-class,
heteronormative, reproductive union.
By encouraging readers to revel in Ellen’s romance with Archer while rooting for May’s,
and, by extension, their own, success, the Pictorial simultaneously capitalized on May’s
femininity as well as Ellen’s. Pitting foreign immorality against American fealty reframed
Wharton’s criticism of American social systems as a celebration of American virtue in the face
of foreign threats, a theme in keeping with the dominant discourse of American superiority in
women’s magazines. As a result, the Pictorial conveyed Wharton’s story as a text primarily on
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marriage and infidelity rather than gender and social systems. The Pictorial’s presentation of The
Age of Innocence thus reveals the higher entertainment value in women’s magazine fiction of the
domestic dilemma over national critique. It also demonstrates the careful calibrations required to
capitalize on female sexuality in women’s magazine fiction. King’s illustrations emphasized
Ellen’s attractiveness while the Pictorial’s marketing campaign deliberately distanced her sexual
experience and appeal from the narrative’s American heroine and, by extension, the magazine’s
American readers. The illustrations and marketing thus worked in concert to construct a sexual,
foreign femininity contained by American feminine fealty and, therefore, marketable to
American women’s magazine readers.
Adapting The Age of Innocence
In the midst of its serial publication, D. Appleton and Company released The Age of
Innocence as a novel in October 1920, and, by December, film companies and stage producers
were clamoring to buy the rights for adapting Wharton’s work. 195 Eventually, Warner Brothers
produced a silent film version in 1924, starring Beverly Bayne as Ellen. 196 In 1924, Wharton also
considered authorizing a stage version based on a scenario for the play prepared by her friend
playwright Edward Sheldon. Wharton wrote to Sheldon, praising his scenario as “admirable” and
declaring, “How I wish you felt like dramatizing the book yourself” (qtd. in E. Barnes 149).
Apparently uninterested, Sheldon focused instead on completing the script for Lulu Belle, a play
he co-wrote with Charles MacArthur and which opened successfully on Broadway in February
1926.
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Shortly after this theatrical success, Sheldon learned that Margaret Ayer Barnes, a
childhood friend of his, was seeking medical treatment from Dr. Russell Hibbs, Sheldon’s own
surgeon in New York. As teenagers, Sheldon and Barnes became friends during summer
vacations in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and remained in contact during Sheldon’s time as a student
at Harvard. Having lost touch through the years, Sheldon renewed their acquaintance via
telegram after learning that Barnes would be visiting Dr. Hibbs. Barnes had suffered a head-on
collision while motoring in France the previous year and had decided to consult Dr. Hibbs
regarding a surgical solution for her continuing pain. 197
Sheldon had met Dr. Hibbs when, as a young man and a promising playwright, Sheldon
developed debilitating rheumatoid arthritis. As treatment after treatment failed, Sheldon became
bedridden, paralyzed from the neck down. Eventually, Sheldon lost his eyesight and, in his later
years, his ability to speak. Throughout his illness, Sheldon exhibited tremendous courage and
refused to despair. Realizing the disease had permanently limited his abilities, Sheldon set up
residence in a New York penthouse, which he dubbed his “Roof Bungalow,” 198 and established
himself as a central figure in the cultural life of the city. Almost nightly, Sheldon played host to
the social and cultural elite of New York, chatting with intimate friends, including Ethel
Barrymore, John Barrymore, Thornton Wilder, Billie Burke, Helen Hayes, Corneila Otis
Skinner, and Anita Loos. 199 Unable to eat without assistance, Sheldon arranged exquisite dinners
for his guests and conversed with them while they enjoyed the repast. Sheldon’s strength,
warmth, talent, advice, and connections made him an invaluable friend and asset to many in the
arts community.
Before his illness, Sheldon had established his reputation with plays such as Salvation
Nell (1908) and The Nigger, a play concerning racial injustice in the South (1909). After his
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illness, Sheldon continued to write, collaborating from his penthouse with artists including Ruth
Draper, Charles MacArthur, and Sidney Howard, creating plays such as Lulu Belle (1926),
Bewitched (1924), and Dishonoured Lady (1930). Sheldon offered feedback on works such as
Our Town and provided copious, detailed advice for actors, including Helen Hayes and John
Barrymore. 200 Sheldon remained so active in the New York theatre scene that his biographer Eric
Barnes claims, “there was no [Broadway] season during those years [1930 to 1946] which did
not see at least one play in which he had some part, and frequently two or three” (207). Indeed,
Sheldon’s insightful and supportive commentary made him one of the most sought-after voices
in American theatre from the 1920s until his death in 1946. 201
Prior to her surgery, Margaret Ayer Barnes paid Sheldon a visit at his New York
apartment in March 1926. Sheldon understood Barnes’s recovery would require several months
of hospitalization, much of this spent immobilized by a backboard. Intimately familiar with
immobility, Sheldon communicated with Barnes frequently throughout her hospital stay and sent
numerous gifts and telegrams to encourage her throughout her recovery. 202 In an additional effort
to relieve her tedium, Sheldon asked Barnes, who held an English degree from Bryn Mawr, to
write current descriptions updating him on their old acquaintances. This exercise opened
conversations on the subject of writing, and, shortly before Barnes returned to her home in
Chicago, Sheldon suggested that she attempt to write a stage adaptation of The Age of Innocence.
Before leaving New York, Barnes visited Sheldon to discuss the details and a possible
plot structure for the script (E. Barnes 153). Barnes made notes from their conversation, which
she later employed in structuring the play. 203 By early November, Barnes had completed the first
act of the play, which she anxiously forwarded to Sheldon for comment. Sheldon replied four
days later, exclaiming, “Hooray! Hooray! I knew you would do it! Dear Margaret, it is beautiful.
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In every way.” (Telegram to Barnes 7 Nov. 1926). 204 Sheldon cabled the following day, saying
he had read it a second time and was “just as enthusiastic” as the day before (8 Nov. 1926).
Sheldon’s enthusiasm pleased Barnes but did not prepare her for his next telegram, which
announced that his friend Edith Wharton had “accepted joyfully” his offer to purchase the
dramatic rights in a formal arrangement for Barnes’s adaptation (9 Nov. 1926).
Sheldon met Wharton in 1923 when Wharton’s sister-in-law Mary Cadwalader Jones
introduced them during what would be Wharton’s last visit to America. Wharton remained
friends with Sheldon throughout her life, and the two corresponded regularly. 205 Jones, who had
befriended Sheldon before his illness, maintained a close relationship with him as well, dining
with Sheldon every Thursday evening until her death in 1935 (E. Barnes 132). This relationship
proved invaluable during the adaptation of The Age of Innocence, for, in addition to being
Wharton’s sister-in-law, Jones operated as Wharton’s researcher, proof-reader, and legal
representative in all “theatrical and cinematographic matters” (qtd. in Lee 590). Sheldon cabled
Wharton on November 9th, telling her he had found someone to dramatize The Age of Innocence
and promising that the “dramatization would be made under my professorship and [the] finished
play submitted for your approval” (9 Nov. 1926). Trusting Sheldon’s judgment, Wharton
accepted his offer of five-hundred dollars and the conditions that she and Barnes would share
equal royalties for the play and that all rights would revert to Wharton if the play was not
produced within two years. Their agreement, however, stipulated nothing regarding the novel’s
central criticism of American femininity, leaving Barnes and Sheldon free to adapt Wharton’s
argument, and the gender it criticized, however they wished.
With Barnes residing in Chicago and Sheldon confined to his apartment in New York,
Sheldon’s promised “professorship” amounted to a kind of correspondence course, with Barnes
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mailing in drafts and Sheldon returning them with edits, a process Barnes dubbed “SearsRoebuck collaboration” (Letter to Sheldon 3 Nov. 1926). Sheldon thus played a key role in
creating the adaptation, although he did not receive authorship credit. 206 Barnes thoroughly
enjoyed the process, exclaiming to Sheldon, “I am getting a liberal education from writing this
play. And, Oh [sic], Ned, how I LOVE to try to do it!” (Letter 29 Nov. 1926). Sheldon expressed
equal enthusiasm, cabling Barnes in January saying, “All changes are splendid you have done
them beautifully and I am very happy” (26 Jan. 1927).
While Sheldon proved a playwright’s dream collaborator, Wharton became Barnes’s
nightmare supervisor. Sheldon communicated directly with Wharton as well as discussing
matters with Mary Cadwalader Jones, but Barnes communicated with Wharton only through
Sheldon and received her instructions through Sheldon and Jones. Barnes felt Jones’s comments
addressed only “surface snags” and longed for “more penetrating” insights she expected from
Wharton (Letter to Sheldon 20 Aug.1927), but, despite promises of detailed “scene by scene”
comments, Wharton failed to provide such feedback to Sheldon and Barnes and, ultimately,
refused to read the final script (Barnes Letter to Sheldon 6 July 1927). Wharton did, however,
skim the initial draft and communicated her comments via telegram and Jones.
Adapting Masculinity, Class, and Nationality
Although Barnes’s adaptation presented a drastic departure from Wharton’s portrayal and
criticisms of American femininity, Wharton’s chief complaints against Barnes addressed the
play’s incongruous language 207 and characterization of Newland Archer. Wharton found
Barnes’s elimination of Archer’s formative travels to Europe and the addition of a political and
military career for his character particularly irksome. She believed these specific alterations
would “destroy [the] character of [the] play” (Telegram to Sheldon, n.d.). 208 Writing to Sheldon,
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Wharton declared, “It is impossible to represent Newland Archer as a man who has never been to
Europe . . . To any one of my generation in New York, this would have simply been incredible”
(6 July 1927). Barnes, however, considered Wharton’s conventional Archer bland and suspected
that audiences would find Ellen’s attraction to a corresponding stage version difficult to believe.
“Mrs. Wharton’s Archer was a snob and a bore,” Barnes declared in a letter to Sheldon, and
explained that she failed to see how this Archer “attracted the very brilliant and genuine and
sophisticated Ellen Olenska” (13 Sept. 1927).
Barnes’s character shifts thus originated in her understanding of femininity, particularly
the cultivated yet unpretentious femininity embodied in Ellen, and materialized in Archer’s
masculinity. Barnes set out to increase Archer’s appeal for Ellen by creating a character history
that included four years of fighting as a soldier in the American Civil War followed by a stint
with Custer battling “Cheyennes” in Kansas. 209 In Barnes’s adaptation, Archer’s military
experience carries into an active political career as well, devoted to, as Archer puts it, “fight[ing]
for the under dog [sic]!” (1-23). 210 Barnes’s Archer thus stands in sharp contrast to Wharton’s
protagonist who praises social change but enjoys the privileges of tradition too much to actually
act on his ideals. Barnes’s script depicts an Archer who devotes his life to challenging Boss
Tweed and the machinery of Tammany Hall, repeatedly running for office in an effort to fight
systematic corruption. The play thus portrays a more rugged and patriotic, and, Barnes believed,
attractive Archer than Wharton’s aesthete gentleman who establishes his manhood through
European travels and museum tours. Indeed, Barnes viewed Archer’s political activities as
Ellen’s “most convincing reason for falling in love with him” (Letter to Sheldon 30 Mar. 1928).
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Barnes felt that this continuous political activity functioned as a logical prelude to the
political interest Archer forms late in life in Wharton’s narrative. 211 Defending her changes to
Sheldon, Barnes chafed,
I never saw any reason, except that Mrs. Wharton said so, to believe her sappy
Archer who sat on his Eastlake furniture and read his first editions of Matthew
Arnold and drifted with the social current and took the line of least resistence [sic]
and evaded the real issues of life and thought it was important whom the Van der
Luydens asked to dinner, EVER became a man of any real importance in his later
years. (Letter 13 Sept. 1927)
For her part, Wharton found the political interests of Barnes’s Archer inconsistent with
his class standing and repeatedly expressed her objections through Jones. Jones voiced
Wharton’s concerns in meetings with Barnes on September 9th and 13th, 1927, which Barnes
recounted in a letter to Sheldon. Pointing out the similarities between Jones and Wharton’s
attitudes and those of the novel’s conventional characters, Barnes reported, “She and Mrs.
Wharton feel absolutely with the van der Luydens that a genteel young man would not dabble in
politics! She said, actually SAID, ‘Edith thought he would not have been so vulgar’. [sic]
Meaning – so vulgar as to fight Tweed. And they also think it would have been a bit common to
join up with Custer to fight Indians” (9 Sept. 1927).Wharton and Jones found Archer’s
“common” and “vulgar” activities incompatible with his upper-class position, 212 not realizing
that Barnes had imbued her Archer with a central disregard for social prejudices and boundaries
in a deliberate attempt to make him believably attractive to Ellen.
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In an effort designed to appeal to both Ellen and middle-class Broadway audiences,
Barnes also made her Archer less cavalier about class privilege. In the book, class issues trouble
Archer only when social constraints prevent him from being with Ellen, causing him to envy the
relative social freedom of those outside his eminent circle. The book further exposes Archer’s
hypocrisy as he defends Ellen’s disregard for class boundaries but strictly maintains them in his
own encounters, avoiding Mrs. Struther’s parties because of her working-class origins and never
inviting his working-class journalist friend Ned Winsett into his own upper-class home. Barnes
eliminates this hypocrisy in the play, imbuing Archer with a class conscious concern that inspires
his social action. At the beginning of the play, Archer praises the “good men . . . [sic] honest
men” (1-25) he has encountered in the working-class, plans to attend a fireman’s ball, and boasts
of his “astonishingly wide acquaintance in the Fire Department” (1-28).
Barnes considered Archer’s working-class sympathies essential for making him attractive
to contemporary audiences. In discussing how to handle Wharton’s objections to her version of
Archer, Barnes wrote to Sheldon admonishing,
. . . we MUST struggle to keep him a politician and make him a hero that sees the
short comings in his, after all, extremely provincial environment. There will be a
great many more people who agree with Sherwood Anderson 213 than with Mrs.
Jones [and Mrs. Wharton] on the East 11th Street background, in any modern
audience. Our hero MUST be working with them– not against them. (Letter 13
Sept. 1927)
After receiving these instructions from Barnes, Sheldon contacted Wharton, offering to reinsert
Archer’s European tours but arguing against eliminating his political career. Ironically, Sheldon
appealed to Wharton’s classist attitudes in his reasons for preserving Archer’s politics. To
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Wharton, Sheldon argued that the political and patriotic Archer would be “theatrically more
effective and more comprehensible to [an] unsophisticated audience” (Telegram 22 Sept. 1927).
Wharton conceded that there was “No need to suppress Archers [sic] political career” as long as
Sheldon would “make him a gentleman in politics like Roosevelt” 214 (Telegram to Sheldon,
n.d.).
Barnes, however, focused on making Archer into more of a hero than a gentleman,
believing that her heroine, as well as her audience, required a champion. As Barnes argued to
Sheldon, “He [Archer] has to make some romantic, heroic, appeal to the audience, as he does to
Ellen” (Letter 13 Sept. 1927), and Wharton’s Archer is “not the stuff of which heros [sic] are
made!” (Letter 10 Aug.1927). Accordingly, Barnes painted Archer’s political career with the
mythic heroism of Arthurian legend, a device elevating both Archer and the nation he served to
mythic glory while reducing Ellen to the role of supportive leading lady. In Archer’s first
discussion with Ellen in the play, he refers to himself as a “crusader” when describing his initial
attempt against Tweed (1-23). Archer lapses into a speech about America’s future, and Ellen,
“Who has been listening with glowing attention,” responds to his plans exclaiming, “It’s
adventure! It’s romance! It’s young America riding out in quest of the Grail!” (1-25). Archer
views this holy quest as merely part of a national campaign for the future, a campaign making
the nation “richer and stronger and greater all the time” until it becomes “the greatest nation on
earth” (1-25). Barnes ennobles Archer’s political and national ambition to the point that his civic
potential dominates the play, even competing with his affection for Ellen. Later in the play, Ellen
tries to convince Archer to abandon his plan to run off with her by admitting, “You won’t be
happy! . . . I’m not the great love of your life! Your great love is your career, the country!” (3-19,
3-20). 215 Archer’s patriotism thus replaces his passion as his driving motivation, and, in Barnes’s
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opinion, made him less of a “cad” for abandoning Ellen who, in Barnes’s version, recognizes the
superior call of Archer’s national service (Letter to Sheldon 29 Nov. 1926). Framing Archer’s
political career as a noble national quest superior to his feelings for Ellen made Archer, in
Barnes’s opinion, a much more attractive, and, hence, marketable figure than Wharton’s
“absurd” creation (Letter to Sheldon 29 Nov. 1926).
However, the heroism Barnes inserted into Archer’s political endeavors drastically
altered the narrative’s central discussion of femininity by aligning both Ellen and May with his
national concerns. As discussed earlier, in the serial, May and Ellen exemplify Wharton’s view
of the essential differences between American and European femininity, with May representing
American innocence and, in Wharton’s view, ignorance, and Ellen portraying European
experience and sophistication. Throughout the novel, May and Ellen stand in opposition to each
other as representatives of two antithetical and indigenous forms of femininity.
Barnes’s adaptation, however, eliminated this comparison by presenting both women as
examples of American femininity. Early in the writing process, Barnes excised dialogue carrying
the American/Foreign, May/Ellen dichotomy from the novel into the play. Barnes justified her
edits to Sheldon, explaining that the discussion of national differences did not advance the
action. As a solution, she suggested “MUCH less talk between Ellen and Archer about her little
house and American women versus European women in the opening of their scene” (Letter to
Sheldon 21 Feb. 1927). In addition to deleting discussions of “American women versus
European women,” Barnes downplayed Ellen’s foreignness by portraying her as an essentially
American woman. Sheldon and Barnes cut dialogue, such as the following conversation, which
positioned Ellen as an example of foreign femininity. When Archer complains that no other
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woman understands his political aims, Ellen attributes her support for his career to her foreign
origins, replying,
ELLEN. Ah, I’m European. Over there women are trained to be interested –
absorbed in their men.
ARCHER. American women arent [sic] like that.
ELLEN. No. With all their freedom they seem to me to live in an intellectual
harem of their own making. No man enters it. And they never step out from
behind the bars – to share their men’s interests. Perhaps you like it that way.
You naïve Americans. There’s a charm to the seraglio. 216
The dialogue indicates that Barnes not only understood Wharton’s argument about American and
European femininity but was familiar with the attitudes, discussed earlier, that Wharton
presented in her articles “Is there a new Frenchwoman?” and “Harems and Ceremonies.”
However, such sentiments from Ellen, contrasting her European nature to “naïve
Americans,” disappeared as the script evolved. Barnes omitted these passages from later
versions 217 and instead introduced dialogue asserting Ellen’s authenticity as an American
woman. As discussed earlier, in the novel, Ellen tries to “become a complete American again”
(106) but is constantly conscious of her failure to assimilate. When she refers to herself as
American, it is “with an ironic sound” (188), and she deflects one of Archer’s advances by
retorting “I don’t speak your language” (160). In the play, however, Ellen speaks this line, but
also tells Beaufort, a European, that she and Archer are “both good Americans. We speak the
same language” (2-8) and, she continues, they discuss politics “in the vernacular” (2-14).
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Barnes’s version of Ellen thus aligns Ellen with Archer and America while eschewing the
foreignness associated with the European Beaufort.
Barnes also carried Ellen’s democratic social views from the novel into the play by
retaining Ellen’s friendly acquaintance with her working-class neighbors, a relationship
established in the novel. While these practices mark Ellen as foreign in the novel, in the play,
Archer espouses them as well, making her egalitarianism distinctly American. In the play, this
quality also sets Ellen apart from May, who discourages Archer from socializing with the
working class. Ellen maintains her exotic European allure in the play, retaining her “too
European” (1-6) low-cut dress, but her patriotic zeal, egalitarianism, and interest in social justice
and civic duty make her, in many ways, more American than May. The play thus presents Ellen
as a competing ideal of American femininity rather than a foreign infiltration.
While Wharton’s novel juxtaposes May and Ellen as products of polarized gender
systems, the play positions both women within a value system that determines their worth based
on their ability to buttress American patriarchy. As American women in the play, both May and
Ellen perform gender primarily through their ability to preserve Archer’s political prowess and,
thus, America’s future. Throughout the play, Ellen and May thus demonstrate their worthiness as
women through their worthiness as citizens. Ellen voices this valuation of femininity in her first
conversation with Archer, telling him he must marry a woman who will support his political
career. Employing Arthurian imagery, Ellen warns Archer, “If she’s the right kind [of woman],
you can fight the devil from a fortress and sanctuary. If she’s the wrong kind, you’ll be left
shattered in the garden of the enchantress and you won’t do any fighting any more” (1-26). Ellen
explains that the enchantress, who resembles Wharton’s view of childish femininity, destroys the
crusader’s potency because “she is a helpless human being who clings to a man and cries like a
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frightened child,” thus deflecting him from his purpose (1-27). The play thus reduces femininity
to a quality valuable or worthless in its relation to male and, by extension, national achievement.
Within this system, the play initially establishes May, who disapproves of Archer’s
political interests, as inferior to Ellen, who supports and admires Archer’s civic service. 218 In act
one, May deprecates Archer’s political activities and declares that if he loves her he will leave
politics for good, an ultimatum that threatens to deter Archer from his political pursuits (2-22).
However, later in the play, May shifts her opinion. In act three, May discovers that Archer is
having an affair with Ellen, another departure from the book. After discovering a piece of
Archer’s clothing in Ellen’s apartment, May claims to change her opinion about politics and
credits Ellen with leading her to realize their import. May shrewdly invokes the primacy of
politics as she attempts to convince Ellen to end her affair with Archer, who will be unable to
support a railroad bill, the most important bill of his career, if he elopes with Ellen. May argues,
without ever explicitly acknowledging the affair, that “Nothing ought to count with Newland
[Archer], ought it, except his career?” (3-26). “Nothing,” Ellen agrees (3-26). May advances her
cause in a similar vein when telling Ellen that she is pregnant. May artfully aligns her condition
with Archer’s career, explaining how it fulfills “what he says about every country needing men
who can work hard and fight hard and have plenty of children” (3-26). May’s pregnancy thus
makes Archer the ideal civil servant. By couching her argument in terms of Archer’s political
success, May convinces Ellen of her superior claim and persuades Ellen to abandon Archer.
The play’s epilogue condones May’s actions and, given the value system of the play,
affirms her femininity by revealing Archer’s later success in becoming a senator and, eventually,
the Secretary of State, more than he ever accomplishes as Wharton’s creation. The play also
removes any indication that May deceives Ellen by announcing her pregnancy prematurely, thus
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removing the complexity May’s character exhibits in the serial and lending her innocent purity
an authenticity Wharton attenuates through May’s deliberate manipulation. In the play, May acts
with apparently pure motives when facilitating Archer’s national service by preserving her
marriage and preventing scandal. The play thus unites Archer’s political prowess with May’s
feminine concern for home and family.
Rather than standing in contrast to the patriotic and domestic femininity May ultimately
embodies, Ellen embraces the same American values May exhibits, thus eliminating the central
contrast of Wharton’s novel. In the play, Ellen and May differ more in their timing than their
femininity. While May initially condemns Archer’s political efforts, Ellen admires his ambitions
from the beginning, cheering him in his quest for the “Grail” and following his political
successes and defeats with interest. May adopts this attitude towards Archer’s career later in the
play but supports his desire for marriage and family from the beginning, a position Ellen upholds
only after learning May is pregnant. Throughout the play, Barnes indicates that, like May, Ellen
longs to have a child, a longing absent from the novel. Motivated by love of country and the
sanctity of family, quintessential American values, Ellen abandons Archer after learning he is to
be a father, thus sacrificing her individual happiness to preserve his family and his career.
Indeed, Barnes understood Archer’s political career as Ellen’s “most powerful motive for her
subsequent action [ending their affair]– her desire not to wreck a really important life” (Letter to
Sheldon 30 Mar. 1928). Ellen thus safeguards Archer’s reputation and “really important life” by
sacrificing her, by implication, unimportant existence. Ellen demonstrates her value as an
American woman while also recognizing May’s marital and maternal femininity as more
valuable to Archer and, thus, America than her own. The play thus parallels the feminine
microcosm of May and Ellen’s personal sacrifices (Ellen sacrifices her affair and May accepts
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Archer’s infidelity), preformed in order to preserve the nuclear family, with the male macrocosm
in which Archer relinquishes Ellen and continues to pursue politics in order to protect the
nation’s future. Rather than revealing American hypocrisy, the play glorifies the patriotism
ultimately directing all of the characters in the play.
Adapting Racial Others
By intertwining familial and national destiny in this manner, the play addressed
contemporary anxieties about racial and national stability within the play’s central concern
regarding Ellen and Archer’s affair. As discussed in chapter one, high levels of immigration from
Eastern Europe as well as lingering animosity towards enemy nations from the Great War fueled
racism during the inter-war years against individuals understood as racially Other from white,
Protestant Americans—particularly Eastern Europeans. Such prejudices tied to understandings of
nation in the persistent belief, supported by the “science” of eugenics, that only Northern
Europeans carried the racial qualities required to create and sustain American civilization
(Hutchinson 65). Emphasizing Ellen’s Americanness thus entailed underscoring her whiteness, a
racial quality carrying distinct cultural capital in 1920s entertainment.
Barnes and Sheldon’s adaptation highlights Ellen’s status as a white American woman by
placing her racial and national qualities in relief to the play’s racial and national Others. As
discussed earlier, the serial constructs Ellen as European and May as American while the play
portrays both women as essentially American. Erasing the national difference between May and
Ellen served to remove fears of the foreign from Ellen and the femininity she represents.
Detaching foreign otherness from Ellen allowed Barnes and Sheldon to intensify negative
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stereotypes of the non-American Other for dramatic effect without compromising the capital
contained in their heroine’s white Americanness.
Barnes and Sheldon utilized this opportunity to create threatening and sinister depictions
of the foreign, non-white Other in Julius Beaufort, a Jewish banker and Austrian émigré, and
Ellen’s husband, the Polish count. In creating these characters, Barnes employed racial
stereotypes and played on white anxieties about Eastern Europeans and their “deficient” moral
practices in order to increase the entertainment value of Ellen’s femininity by placing her in
contrast to and, in the case of the count, in danger of, these characters. In the novel as well as the
play, Beaufort and the count pursue sexual relationships with Ellen, and both the novel and the
play indicate that their sexual morals, along with their racial origins, exist outside the boundaries
of white New York society. 219 The play thus links the perils Ellen faces, particularly in the areas
of love and reproduction, to those confronting white hegemony in contemporary America.
Barnes initiated this alteration to Wharton’s narrative by making Beaufort’s character
Jewish in the stage version. In the stage directions, Barnes describes Beaufort as “slightly
Hebraic in feature, [and] subtly foreign in appearance” (1-10). This description departs from the
novel, which describes Beaufort’s origins as mysterious and foreign (70, 321) but does not
designate his character as Jewish. 220 The script, however, links Beaufort’s foreignness with a
Jewish ethnicity that the play characterizes as a racial identity, a concept common in 1920s
American culture (2-13). Repeatedly throughout the play, characters reference the racial and
national difference between Beaufort and Ellen, using Beaufort’s European and Jewish origins to
underscore Ellen’s white, American heritage. Mrs. Mingott, the matriarch of May and Ellen’s
family, for example, warns Beaufort to stop pursuing Ellen because “Ellen’s not your kind . . .
she’s American through and through” (1-11). Ellen confirms this view when she tells Beaufort,
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“We Americans are beyond you . . . You don’t understand us any better than Anastasia,” her
Italian maid who only speaks Italian (italics added 2-8). 221 In addition, Beaufort’s reference to
“my race” in a conversation with Ellen, indicates his own understanding of his ethnicity as a
racial designation and, moreover, a racial designation he and Ellen do not share (2-13).
Separating Ellen and Beaufort departs from the novel, which aligns them as outsiders with
foreign qualities threatening the stability of New York society—Beaufort through his unethical
financial dealings which spark a financial crisis, and Ellen through her sexuality which sparks an
attraction endangering old New York’s premier couple. The play, however, underscores Ellen’s
whiteness and Americanness by distancing her from Beaufort’s Otherness as an Austrian Jew.
Beaufort’s ethnicity thus carries capital primarily as a contrast highlighting Ellen’s race and
nationality.
As a foil for Ellen, Beaufort gained an increasingly important role in the plot of the play.
In the novel, Beaufort functions as a minor character, interested in Ellen but also conducting an
affair with a mistress he eventually marries. In the play, however, Beaufort serves as a major
character receiving almost as much stage time as Archer. Beaufort also holds a more central role
in Ellen’s life in the play, emerging as the man who faced down her husband and aided her in her
escape from his control. 222 Courageous and deeply in love with Ellen, Beaufort pursues Ellen in
a more blatant and single-minded manner in the play than in the novel. Although married, as he
is in the novel, Beaufort lacks a mistress in the play and overtly attempts to persuade Ellen to
take on this role, offering to save her a second time from her husband who is on his way to New
York to reclaim her. Beaufort declares his love for Ellen in the penultimate scene of the play, a
scene critics found particularly moving, 223 but Ellen declares that, in spite of their close
friendship, she is powerless to love Beaufort. “One can’t control love,” she explains, “One can’t
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tell it to come . . . [sic] or go” (3-12). Ellen claims she cannot control her heart, indicating that
the racial preference of her heart for the white, American Archer rather than the foreign, Jewish
Beaufort, reflects the natural inclinations of her white, female affection. Like Magnolia in Show
Boat, Ellen “can’t help lovin’ dat man.” Both women are helpless when it comes to the
heteronormative love of a white man—a marketable construct of female desire in 1920s
commercial theatre.
While Beaufort represents a noble but, ultimately, incompatible foreign and racial
Otherness, Ellen’s husband Count Olenska presents a more extreme racist stereotype associating
Eastern Europeans with degenerate sexual appetites. In the novel, Ellen leaves her husband, a
Polish count, for unspecified reasons. Various characters hint at his serial infidelity with
prostitutes, but Ellen never names his improprieties. The play, however, capitalizes on 1920s
xenophobia by specifying the count’s atrocities, which entail numerous affairs, including one
with a teenage peasant girl on his estate. Ellen mourns this particular affair because, she explains,
“She . . . [sic] had the baby I wanted” (2-48). In addition to this, Ellen presents documents
proving that her husband beat her, raped a little girl, and, in an atrocity later cut from the final
version, raped a ten-year-old boy. 224 Enumerating the Count’s crimes in the play served to
construct Eastern European society as essentially depraved. The Count’s victims have no
recourse in these cases because, as Ellen explains, the Eastern European social structure favors
the Count. When Archer asks why no one prosecuted the Count for these actions, Ellen replies
“You don’t know Europe,” affirming America’s moral and, in the racist logic of the play, racial
superiority over this immoral, non-white continent (2-49). 225
As discussed earlier, many white Americans at this time believed that evolution and
eugenics scientifically demonstrated the intrinsically lower moral nature of non-white races,
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including Eastern Europeans. According to historian Peggy Pascoe, several ethnologists and
eugenicists in the 1920s reported on the racial differences between “fair whites,” or Northern
Europeans, and “dark whites,” or Southern Europeans (118). According to these experts, Eastern
Europeans qualified as “dark whites,” a category viewed as racially and morally inferior to
Northern Europeans. 226 Increased immigration from Eastern Europe during this period thus
inspired anxieties about “interracial” sex in America, particularly child-producing unions
between Eastern European men and white women. Such fears played out in numerous accounts,
several claiming to be based in fact, of white slavery—the forced prostitution of white women
instigated by non-white men. White slavery stories carried tremendous value in entertainment,
appearing in novels, on Broadway, and permeating the film industry in the early 1910s. 227
Barnes and Sheldon altered the narrative’s ending in order to capitalize on the lingering
entertainment value representations of white women sexually victimized by non-white men
carried in 1928. Accordingly, at the end of the play, Ellen sacrifices herself by returning to
Europe with the count and agreeing to reinstate herself there as his wife in order to effectively
end to her affair with Archer. Given the count’s former atrocities, Ellen’s decision to return to
this life seems tragic and terrifying, an effect Barnes relished. Sheldon and Barnes considered
including the count in the play, but Barnes concluded that leaving him off stage made his
character more terrifying, more of “a mythical monster” rather than just a bad husband (Letter to
Sheldon 2 May 1927). In order to maximize the horror of his claim on Ellen, giving the sense of
“the Minotaur, waiting for the maiden,” Barnes cut several scenes involving the count, hoping
his physical absence from the stage would increase the horrors her audience imagined for Ellen
at their reunion (Letter to Sheldon 2 May 1927).
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Barnes’s desire to accentuate the count’s depravity and Ellen’s vulnerability indicate the
entertainment value attributed to representations of white women as sexual victims of foreign,
non-white depravity. Barnes’s ending differs dramatically from the novel, which concludes with
Ellen returning to Europe but not to her husband. In the novel, Ellen determines to leave New
York after she learns that May is pregnant and persuades Mrs. Mingott, her grandmother, to
provide for her financially so that she has no need to return to her husband. Ellen thus retains her
independence, her integrity, and her joie de vivre, while still losing Archer. 228 In the play,
however, Ellen ends in the hands of a man she describes as “a monster, a demon, something . . .
[sic] something out of the pit!” (2-50). Rather than a woman in control of her own sexuality,
Barnes portrays Ellen as a sexual victim, fated to succumb to men and desires outside of her
control. Barnes applied this interpretation even to Ellen’s affair with Archer, which, in contrast
the novel, the couple consummates in the play the night before May reveals she is pregnant.
Barnes attributed Ellen’s decision to sleep with Archer, a morally ambiguous act, to the count
rather than Ellen’s own desires. After dealing with the count, Barnes explained to Sheldon, Ellen
would be emotionally spent and “Easy prey to reaction” (Letter 2 May 1927). Barnes’s
adaptation of The Age of Innocence thus reveals that depictions of sexually reactive women held
more entertainment value in 1920s drama than representations sexually autonomous women.
As discussed earlier, sexually active women held entertainment value as long as their
activity remained contained within social norms. Accordingly, Barnes contained Ellen’s desire
within accepted class, race, and ethnic boundaries by limiting her affection, as discussed earlier,
as well as her fertility. Barnes contained the threat Ellen’s sexuality presented to white
hegemony and national stability by rendering her character infertile. As Ellen’s comments about
the peasant girl’s baby indicate, Ellen longs for a child, but, the play implies, is unable to
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produce one. While tragic and painful for Ellen, her infertility increases her entertainment value
by making her sympathetic, through the personal tragedy she suffers, and by mitigating the threat
her sexual activity poses to Archer’s family and career. Although Ellen sleeps with Archer in the
play, she cannot produce a child and, therefore, cannot present a threat to May, who carries
Archer’s legitimate offspring. In the play, both May and Ellen understand the supremacy of
maternal femininity and the nuclear family in relation to personal as well as social values and the
importance of sacrificing self in order to protect this superior femininity. As May maintains, “I
think, with Newland, that babies come first” (3-29), and Ellen concurs definitively, “You’re
right. Babies come first . . . [sic] before everything” (3-30). The play thus portrays Ellen’s
sacrifice in returning to the Count as a noble act protecting both Archer’s family and white
hegemony since her departure enables May to continue to produce upstanding, white citizens but
holds no threat that the Count will produce any parallel, non-white progeny. As Ellen describes
her situation, “Not all women are lucky enough to have children, May. There are other things
women can do for the man [and the country] they love” (3-29). Ellen’s understanding of the
sacred value of the white, nuclear, American family mitigates the social threat of her sexuality,
thus aligning her sexual freedom with contemporary conservatism—a calibration making her
more marketable in 1920s theatre.
Rather than a condemning contrast and damming critique of the ignorance ingrained in
American femininity, Barnes and Sheldon’s The Age of Innocence presented Ellen Olenska as a
representation of the 1920s American feminine ideal—overtly sexual yet essentially maternal
and self-censured. This ideal glorified the sexualized woman of the 1920s while containing her
sexuality within traditional ideals of family and fidelity. In creating the stage version of Ellen,
the perceived entertainment value of nationalism, maternity, sexuality, and self-sacrifice
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preempted Wharton’s critique of American femininity, offering American audiences a more
flattering portrayal of American culture and femininity than presented in the serial. Barnes and
Sheldon shifted Wharton’s criticism of American hypocrisy, in preaching a morality it fails to
practice, to a condemnation of Eastern European culture and a celebration of America as the
bastion of civilization. This alteration reduced Wharton’s complex and complicit female
characters to victims and served to naturalize feminine innocence rather than depicting and
critiquing this characteristic a pernicious cultural construct. The play thus presented May’s
innocence as an isolated virtue rather than a pervasive national problem and glorified Ellen as an
alluring and altruistic example of American femininity. As a tragic, sexual, and patriotic woman,
Ellen carried tremendous entertainment value, which, as Barnes and Sheldon intended, attracted
several Broadway producers and leading ladies to the project.
Casting, Contracts, and Capital
In the 1920s theatre industry, untested scripts had little chance of seeing the stage without
the backing of an able producer and a famous actress. Usually, producers and Broadway stars
purchased the rights to a script and agreed to produce the show within a specific timeframe or
release the rights for sale to another interested party. Often, actresses worked with producers to
find potentially profitable material. Barnes understood that, because she was a novice
playwright, she and her play carried little capital in such negotiations. For Barnes, Sheldon’s
connections proved invaluable in turning her play into a production.
On June 19th, 1927, Sheldon requested that Ethel Barrymore, his dinner guest for the
evening, read The Age Innocence to him and suggest actresses for the role of Ellen (Letter to
Barnes 20 June 1927). Sheldon reported to Barnes that Barrymore wept over several of the
scenes and suggested Ann Harding for the role, claiming she could do it well if given a good
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director (Letter 20 June 1927). It is unclear whether or not Sheldon approached Harding, but he
soon sent a copy of the script to actress Maude Adams and also contacted Winthrop Ames and
Arthur Hopkins about producing the play. Edwin H. Knopf, another potential producer,
expressed concern over the cost of the show, which would require period sets and opulent
costumes (Knopf). By August, Sheldon had attracted three leading actresses interested in playing
Ellen—Jane Cowl, Ina Claire, and Katharine Cornell.
In her deliberations concerning these three actresses, Barnes demonstrated an insightful
understanding of the issues of capital surrounding her choice as well as the career considerations
of the actresses themselves. Referring to Cornell as a “surprise package” and Cowl as “just as
advertised,” Barnes recognized that, in selecting an actress, she was, in a sense, selecting a
consumer product, and the qualities of this product would determine the Ellen sold through her
play (Letter to Sheldon 27 Mar. 1928). Accordingly, Barnes focused on issues of capital,
including experience, talent, intelligence, reputation, and appearance in selecting her star. Cowl,
Claire, and Cornell also demonstrated a keen understanding of the value of their “advertising”
and “packaging.” Throughout negotiations, each actress worked to secure Barnes’s script, which
they believed s would increase their capital by validating and building their reputations as skilled
performers. An actress’s reputation worked as cultural capital and translated into monetary
capital through box office revenue. Accordingly, leading actresses intently searched and
negotiated for plays that would showcase their talents, demonstrate new skills, and provide
profitable production options, all factors increasing their individual cultural and economic
capital.
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Additionally, popular shows sometimes generated long runs and national, and,
occasionally, international, tours, providing a secure source of income for the savvy and
successful star. In addition to the income from a long run, the duration of a successful vehicle
often linked the star permanently in public memory with a particular role. As theatre historian
Marvin Carlson demonstrates, such “ghostings” haunt a performer’s career, often influencing
audiences’ perceptions in perpetuity. 229 Ghostings thus carry capital, and, for various reasons,
Cowl, Claire, and Cornell believed that Ellen would prove a profitable specter.
Initially, Cowl and her husband, producer Adolph Klauber, expressed keen interest in
producing The Age of Innocence. 230 Negotiations hit a snag, however, when Klauber insisted on
a contract granting him the option to produce the show with another actress if Cowl found
another project. This stipulation concerned Sheldon who, in turn, discussed Cowl’s interest in the
script with Cornell in an attempt to provoke a competing offer (Letter to Barnes 26 Aug. 1927).
Sheldon’s tactic, however, failed, and Cornell phoned Sheldon to explain that, while flattered by
his offer, she was not interested. 231 After learning of Cornell’s rejection, Barnes urged Sheldon
to accept the offer from Cowl with the stipulation that she and Klauber would not be permitted to
stage the play with another actress as Ellen. Barnes knew this condition might delay production
for a year but reasoned that it was better to have the play performed later with a first-rate star
than to have an earlier production with “a second rater” (Letter to Sheldon 28 Aug. 1927). In
order to appease her A-list star, Barnes immediately set about altering the script to incorporate
changes Cowl had suggested. 232 However, Sheldon kept their options open and continued to
court Cornell as well as other leading ladies. 233 Sheldon’s efforts proved prudent when Cowl and
Klauber rejected the contract in December 1927, prompting Sheldon to approach actress Ina
Claire.
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Barnes and Sheldon’s negotiations with Ina Claire reveal the capital concerns at the
forefront of their considerations in choosing a leading lady as well as several specific concerns of
the actresses themselves. Throughout these negotiations, both parties carefully weighed the
capital that both the actress and the character carried. While Cowl was more famous, Claire, by
this time, also possessed a substantial reputation. However, Claire’s notoriety rested primarily on
her past as a Follies girl and her ability as a stage comedienne. Claire danced with the Ziegfeld
Follies and Midnight Frolic in 1915 and 1916, eventually becoming a lead performer through her
ability to do impressions. Although Claire left the Follies to establish an independent career, she
remained united with the image of the chorus girl through her past as a Ziegfeld girl as well as
her defining role in Avery Hopwood’s 1919 hit The Gold Diggers, a comedy about chorus-girl
life which ran for over two-hundred performances and established Claire as a Broadway star.
The Age of Innocence, as Barnes understood, appealed to Claire because the role of Ellen
presented an opportunity for her to perform tragedy, a particularly advantageous ability for a
former Follies girl working to establish herself as a serious Broadway star. Unlike comedy,
critics and audiences viewed successful performances in tragedy as proof of a performer’s skill
and intelligence. Barnes offered Sheldon a perceptive analysis of Claire’s concerns about this
issue explaining, “Her [Claire’s] interest is entirely in her own growth as an actress. She wants to
succeed by being really worth success Ziegfield [sic] folly or no” (Letter 12 Dec. 1927). Barnes
understood the disparity in value between a Follies girl and a dramatic actress and apprehended
Claire’s interest in her script as an attempt to overcome the stereotypes separating chorus girls
from talent and intellect. Barnes relished this opportunity because she believed that Claire’s
desire to improve her capital would benefit the play. “The play is important to her [Claire] as her
debut in a new sort of thing,” Barnes explained to Sheldon; “She will want to succeed in it, and
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she will not take success for granted. She will put thought and care into her interpretation,” as
opposed to Cowl who, Barnes implied, might be tempted to rest on her laurels and approach the
play with a cavalier attitude (Letter 12 Dec. 1927). In addition, Barnes explained, if Claire
succeeded in something new, her performance would carry more value and sell more tickets than
Cowl as “the sure old war horse . . . playing one more romantic role” (Letter 12 Dec. 1927).
Claire’s novelty thus carried more capital in this case than Cowl’s experience.
In addition to novelty, Barnes felt that Claire held an advantage over Cowl in the area of
intellect. While comedy, particularly sex farces like The Gold Diggers, often linked comic
actresses with fatuity, Barnes believed Claire’s comedic work demonstrated skill and artistry.
Barnes detailed Claire’s advantages in this area in a lengthy letter to Sheldon declaring,
I consider her a much cleverer actress [than Cowl]. She is really, technically
speaking, an extremely intelligent comedienne. Her effects are artistically sound.
She knows, with her little blonde bean, just what she is trying to do, and she
usually hits the bull’s eye. If you watch her acting, as such, critically, you are
conscious of her head behind it, every minute. (12 Dec. 1927)
Barnes believed that the intelligence Claire employed in her comedy could transfer to a dramatic
performance and create a stronger and more complex portrayal of Ellen than Cowl could
manage. This assessment stemmed from Barnes’s high opinion of Claire as well as her low
opinion of Cowl, and Barnes ended her letter with a quip regarding Cowl’s renowned
performance as Juliet. Barnes related her relative’s comment that “the reason that Jane Cowl
made such a convincing Julie[t] is that she has the mentality of a fourteen year old child!” (12
Dec. 1927). Barnes agreed.
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As Barnes’s letters reveal, intelligence, ability, reputation, and novelty formed the nonmaterial capital weighed in selecting an actress to play Ellen. While Barnes also considered
appearance in these deliberations, she considered class, rather than beauty, the actresses’ main
asset. Cowl and Claire, Barnes claimed, could play upper-class characters almost convincingly,
but only actresses such as Barrymore or Cornell, actresses who, Barnes stated, “have an
advantage of birth and breeding,” could truly convey such status (Letter to Sheldon 12 Dec.
1927). Cornell’s carriage thus gave her an advantage in these deliberations as did “a certain
exotic quality” she possessed, which Barnes believed would help convey Ellen’s foreign past and
explain her appeal (Letter to Sheldon 28 July 1928). In addition to brains and breeding, Barnes
also considered time. Claire planned to produce the play right away, while Cowl wanted to wait
until the following year, by which time, Barnes feared, Cowl would have lost interest and
Wharton would have found time to read and repeal the script. Barnes worked to increase her own
capital through this consideration, for, by this time, she and Sheldon had other plays in the
works, 234 and a Broadway production of The Age of Innocence would likely generate interest and
financial backing for their forthcoming projects.
For these reasons, Barnes urged the deal with Claire, whole would produce the play soon,
while also acknowledging the risks. Barnes understood that, due to her skill and reputation, Cowl
held a higher status in the Broadway hierarchy of dramatic actresses. While this did not
guarantee the best performance or substantial box office receipts, it did assure a predictable
performance and reliable revenue. As Barnes explained to Sheldon, “Against all this [Claire’s
strong points] I weigh only the fact that Ina Clair [sic] has never done just this sort of thing
before. There is no doubt, in my mind, that Jane Cowl would be surer to weep and agonize and
carry on in the serious emotional scenes, with more certain effect . . .Ina Clair [sic] might be
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better than she. But we DONT KNOW. We take a chance” (Letter 12 Dec. 1927). For Barnes,
the fact that Claire had never done anything like The Age of Innocence before served as a
simultaneous advantage and disadvantage. Claire stood as a thrilling chance and a substantial
risk.
For her part, Claire held similar reservations about Barnes’s script, the first offering from
an unknown playwright, and its ability to build her reputation as a capable actress. Claire
discussed the script with numerous friends and colleagues, seeking assurances of success, and,
by the beginning of March, Sheldon felt her interest beginning to wane. Sheldon expressed
frustration over Claire’s dithering in a letter to Barnes, declaring that Claire should make up her
own mind and stop shifting in accordance with every acquaintances’ opinion: “She evidently has
the kind of mind that takes advice from anyone, including the elevator-boy,” he complained (5
Mar. 1928). 235 Like Cowl, Claire began requesting changes to the script, but, for Barnes, Claire’s
requests seemed to strike at the heart of the play. On the advice of her friend actress Constance
Collier, Claire suggested that Barnes eliminate the scene in which May reveals she is pregnant
and convinces Ellen to leave Archer. Claire and Collier felt the scene “a comedy scene and
undignified, [conveying the] aroma of wife catching husband with the goods,” Sheldon related to
Barnes (Letter 5 Mar. 1928). Collier and Claire also found the political discussions in the play
dull and suggested that Barnes remove these as well.
While Barnes acknowledged the play required structural edits, she rejected changes to the
major themes she had inserted into Wharton’s narrative, mainly Archer’s political career, which
she viewed as his primary point of attraction and conflict for Ellen. As she explained to Claire,
“To remove the politics from the text seems to me to strike a body blow at the entire plot. Not
only to change the character of Newland [Archer] but to take away from Ellen her most
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convincing reason for falling in love with him” (Letter to Sheldon 30 Mar. 1928). 236 Barnes also
defended the scene between May and Ellen, arguing that confrontation created a more dramatic
method for revealing May’s pregnancy than hearsay from a third character, as Claire and Collier
proposed. Barnes ended her letter, explaining that she regretted the fact that she could not
perform the changes Claire suggested but neglected to express regret over the fact that Claire
would not be playing Ellen.
This omission reflected Barnes’s delight that Cowl and Cornell had both reentered
negotiations for her play, prompting Sheldon to compare Barnes to the mythical Paris selecting
which goddess would receive the golden apple. Barnes and Sheldon courted both Cowl and
Cornell, hoping to entice one into signing a contract. Sheldon wrote to Cowl saying, “the thought
of you as Ellen still entrances her [Barnes] and she is delighted to hear that you still are
interested” (Letter 8 Mar. 1928), 237 while Barnes hosted a meeting at her home with Cornell and
her husband, director Guthrie McClintic, to discuss the project. Barnes also worked to keep
Claire in reserve, telling Sheldon to relay that she was “terribly disappointed” about losing her
(Letter 30 Mar. 1928). This strategy proved successful, and both Cowl and Cornell offered to
produce The Age of Innocence. However, each actress’s offer contained stipulations providing
additional production options for the play, indicating that both Cowl and Cornell negotiated with
a purposeful eye on potential revenue and opportunity. Cowl, who was writing a play for herself,
still insisted on a contract giving her producers the option to stage the play without her, and
Cornell, with McClintic and producer A. H. Woods, seemed interested only if they could also
obtain the film rights.
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As matters came to a head with Cowl and Cornell, Barnes modernized Sheldon’s
mythical reference, using language to suggest her choice lay not between two goddesses but
between two consumer products:
If I had Jane Cowl and Katherine [sic] Cornell standing side by side before me
both begging for the play on the understanding that it would go on next
November, I think I might decide on Jane Cowl, for purely prudent reasons. I
think she is a surer, safer, box office bet. That she would look perfectly lovely, get
away with the romance, lumber fearfully over the comedy and not look quite East
11th Street. But I think she would bring home the bacon.
I feel that Katherine [sic] Cornell is much more of a chance. More interesting,
more exciting, infinitely more distinguished. . . . I feel quite sure that I should
prefer her Ellen to Jane’s. But I think an element of chance comes into it. She is a
surprise package. Jane Cowl is just as advertised. (Letter to Sheldon 27 Mar.
1928)
Barnes felt that Cowl served as a recognized brand delivering a consistent, reliable product.
However, Cowl’s uniform consistency negated any possibility of complexity, making Cowl an
uninspired but safe choice. Cornell, however, held the allure of surprise.
Cornell’s Capital
Known for her portrayals of dishonorable and passionate women, Cornell, like Claire,
considered The Age of Innocence a play that could build her professional capital. Demonstrating
a keen awareness of the capital concerns entailed in her status as a leading lady, Cornell
explained in her autobiography, “The brief appeal of a commercial star who is just a commodity
for making money for managers didn’t seem an exciting prospect. I wanted to re-state myself in
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my own terms” (83). Cornell hoped that producer Gilbert Miller would find her a “great modern
play” but, when he failed in this endeavor, she decided to proceed with The Age of Innocence
(Cornell 84). In doing so, Cornell deftly managed her capital as a “commercial star” by avoiding
the limited return she would receive if she remained a managers’ commodity in the lurid roles
then associated with her name.
At this time, Cornell’s fame rested on her performances as Iris in The Green Hat and
Leslie in The Letter, both plays centering on morally transgressive women. Iris, in The Green
Hat, falls for Napier Harpenden, whose father forbids their marriage because of Iris’s
disreputable family. Following a series of lovers, Iris, after dramatically throwing her green hat
onto the sofa to indicate her intentions, sleeps with Harpenden the night before his wedding. Iris
then bears his child and commits suicide by driving into a tree. The Green Hat ran for twentynine weeks in New York, inspired a fashion craze for green hats, and made Cornell a star. 238
Following this performance, Cornell played Leslie in The Letter by W. Somerset Maugham. The
Letter opens as Leslie fires a revolver at her lover, and unfolds as Leslie lies to escape the
consequences of this murder, which she committed out of jealousy. Following this production,
Eugene Walter’s Jealousy offered Cornell a similar role in the character Valerie, who remains a
rich man’s mistress in order to support her husband’s career as an artist. According to news
reports, Cornell suffered a breakdown that prevented her from continuing in the production, 239
but, in her autobiography, Cornell makes no mention of attempting the role and implies that she
chose not to take the “lurid, sensational part” (83). Whatever the case, Cornell wanted to distance
herself from precisely the type of femininity commodified in Iris, Leslie, and Valerie, which, she
believed, limited her opportunities as an actress. Rejecting a future of such “lurid, sensational”
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parts (Cornell 83), Cornell told Barnes she was “tired of sin” and interested in The Age of
Innocence (Barnes, Letter to Cornell).
By May 18, 1928, Barnes’s agent had drafted a contract designating Cornell as the play’s
manager and star. The contract ensured the early opening Barnes had hoped for by stipulating
that Cornell would produce the play on or before December 1, 1928 (“Contract”). Cornell, as
with most of her projects, selected her husband as director, which gave her tremendous control
over the production.
Like Claire and Cowl, Cornell asserted this control by requesting revisions. Primarily,
she, along with McClintic, suggested eliminating the last scene, a farewell party for Ellen during
which Archer confronts Ellen, who subsequently discovers that Archer knows nothing of May’s
pregnancy. Rather than revealing May’s secret, Ellen implies that she habitually commits
adultery thus, she believes, making it easier for Archer to part with her. After Ellen leaves, May
informs Archer of her pregnancy, leading Archer to understand both Ellen’s motives and the
finality of his fate. Sheldon concurred with Cornell and McClintic and encouraged Barnes to cut
the scene, pointing out that eliminating this lengthy portion would allow Barnes to keep the
previous scenes relatively intact while cutting the play, which, in its current form, was too long
for production. 240
Deleting this section reduced May’s role to only two scenes, further focusing the play on
Ellen. From the beginning of the adaptation process, the creation of the play as a star vehicle
literally and metaphorically placed Ellen center stage, leaving little textual or physical space for
May, the exemplar of the American femininity Wharton critiqued. Additionally, cutting the final
scene eliminated any indication that May had announced her pregnancy to Ellen prematurely,
thus erasing the implication of May’s duplicity, and, thus, her complexity. Such edits, along with
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subsequent marketing efforts, centered the play on Ellen and, hence, Cornell, emphasizing her
position as the main attraction of the production and the only complex female character. Cornell
solidified her preeminence in the play in a contract with the production company Charles
Frohman, Inc. on September 1928, specifically designating Cornell as “the sole star in the said
play” (italics added, “Contract”). 241 The play thus presented Ellen as the primary representation
of American femininity in The Age of Innocence, presenting nationalism, maternity, sexuality,
and self-sacrifice as Ellen’s and, by association, Cornell’s essential qualities.
Fig. 3 Cornell in The Age of Innocence, Photo by Vandamm
Studio© Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts.
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As Barnes’s earlier comments indicate, Cornell’s physicality, which critics often
described as “exotic,” worked to create a more marketable Ellen (see fig. 3). As mentioned
earlier, Barnes considered this quality an asset, telling Sheldon, “She [Cornell] has a certain
exotic quality that will single her out from the rest of the cast and make her seem different and
remote and foreign” (Letter 28 July 1928). Cornell’s stage presence and physical appearance
hinted subtly at Ellen’s foreignness while also working, through Cornell’s American origins, to
maintain Ellen’s American essence. Critics often discussed Cornell’s alien qualities in
conjunction with her American origins. Reviewing The Age of Innocence, St. John Ervine
asserted that “in her [Cornell] America possesses a great actress,” establishing Cornell as an
American possession before praising her “dark, ivory-colored beauty that is almost Amerindian
in its quality” (qtd. in Cornell 247). Similarly, Gilbert W. Gabriel praised Cornell by attributing
her success to an “indefinable” ability to portray passion through her mere presence. Gilbert
claimed this quality was common among “Stage ladies of the Latin countries,” but, he continued,
“I wish more of the frank, pleasant, nice enough stage ladies of the English speaking countries
could accomplish it too.” While Ervine tied Cornell’s exotic qualities to her attractiveness,
Gabriel linked this quality to “Latin” women who were, by implication, not “nice,” read as
moral, like “English speaking” women. Cornell’s exoticism thus tied directly to the sexuality she
conveyed. As Ervine and Gabriel’s comments imply, Cornell’s appeal, and, thus, her
marketability, lay in her ability to evoke foreign, non-white sexuality through a safely white,
American body. While “exotic,” Cornell was still American, and, therefore, nice.
Cornell deliberately cultivated this construct of “niceness” in the performance of her
personal life. Most notably, according to scholar Lesley Ferris, through her forty-year lavender
marriage with Guthrie McClintic. 242 As Ferris explains, romantic same-sex relationships,
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particularly lesbianism, remained associated with sexual deviance at this time, and theatre
couples often entered lavender marriages in order to disguise and deflect attention from same-sex
relationships. 243 In addition to her marriage to McClintic, Cornell asserted her heterosexuality
through the excessively amorous characters who built her career, including Iris from The Green
Hat and Leslie in The Letter—both women willing to commit immoral acts in the name of
heterosexual love. However, as Ferris points out, such roles associated Cornell with “a wild kind
of femininity that neatly aligned itself in the public mind with another kind of transgressive
activity: the sexual deviancy known as lesbianism” (209). By 1928, Cornell was actively seeking
to distance herself from such “sinners,” as she described them to Barnes, and shore up her
cultural capital by playing respectable women. While Ellen, through her affair with Archer, left
much to be desired in the area of respectability, in Barnes’s version, she ultimately acts with
patriotism and integrity, sacrificing her love to preserve Archer’s political career and nuclear
family. Albeit delayed, the eventual triumph of Ellen’s moral virtue offered a strong contrast to
Leslie in The Letter who implicates others in order to avoid the consequences for her crime.
While Barnes’s adaptation diminished Wharton’s gender critique, it ideally suited Cornell’s
interest in accumulating the respectable capital of some moral “ghosts.”
Throughout the run of The Age of Innocence, Cornell continued to build her image of
“niceness” by performing charity work and refusing to appear in cigarette advertisements,
leading one writer to dub her “The Incorruptible Actress.” 244 During the run of The Age of
Innocence, Cornell also emphasized her attachment to heterosexual norms in interviews such as
one entitled, “Makes Stage An Art Not Career: Home Life, Not Theatre, Is Real Interest of
Katherine [sic] Cornell.” The article informs readers that Cornell’s “real life” takes place not on
Broadway, “but in the home which she shares with her producer-director husband, Guthrie
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McClintic, who directed his wife’s present vehicle” (“Makes Stage”). Such statements distanced
Cornell from the corrupt characters she played onstage and reassured audiences by implying that
her real desires rested within heteronormative constructs of the middle-class home. In addition,
discussing McClintic as “her producer-director husband” implied that, while wild on stage,
Cornell acted under male instruction both at work and at home. This implication was misleading
in relation to Cornell’s sexuality, which operated outside her husband’s managerial control, as
well as her acting. Cornell, for example, deviated from her blocking when she felt Arnold Korff,
who played Beaufort, was becoming too forward while wooing her on stage (Barnes, Letter to
Sheldon 21 Dec. 1928). Cornell thus controlled her sexuality onstage and off while reputedly
under McClintic’s authority.
Through the reputation she cultivated during the run, as well as the role of Ellen, Cornell
created and marketed a particular form of femininity in The Age of Innocence based on nostalgic
associations with Victorian womanhood and female morality. Cornell molded her “exotic”
appearance, rich voice, and personal morals, at least publicly, to Ellen’s 1870s character,
clothing, and virtues to create a marketable image of old-fashioned femininity that attracted
audiences. As one commentator inquired, “Who, having lately seen Katherine [sic] Cornell in the
stage adaptation of Mrs. Wharton’s novel, The Age of Innocence, can doubt the allure of
femininity?” (“How Feminine”). In an age of overtly sexual women with shortened hair and
hemlines, Cornell and her character presented an appealing relic reminiscent of an age and
femininity many considered more moral and respectable than those of the roaring 1920s.
Cornell aligned herself with this period and its morals by acquiring the most authentic
costumes possible for Ellen. Cornell carefully managed this aspect of the performance,
stipulating in her contract that she would select Ellen’s costumes but designating Charles
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Fig. 4 Cornell in The Age of Innocence, Photo by Vandamm Studio© Billy
Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts.
Frohman, Inc. as the party responsible for their expense (“Contract”). Cornell spared no cost in
acquiring the most elegant and accurate costumes possible and hired French designer George
Barbier, known for his illustrations in Parisian fashion magazines, to create Ellen’s clothes. 245
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Barbier’s costumes made Ellen the quintessence of elegance in the play, earning much praise
from audiences and critics (see fig. 4) who particularly admired Ellen’s grey velvet ensemble,
which “brought a little gasp of admiration from the audience” (“Katharine Cornell Shows”). 246
Cornell’s Parisian costumes visually separated her from the other women in the cast who wore
less expensive designs by an American company. This visual difference added to Ellen’s
elegance and Cornell’s status, while the design of the play as a whole, particularly the women’s
long skirts and Victorian silhouettes, emphasized the conservative quality of the play’s setting
and characters. Cornell’s appearance in particular, central and authentic, underscored the fact
that her character followed an antiquated moral code, an association distancing her from the
implication of immorality she carried from her previous roles.
Wharton’s Modified Critique
Contemporary commentary suggests that, ultimately, the stage version of The Age of
Innocence presented Wharton’s critique of American femininity in a permutation prompting
nostalgia rather than introspection. Rather than tying Wharton’s work to contemporary concerns,
as the Pictorial had done in its marketing, the stage production presented a window into a time
and culture viewers felt bore little resemblance to the present. As one critic remarked, the
production felt like “a Museum of the ‘Seventies” (Mulhern), while another commented that the
piece seemed “a little artificial and stilted in this age of sophistication, jazz and gin” (“Katharine
Cornell Warmly”). 247 Such sentiments indicate the distance many perceived between the play
and the present while also revealing the production’s main source of entertainment value—
nostalgia.
Ironically, considering Wharton’s original critique, this nostalgia translated for several
viewers into a longing for Victorian femininity. Rather than prompting a critique of American
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gender constructs, the combined appeal of Cornell and her character inspired several audience
members to interpret The Age of Innocence as a lament over the loss of Victorian purity in
American femininity, particularly as exemplified in modern women’s fashions. Citing “the allure
of [Cornell’s] femininity,” one commentator went so far as to advocate a return to the morality of
Victorian womanhood, which they saw exemplified in Ellen (“How Feminine”). In a paean to
Victorian morals, this commentator claimed that if modern women behaved as Ellen did, they
would no longer “steal each other’s husbands, divide our children’s lives as Solomon suggested
dividing one child’s body, follow our fancies untrammeled by remorse, sacrifice anybody’s
welfare to our own pleasure, and feel that life must be liberty to be life” (“How Feminine”). Such
sentiments directly opposed Wharton’s serial, which criticized old New York society for limiting
Ellen’s personal freedom, and thus indicate that this theme was expunged from the play.
The article entitled “How Feminine Shall We Be?” linked conservative Victorian
morality with constrictive Victorian fashions, arguing that Cornell’s “exquisite garments” were
“hampering to ill-considered movement, to hurry, to sudden changes of purpose, even to rash
thought, as the disciplined ‘tenue’ of behaviour in those times was restraining to self-indulgence”
(“How Feminine”). These comments failed to address the artificiality of such moral and physical
constraints, indicating that this point too was lost in the serial’s translation to the stage. In his
review of The Age of Innocence, St. John Ervine expressed similar regret at the loss of 1870s
femininity and fashion in his description of “Miss Cornell [as Ellen], magnificent in her grey
furs, magnificent again in a long white dress which caught the firelight and convinced me that
women gave up a deal of beauty when they shortened their skirt” (qtd. in Cornell 248).
Ervine’s comments on female beauty as well as the title of the previous essay indicate
that the femininity Cornell embodied and commodified in The Age of Innocence owed much of
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its appeal to contemporary reactions against the modern girl as well as a pervasive longing,
inspired by the current turmoil, for what many perceived as a simpler time in American gender
and morality. As Bellamy noted, the play gave viewers the sense that “the Victorian age had
worked out completely a set of values in life so well understood, so definitely marked, that one’s
course in life could be clearly charted. Right and wrong were as distinct as black from white.” 248
Such cultural simplicity, especially in regard to American femininity, was particularly
marketable in 1920s America.
Although the play failed in conveying Wharton’s critique, it succeeded in making money,
earning over $22,000 for both Wharton and Barnes 249 and considerably more for Cornell and the
play’s producers. 250 The Age of Innocence played at the Empire Theatre in New York from
December 1928 through May 1929 and then toured, beginning in September, to cities such as
Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia. 251 Through this production, Cornell
earned enough capital, both cultural and economic, to start her own production company with
McClintic in 1930, giving her more freedom in choosing scripts and directing her career. Her
first show as actress-manager was The Barretts of Wimpole Street, a tremendous success that
forever associated Cornell with the wholesome role of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which she
performed over seven hundred times (Mosel and Macy 263).
In the value system of commercial entertainment, The Age of Innocence’s financial
success legitimized the play’s nationalistic and nostalgic representation of American femininity
by confirming the entertainment value anticipated in Barnes’s alterations of Wharton’s plot and
characters, particularly Archer and Ellen. As presented in the play, through both May and Ellen,
Wharton’s characters represented American femininity as a gender defined through its primary
desire to protect the nuclear family and American patriarchy. The play also commodified Ellen
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as an icon of American femininity, representing nationalism, maternity, sexuality, and selfsacrifice as American women’s essential qualities. These versions of American femininity sold
well through Barnes’s play and, in the case of Ellen, Cornell’s characterization.
Barnes’s depiction and Cornell’s embodiment of Ellen as a woman sensual and sexual yet
subject to the supremacy of conservative national and patriarchal values maximized Ellen’s
entertainment value by emphasizing her sex appeal while portraying it as, ultimately, under male
control—the count’s, Archer’s, and, by extension, white, male, upper-class citizen’s control. The
success of Barnes’s Ellen demonstrates the entertainment value that constructs of malecontrolled female sexuality and power carried in the 1920s, not only in musicals and revues, but
in commercial drama as well. Cornell’s pursuit of Ellen’s male-controlled character, as well as
her articulation of this construct in her public image, indicate the correlating value this construct
carried in creating and maintaining actresses’ capital. While actresses’ intelligence and ability
carried a capital in commercial dramas that these qualities did not sustain in musicals and sex
farces, this capital continued to rest on constructs of the female performer as an individual
operating under male control.
In addition, Barnes’s The Age of Innocence underscores a disturbing iteration of the
profitable representation of female sexuality under male control in the depiction of Ellen as a
sexual victim. As the manipulations of race in the script indicate, the entertainment value of this
representation often relied on the entertainment value of racist stereotypes of non-white sexual
deviance. The assembling of these various capitals into a marketable image of white women
sexually victimized by a non-white men played on racist fears of the time, particularly of black
and Asian men preying on white women. Such racist representations carried capital throughout
American entertainment during this decade, which relied on the entertainment value of non-
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white sexual deviance as well as the entertainment value of women as sexual victims—a
representation that continues to carry capital in commercial American entertainment.
The entertainment value of male-controlled female sexuality formed from cultural
prejudices as well as constructs of love and romance. In both Show Boat and The Age of
Innocence, adapters commodified understandings of women as powerless in the area of love, an
emotional helplessness further submitting them to male control. In the following chapter, I will
analyze Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which satirized this representation of romance
and male-controlled female sexuality through modern constructs of women and consumerism.
Through her satire, Loos questioned the capital of intellectual women in modern society, which
located female expertise in the field of material consumer goods. This chapter also explores how
Loos employed representations of femininity to manage her own capital as an attractive and
intelligent woman working in 1920s entertainment. Through this analysis, I hope to illuminate
additional aspects of the capital complex at work in entertainment and introduce an additional
popular genre to this study—stage comedy.
Chapter 4
Ignorance is Marketable: Feminine Fatuity and the
Currency of Fun in Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
In January, 1926, Edith Wharton wrote to a friend, declaring, “We are just reading the
great American novel (at last!),” a reference to her recent discovery of Anita Loos’s Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes (qtd. in Loos, Cast 257). Not surprisingly, the work delighted Wharton with its
witty satire, which targeted many of the same aspects of American culture and femininity
Wharton attacked in her own writing. In particular, Loos’s work, like Wharton’s, satirized what
both authors viewed as the American male penchant for ignorant and infantile women. 252
However, unlike Wharton’s stately period pieces, Loos’s work lampooned this fetish in a modern
setting with characters exhibiting distinctly contemporary aspects of femininity, including youth,
sex appeal, materialism, and fun.
In modern constructs of gender, fun defined the form of femininity exemplified in the
decade’s most iconic image—the flapper. Young, sexual, intoxicated and intoxicating, the
flapper represented a femininity focused on having a good time and looking good while having
it. Such constructs allowed women more freedom in terms of fashions and self-expression but
also worked to restrict women by portraying fun as the antithesis of intellectualism, a designation
delineating intelligent women as boring and unattractive. As Ziegfeld, the era’s arbiter of female
pulchritude, declared, “beauty and brains are not often found together” (qtd. in Glenn 171). 253
As an attractive and intelligent woman, Loos chafed at such constraints and created
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in order to both exploit and excoriate the modern schism between
beauty and brains through the narrative’s central character Lorelei Lee—the quintessence of
modern beauty and vacuity. In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Loos caricatured modern constructs
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equating feminine fatuity with sexual allure through the serial’s eponymous gentlemen whose
preference for the pretty and vapid Lorelei repeatedly reaches the point of absurdity. Loos also
imbued her heroine with expensive tastes and a penchant for shopping in order to satirize the
contemporary alliance between beauty, brainlessness, and consumerism, values inherent in the
flapper’s fetish for fashion.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes centers on Lorelei Lee, a beautiful young blonde woman
consumed with her quest for material goods and a good time. Lorelei uses her sex appeal to
persuade rich men to purchase expensive gifts for her while her pervasive ignorance shields her
from the moral implications and repercussions entailed in this exchange. 254 Loos presents the
narrative of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in the form of Lorelei’s diary, a document rife with
misspellings and malapropisms reminding readers of the writer’s lack of education as well as her
social pretentions. In her diary, the vivacious and flirtatious Lorelei records the important events
of her life, which center primarily on encounters with gentlemen. The diary begins after Gus
Eisman, a wealthy Chicago businessman, has undertaken Lorelei’s “education,” a term Lorelei
interprets as the act of associating with men who buy her expensive gifts. 255 Attracted, as all men
seem to be, to Lorelei, Eisman ensconces her in a New York apartment with instructions to
improve herself through education. While Eisman is away, Lorelei discovers several other men
interested in “educating” her, prompting Eisman to send Lorelei to Europe with her friend
Dorothy accompanying her as her chaperone. Eisman embellishes this arrangement with a string
of pearls for Lorelei and a diamond pin for Dorothy, and the narrative progresses as Lorelei
continues to beguile men into buying her gifts while she and Dorothy travel to Europe.
While en route via steamship to London, Lorelei encounters Mr. Bartlett, a former
District Attorney and current U.S. envoy who once prosecuted Lorelei in Little Rock, Arkansas
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for shooting her employer Mr. Jennings. While working as his secretary, Lorelei had discovered
Jennings with a girl “famous all over Little Rock for not being nice” (47-8). 256 The discovery
had inspired “a bad case of histerics [sic],” and, as Lorelei explains to her diary, “when I came
out of it, it seems that I had a revolver in my hand and it seems that the revolver had shot Mr.
Jennings” (48). At the behest of Major Falcon, a British spy who buys her perfume, Lorelei
decides to forgive Bartlett for his harsh treatment of her at the trial and, in the course of her
conversation with Bartlett, learns several state secrets regarding his trip to Europe. Lorelei fails
to realize the import of this information, and, finding that she is still “quite upset” about the
names Bartlett called her in Little Rock, decides to tell Major Falcon what she has learned (59).
After arriving in London, Lorelei performs her most famous escapade by persuading Sir
Francis Beekman, a stingy, retired, and married British officer, to buy her a diamond tiara by
implying that she will remain in London as his mistress if he does. However, after receiving the
tiara, Lorelei proceeds on her travels to Paris and then to central Europe. During her journey, she
encounters Henry Spoffard, a wealthy, Presbyterian enticed by the very vices in entertainment
and art that he notoriously censures. Lorelei overcomes Spoffard’s reserve, and Spoffard
proposes to her before she returns to New York. Lorelei then throws herself a three-day debut
party, which turns into a debauched orgy that literally makes headlines. In spite of this scandal,
she wins over Spoffard’s family by plying his mother with alcohol, a banned substance at this
time, and flirting with Spoffard’s father, who is so stimulated by Lorelei’s looks that he
abandons his wheelchair and walks for the first time in months. Lorelei finally convinces
Spoffard to honor their engagement by promising him that they will create uplifting films
together, along with Lorelei’s new screenwriting suitor. Spoffard, she promises, can provide
“spiritual aid” for the film’s actresses, an activity which will require detailed interviews about
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the women’s lurid pasts (214). The novel concludes with Lorelei’s blithe observation that
“everything always turns out for the best” (217).
Through her overwhelming sex appeal, unapologetic materialism, and vast ignorance,
Lorelei functions as both a symbol and send up of the femininity she exemplifies. The tone and
candor Loos employs through Lorelei’s voice invites audiences to both relish and ridicule the
femininity codified in the “dumb blonde” stereotype—a highly marketable construct in 1920s
entertainment. Lorelei proved particularly profitable for Harper’s Bazar, where Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes debuted, which experienced a sharp increase in sales during the run of the
serial. 257 Lorelei also earned sizable returns for Loos’s publishers, who issued thirteen editions of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in the first seven months of the book’s release. This commercial
appeal prompted Loos to adapt the narrative into the 1926 stage play, a farcical comedy that
preceded the famous 1949 musical version.
Because of the serial and novel’s commercial successes, Lorelei carried tremendous
capital as a highly entertaining commodity before she ever appeared on stage. The established
entertainment value of her character thus functioned as powerful part of the capital complex
influencing Loos’s stage adaptation. Although Loos attempted to sharpen her critique through
the play, the popularity of her serial required that she subsume her characterizations, and thus her
critique in the play, to audience expectations in order to retain their commercial appeal. This
chapter examines the origins of Lorelei’s capital by analyzing the development of Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes as a serial for Harper’s Bazar. The chapter then explores the affect of this capital
on Loos’s critique of American femininity in the 1926 stage adaptation.
In addition, this analysis demonstrates the entertainment value of the specifically modern
facets of 1920s femininity embodied in Lorelei—overt sex appeal, materialism, and fatuity—and
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the influence of this value on representations of femininity in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Because Loos’s narrative exemplified and also satirized these qualities, an analysis of the serial
and stage versions of her narrative reveals the entertainment value in glorifying as well as
ridiculing such constructs in 1920s entertainment. Simultaneously elevating and excoriating the
femininity represented in Lorelei established her entertainment value in two seemingly opposite
areas of the capital complex, which increased her commercial success by catering to the
contemporary cultural ambivalence regarding modern gender.
In addition, I consider in this chapter how issues of capital in relation to beauty and
intellect affected women working in entertainment. Specifically, I explore how both Loos and
June Walker, the actress portraying Lorelei, operated as intelligent and attractive women within
1920s Broadway and Hollywood, entertainment industries that systematically denigrated female
intelligence. Loos’s resistance to this treatment resulted in much of the humor and, hence, the
entertainment value inherent in Lorelei’s character. However, Loos understood the capital in
mocking as well as mimicking Lorelei’s qualities, and both she and Walker embraced aspects of
Lorelei’s femininity, including her simplicity, sexuality, and race, to enhance their public
personas, trading on the Lorelei’s cultural capital to increase their own. This chapter studies how
Loos and Walker resisted but also masterfully employed the intersections of capital in the
stereotype of the “dumb blonde” as professional women working in 1920s entertainment.
Through this analysis, I hope to illuminate additional aspects of the capital complex affecting
representations of femininity in entertainment and the everyday performances of femininity by
women working in the entertainment industry.
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Femininity and Fatuity
As the satire in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes demonstrates, Loos, like Wharton, detested the
male preference she observed in American culture for ignorant and vacuous women. Loos
encountered what she referred to as this “sex problem” early in life when discussing her literary
career with a date (A Girl 70). The revelation of her occupation as “an authoress” altered the
man’s perception of her (A Girl 70). “It turned me,” Loos explains, “into some sort of monster; I
no longer seemed to be a girl” (A Girl 70). 258 Loos’s success and intellect unsexed and
transformed her in the man’s eyes into something unnatural and unfeminine. 259
Loos’s achievements had a similar affect on her relationship with actor and director John
Emerson. Loos met Emerson in the mid-1910s while working as a scenario and title writer for D.
W. Griffiths’ film studio, American Biograph Company. Emerson, who worked as a director at
Biograph, collaborated with Loos on numerous projects, including the stunt-filled films that
made Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. a star. 260 As Loos and Emerson worked together, Loos fell in love
with Emerson, and, as she describes, “worked every other angle I knew to trap the unfortunate
man” into marriage (A Girl 174). Loos’s strategy succeeded, and Loos and Emerson married in
June 1919. 261
Throughout their marriage, Emerson, who was fourteen years older than Loos, conducted
numerous affairs. According to Loos’s biographer Gary Carey, Emerson’s infidelities started
soon after their marriage (77-8), and, while Loos suspected, she “chose to dismiss this [his
behavior] as nothing more than innocent flirtation” (85). Later, when an incriminating letter
surfaced from one of Emerson’s lovers, Loos confronted him about his infidelities. According to
Loos, Emerson defended himself, claiming “that he wasn’t the marrying type . . [and] that his
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nerves were shattered by such a binding arrangement” (Kiss 13-4). 262 The couple eventually
separated but never divorced, and Emerson, who was financially dependent on Loos, retained
control over Loos’s finances. 263
While Emerson’s paramours no doubt held many attractions, their most alluring
characteristic was that, unlike Loos, none of them threatened to overshadow him. One of the
most humiliating things Emerson ever experienced, Loos relates, was being addressed as “Mr.
Loos,” a blow to “his egotism . . . that reverberated as long as he lived” (A Girl 181). Loos came
to regard Emerson’s insecurity as “very dangerous [and] pathological” (A Girl 181), and
Emerson’s response to her success with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes solidified this assessment.
Throughout the project, Emerson advised Loos against publishing Blondes, claiming that its
humorous treatment of sex would ruin her reputation and career. 264 As the narrative’s popularity
and Loos’s notoriety increased, Emerson suffered a severe attack of laryngitis. An examination,
however, revealed no physical cause. Emerson’s specialist recommended consulting a
psychiatrist who confided to Loos that her success was the cause of Emerson’s illness. “Dr.
Jelliffe,” Loos recalls, “proceeded to quote from H. L. Mencken that a husband may survive the
fact of a wife having more money than he, but if she earns more, it can destroy his very essence”
(Kiss 64). Superior earnings connoted superior intellect and skill, characteristics, apparently,
devastating to the egos of men like Mencken and Emerson. The only available solution, Dr.
Jelliffe explained, was for Loos to abandon her career. Eventually, Loos received help from a
Viennese physician whom Emerson consulted when his malady resurfaced in 1927 as Loos
worked on the film version of Blondes. Unbeknownst to Emerson, Dr. Emil Glas conspired with
Loos to address his case by staging a fake operation. Dr. Glas scratched Emerson’s throat during
the “surgery” and presented Emerson with a vial of “nodes” he claimed to have removed from
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Emerson’s throat (Carey 120). The ruse succeeded in relieving Emerson’s laryngitis, and
Emerson requested the same operation the following year (Carey 130).
Such incidents illustrate the pervasive prejudice Loos encountered as a successful female
writer in a patriarchic culture constructing intellectual women as threatening and monstrous. 265
While Victorian culture cultivated female innocence and ignorance, modern society deliberately
attacked female intellect, ridiculing intellectual women as unattractive and unnatural, and
celebrating vapid women as alluring and wholesome. Mizejewski refers to this system of value
as “the new currency of ‘fun’” in which sexual knowledge, vivaciousness, youth, and beauty
trumped education, resoluteness, maturity, and intelligence in constructs of femininity (74).
Marriage historian Stephanie Coontz relates the cultural dissemination of this construct through
vehicles such as Cecil B. Demille’s 1920 film Why Change Your Wife? which centers on a lovely
wife devoted to intellectual improvement. The wife’s intellectualism renders her unattractive to
her husband, thus threatening the stability of their marriage. Acknowledging the error of her
ways, the heroine restores her marriage by donning a revealing evening dress and devoting
herself to dancing rather than literature (Coontz 205). The film thus conveys the message that
while beautiful and intelligent women might exist, they hold no allure for the opposite sex and,
thus, no value in the modern currency of fun.
This ethos permeated the entertainment industry where Loos and Emerson worked and
socialized. As sexual allure became an actress’s primary asset in modern entertainment,
particularly in sex farces and revues, skill and intelligence garnered less esteem for women in
this field. As discussed in chapter one, constructing beautiful women as brainless allowed the
entertainment industry to market a benign female sexuality, titillating yet non-threatening due to
its inanity. In his analysis of revue shows during this period, theatre historian Lewis A. Erenberg
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explains that the idea that “women had the only supply
of sex and beauty” inspired anxiety regarding male
autonomy, which audiences mitigated through
understandings of “the sexually charged woman as too
stupid to pose a real threat” (222). Moreover,
Mizejewski argues that the mechanic movement, youth,
and uniformity of the chorus girl, ubiquitous in
Broadway musicals and revues during this period,
fostered a fantasy of male control over the female body,
assuaging fears inspired by the modern girl as a
political, public, and sexual presence (32). Loos noticed
similar conventions in the film industry, particularly in
her work with Fairbanks who deliberately changed
leading ladies for each picture in order to prevent female
Fig. 5 Anita Loos, Pictorial
Review June 1920 p. 17.
co-stars from acquiring experience and skills that might
upstage him (A Girl 165). Limiting women’s
opportunities in an industry which glorified male control and celebrated female ignorance
created a construct which operated as mitigating foil to independent and talented women such as
Loos.
In order to operate simultaneously as a skilled writer and an attractive woman working in
1920s American entertainment, Loos traded on her success while also downplaying her writing.
Loos often discussed her writings as the childish efforts of a young dilettante rather than the
literary accomplishments of a disciplined adult. The diminutive femininity Loos performed in
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her public persona formed the basis of the femininity she later commodified in Lorelei. Through
most of her life, Loos, who measured 4’ 11” and weighed ninety pounds, looked much younger
than her years (see fig. 5). Loos exploited her youthful physique by portraying herself in
numerous interviews, articles, and autobiographies as young and child-like, cultivating a public
image suited to modern constructs that exalted women’s youth and inexperience over maturity
and accomplishments. According to Carey, Loos “usually implied that she started writing for the
movies when she was twelve or fourteen, [and] that she was still in her twenties when Blondes
was written. The truth is that she was twenty-four when she sold her first scenario and close to
forty when Blondes appeared in 1925” (4). Carey states that Loos was born in 1888 (4), but Loos
often set her birth date closer to 1894 (Waxman 17). 266
Percy Waxman’s 1920 article, “She Makes $100,000 A Year: The Life Story of a Most
Remarkable Girl,” which appeared in the Pictorial Review, encapsulates the public image Loos
projected by repeatedly mentioning her youth, size, beauty, and effortless writing. Waxman
informs readers that “from the topmost link in her braid to the tip of her tiny slipper she measures
exactly four feet eleven and weighs about ninety pounds” (17). Waxman then expresses
amazement over “what this diminutive human dynamo has achieved in her twenty-six years of
life,” an inaccuracy the thirty-two-year-old Loos neglected to correct (17). Continuing this
“diminutive” theme, Loos provides several quotes belittling her writing efforts by claiming that
her main task involves simply waiting for inspiration (17). “The inspiration is bound to come,”
she tells Waxman’s readers, “and all you have to do is to be ready for it” (17). Such advice rings
false from a writer who routinely started her work day at six in the morning and wrote for several
hours on a daily basis. 267 However, through Waxman’s article, and several similar publications,
Loos repeatedly emphasized her youth and facile efforts in terms crafted to increase her capital
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in the era’s “currency of fun,” which defined fun women, and therefore valuable women, against
stereotypes of dull, and therefore worthless, women invested in intellectualism and literature.
While Ferber and Wharton operated in similar value systems, such concerns weighed
more heavily on Loos who, unlike Ferber and Wharton, wrote primarily for film. Wharton and
Ferber worked in the relatively high-brow medium of literary fiction, and each had also received
the Pulitzer Prize, Wharton in 1921 and Ferber in 1925. The two fiction authors thus carried the
capital and prestige entailed in the award while, by comparison, Loos carried little weight in the
world of fine literature. 268
Loos embraced this status and deliberately separated herself from the field of fine
literature by emphasizing the low-brow perception of her work, specifically in regard to
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Loos described the work as “childish” and “infantile,” particularly
when compared to the mature and sophisticated fiction of “real novelists” such as Hemingway
and Faulkner (Fate 54-5). 269 After the success of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Loos embellished
her youthful and frivolous public image by linking her persona with Lorelei, who had come to
epitomize fashionable and fatuitous femininity. Loos employed Lorelei’s cultural capital to
increase her own by adopting Lorelei’s language for the title of her autobiography A Girl Like I
and continuing to underscore her youth and downplay her literary import in this and later
reminiscences. Loos’s rhetoric thus traded in the 1920s currency of fun by portraying her and her
writing as an extension of her feminine frame, diminutive, immature, anti-intellectual, and
therefore fun, especially when compared with the weighty and serious work of writers like
Faulkner and Hemmingway. Loos marketed herself as well as her satire in this highly profitable
literary niche. However, her insistence on her own vacuity, particularly in her writings after
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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, carried a veiled duplicity, indicating that even her childish and
effortless efforts could out earn the literary giants of her day. 270
In addition to marketing herself and her works as fun, belittling her accomplishments also
created a buffer between Loos and the professional and personal injuries inflicted by Emerson.
Under the guise of collaboration, Emerson often appropriated Loos’s work and income, and
minimizing the worth of her work served to undercut the extent of this insult and injury. Early in
their relationship, Emerson began attaching his name to Loos’s work, taking authorship credit for
“collaborative” efforts she created on her own (Loos, A Girl 181). Loos permitted this “without
giving the matter a second thought . . . because,” she explains, “I never thought that anything
produced by females was, or even should be, important” (A Girl 181). Because her female
writing did not qualify as “important” or “great writing,” Loos implies that giving Emerson
credit cost her little (A Girl 181), a sentiment belying the fact that Emerson secretly moved
almost $150,000 of her income into accounts solely in his name (Carey 173).
In her memoirs recounting these events, Loos seems anxious to appear neither the fool
nor the victim in her marriage and alternates between owning her success and admitting
Emerson’s treachery to disparaging her efforts and describing the sacrifice of her work for his
ego as an act of love. Undoubtedly, Loos’s relationship with Emerson affected her portrayal as
well as her perception of her writing and the value of her work. Not surprisingly, Loos sought
solace and affirmation from other men she respected, including her romantic crush, editor and
author H. L. Mencken. 271 Unfortunately for Loos, in matters of romance, Mencken’s preferences
echoed Emerson’s.
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The Beginnings of Blondes
While Loos had come to expect Emerson’s insecurities and proclivity for vapid women,
she balked at this preference in men she viewed as intellectual, particularly in Mencken who,
according to Loos, railed against “the infantilism that had overtaken American thought” (A Girl
215). Loos admired Mencken for his literary work in The Smart Set magazine, and, after
overcoming her initial intimidation, became fast friends with “Menck” around 1919. 272 Loos
developed a crush on Mencken who exhibited “enormous charm; based on extreme masculinity”
(A Girl 213), combined with an intellectual prowess Loos felt Emerson lacked. While Mencken
remained “a man of honor in the most old-fashioned sense,” he and Loos maintained a flirtatious
correspondence (A Girl 218). According to Loos, the main advantage to her marriage with
Emerson, who, as she describes, “treated me with complete lack of consideration, tried to take
credit for my work and appropriated all my earnings,” was that he also “granted me full freedom
to choose my own companions” (Cast 223). Loos often selected “Menck” as one of these
companions. As a regular member of Mencken’s circle in the 1920s, Loos frequented New York
and New Jersey speakeasies with “Menck” and his cadre, which included Sinclair Lewis,
Theodore Dreiser, and theatre critic George Jean Nathan (Carey 87).
As Loos recounts in numerous articles and autobiographies, it was Mencken’s behavior
on one such outing that inspired Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. While the details of her accounts
vary, each ontology includes a flirtation between Mencken and a “witless blonde” whom
Mencken seemed to prefer sexually to Loos’s brunette self (Cast 74). 273 Baffled by Mencken’s
preference for ignorance and pallor, Loos began to observe the prevalence of this preference in
men in general. To Loos’s annoyance, soon after the evening with Mencken, the same blonde
attached herself to Loos’s traveling party en route to Hollywood. Loos observed that the men in
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the party, including Emerson, waited attentively on the blonde while leaving Loos to fend for
herself. Loos explains that she expected such behavior from her husband, but Mencken’s
fascination with the woman puzzled and frustrated her (Cast 74). In A Girl Like I, Loos considers
this conundrum:
Obviously there was some radical difference between that girl and me, but what
was it? We were both in the pristine years of youth. She was not outstanding as a
beauty; we were, in fact, of about the same degree of comeliness; as to our mental
acumen, there was nothing to discuss: I was smarter. Then why did that girl so far
outdistance me in allure? Why had she attracted one of the keenest minds of our
era? Mencken liked me very much indeed, but in the matter of sex he preferred a
witless blonde. (265)
Loos continues her musings and concludes that “possibly the girl’s strength was rooted
(like that of Samson) in her hair” (265). However, the locus of her rival’s success, as Loos well
knew, lay primarily in her male companions’ insecurities and the reassuring superiority they
experienced in the company of the blonde’s female ignorance. Annoyed by this “palpably
unjust” state of affairs, Loos brandished her pen at the problem, creating what would become a
tremendously popular and profitable satirical sketch of vapid femininity (Cast 74).
As Loos relates, she discovered the pages of her satire while unpacking from her trip to
Hollywood and forwarded the sketch to Mencken who, now several blondes later, found the
piece amusing and suggested Loos publish it in a magazine. According to Loos, Mencken
suggested she approach Harper’s Bazar 274 with the piece, reasoning that, in Harper’s, the story,
which satirized sex and infidelity, would be “lost among the ads, [and] wouldn’t offend
anybody” (A Girl 267). 275 The narrative Loos submitted to Harper’s included only the first
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chapter of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and ended with Lorelei and Dorothy embarking for Europe.
Seeing potential in Loos’s satire, editor Henry Sell agreed to purchase the narrative and
suggested that Loos extend the story to include additional installments, beginning with Lorelei
and Dorothy’s trip to Europe. Loos, about to leave for Europe herself, agreed, and, after meeting
with illustrator Ralph Barton, 276 forwarded installments to Sell as she progressed on her
travels. 277
Loos thus completed the bulk of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes specifically for Harper’s
Bazar. Accordingly, as scholar Sarah Churchwell observes, “Its [Blondes’] evolution was thus
affected—even determined—by the magazine that printed it” (136). 278 The femininity Loos both
marketed and satirized in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes bore a strong resemblance to the distinctly
modern form of femininity permeating the haute couture fashion magazine, which equated
femininity with consumerism and effectively reduced female intellect to consumer savvy.
Through her fashionable and materialistic blonde stereotype, Loos capitalized on the glamour of
the consumerism permeating Harper’s while also critiquing the ignorance fostered in
representations of women primarily valuing and valued for their chic appearance.
Harper’s Bazar marketed itself as a women’s magazine representing the quintessence of
everything modern in modern femininity. In January 1920, Henry Sell became editor of
Harper’s 279 and proceeded to establish the publication as one of the leading magazines in
women’s fashion. Early in his editorship, Sell established connections with the Parisian fashion
industry, enlisting the Duchess de Gramont to introduce him to prominent designers who were
reluctant to work with Americans after World War I (Leckie 62). 280 Sell also emphasized
modishness by introducing candid photos, which created a more spontaneous and vibrant feel
than the posed studio photos that previously defined the magazine. Sell’s efforts proved
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successful, and, by the end of his first year as editor, Harper’s had increased its number of
advertising pages by almost fifty percent (Leckie 72).
While maintaining its focus on fashion, Harper’s also included fiction, a feature
differentiating the publication from Vogue, its nearest competitor. However, lest readers have
any doubt about the publication’s priorities, subscription ads declared, “The chief purpose of
Harper’s Bazar [sic] is, as you know, to give you the latest news of smart fashions—and the
smartest fashions only. The fiction in Harper’s Bazar [sic] is just so much added value to interest
you” (Harper’s, July). Such qualifications assured readers that although Harper’s carried literary
content, this content would not interfere with the publication’s first priority—fashion. In addition
to such disclaimers, the magazine dedicated the first third of every issue to advertisements
largely devoted to fashion, leaving little doubt that fiction occupied a subordinate position in the
Harper’s hierarchy. Typically, women’s magazines, such as Woman’s Home Companion and
Pictorial Review, opened with a table of contents followed by editor’s notes and then articles
interspersed with advertisements. Harper’s, however, reserved the first third of the magazine for
advertising, only introducing contributors’ content after forty or more pages of ads selling
everything from Tiffany jewels to enrollment in private schools. Harper’s also carried few
articles on social topics, discussing political and social issues primarily in relation to fashion and
trends. Maintaining and promoting this hierarchy of content in Harper’s indicated that women on
the cutting edge of modern culture prioritized knowledge in a similar manner.
As a publication, Harper’s marketed and perpetuated this form of femininity, which held
entertainment value for women admiring and seeking the status portrayed in its pages. Along
with Vogue, Harper’s deliberately cultivated a readership among such high-income, or, at least,
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high-spending subscribers interested in luxury goods. This readership established Harper’s and
Vogue as “class magazines,” allowing them to charge higher rates for advertising space than
other women’s publications (Zuckerman, History 133, 164). 281
Satirizing Shopping and Smartness
As a satire of consumerist femininity, Loos’s serial both catered to and caricatured the
femininity commodified in Harper’s. Loos emphasized the link between the femininity
represented in Harper’s and Lorelei’s femininity when she subtitled her novel Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady. As stated in chapter one, during the
1910s and 1920s, modern constructs increasingly defined femininity through appearance,
emphasizing makeup, fashion, and youth, rather than moral purity and sexual innocence, as
markers of feminine beauty and desirability. Through the modern advent of the cosmetics
industry, pre-made clothing, and the proliferation of manuals on femininity in the form of the
burgeoning women’s magazine industry, femininity during the 1920s transformed from the
natural inheritance of all females 282 to the professionalized expertise of those on the cutting edge
of new fashions and fads. In this sense, Lorelei demonstrates her expertise as “a Professional
Lady” in her expert performance of the streamlined and youthful look of modern femininity as
well as her regard for luxury products facilitating this performance.
As Churchwell notes, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes satirizes the specific form of
consumerism promoted in Harper’s, which portrayed the purchase of luxury goods as a means of
upward mobility. Churchwell demonstrates that Harper’s Bazar, through its focus on upper-class
goods and lifestyles, carried an underlying ethos suggesting middle-class consumers could buy
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their way in to upper-class society by accumulating the accoutrements of upper-class culture.
Advertisements in Harper’s featured expensive items, such as authentic pearls and foreign
vacations, as well as more affordable versions of upper-class appurtenances, including imitation
pearls and reproductions of Parisian gowns (Churchwell 143). 283 Such affordable versions
allowed middle-class readers to access objects, or replicas of objects, marking the upper class.
As Churchwell explains, “Harper’s was actually selling itself as an instruction manual in
middlebrow social pretension, offering the fetish objects of cultural capital to arrivistes who were
waiting to arrive and advertising that cultural capital could be bought and sold” (142). 284
While Churchwell explores the implications of this purchasing ethos in relation to class,
her analysis often separates issues of class and gender. 285 However, Harper’s sold as a women’s
magazine as well as a class magazine, specifically gendering this consumerist method of upward
mobility as a feminine approach. As Bourdieu reminds us, modes of acquiring capital are ranked
in accordance with the time and effort invested in attaining objects or developing talents of
material and/or cultural value (Distinction 2). Purchasing objects of cultural worth ranks as one
of the easiest and, therefore, lowest modes of acquiring cultural capital.
In the 1920s, the booming advertising industry associated this “lower” form of
accumulation—purchasing rather than earning—and social climbing specifically with women
and female consumerism. 286 This gendered perception of purchasing permeated the pages of
Harper’s, which addressed the typical concerns of women’s magazines, such as caring for home,
children, and husbands, but suggested addressing such issues through luxury items and upperclass activities associated with wealth and status. While magazines such as Delineator and
Woman’s Home Companion promoted thrift and domestic skills, Harper’s encouraged readers to
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care for their children by purchasing products such as a private school education with specialized
training in music, dance, and horseback riding or creating comfort and class in their homes by
acquiring items such as a genuine Victrola and accompanying library of classical music records.
In the pages of Harper’s, women themselves acted as accessories to the middle-class home,
displaying taste and beauty by accessorizing their bodies with expensive, or, at least, expensive
looking, clothes and jewels. 287 Through its emphasis on fashion and appearance, Harper’s
encouraged women to purchase as well as perform as accoutrements of upper-class culture,
“bettering” their homes and families through their spending rather than their morality, maternity,
or domesticity.
This gendered form of consumerism linked directly with the modern constructs of
women’s intellect Loos deplored. As portrayed in Harper’s, women’s intellect achieved its
highest form when employed in selecting merchandise. Harper’s advertisers fostered this
construct of female acuity by touting the fine quality of their products, which, their ads implied,
Harper’s discriminating female readers had the taste and education to appreciate.
Advertisements declared that Steinways, for example, made affordable to the middle-class
through installment plans, reflected the taste of the greatest concert pianists, and Parisian
designer Jean Patou praised “the well-dressed woman of America,” a.k.a. the Harper’s reader,
for her “fastidious discrimination in her selection of just the proper shoes” (Diamond Brand 22).
According to ads for Tècla Pearls, this ability to discriminate distinguished the consumer who
recognizes the quality of “genuine Tècla Pearls,” the most “genuine” brand of imitation pearls,
from “the woman who throws her money away on imitations of Tècla Pearls [and] will
eventually have to throw the pearls away too” (Tècla). As the ad implies, wearing inferior pearls
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is “a mortification” because such low-quality accessories advertise a woman’s ignorance by
displaying her inability to distinguish between quality and trash (Tècla).
The opposite of such ignorance, as Harper’s demonstrates, is the ability to look “smart.”
As Churchwell explains, the importance of “smartness” runs as a constant through line in
Harper’s Bazar (143). 288 “Smart” individuals, in the Harper’s sense, masterfully display the
latest fashions, visit the most fashionable vacation spots, and send their children to the most
fashionable schools—behaviors displaying their wealth as well as their au courant cultural
knowledge. As a women’s class magazine, 289 Harper’s displaced the intellectual connotations of
“smartness” with a consumerist understanding equating feminine intelligence with clairvoyance
in matters of haute couture. As an ad for Harper’s explains, the purpose of Harper’s is “to give
you the best fashions first—to tell you not what is smart today but what will be smart tomorrow”
(Harper’s, Jan.). The ad expounds on the vital importance of this information saying, “It’s a
bitter blow to buy a new hat or gown and then find ‘everybody’ wearing it. Harper’s Bazar is
valuable to you because it tells you what is smart months before ‘everybody’ has taken it up”
(Harper’s, Jan.). Women who do not appear smart sartorially cannot, in Harper’s logic, be smart,
making the modern woman’s intellect, much like the modern woman’s gender, largely a matter
of fashionable appearance. According to Harper’s, readers thus operated as ideal women through
their function as ideal consumers, interested and informed about new trends and willing to spend
on luxury goods and up-to-date looks. Loos’s satire thus correlated closely with Harper’s content
because the object of her satire, culturally ignorant, materialistic femininity, formed the primary
product of Harper’s magazine.
Loos focused her critique of ignorant femininity on the consumer-based construct
permeating Harper’s by making her protagonist smart and savvy in the Harper’s sense yet
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overwhelmingly ignorant in areas unrelated to shopping, thus demonstrating the bankrupt nature
of “smartness” in the modern feminine sense. Lorelei instinctively and expertly calculates the
economic value of every man and jewel she encounters but remains utterly ignorant in matters of
non-material capital. Loos repeatedly mocks modern constructs of female consumer savvy by
displaying Lorelei’s disregard for objects of tremendous cultural value but no evident monetary
worth. While in London, for example, Lorelei opts not to purchase an original Whistler portrait
of a noblewoman’s father, reasoning, “my own father was a whistler and used to whistle all of
the time and I did not even have a picture of him” (76). Lorelei displays similar disdain for the
Tower of London “that is not really even as tall as the Hickox building in Little Rock Arkansas
[sic]” (72). Lorelei’s comparisons of Whistler’s painting with her father’s whistling ability and
the Tower of London with an Arkansas office building demonstrate her lack of education and
understanding in history and art and her inability to understand non-material value.
In this aspect, Lorelei represents the quintessence of modern femininity, acting as a
distillation of modern values as she elevates appearance, wealth, and novelty above character,
heritage, and history. She sees no value in the old, except in the case of diamonds which “always
look new” (69). The “history” Lorelei values relates solely to modern ideals of femininity,
prizing youth, beauty, and materialism above all. One of the few “historic” sights to impress
Lorelei is celebrity Fannie Ward, famous for maintaining her youthful appearance for decades.
Lorelei displays her modern understanding of history as she exudes, “I mean Fanny is almost
historical, because when a girl is cute for 50 years it really begins to get historical” (64). Lorelei
also stands in awe of “the famous historical names” and offices of Coty and Cartier and literally
turns her back on the Vendôme Column in order to view the more impressive Coty’s emblem
(94-5). Lorelei’s disregard for sites of cultural worth in favor of modern attractions of
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commercial value demonstrates her mastery of modern consumerism by revealing her veneration
for luxury goods while also displaying her disdain for tradition and need for the new. By
demonstrating Lorelei’s ignorance, Loos satirized the consumerist understandings of smartness
and intelligence codified in contemporary constructs of modern femininity and, specifically, in
Harper’s.
At the same time, Loos’s satire also glorified this construct through Lorelei’s glamorous
lifestyle. Lorelei devotes her time to socializing and shopping, purchasing only the most
fashionable and expensive goods. In sharp contrast to the female consumer featured in women’s
magazines, Lorelei acquires accoutrements for herself rather than for her home, family, or
husband and abandons the male provider once he has provided. Loos used Lorelei’s self-centered
purchasing to question contemporary understandings of the female consumer as a purchaser
primarily acquiring goods for others. By divorcing the role of female consumer from the role of
female care giver and homemaker, Loos presented a modern female shopper bent only on
pleasing herself, an attractive construct for many readers. While Lorelei’s ignorance generated
ridicule, her purchasing prompted admiration, and many advertisers capitalized on this portrayal
of female materialism by directly referencing Lorelei in ads for various products. 290
Lorelei’s allure and consumerism entertained Loos’s readers while the narrative’s ridicule
accentuated Lorelei’s entertainment value. Satirizing Lorelei and her femininity allowed readers
to enjoy her mindset and materialism without directly relating to these aspects of her character.
As an exemplar of both a low mentality and a low form of accumulating capital, Lorelei served
as an unflattering reflection of the Harper’s ethos. However, her hyperbolic representation of
these aspects ensured her entertainment value with Harper’s readers by referencing this ethos
while also distancing readers from the “low” aspects of the femininity Harper’s commodified.
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As Daniel Tracy notes, laughing at Lorelei’s ignorance of cultural value requires and reaffirms
readers’ own cultural knowledge, “position[ing] the savvy reader above Lorelei rather than
alongside her” (131). Laughing at Lorelei’s assessment of the Whistler painting, for example,
requires cultural knowledge about fine art and prompts readers to mock individuals who lack
such cultural capital. Loos’s satire thus prompted her readers to separate themselves from 1920s
constructs conflating femininity with spending and ignorance while at the same time her serial
glamorized female consumerism. Accordingly, Loos’s satire, and Lorelei’s femininity, carried
entertainment value for women who, like Loos, both perpetuated and resented such constructs.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes lampooned women who exemplified the modern conflation of
consumerism, beauty, and fatuity as well as the gentlemen who preferred them. Lorelei’s
ignorance, displayed through her inability to value high culture, parallels her gentlemen’s
inability to value cultured women. Throughout the work, Loos employs the term “gentlemen,” a
reference to cultivated men of good social standing, as an all-purpose word for men of means
attracted to Lorelei. Loos’s broad use of the term serves to mock the gender as well as the social
status such “gentlemen” embody.
Much like Mencken, the “gentlemen” in Loos’s satire espouse the value of education,
culture, and intellect, but expose their hypocrisy through their unflagging interest in Lorelei, who
exhibits none of these qualities. Throughout Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Lorelei’s suitors
repeatedly profess an interest in her “brains” 291 and devote significant time and money to her
education. As Lorelei explains in the first installment, Mr. Eisman supports her in New York
because “he is the gentleman who is interested in educating me, so of course he is always coming
down to New York to see how my brains have improved” (12). 292 Later, Mr. Lamson, a writer
also interested in educating Lorelei, sends her a collection of works by Joseph Conrad, and Mr.
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Bartlett offers Lorelei “a book of philosophy” and appears to compliment Lorelei’s intellect as he
tries to persuade her to accompany him to Vienna (56). 293
Although numerous men attempt to educate Lorelei, Lorelei’s intractable ignorance
defies their efforts. Lorelei instructs her maid to read and then recount the narrative of Lord Jim
so that she can improve her mind without wasting her time by reading the book (28), and her
efforts to please Eisman by holding a literary salon end in a wild party fueled by bootlegged
liquor (18). Loos ridicules male hypocrisy as, in spite of their ineffectual tutelage, none of the
gentlemen lose interest in their mission to educate Lorelei. Through the gentlemen’s persistent
interest in Lorelei’s intellect, “education” acts as a double entendre masking the gentlemen’s
actual interest in providing Lorelei with sexual rather than cultural experience. 294 This
convoluted form of education fits perfectly with the modern ideal of feminine intellect Lorelei
embodies, smart in relation to consumer products and physical allure while incapable and
uninterested in intellectual pursuits. Loos thus exposes the hypocrisy of men like Mencken,
whose purported devotion to intellect and culture dissipates in the presence of female beauty
rendered unthreatening through female ignorance.
Loos undercuts the “gentlemen’s” interest in Lorelei’s education by repeatedly drawing
attention to Lorelei’s ignorance and lack of education. Throughout her diary, Lorelei misspells,
misuses, and misunderstands words, in effect, documenting her ignorance. Lorelei uses the word
“sheik” to mean “chic” and repeatedly refers to herself as “a girl like I,” in a misguided effort to
sound refined. Lorelei demonstrates both her linguistic and cultural ignorance as she tours
Europe, visiting the “Eyefull Tower,” “Versigh,” and “Buda Pest” (99, 124, 167). Although
Lorelei perpetually demonstrates her ignorance and lack of cultural value, the gentlemen in
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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes continue to value her. Not only do they give her costly material gifts,
but they also surrender priceless immaterial items for the promise and pleasure of being with her.
Beekman sacrifices the stability of a thirty-five year marriage in order to buy Lorelei a tiara, Mr.
Bartlett reveals state secrets in his attempt to persuade Lorelei to become his companion, and the
narrative implies that Eisman, whose “mother is authrodox” (17), betrays his religious beliefs in
pursuing a relationship with Lorelei. 295 Through these exchanges, Loos satirizes men who trade
things of value for culturally and intellectually worthless women. Like the woman in the Tècla
ad wearing inferior pearls, the gentlemen with Lorelei advertise their ignorance by accessorizing
their masculinity with a culturally and intellectually “inferior” woman.
Lorelei’s ignorance plays a key role in fashioning the entertainment value of her
character by precluding any condemnation, or devaluation, of her motives. Lorelei seems
innocent and ignorant of the sexual implications entailed in the gentlemen’s interest and gifts.
Lorelei tells Beekman, for example, that a tiara will make her fit to be his companion, and
continues saying, “So then I told him that, even if his wife was in London, we could still be
friends because I could not help but admire him even if his wife was in London” (86). Lorelei’s
language offers the possibility that she is truly unaware of the innuendo entailed in offering to
“be friends” and “admire” a man despite his marriage. Lorelei’s language and reference to their
continuing relationship prompts Beekman to buy her the tiara. While Beekman, and, later,
Beekman’s wife, understand this as a transaction based on an offer of sex, Lorelei, ignorantly
and innocently, sees the tiara as a gift free of immoral connotation. As she explains in her diary,
“Sir Francis Beekman . . . was the admirer of mine in London who seemed to admire me so
much that he asked me if he could make me a present of a diamond tiara” (102). Lorelei seems to
understand the tiara as a symbol of Beekman’s genuine admiration rather than a down payment
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on a promised tryst, and, after receiving the tiara, Lorelei travels to Paris feeling no sense of
obligation to remain with Beekman in London. In addition, Lorelei transfers the idea and desire
for the tiara to Beekman, rather than herself, who, inspired with “admiration,” requests
permission, seemingly of his own accord, to purchase the tiara for Lorelei. Lorelei’s insistent
innocence places Beekman in a double bind since in order to rectify the situation by obtaining
either the tiara or Lorelei, he must admit his original understanding of the bargain as a sexual
exchange, acknowledging Lorelei as a prostitute and himself as a customer. Devaluing Lorelei in
this way devalues his own morals and intentions, an impossible admission for the gentleman who
wishes to remain a gentleman.
Beekman’s dilemma parallels Eisman’s and Bartlett’s and all of the gentlemen in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes whom Lorelei leaves, seemingly ignorant of what the gentlemen
expect in return for their gifts and investments in her education. Lorelei’s childish ignorance
echoes the childish attire and demeanor that she dons for her admirers. Lorelei shops for hats,
with the ever-youthful Fanny Ward, in the children’s department, adorning her adult body with
accessories designed for children. Lorelei further affirms her childish status by addressing Mr.
Eisman as “Daddy,” a moniker modeling her child-like understanding of adoring men who buy
her presents and expect nothing in return. Lorelei’s childishness and ignorance thus preclude her
involvement in sexual trysts. Moreover, these qualities secure her entertainment value by
containing her sexuality within conventional social morals. Lorelei’s childishness thus satirizes
the 1920s idealization of youth in constructs of femininity by imbuing Lorelei with this ideal
quality of sexual allure and then using this quality to prevent sexual encounters.
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Lorelei’s child-like ignorance also precludes her agency and, therefore, her culpability in
her dealings with gentlemen by rendering her oblivious to the havoc her actions wreak. In an act
of childish pettiness, Lorelei gives Bartlett’s intel on U.S. armament to Major Falcon because
Falcon buys her perfume and a stuffed dog, in contrast to Bartlett who once called her names. In
addition to endangering national security, Lorelei mortally threatens the gentlemen who prefer
her by opening Bartlett to accusations of treason and shooting a Mr. Jennings, her former
employer, when she finds him entangled with another woman. Throughout these encounters,
Lorelei maintains her innocence, even blaming “the revolver [for having] shot Mr. Jennings”
(48). 296
However, Lorelei’s masterful manipulation of gentlemen and events indicates that her
insistent innocence and ignorance lacks verity. As Susan Hegeman points out in her article
“Taking Blondes Seriously,” Lorelei’s agency thus forms the central question of Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes. Whether or not Lorelei manipulates men and circumstances deliberately and
ruthlessly, or, as she insists, fate simply happens to happen in her favor, 297 determines exactly
how ignorant, and, therefore, innocent, she is. The answer to this dilemma determines Lorelei’s
culpability as well as her femininity and, thus, her entertainment value.
Depending on the interpretation, Loos’s work either lampoons a frivolously feminine
blonde or ridicules men through a cunning, female con artist, making Lorelei either a victim or a
vamp—constructs carrying varying capital in 1920s entertainment. Ziegfeld addressed the
entertainment value of both of these constructs in 1919 when he declared, “most people do not
like the ‘vampire’ type of beauty but prefer the charm of youth and happiness and health.”
(“Picking Out” 35). However, both forms remained popular in entertainment during the 1920s.
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Loos capitalized on aspects of both of these forms of “beauty” through the ambiguity of
Lorelei’s capability and culpability. In the serial, such ambiguity titillated readers with the
intersection of both the “vampire” and the “youth” in Lorelei while also raising doubts as to the
value and “charm” of feminine ignorance as idealized in modern constructs of young, sexual
women. Through the ambiguity surrounding Lorelei’s agency, Loos leaves readers to wonder
whether her character’s inanity, a quintessential quality of modern femininity, acts as an asset, a
liability, or a threat to her male companions. Centering the satire in such uncertainty placed
modern “gentlemen” in a precarious position, doubtful as to whether their preference for female
ignorance rendered them venerable or vulnerable.
Constructing Culpability
While this ambiguity remains central to the serial and the novel, Loos removed such
doubt from the stage version, which portrays Lorelei as intelligent and intentional in her
machinations. The stage version thus presents a more pernicious portrayal of female sexuality
and ignorance by clearly constructing Lorelei’s feminine innocence as a deliberate facade she
actively and consciously employs to trap men. While establishing the unambiguous intellectual
capability of the protagonist, this characterization also constructs flirtatious women as
mercenary, portraying female sexuality as threatening to male autonomy and economy. The stage
adaptation thus emphasizes the danger of female “ignorance” but, by explicitly portraying this
ignorance as fake, ultimately serves to highlight the threat of women intelligent enough to
employ it.
While separate playwrights adapted Ferber’s Show Boat and Wharton’s The Age of
Innocence, Loos herself adapted Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. 298 Accordingly, the character shifts
between the serial and the play reflect her vision for the character as well as her facility with the
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demands of live performance. 299 Prior to this project, Loos worked for over a decade in the film
industry, selling hundreds of scenarios 300 and establishing herself as one of D. W. Griffiths’s
leading writers. In addition to her screen success, Loos had also completed two Broadway plays
by this time, including The Whole Town’s Talking which opened in 1923 and ran for over one
hundred performances. 301
As a seasoned screenwriter and experienced playwright, Loos adapted her critique and
depiction of femininity in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to the conventions of performance, aiming
to attract a broad audience through the comic aspects of her characters while maintaining the
sting of her criticisms against the femininity embodied by “blondes” and endorsed by the men
preferring them. Loos’s adaptation resulted in a commercially successful production, presenting
audiences with a visually and aurally comic depiction of the modern femininity epitomized in
Lorelei that undermined the innocence and ignorance society prized in the modern girl. Rather
than the ignorant and innocent blonde of the serial, Loos’s play portrayed a calculating and
culpable femininity, offering audiences a more alarming than alluring depiction of the modern
girl.
In adapting Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for producer Edgar Selwyn, Loos retained much
of the dialogue and many of the plot points from the novel, but she also compressed the action
and, thus, eliminated several scenes, mainly from the portion of the story set in central Europe. 302
The three-act play opens aboard an ocean liner as Lorelei and Dorothy travel to Europe.
Raymond Sovey, who later became famous for designing elaborate and elegant scenery,
designed the sets for the production in order to emphasize the importance of monetary wealth in
the luxurious decor. While opulent, the ocean liner’s imperial suite offers a visual representation
of Lorelei’s childishness through displays of various stuffed dogs, a teddy bear, and two dolls
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Fig. 6 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, ©Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts.
distributed throughout the room. 303 Act two takes place in Lorelei’s Paris hotel room, also
decorated with stuffed dogs, and the play concludes in act three at Lorelei’s New York
apartment. 304 Rather than meeting Spoffard, played by Frank Morgan (famous for portraying the
wizard in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz), later in her journey, Lorelei encounters him onboard
and begins her conquest of Spoffard in act one (see fig. 6). In addition to condensing the action,
Loos replaced Lorelei’s spelling infelicities with mispronunciations and malaprops which
translated Lorelei’s ignorance into the aural medium of the theatre. In the serial, for example,
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Lorelei uses the spelling “riskay” for the word “risqué,” which, in the script, Loos changed to
“risky.” While these alterations are relatively minor, they facilitated the major shift Loos
performed in creating Lorelei’s more pernicious stage characterization.
As stated earlier, the novel shrouds Lorelei’s culpability in ambiguity, but, in the play,
Loos fashioned Lorelei’s character to emphasize the deliberate nature of her actions. Loos
describes Lorelei in the stage directions, saying, “She appears to be the perfect bonehead, but
back of all that is an almost supernatural knowledge of the weaknesses of men, which knowledge
she uses to her best advantage” (1-4). 305 Lorelei’s “supernatural knowledge” and its application
present a more calculating character in the play than in the serial, which, as a document written
from Lorelei’s point of view, never offers such a self-aware description. While more intelligent,
the Lorelei of the play is also more insidious, deliberately preying on men and directing male
desire for her own material gain rather than innocently trusting in their purported interest in her
intellectual improvement. Her phonetic pronunciation of “risqué,” for example, indicates her
intentional, if ineffectual, effort to study refined rhetoric.
In addition to emphasizing the deliberate nature of Lorelei’s plotting in her character
description, Loos altered the story’s plot in ways that revealed the mindfulness behind Lorelei’s
machinations to the audience, as well as some of the other characters. In the serial, for example,
Lorelei encounters Spoffard, the rich, moralist bachelor, by chance while traveling through
Europe. In the play, however, Lorelei deliberately selects the ocean liner carrying her to Europe
because she knows Spoffard will be onboard (1-3). While this condenses the action to suit the
real-time medium of theatre, introducing Lorelei’s interest in Spoffard earlier in the play
compounds Lorelei’s disloyalty to Eisman since she knowingly employs his money to fund her
conquest of another man. In addition to condensing the action, Loos drew on her film experience
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with Fairbanks to increase the comedic elements of the play by adding surprise encounters and
farcical routines. Rather than arriving in Paris as planned, as he does in the novel, Eisman arrives
unexpectedly in Paris in the play, surprising Lorelei in her hotel room as she anticipates a visit
from Spoffard. Lorelei handles the situation by taking Eisman to dine at an establishment where
she knows he will contract ptomaine poisoning, thus buying her time to finish her conquest of
Spoffard. In the play, Eisman’s arrival creates comedy by throwing Lorelei into a panic, but this
plot shift also serves to expose the conscious calculations Lorelei performs in pursuing her goals.
Rather than manufacturing excuses or relying on fate, in the play, Lorelei plots to poison Eisman
in order to hide her relationship with Spoffard.
By constructing a more aware and intelligent Lorelei, Loos maintained her critique of
gentlemen’s preference for the innocent and ignorant façade Lorelei presents but shifted her
portrayal of vapid femininity to one of a calculating female con artists. In doing so, Loos created
a character more closely aligned with herself, presenting a childish and frivolous front while
remaining worldly wise and focusing unflaggingly on her work. Accordingly, this version of
femininity remained sexually appealing while becoming subversively superior, outsmarting
prestigious and prosperous men through her innocent façade and sexual allure.
Such changes provided Lorelei with more agency while also imbuing her with more
malice. The visual nature of the theatrical medium served to underscore Lorelei’s duplicity by
displaying her sudden shifts of affection in stark contrast to one another. Rather than hearing of
Lorelei’s wandering heart through the filter of her explanations and justifications to her diary, the
audience hears her cry “Daddy!” as she flings herself “happily” into Eisman’s arms seconds after
planning to poison him and minutes after cuddling with Spoffard (2-49). While Lorelei’s
rationalizations portray such shifts as the result of fate in the serial and the novel, the play offers
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no internal monologue, leaving audiences to interpret her sudden changes of heart as either
malicious or justified, but foreclosing any possibility of understanding them as unintentional or
inconsequential.
The stage version of the narrative exposes Lorelei’s duplicity to her theatre audience to as
well as her cadre of suitors. In the serial, Lorelei’s suitors remain largely ignorant of her
schemes, which are rendered particularly opaque by Lorelei’s own professed ignorance and
innocence. In the play, however, Loos structured events so that Eisman learns of the deliberate
nature of his food poisoning. Unbeknownst to Lorelei, Eisman also reveals her spending habits to
Spoffard, her fiancé. In the novel, Lorelei controls the information about her schemes and
extravagant spending. She deliberately directs Dorothy to reveal her spending habits to Spoffard
in the serial so that he will break off their engagement, allowing Lorelei to sue him for breach of
promise. In the play, however, Lorelei loses control over her secrets and must repair the damage
Eisman causes when he reveals this information to Spoffard without her authority. As her suitors
discover her deception, Lorelei’s agency becomes a liability for her character who, in the play,
stands on the verge of confronting the consequences of her actions.
Although Lorelei wreaks havoc on several of her suitors in the novel, she simply departs
before complications arise, often leaving a letter saying she hopes to meet the man again
someday, a sentiment indicating her ignorance of any wrongdoing. In the play, however, Lorelei
finds consequences more difficult to escape. For example, rather than remaining in London, her
entanglement with Beekman follows her to Paris in the stage version. Instead of hunting in
Scotland in order to avoid his wife, as he does in the book, Sir Beekman follows Lorelei to Paris
when she flees with the tiara. Beekman intimates that she cannot avoid the sexual favors she
owes him for the accessory, informing her, “I warn you—you can’t lose Beekie . . . you may
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misplace Beekie, but you’ll never lose him!” (2-5). “Beekie’s” manner is friendly, but his
warning is clear—Lorelei will pay what she owes. Beekman’s warning indicates the harm
Lorelei might incur should the gentlemen she beguiles prove ungentlemanly in their revenge.
Beekman’s persistent presence in Lorelei’s suite emphasizes the flimsy nature of the respectable
veneer holding her “admirers” in check. While Lorelei blithely avoids such complications in the
serial, their presence in the play underscores the risk she undertakes in manipulating the fragile
boundary between respectable and risqué in modern femininity. 306 The potential for rupture
threatens to leave Lorelei ruined and penniless should her suitors cease to invest or demand a
return. While none of these events occur, the play includes the potential for these disastrous
possibilities, which the novel ignores.
In addition to portraying the precarious nature of Lorelei’s position, Loos’s alterations
also depict the aftermath of her scheming. Consequences continue to follow Lorelei in the play
as Lady Beekman also arrives in Paris, as she does in the book, and demands that Lorelei return
the tiara. 307 Placing both Beekmans in Paris provides the opportunity for a comic confrontation
and creates an atmosphere of farce with characters entering, exiting, and hiding as they pursue
and avoid confrontation. Although comical, this device places the Beekman’s marital issues and
the consequences of Lorelei’s machinations before Lorelei as well as the audience, and the
pathetic couple exits in physical and emotional disarray. Portraying the consequences of
Lorelei’s schemes lessens the levity of her betrayals and foregrounds the damage and distress
caused by her dissemblance.
By altering the play to portray the consciousness and consequences of Lorelei’s
scheming, Loos created a more serious satire on stage than in the serial, highlighting the dangers
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of feminine ignorance and innocence for “blondes” as well as the culture elevating such forms of
femininity. Underscoring the deliberate nature of Lorelei’s plotting rendered her flirting more
pernicious than pleasant and stood to alert audiences to the dangers of performing as well as
preferring a lack of intellect in femininity. Critic Alan Dale remarked on this shift in his review
of the play, noting, “She [Lorelei] and her companion, Dorothy, were perceived ‘luring’
gentlemen to their ruin, demanding ‘presents’ and behaving like little ladies of the evening more
indubitably than they did in the story [the novel].” Dale’s comments on the “little ladies” reflect
the persistence of childish femininity in the stage version while also recognizing the more
deliberate and insidious nature of the women “luring” men into an exchange of this diminutive
and sexualized femininity for material “presents.” By foregrounding Lorelei’s conscious
duplicity, Loos’s theatrical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes offered audiences a sterner cautionary tale
with a more culpable but much less relatable and enjoyable protagonist.
Loos’s critique benefitted from a more calculating character, but the commercial success
of her production required a sympathetic protagonist. In order to retain audience sympathy for
Lorelei, Loos added two female characters to the play, Gloria Atwell and Connie, blatantly
mercenary gold-diggers who serve as foils for Dorothy and Lorelei. In the stage directions, Loos
describes Gloria as “the cold, superious [sic], supercilious type of gold digger, full of pretense
and social buncombe. She is very good looking, very chic and very smartly dressed. She speaks
in an affected manner, which expresses her idea of social distinction” (1-2). In contrast to Gloria,
Lorelei is warm-hearted and unaffected. Gloria calls everyone “darling,” which she pronounces
“dolling” in an attempt to sound refined. Lorelei also attempts to speak in a cultured manner, but
her frequent malaprops and mispronunciations thwart any positive effective this might have. In
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addition, Lorelei’s ignorance in matters of cultural value renders her incapable of social pretense
except in regard to fashion and physical appearance. Gloria’s companion Connie offers another
contrast to Lorelei in the area of morals. Connie, described in the stage directions as “very pretty
but also pretty common,” indicates that she might be pregnant, 308 providing a sharp contrast to
Lorelei and Dorothy who insinuate but never, at least never explicitly, consummate. While
Lorelei inflicts more damage than Gloria, the contrast Gloria and Connie provide indicates that
Lorelei is more sincere, moral, and less malicious than the average gold-digger, allowing the
audience to maintain a kind of sympathy for the stage version of Lorelei in spite of her
calculating qualities.
Casting and Capital
As with The Age of Innocence, casting the show’s lead actress became the most crucial
element in conveying the playwright’s vision of her protagonist and her cultural critique. While
Loos’s script provided a solid foundation for a calculating yet kindly Lorelei, Loos and producer
Edgar Selwyn knew that casting would determine the commercial success of this new
characterization. Their decision proved particularly challenging since the popularity of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes rested entirely on the well-established entertainment value of Lorelei,
a popular literary character audiences would expect to see faithfully reproduced on stage.
Drawing on Lorelei’s strong resemblance to the chorus girl stereotype, 309 Selwyn initially
went to the source in search of a genuinely blonde and vapid actress to carry the show. Selwyn
started by auditioning former Ziegfeld girls, women, by definition of the Ziegfeld brand, both
beautiful and brainless. Ironically, cultural stereotypes regarding the separation of beauty and
brains complicated the casting process since women fitting the look Selwyn required also suited
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a performance genre that limited their opportunities for acting experience. As Loos states, “it
requires a very special talent to play a dumb blonde without making her tedious,” but finding a
beautiful blonde with this talent proved impossible for Selwyn (Cast 145). June Walker, the
brunette who eventually played Lorelei, described Selwyn’s casting difficulties in an interview,
boasting, “The authors and management rehearsed four or five blondes. They tried Ziegfeld
Follies Girls who looked the part. . . Time
passed; as writers say, and more blondes were
rehearsed” (qtd. in Patterson 12). Eventually,
Selwyn approached Walker, but, according to
Walker, Loos and Emerson told Selwyn that
they admired the actress but couldn’t picture
her in the role (Patterson 12). The couple’s
opinion prevailed, and Selwyn continued his
search.
As Walker’s comments indicate, Loos
Fig. 7 Mildred Macleod, author’s collection,
Vandamm Studio© The New York Public
Library
played an active role in selecting the cast for
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Loos personally
approached Broadway impresario David
Belasco in order to request that he release Edna Hibbard from her final performance in Ladies of
the Evening so that she would be available to play Dorothy. 310 Belasco acquiesced, and, in
March 1926, the New York Times announced that Edna Hibbard would play Dorothy in the new
adaptation of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (“Gossip,” Mar.) The Times also related that Selwyn
had yet to find an actress to play Lorelei. At this point, Selwyn and Loos both approached
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Universal Pictures’ Carl Laemmle in an effort to persuade him to release film star Laura La
Plante for the role, but Laemmle refused (Kingsley). Eventually, Selwyn was forced to start
rehearsals without a leading lady. Finally, on April 6th, the New York Times and the Chicago
Daily Tribune announced that Mildred Macleod would appear as Lorelei when the show opened
in Detroit (see fig. 7). Reputedly, stitchers performed last minute alterations on her costumes
while Macleod rehearsed on a train to Detroit where she joined a cast already a week into
rehearsals (“Just Before”). Macleod opened the show in Detroit on April 18th, 1926, but, by April
21st, Selwyn had decided to replace the blonde actress for the show’s Chicago opening.
Persuaded, perhaps, by Macleod’s failure, Selwyn realized he would have to settle for a brunette
and convinced Loos to accept his previous choice, actress June Walker.
Walker’s motives for accepting the role highlight issues of race, intellect, and gender in
creating individual actress’s capital as well as the capital entailed in Lorelei as an iconic
characterization of femininity. As stated earlier, both Loos and Walker adopted aspects of
Lorelei’s femininity to increase their capital as attractive and intelligent women in an industry
depicting intelligence and beauty as antithetical qualities in a woman. Prior to appearing as
Lorelei, Walker earned a respectable reputation through her work at the Theatre Guild, a noncommercial company supported by a subscriber audience, but she had yet to establish herself as a
star in a Broadway hit. Up to this point, Walker’s favorite roles included Sadie Cohen in John
Howard Lawson’s Processional (1925) at the Theatre Guild and several lead roles she had
played while working in Toronto with Edward Robbins’ Players (Patterson 62). These previous
roles included several characters Walker described as “slaveys and cockneys” (qtd. in Patterson
62), which linked Walker with constructs of class and race outside 1920s delineations of ideal
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femininity. Similar to Cornell and her association with “sinners,” Walker felt her affiliation with
racially and economically marginalized characters hampered her efforts to attain the income and
status of a Broadway star. In order to increase her capital as a Broadway actress, Walker thus
purposefully accepted the part of Lorelei because, as she explained, “I was afraid of being kept in
those parts” (qtd. in Patterson 62).
Fig. 8 June Walker
as Lorelei, ©Billy
Rose Theatre
Division, The New
York Public Library
for the Performing
Arts.
Because Lorelei epitomized cultural ideals of class and race in femininity, the role
offered Walker an ideal opportunity to escape her association with low-class and non-white
characters. By embodying Lorelei’s upper-class consumption of luxury goods and untarnished
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whiteness of the blonde ideal Walker could distance herself from the race and class stereotypes
linked to her through her earlier roles and, thus, increase her capital as an actress. 311 To this end,
Walker participated in publicity emphasizing Lorelei’s race and class, including advertisements
for blonde wigs; 312 publicity close-ups of her adorned with her blonde coiffeur, elegant gown,
and sting of pearls; and production photos of her in Lorelei’s stylish clothes and jewels (see fig.
8). Walker’s New York Times interview aided her attempt to co-opt Lorelei’s whiteness by
framing Walker’s comments with a description of the brunette actress’ physical transformation
into the blonde Lorelei (“More or Less”). The column relates how Walker employs “two pale
yellow wigs” as well as “a box of whitening, strawberry rouge, [and] a heavy blue pencil” to
transform her “naturally pale ochre” skin into the whiteness embodied by Lorelei (“More or
Less”). Walker masks her natural, “faintly sepia” skin under whitening, rouge, and pencil and
her brown hair under a “natural” blonde wig, to form the quintessence of chic, white femininity
(“More or Less”). The interviewer contrasts Walker and Lorelei’s femininity in her description
of how she “watched the metamorphosis of a symphonic brunette into the synthetic blonde
whom not merely gentlemen but more specifically producers and critics prefer” (“More or
Less”). The interviewer’s contrast between “symphonic” and “synthetic” indicates the
manufactured and artificial nature of this white ideal, which, as she confirms, offers actresses an
advantage in producer’s casting choices. This observation proved true for Walker whose
association with Lorelei helped her land lead roles in two of her following endeavors, The Love
Nest (1927), and David Belasco’s The Bachelor Father (1928), which ran for over two hundred
performances.
In addition to the desirability and artificiality of Walker’s whiteness as an actress as well
as a character, the article also illustrates the exclusive nature of this racial construct of femininity
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in the entertainment industry. As the author notes, Walker’s transformation occurs in front of a
“nut brown maid with a hand mirror,” an observation underscoring Walker’s race and status
(“More or Less”). Just as Lorelei, through her beauty and jewelry, acts as a class signifier for the
men she accompanies, so does Walker’s maid, through her racial otherness, signify Walker’s
status as a leading lady in a hit show. In addition to signifying Walker’s status, the maid operates
as a reminder of the subordinate role non-white women held in mainstream theatre during this
period, employed to literally and figuratively assist in the production of whiteness. The inequities
of this hierarchy played out in the dressing room as well as on stage as Grace Burgess, a white
actress, donned blackface and dark stockings in order to play Lulu, Lorelei’s maid. 313 While the
character would have remained intact without this shading, Burgess’ makeup, much like the
racial identification of Walker’s maid in the article, served to underscore the social and economic
standing of the white character and actress. While Burgess and Walker crossed racial boundaries
in performance, racial standards for ideal femininity limited options for non-white women in
mainstream entertainment and, as discussed earlier, white-collar employment. 314 Additionally, as
Walker’s concerns about casting indicate, even superficial associations with non-whiteness
threatened to circumscribe an actress’ career. 315 Lorelei’s synthetic whiteness allowed Walker to
project an image of beauty and modernity and distance herself from the non-white and low-class
characters she embodied in previous plays.
However, Loos’s narrative also established Lorelei’s blondeness as a symbol of female
ignorance, and, in co-opting this symbol of race, Walker simultaneously acquired Lorelei’s link
with inanity. Due to the capital whiteness carried in mainstream entertainment, Lorelei’s race
acted as an asset for Walker, but Lorelei’s mentality was a potential liability. While managers
hired chorus girls based primarily on looks, Selwyn’s, as well as Barnes and Sheldon’s,
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difficulties with casting demonstrate that producers valued intellect when searching for leading
ladies. While beauty was an asset, complex roles required women with acting experience and the
ability to critique and analyze a character. Lorelei’s brainlessness thus threatened to derail any
serious consideration Walker hoped to attain as an actress through her performance in Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes. As discussed earlier, women in entertainment, particularly during the era of star
vehicles, were closely associated, both personally and professionally, with roles they performed
on stage. Selwyn, for example, refused to audition Helen Hayes for the role of Lorelei because,
as Selwyn explained, “Little Helen Hayes couldn’t even suggest this character. Why she’s a
virgin!” (qtd. in Loos, Cast 147-8). Selwyn’s conflation of Hayes’ life experience with the
character’s highlights the dilemma Walker faced in taking on a role exemplifying the “nation’s
lowest possible mentality” (Loos, A Girl 266).
While wary of the impact Lorelei’s mentality might have on her own capital, Walker
understood that this vacuity played a key role in creating her character’s entertainment value.
Lorelei’s emblematic ignorance had achieved such fame in popular culture by this time that
Walker knew she must capture this aspect of Loos’s iconic character in order to succeed in her
performance. As Walker explained, playing Lorelei was “like singing opera where the audience
knows the score and is, therefore, the more exacting” (“More or Less”). In order to please this
demanding audience, Walker emphasized Lorelei’s childishness and ignorance through her
physicalization, using a high-pitched voice and vapid facial expression to create the character.
Walker explained her vocal technique to the New York Times, disclosing, “I try to make my
voice empty, yet arresting; emaciated to thinness, yet languorously luxurious . . . I pitch Lorelei’s
tones fairly high with a slight rising inflection at the end of each sentence so as to send them over
the footlights still higher” (“More or Less”). Reviews citing “Miss Walker’s childish voice”
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(Atkinson, “The Play: Blondes”) and “implausible coo” (Hammond) indicate that Walker
achieved the desired effect. In addition to her childish coo, Walker created a blank facial
expression to convey what she referred to as Lorelei’s “dumb-bell” mentality (qtd. in Patterson
12). Walker’s expression impressed the New York Times interviewer, who inquired, “How do
you achieve that sweet vacuity of expression?” (“More or Less”). Walker explicated her
technique, responding, “That comes from holding my eyes in a rigid stare and is partly the effect
of the wig” (“More or Less”). Critic Frank Vreeland found this method particularly effective in
translating Lorelei’s characteristic mentality to the stage: “Miss Walker,” he explained, “was the
incarnation of professionally girlish demureness. With round, starry eyes and a constant effort to
be sweetly and stuffily refined, Miss Walker managed to win favor for a role that just stopped
short of radiant imbecility.” Walker thus created the “imbecility” audiences expected in Lorelei,
which undercut the emphasis Loos’s script placed on the protagonist’s deliberate scheming and
also threatened Walker’s capital as an actress.
Walker, however, mitigated the risk posed by Lorelei’s imbecility by deliberately
distancing herself from Lorelei’s mindless mentality in her publicity for the show. While
ignorance defined Lorelei, Walker repeatedly emphasized the fact that it did not define her.
Confiding to an interviewer that Loos “likes neither the book nor the play,” 316 Walker implied
that both she and Loos possessed talents and intellects superior to their frivolous, fictional
character (qtd. in Patterson 12). Walker expressed her desire to display this superior intellect in a
comment to the New York Times, stating, “I want to play more subtle, sophisticated comedy,”
demonstrating that she, unlike Lorelei, recognized cultural hierarchy and understood the inferior
position of blunt and unsophisticated work (“More or Less”). Walker referred to Lorelei as a
“dumb-bell” and downplayed the challenge of the role, saying, “It is not a difficult part to play,
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but it did require more than a type” (qtd. Patterson 12). Walker’s comments about difficulty
follow her account of Selwyn’s frustrations in finding a capable actress. Explaining that she does
not find the role difficult thus places her in a superior position to the many actresses Selwyn
auditioned, most of whom were genuine blondes. Later in the interview, Walker emphasizes the
vast distance between her brunette self and the blonde stereotype, saying, “I haven’t a friend who
isn’t dark-haired. I don’t think I ever had” (Patterson 12). Walker thus implies not only that she
herself bears no resemblance to the stereotype, but also that she does not associate with women
who do.
Walker’s strategy of both performing and distancing herself from Lorelei’s ignorance
proved successful with audiences and critics as well as her current and future producers.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes opened in Detroit in 1926 and played successfully at Chicago’s
Selwyn Theatre over the summer. 317 The successful Chicago run prompted fierce competition
between New York theatre managers hoping to house the production, and ticket costs for
opening night orchestra seats soared to a record price of $11.00 (“Gossip,” Aug.) In spite of this
critical success, Loos and Selwyn both felt they could improve the production before the
Broadway premier. Selwyn asked Loos to fine-tune the script, and Loos suggested replacing
Walker who, according to Carey, Loos found to be “too cozy and sweet” (111), characteristics
which undercut her critique. Selwyn, however, refused to replace Walker so close to opening,
and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes premiered at New York’s Times Square Theater 318 on September
28th, 1926 with Walker in the lead. While critics remained amused but unenthused by the play,
reviewers roundly applauded Walker’s “clever” performance. 319 J. Brooks Atkinson called “June
Walker’s imaginative impression of Lorelei Lee, a splendid achievement of portrait acting,
[which] communicates a far more subtle character delineation, impossible to describe in
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commonplace terms” (“Speaking”). Alexander Woollcott declared that “the choice of June
Walker [for the role] was a stroke of genius,” and Percy Hammond proclaimed, Walker’s
“manipulation of the naïve heroine was one of the most skillful bits of comedy that has been cast
this year before the Broadway illuminatti.” Such uniform praise for Walker’s intellectual and
skillful approach to the character indicates that she resisted the common conflation of actress and
character and, through this role, successfully transformed herself into a more marketable actress.
Ironically, the middlebrow aura of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes also worked to increase Walker’s
capital as a performer by translating her talent from the small houses and intellectual plays of the
Theatre Guild to the mass appeal of a Broadway hit. Critic Helen Klumph applauded this career
move which, she believed, kept the “gifted and promising” Walker from becoming “the pet of
the highbrows” (C13). Instead of equating Walker’s mentality with her character’s, critics
praised her talent and ability, which they now associated with mainstream success. Walker’s
associations with Lorelei and the hit play carried her into leading roles for several following
seasons, including, most famously, the role of Laurey in Lynn Riggs’ play Green Grow the
Lilacs (1931), which Rogers and Hammerstein later adapted into the musical Oklahoma! (1943).
While Walker carried the New York production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, three
additional Loreleis led touring companies throughout the United States. The New York Times
reported that 500 actresses auditioned to play Lorelei in these productions, which carried the play
to a nation-wide audience while the original still played in New York (“What News”). Loos and
Emerson assisted in generating publicity for the tour by attending the opening night of the Los
Angeles production, starring Joan Marion, 320 which opened the new Belasco Theater on
November 1st. Other companies toured to major cities, including Pittsburgh and Atlantic City.
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Through this stage version of Lorelei, Loos’s critique of American femininity proliferated
throughout the country, lampooning the modern idealization of feminine ignorance and
consumerism. However, in spite of Loos’s characterization of the stage Lorelei as deliberately
cunning and calculating, commercial considerations, particularly as they influenced Walker’s
performance, kept Lorelei delightfully entertaining, eventually inspiring musical and motion
picture versions of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In both the musical, which established Carol
Channing as a star (1949), and the movie, which created an iconic role for Marilyn Monroe
(1953), 321 Loos’s message was overshadowed by the charisma of her star. Even the version with
Walker, whom Loos felt was wrong for the role, ran for over six months (Loos, Cast 86),
indicating audiences remained charmed even when encountering the more manipulative version
of Loos’s “innocent” blonde. As Loos would later remark, “Lorelei has been harder to kill than
Rasputin” (Cast 107). Lorelei’s longevity reveals the continued resonance of the blonde
stereotype and the combined pleasure of relishing and ridiculing the values she represents. Just
as Loos herself capitalized on the system she criticized, so does Lorelei allow audiences to bask
in “blondeness” through her overt sexuality and opulent materialism while simultaneously
snickering at the ignorance conflated with these aspects of femininity. Serving as both a
stereotype and an ideal, Lorelei endures in American entertainment as the vapid, non-threatening
blonde who has more fun and, consequently, more capital than her smarter, darker counterparts.
While critics and scholars acknowledge the problematic aspects of this portrayal, it continues to
carry tremendous value in entertainment as its sustained popularity and profitability ensure the
endurance of this representation in commercial entertainment.
Conclusion:
Continuing Issues of Capital
In August 2012, the Hollywood Reporter announced that, following revelations of actress
Kristen Stewart’s affair with director Rupert Sanders, Universal Pictures had decided that
Stewart would not appear in future films based on her feature Snow White and the Huntsman
(Rosenberg). According to culture reporter Alyssa Rosenberg, producers feared that Stewart’s
infidelity to boyfriend and Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson would harm her credibility and,
thus, her marketability as the fairy-tale princess. The focus on Stewart and her commercial value
in this story, rather than Sanders or Pattinson’s, underscores the continued centrality and
complexity of commodified femininity in American entertainment. Although Universal Pictures
later denied dropping Stewart, such speculations reveal the abiding influence of the capital
complex in creating marketable representations of femininity in entertainment. Producers
continue to assess and manage actresses’ and characters’ capital—in this case, Stewart’s and
Snow White’s—in order to create the most profitable representations possible.
As stated in the introduction to this dissertation, few studies investigate precisely how
practitioners in for-profit entertainment calculate entertainment value in relation to femininity.
The proceeding analyses of Show Boat, The Age of Innocence, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
demonstrate how practitioners in for-profit entertainment worked to calculate and compound the
value of femininity in specific instances and productions. In each production, producers, writers,
and artists primarily considered non-material capital, basing their calculations on characteristics
carrying particular value in 1920s femininity, including beauty, as defined in the modern girl, as
well as ethnicity, class, race, sexuality, and heteronormativity. Practitioners assessed these
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qualities in relation to both the actress and the character and based their valuations on
assumptions of the potential appeal these specific qualities, as uniquely exhibited and combined
in these particular actress/character combinations, would have for Broadway audiences. In their
evaluations, producers, directors, and writers considered entertainment value in relation to the
physicality of the actress as well as the femininity she and her character presented—vapid,
sexual, moral, patriotic, incompetent, American, helpless, independent, maternal, materialistic,
etc. Each of these aspects, combined in the complex asset of actress/character, carried capital in
these calculations of entertainment value.
In addition, each production worked to compound the value of this asset through various
techniques. In the case of Show Boat, Ziegfeld and his colleagues worked to supplement the
entertainment value of their Magnolia’s conservative femininity through more sensational
representations of womanhood in displays of physical female strength, queered sexual violence,
and black sexuality. These evocative displays worked to highlight the conventional form of
femininity that the production commodified in Magnolia while Magnolia acted as a normative
testament and moral guarantor legitimating the production’s more provocative representations of
femininity. In a similar manner, May worked in Barnes’s The Age of Innocence to contrast and
contain Ellen’s sexuality, allowing the production to commodify female desire by subsuming its
value under the supremacy of maternity and nationalism. Both actresses and producers also
worked to compound entertainment value by acquiring and invoking “ghosts” from previous
productions. For Show Boat, Norma Terris’s association with Ziegfeld’s Follies increased
Magnolia’s standing as a symbol of normative, wholesome sexuality. However, as Cornell and
Walker demonstrate, utilizing the capital of an actress’s ghosts could be difficult.
229
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes offers another practical example of practitioners compounding
capital through Anita Loos’s ability to both glorify and ridicule the femininity commodified in
her narrative. Loos’s satire capitalized on the ridiculous aspects of her protagonist’s femininity
while her depiction of Lorelei’s sex appeal and luxurious tastes inspired imitation and, in many
cases, admiration. Loos anticipated and promoted both reactions to Lorelei, and her work, thus,
compounded the entertainment value of the femininity commodified in her narrative by
appealing to a wide spectrum of audience members ambivalent in their opinions about modern
gender.
In addition to exploring the practical aspects of calculating and compounding
entertainment value on stage, these analyses reveal the implication of such calculations for real
women. Cornell, Loos, Walker, as well as the numerous other women in this study, worked
actively to manage their capital as entertainers and as women. Cornell worked to hide her
sexuality in order to maintain her capital as a Broadway star, while Loos endeavored to diminish
her intellectual abilities in order to stabilize her relationships. While this is not the focus of the
preceding analyses, it is worth noting the interrelated nature and real effect of sociocultural and
entertainment value.
The impact of entertainment value in shaping identity makes the enduring nature of these
valuations particularly interesting. The commercial success of Show Boat, The Age of Innocence,
and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, in these productions as well as the subsequent versions in film
and on stage, served to legitimate and proliferate each of these representations of femininity and
the characteristics they espouse. Through the film adaptations of all three narrative as well as
numerous revivals of Show Boat and the musical version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, these
230
representations of femininity, along with their 1920s understandings of race, beauty, class,
ethnicity, sexuality, etc., continue to circulate in American culture. 322
The enduring entertainment value of these narratives and characters points to the broader
issue of problematic representations of women, and their race, class, sex, ethnicity, etc., which
proliferate because of their profitability. Many of the characteristics carrying capital in the
femininity ultimately commodified in Terris/Magnolia, Cornell/Ellen, and Walker/Lorelei
maintain their entertainment value in current constructs of femininity in entertainment.
Broadway and Hollywood continue to glorify white, sexual, heterosexual, lovelorn women and,
often, construct the entertainment value of these dominant constructs in contrast to women
existing outside them.
As Jill Dolan states, “dominant cultural meanings both constitute and are reconstituted by
representation” (41), and, as this study demonstrates, dominant cultural meanings hold close ties
to dominant economic power, particularly, in the case of commercial entertainment and
femininity. While this system gives tremendous power to studio executives, Broadway
producers, and industry institutions in modern entertainment, it also acknowledges the power of
the audience, who, by voting with their dollars, can legitimize or marginalize representations in
commercial entertainment. In this sense, it is my hope that this study will act as a stimulus for
voter education.
As stated earlier, it is my hope that this study will provide a productive model for
analyzing the practical aspects of assessing and commodifying femininity in commercial
entertainment in addition to raising productive questions about the cultural and social cost of
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relying on for-profit systems of entertainment. Such questions are increasingly important at a
time when individuals and institutions frequently champion the for-profit model as a solution to
waning public arts funding. In addition, the field of playwriting, which has historically served as
a point of access for women’s voices in entertainment, has developed in the modern era as a
male-dominated field, limiting women’s roles in creating representations of femininity in
American theatre. These current conditions create an acute need for productive methods and
models analyzing the issues of capital at work in shaping representations of femininity, as well as
other aspects of identity, presented in commercial entertainment. It is my hope that as we
develop such models and pursue this line of inquiry, we will (re)discover methods of funding and
viewing that legitimize representations of gender and identity in a manner determined by
curiosity rather than capital.
Notes
1
Scholars often cite this production of Show Boat as a turning point in establishing the American musical
genre, as it was one of the first shows to unite song and action in a cohesive narrative. The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians, for example, calls it “perhaps the most successful and influential Broadway musical play ever
written” (qtd. in Block 19).
2
Norma Terris played both Magnolia and Kim in the original production, so the musical ended with
Magnolia directing Ravenal’s attention to Kim, who was, necessarily, off stage.
3
This project stems from an initial study of the reformulation of femininity in the musical adaptation of
Show Boat, which appeared in Studies in Musical Theatre 4.3 (2010): 321-330. An expanded version of this analysis
appears in chapter two.
4
Show business also commodifies representations of sexuality, race, class, religion, ethnicity, and
numerous other aspects of identity. This study will address the commodification of many of these representations
within the frame of gender, specifically femininity.
5
Dudden’s claim is borne out in studies by Richard Dyer, Robert C. Allen, Linda Mizejewski, Susan A.
Glenn, and numerous other scholars examining specific commodifications of women in relation to particular genres
or individuals.
6
Such performances may also be legitimated through institutional recognition, such as an industry award,
but this legitimation is ultimately employed to attract audiences and generate revenue.
7
Clearly, not all women who exemplify prevailing gender ideals achieve leading-lady status and income.
However, it is equally apparent that all of the women who do achieve this status and salary level exemplify
hegemonic ideals of femininity, indicating the limited opportunities for women outside these ideals. While these
limitations are not definitive, the trend is undeniable.
8
The Non-Traditional Casting Project, founded in 1986, works to address these issues in film, television,
and theatre by advocating for the casting of non-white, female, and disabled actors.
9
Robert C. Allen, for example, details the marginalization of the burlesque industry which failed to adapt
to shifting cultural standards and thus developed into an entertainment of the male working class rather than the
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respectable bourgeoisie (159). Chapter one will discuss the sex farce genre, which declined in popularity and
profitability for similar reasons.
10
This theme of liberation and containment runs through several studies of women in theatre during this
period, including those by Angela Latham, Susan A. Glenn, and Linda Mizejewski.
11
Forbes 2011list of Hollywood’s ten highest-earning actors includes only one non-white actor
(Pomerantz, “Actors”). As Forbes writer Dorothy Pomerantz states at the beginning of her article on Hollywood’s
highest-paid actresses, “Hollywood is still a boy’s town where the men earn a lot more than the women”
(“Actresses”). According to Pomerantz, the top three actresses in 2011 each earned an estimated $30 million, while
the top-earning male actor earned $77 million (“Actors,” “Actresses”). Pomerantz’s list of the ten highest-paid
actresses contains no non-white women.
12
While these factors also influence reception, the focus of this study is their impact on production
decisions in determining which representations are presented on stage. This study will focus on reception primarily
in order to determine how production decisions anticipated, whether correctly or incorrectly, and influenced
audience reception.
13
Bourdieu also discusses the social capital existing in social connections, such as those with one’s family
or ethnic group. While social capital may assist an actor in attaining a part or a playwright in finding a producer,
cultural capital plays directly into valuations of femininity on stage.
14
See Bourdieu, “Forms of Capital” for a discussion of the conversion of cultural and social capital into
economic capital (281).
15
While there are myriad forms of capital associated with the production as a whole, including the skills of
the lighting technicians, the reputation of the sound designer, a producer’s social connections, etc., this study focuses
primarily on those strongly influencing representations of femininity.
16
Butler directly addresses Bourdieu’s theories in her chapter “Implicit Censorship and Discursive
Agency.”
17
Skeggs points out that Bourdieu has come under criticism for normalizing his concepts of home and
family (21-2).
234
18
This paradigm persists, in part, because of the contemporary popularity of and current wealth of
scholarship on 1920s chorus girls, entertainers predominantly and overtly managed by male producers and
choreographers.
19
See Christine Frederick’s Selling Mrs. Consumer and Rita Felski’s The Gender of Modernity (61-5). As
Kate Dossett observes, the binary of producer/consumer was also racialized as hegemonic discourse relegated
respectable consumption to whites (93-4).
20
See also Jennifer Scanlon’s Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies’ Home Journal, Gender, and the Promises
of Consumer Culture, which offers a detailed study of the role women played in shaping depictions of gender in the
advertising and content of Ladies’ Home Journal.
21
During the 1920s, the flapper came to represent several specifically modern aspects of femininity
including alcohol consumption, short dresses, dancing, smoking, and a cosmopolitan sensibility centered in urban
areas. However, the idea of “the Modern Girl,” as expressed in contemporary discourse, addresses a broader range
of femininities emerging during this era. While the flapper stands as an iconic representation of 1920s American
femininity, I wish to focus more on the idea of “the Modern Girl” as a concept closer to the broader and actual
experience of women confronting modern femininity in the 1920s.
22
Women, such as actor and director Eva Le Gallienne, exerted tremendous influence in companies like the
Civic Repertory Theatre, but female directors remained the exception in 1920s commercial theatre.
23
These dates indicate the year of each serial publication. The stage adaptations appeared as follows: Show
Boat debuted in 1927, The Age of Innocence in 1928, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in 1926.
24
Although Wharton established a long-term residency in France, beginning in 1907, and rarely returned to
the United States, she continued to write in response to American culture. See Elizabeth Ammons’ Edith Wharton’s
Argument with America for an analysis of Wharton’s writings as a critique of American culture.
25
Adaptation studies often compare original material and adaptations created in vastly different cultures or
time periods. In such studies, intercultural and temporal differences heavily influence exchanges between the
original and the adaptation making intracultural influences, such as capital concerns, more difficult to trace.
Feminist Theatrical Revisions of Classic Works: Critical Essays, for example, provides several such studies.
235
26
Wainscott explains that over three hundred performances in this era made a production an “enormous
hit” while more than one hundred performances qualified as a success and anything less than thirty performances
was considered a failure (56).
27
Each narrative also inspired several film versions. Show Boat appeared as a film in 1929, 1936, and 1951.
The Age of Innocence was made into a film in 1924, 1934, and, by Martin Scorsese, in 2009. Paramount produced a
film version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in 1927, and the musical version was later adapted into the 1953 film
starring Marilyn Monroe.
28
Frederick served as consulting editor for the Ladies’ Home Journal. She applied the scientific approaches
to efficiency widely used in industry at this time to housework in an effort to make this work more efficient and
provide women with more time for leisure and family. Frederick wrote several books on this topic, including The
New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management and Household Engineering: Scientific Management
in the Home.
29
The Pictorial Review will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter and in chapter four.
30
Historian Angela Latham describes how her grandmother negotiated shifting gender ideals during this
period by bobbing her hair but preserving her long hair in a plait which she reattached every morning when she went
to work at a conservative school (1).
31
Reduced postage rates for magazine publications contributed to the increase in readership by allowing
publishers to offer lower subscription rates. In addition, delivery of mail to rural residences expanded during this
time (Scanlon 12).
32
The Ladies Home Journal achieved one million readers in 1904 and maintained its position as the
number one women’s magazine in America through a combination of subscription and newsstand sales. During the
1920s, over 50% of sales of the Journal occurred at newsstands, the highest percentage for any women’s magazine
(Zuckerman, History 127). The Journal held its position as the leading women’s magazines until 1932 when the
Woman’s Home Companion attained the preeminent slot (Zuckerman, History 106).
33
“Bazaar.”
The spelling of Harper’s Bazar changed in 1929 when the magazine incorporated another “a” into
236
34
Detailed accounts of the market niche targeted by Woman’s Home Companion, Pictorial Review, and
Harper’s Bazar appear in the following chapters of this dissertation. Ladies’ Home Journal focused specifically on
maintaining a middle-class audience interested in domestic advice. Good Housekeeping targeted readers particularly
interested in housekeeping excellence by promoting quality in this field through housekeeping products and stores
approved and endorsed by the Good Housekeeping Institute. McCall’s and Delineator both emerged from pattern
companies. During the 1920s, both continued to sell patters while McCall’s emphasized fiction offerings and the
Delineator was restyled as an upscale magazine which also boasted a “Delineator Institute” to compete with Good
Housekeeping’s (Zuckerman, History 111).
35
Tennessee Williams depicts this method in The Glass Menagerie.
36
Zuckerman discusses the origin of such techniques in the early 1900s (History 29-30), and describes how
publishers adapted these practices in the interwar years (History 125-7).
37
The Thompson agency set this record with the April issue and broke it the following October by
spending an additional $25,000 (Scanlon 172).
38
Author Edna Ferber noted the relationship between advertising and fiction in women’s magazines,
saying, “they [women’s magazines] paid a whopping price for serials, being highly solvent, with enormous
advertising contracts” (Peculiar Treasure 264).
39
New York also experienced a theatrical construction boom as twenty-six new theatres appeared between
1924 and 1929 (Douglas 60).
40
Producer David Belasco opened a new theatre in Los Angeles in 1926, which opened with a touring
production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
41
Avery Hopwood’s sex farce The Demi-Virgin, for example, landed the playwright in court after public
protests over the show’s risqué scenes. The Wales Padlock Law stipulated that actors, producers, and playwrights
could be arrested if the content of a production proved indecent.
42
Ferber’s Emma McChesney stories became so popular in American Magazine that The Saturday Evening
Post offered her $1,000 per story if she would publish with them (Ferber, Peculiar Treasure 173). In 1915,
237
Cosmopolitan Magazine sent Ferber a contract, leaving the price column blank so that Ferber could name her own
salary if she agreed to write McChesney stories for them (Ferber, Peculiar Treasure 174).
43
A 1928 Empire Theatre program, for example, carries a “Short Short Story” by Jack Woodford entitled
“Contretemps Marital” which, briefly, deals with contemporary anxieties about modern femininity and its affect on
the home, subjects often featured in women’s magazines. The program also displays a cover illustration by French
designer and haute couture illustrator George Barbiere, followed by a full-color ad for Pompeian Beauty Powder.
Advertisements for powder compacts, children’s clothes, and multiple ads for silk stocking follow, and an ad for
Lucky Strikes, featuring a photo of film star Betty Compson, fills the back cover.
44
Department stores also sold items such as “Billie Burke Curls” and “Billie Burke Dresses,” designed to
help women imitate the actress’ iconic style (Carter 48).
45
In September and October 1925 Harper’s Bazar published the script for The Green Hat, just as the show,
which propelled Katharine Cornell to fame, opened in New York.
46
Bromley compares this to the “old-style” feminist who talks to men to “air her knowledge and argue
about woman’s right to a place in the sun” (556).
47
In 1919, several commentators argued against a proposed theatre tax, claiming that the tax would
increase Bolshevism by keeping the poor from attending the theatre (Wainscott 47).
48
Lynching, miscegenation laws, Jim Crow laws, disenfranchisement, and numerous other racist practices
were established and maintained at this time to separate African Americans and African American culture from what
was understood and recognized as authentically American. Such practices were often based on the belief that
African Americans would contaminate and weaken society if allowed to become full citizens, mixing spiritually,
morally, and physically with the white mainstream population and culture.
49
The Civic Repertory Theatre produced a stage adaptation of “The First Stone” in 1928.
50
Women during this time criticized the double moral standard which condemned women for extra-marital
sexual activity while condoning such behavior for men. As Weathers declared in “The Modern Girl Speaks for
Herself,” “the modern college girl. . . has unanimously resolved that one thing upon which they are agreed is that
they shall stand, when once they become full-fledged citizens, unequivocally for a single standard of morals” (22).
238
51
As Wharton’s literary agent explained to her, “Like our English cousins, we still find it difficult to face
certain facts frankly. The existence of the illegitimate child is less real if not referred to. Adultery is a word which
should never occur except in the Bible” (Jewett, Letter to Wharton 9 June 1921).
52
This assessment of the Woman’s Home Companion was due to the leadership of the publication’s editor
Gertrude Battles Lane, who will be discussed in detail in chapter two.
53
Editors placed similar moral strictures on advertisers by refusing to promote products associated with
lower-class customers or immorality. In 1910, Edward Bok, who edited the Ladies’ Home Journal from 1889 until
1919, established an advertising policy specifically stating the magazine would permit “no installment buying, no
alcohol, no patent medicines, no immodesty in text or illustration, no financial advertisements, no tobacco, [and] no
playing cards” (qtd. in Scanlon 200). Although prejudice against tobacco diminished during the decade, alcohol
advertisements remained taboo in women’s magazines.
54
In her analysis of Ladies’ Night, Latham posits that the play carried subversive homosexual undertones
and nuances, but her analysis reveals this possibility only in relation to male gay culture, indicating that even in this
subversive play, female sexuality remained censured.
55
The Demi-Virgin centers on a young woman abandoned only three hours after her marriage and the social
speculation concerning whether or not she and her husband consummated their marriage during their brief
honeymoon. Importantly, as Wainscott notes, The Demi-Virgin broke convention by concealing the protagonist’s
virtuous nature, her preserved virginity, until the final scene, thus failing to mitigate the threat of her transgressive
behavior in the preceding scenes.
56
Advertisements targeting men tend to avoid narratives of humiliation and embarrassment and instead
imply that the product will stand as a symbol of the purchaser’s good taste.
57
Literature scholar Sarah Churchwell demonstrates the success of Harper’s Bazar in cultivating a
profitable audience through content and advertising portraying the magazine as a periodical of the elite while
simultaneously making the “elite” lifestyle available to its middle-class readers (142). By cultivating an upper-class
image and a corresponding readership, Harper’s developed the ability to deliver a specifically high-class audience to
239
advertisers, which, in turn, enabled the magazine to charge high rates for advertising space (Zuckerman, History
164).
58
The emphasis in this quotation is added by Zuckerman.
59
The June 1928 Women’s Home Companion, for example, featured a full-color illustration of an African
American woman, a rare occurrence in 1920s women’s magazines. This illustration by Walter Biggs accompanies
Dubose Heyward’s serial Mamba’s Daughters, which would later be adapted into a Broadway play, and portrays
Mamba, a mystical African American woman in her sixties who mysteriously emerges from her dwelling along the
Charleston waterfront. Mamba faces the reader, seemingly well-dressed, but with her hands elongated into claw-like
appendages and her mouth hanging open as she gazes suspiciously over her shoulder, presumably in the act of
telling a story (Biggs). Women’s magazines also carried stories by authors such as Achmed Abdullah, which
exoticized Asian individuals in stories such as “The Evening Rice.” Along with this racial Othering, advertisements
and content also marginalized working-class and immigrant women who occasionally appeared in fiction, but
usually in a romanticized rural setting such as in The Prairie Mother, The Prairie Child, or The House Selzjiord.
These stories are all mentioned in the March 1922 issue of Pictorial Review.
60
Scanlon makes the important point that the advertising industry employed numerous women during this
time who participated in the prejudicial practices and marketing permeating the industry (211).
61
Madam C. J. Walker, popularly known as the first African American millionaire, amassed a large fortune
by selling hair care products specifically designed for black women. Her financial success indicates the false nature
of the racist assumptions by women’s magazines and their advertisers about African American women’s purchasing
power.
62
The U.S. Postal Service began offering parcel post service in January 1913, which caused a substantial
increase in mail-order businesses.
63
Ann Douglas explains that prior to the Great War, women either made their own clothing or ordered it
“made to measure” by sending in their particular measurements. Accurate, standard-sized clothing came into vogue
after the Great War, which, “with its demand for millions of standard-sized men’s uniforms made to government
regulations, was a godsend to the American clothing industry; by the end of the war, full-scale mass-production
240
techniques were being applied to civilian clothing and America had taken the lead in the world’s clothing market”
(Douglas 188).
64
In the late 1920s, Lucky cigarettes capitalized on the anxiety standardized sizes produced by specifically
targeting women in an ad campaign encouraging them to “reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet” (qtd. in Douglas
136).
65
Marriage historian Kristin Celello discusses how marriage experts during this period believed that
women needed marriage more than men and therefore held women responsible as the primary shapers and sustainers
of marriage (8).
66
Ziegfeld also staged another edition of the Follies in 1931. For a detailed discussion of the Ziegfeld
brand see Linda Mizejewski’s book Ziegfeld Girl: Image and Icon in Culture and Cinema.
67
The 1926 Los Angeles Times article “Curves and Dimples Return,” indicates that Ziegfeld issued new
specifications for beauty each year. The article compares standards for the Ziegfeld girl of 1926 with the girl of 1925
saying, “She will not be blonde. She’ll not be so thin as the 1925 girl and she’ll have, therefore, a curve or two . . .
She’ll come from more refined surroundings, and often she’ll be a college girl.”
68
This inset highlights and reiterates Ziegfeld’s comments that also appear on page 125 of the interview.
69
For a detailed discussion of the relationship between Ziegfeld’s construct of the Ziegfeld girl and cultural
discourse regarding eugenics see Linda Mizejewski’s chapter “Racialized, Glorified American Girls.”
70
Ziegfeld insisted, “most of the pretty girls in our companies are Americans. By that I mean that not only
are they native-born, but that their parents and grandparents and remoter ancestors were also natives of this country”
(“Picking” 121). In 1920s parlance, Ziegfeld’s “native-born” rhetoric signaled that the women in his shows were not
only white but were of Northern European heritage.
71
In 1926, Theatre Magazine referred to Ziegfeld and Lee Shubert as “our two arbiters of American
theatre,” indicating Ziegfeld’s influence on the industry (qtd. in Latham 119).
72
Class magazines, such as Vogue and Harper’s, emphasized shopping as women’s primary area of
expertise whereas magazines such as the Big Six appealed to other areas of interest, including household
management as well as social and political issues.
241
73
This appears to contradict Latham’s assertion that Ziegfeld girls received higher wages than those in
other shows, but Zinman seems to be referring only to girls in the chorus, while Latham’s evidence (114) seems to
refer to show girls, women selected to display lavish costumes, and featured performers.
74
See Carlson’s chapter “The Haunted Body” in his book The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory
Machine.
75
Show Boat scholar Miles Kreuger refers to the musical as a “seminal work” and defines its centrality in
musical theatre history, declaring, “The history of the American Musical Theatre, quite simply, is divided into two
eras: everything before Show Boat and everything after Show Boat” (“Some Words” 18). The New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians calls Show Boat “perhaps the most successful and influential Broadway musical play ever
written” (qtd. in Block 19). Theatre scholar Todd Decker describes David Ewen as “the most influential historian of
Show Boat,” and describes how in more than ten books over the course of thirty years Ewen established “the notion
that Show Boat was different from everything that preceded it and everything that surrounded it on Broadway in its
own time. His influential reading of Show Boat situated the work firmly at the head of a larger narrative of
Broadway history, installing Show Boat as the obligatory first chapter” (“Do You” 13).
76
As Todd Decker demonstrates in his article on the historiography of Show Boat, race became a particular
focus of scholarship on this musical following the 1993 revival in Toronto, which sparked criticism and protests
regarding the musical’s depiction of African Americans (“Do You”). M. Philip Nourbese’s Showing Grit:
Showboating North of the 44th Parallel examines the responses to this production in detail.
77
Grosset & Dunlap published Show Boat as a novel in 1926 before the final installment appeared in the
Companion. Quotes from Ferber’s Show Boat are taken from the 1926 novel, which adheres to the serial.
78
In the novel, Parthy warns Magnolia that her husband is a cad and predicts Magnolia will return home
penniless after he gambles away their money. Magnolia says she would rather starve (261).
79
“Coon songs” often contain racist lyrics, particularly in reference to black sexuality. Ferber, however,
seems to employ the term to indicate songs with black dialect but not sexual lyrics. The songs she specifies in the
serial and novel are mainly spirituals.
242
80
Block is one of the few scholars to note the centrality of mother/daughter conflict in Ferber’s Show Boat
and its replacement with the romance between Magnolia and Ravenal in the musical (35-6).
81
Shapiro connects this to Ferber’s understanding of her mother Julia Ferber, who supported the family
after Ferber’s father became blind. In a comment made after Julia’s death, Ferber stated, “she was definitely of the
race of iron women which seems to be facing extinction in today’s America” (qtd. in Shapiro 54).
82
The Companion executed a “Better Babies” campaign to fight infant mortality and published articles
with instructions for mothers on containing an outbreak of tuberculosis. Lane also encouraged women to demand
healthier conditions in grocery stores to prevent food contamination. In addition, the Companion ran a regular
column throughout the 1920s providing instruction and information on voting (Zuckerman, “Pathway” 69).
83
Ferber preferred to have her work serialized in magazines before it was published in book form so that
she could collect fees for the serial and then profit from the book. She particularly preferred women’s magazines
because they “paid a whopping price for serials” (Treasure 264).
84
Ferber described Cimarron as “a malevolent picture of what is known as American womanhood” and
lamented that the film adaptation had entirely missed this point (Treasure 339).
85
So Big, which Ferber described as “the story of a middle-aged woman living on a little truck farm just
outside Chicago,” centers on a widowed mother and her efforts to raise her son (Treasure 276). Lane saw So Big as
Ferber’s move away from “light” literature, such as her Emma McChesney stories, into more serious subjects.
86
Lane originally offered Ferber $35,000 for Show Boat but increased the offer to $45,000 after the success
of So Big and further offered to let Ferber name her own price for her next work (Lane, Letter to Ferber. 25 Aug.
1925).
87
Ferber mocked such prudery through Parthy’s character in Show Boat. When the married Magnolia
becomes pregnant, the narrator explains that Parthy “simply could not utter the word ‘pregnant’ or say, ‘while you
are carrying your child,’ or even the simpering evasion of her type and class—‘in the family way’” (234). Magnolia
laughs at this and then openly discusses the subject.
88
See M. Nourbese Philip, Raymond Knapp, and Scott McMillin.
243
89
The October 1920 issue of the Pictorial Review, for example, carried an article entitled “A Square Deal
for the Nameless Child” by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, which discussed the death of orphans in the United States due
to the poor conditions of the nation’s orphanages.
90
Berlant demonstrates how Show Boat uses sentimentality to universalize “African American history
[which] comes to stand for American history itself” (73). See Berlant’s chapter “Pax Americana: The Case for Show
Boat.”
91
After appearing in the Woman’s Home Companion, Show Boat was published as a novel and selected for
the Book of the Month Club, which sold over 25,000 copies (Kreuger 12). The book became a bestseller, and, in
1939, Ferber stated that Show Boat had sold 320,000 copies in the United States (Treasure 304).
92
According to Hill and Hatch, “Broadway policy in 1925 was to have white actors play ‘colored’ roles in
blackface in order to avoid mixed casts” (235).
93
Three Plays did not achieve commercial success, largely because its opening coincided with the United
States’ entry into World War I. However, the production received high critical praise and was often referenced in
post-war discourse as evidence of the achievements of black actors in mainstream drama.
94
This phrase was used to indicate that both blacks and whites attended the Swanee Club which was
situated on 125th street, “’the dividing line’ between white and black Harlem” (“Black and White”).
95
Williams performed with the Follies from 1907 to 1919. However, he was not with the company for
1913 and 1918 (Hill and Hatch 173). Williams performed solo pieces or acts with one or two other actors, but,
according to Hill and Hatch, “It was also generally understood that women would not appear in scenes with
Williams, a rule that was occasionally relaxed in later years” (172).
96
George White, who ran the Follies-esque George White Scandals, also incorporated music from black
entertainers into his shows during this time, including “Birth of the Blues” and “Beauties Performing the Black
Bottom” (Hill and Hatch 246).
97
Kern contacted theatre critic Alexander Woollcott to ask for a letter of introduction to Ferber. After
Woollcott posted the letter, he accompanied Ferber to the theatre that evening where he noticed Kern in the lobby
(Woollcott123-4). Kern also noticed Woollcott and approached him about the introduction to Ferber. Woollcott
244
mischievously replied: “M-m-m, well, I think I can just arrange it if I play my cards right,” and promptly introduced
Kern to the nearby Ferber (Ferber, Treasure 305).
98
Reputedly, Kern recruited Hammerstein by asking if he would like to make a musical for Ziegfeld. When
Hammerstein asked if Ziegfeld was enthusiastic, Kern replied: “He doesn’t know anything about it yet” (Freedland
87).
99
Ziegfeld also produced a final edition in 1931, and editions following his death in 1932 continued to use
his name.
100
Ferber’s iron women and Ziegfeld’s glorified girls both circulated within the intimate public of women’s
culture, providing American women with instruction on how to “live as an x” (Berlant viii). Historian Linda
Mizejewski describes how the “Ziegfeld enterprise” published precise instructions on matters of appearance,
including rules, charts, and measurements indicating how American women could meet Ziegfeld’s standards (113).
101
One notable exception was Albertina Rasch, who choreographed several numbers that her troupe
performed as part of Ziegfeld’s Follies and musicals.
102
McMillin’s article examines the earliest known script for Show Boat. He demonstrates that script #7430,
housed in the Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, was written before
February 9, 1927.
103
This was a revival of the 1920 production that starred Charles Gilpin.
104
McMillin argues that the adapters and producer also hired Robeson because of his strong public stance
on controversial issues regarding depictions race in entertainment, particularly the use of the word “nigger,” which
Joe and the black chorus would employ in Show Boat (65).
105
“Joe” in the musical is referred to as “Jo” in the novel. Kern and Hammerstein’s early script contains a
scene in act two where Captain Andy reveals that Joe has a son who has become a famous singer. The stage
directions instruct that Paul Robeson then appears in concert dress, alongside the accompanist Robeson performed
with in his actual concerts, and performs as if in one of his concerts (McMillin 60). Due to delays with production,
Robeson was not able to perform the role in the original musical, which instead featured Jules Bledsoe as Joe.
Robeson would come to play Joe in the London production in 1928 and in the 1936 film version.
245
106
As Raymond Knapp points out, the style of “Ol’ Man River” is “based on the spirituals that became
widely popular in the late nineteenth century, after the Fisk Jubilee tours” (188).
107
McMillin is one of the few writers to acknowledge this theme. However, his one-sentence explanation
misses the scope of Ferber’s project. He states, “Ferber’s proto-feminist theme is that the women of the story are
eventually bonded to one another and to the Mississippi (which is metaphorically a woman too)” (54). Breon also
acknowledges Ferber’s focus in one sentence, stating that “The book (which was a best-seller in 1926) is a
sentimental tale of life on the Mississippi with a slightly feminist point of view” (99).
108
A similar scene occurs when Julie is forced to leave the show boat, but the language is not as closely
109
Kim serves as a contrast to Parthy and Magnolia in her associations with the river. “There was no
parallel.
Mississippi in Kim,” intones the narrator, “Kim was like the Illinois River of Magnolia’s childhood days. Kim’s life
flowed tranquilly between gentle green-clad shores, orderly, well-regulated, dependable” (393). Kim remains an
emblem of American womanhood, connected to the nation and womanhood through her association with an
American, albeit less iconic, river as well as the theatre. Kim also serves as a contrast to Parthy and Magnolia since
she plans to build her career in “a real American theatre” by performing foreign classics from writers such as
Shakespeare, Chekhov, Hauptmann, Molnar, and Ibsen rather than Parthy and Magnolia’s melodramas and
Magnolia’s African American music, which Ferber employs to represent a more authentically American repertoire
(395-6).
110
Mainstream productions portraying serious racial concerns proliferated on the American stage during
this time. Some, including Scarlet Sister Mary (1930), used white actors in blackface, while others, including Three
Plays for a Negro Theatre (1917), Porgy (1927), and The Emperor Jones (1920), used black actors. Some
productions, including Show Boat, used both black actors and white actors in blackface.
111
Numerous scholars, including McMillin, Robin Breon, M. Nourbese Philip, Lauren Berlant, and
Kreuger address the results of Kern and Hammerstein’s efforts to portray African American experience and the
continuing racial stereotypes perpetuated in American entertainment through revivals of the musical. McMillin
concludes that “The Kern-Hammerstein show has a complex involvement with racism, countering it in some ways
246
and perpetuating it in others” (68). Breon discusses the musical’s “scenes that perpetuate racial stereotypes
demeaning to black life and culture” (86), and responses to these stereotypes in modern productions, particularly the
1993 revival in Toronto. Philip believes that “Show Boat is an example writ large of cultural appropriation and theft”
and argues that “Show Boat, the book, along with its many musical and film productions, exoticize[s] and demean[s]
Blacks” (44). Miles Kreuger, however, argues that Hammerstein purposely opened the musical with racist language,
the opening song originally contained the word “nigger,” in order to “stunningly shock an audience from its
complacency, to consider (at least subconsciously) the servile conditions to which southern Negroes were subjected”
(“Some Words” 23). Lauren Berlant argues that “the drama actually gives richer, more elaborate, and nuanced
subjectivities to the African American characters it foregrounds than the novel does,” but argues that this comes at
the cost of universalizing African American history and suffering (73).
112
Kern and Hammerstein also restructured Ferber’s plot in order to stress the significance of this reunion
and focus the musical on the theme and triumph of romantic love. Ferber’s structure centers on mother/daughter
relationships by opening with the birth of Kim and ending with Magnolia standing aboard the Cotton Blossom she
inherits from Parthy as Kim drives off in the distance. Kern and Hammerstein structured the musical around
Magnolia and Ravenal’s relationship and opened the musical with Magnolia and Ravenal’s meeting in act one, scene
one, ended act one with their wedding, and closed the show with the couple’s reunion and reconciliation.
113
When Magnolia tells Ravenal she is thinking of returning to the stage, Ravenal shows his displeasure by
mistreating their carriage horses, “cut[ting] the chestnuts sharply with his whip” (312). The narrator explains that,
Ravenal “was likely to fall into one of his moody silences and to flick the hackneys with little contemptuous cuts of
the long little whip in a way that only they – and Magnolia – understood. On such occasions he called them nags”
(275). The “them” in this final sentence is deliberately ambiguous, referring to both Magnolia and the horses.
Ravenal also refuses to let Magnolia work or give her any money of her own, leaving her financially dependent on
his gambling.
114
Additionally, scenes between Magnolia and her adult daughter were impossible in the original
production since Norma Terris played both roles.
247
115
Annie Dear starred Billie Burke as a heroine repulsed by her new husband’s beard and rough Western
ways. Annie unknowingly encounters her husband in a more refined form and falls in love with him (Ziegfeld,
Richard and Paulette 217). Annie Dear thus follows the conventions of a sex farce by depicting the heroine in what
she believes to be an affair while containing this flirtation within the bounds of matrimony. Betsy depicted the
escapades of several brothers forced to marry off their sister Betsy before they may marry (Ziegfeld, Richard and
Paulette 218).
116
This phrase comes from one of the songs in the musical, entitled “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” in
which Julie expresses the inevitability of her love for her husband, Steve. Queenie identifies the song as a song for
“colored folks,” which foreshadows the revelation of Julie’s mixed-race heritage (Kern and Hammerstein, Libretto
24). The use of “dat” in Hammerstein’s quote reflects the language of the lyrics, which were intended to convey an
African American dialect.
117
Axtell’s dissertation offers a precise timeline for the alterations in the musical as well as an insightful
and thorough analysis of the musical’s score.
118
Kern and Hammerstein’s earlier versions of the musical contained a scene in which Magnolia defiantly
sings a version of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” to Parthy as she and Ravenal prepare to leave for their wedding
(McMillin 54). This moment of Magnolia asserting her independence was later cut, which McMillin refers to as “a
real loss” (54).
119
Kern originally wrote this song with P.G. Wodehouse in 1918 for the show Oh Lady, Lady!, and
Hammerstein reworked this version for the musical. Miles Kreuger offers the scores of both versions for comparison
in his book Show Boat, the Story of a Classic American Musical (58-63).
120
Kreuger states that, “Although only twenty-seven, Miss Morgan’s dissipation from brandy had already
given this former beauty queen a somewhat worn quality . . . The vulnerability suggested by both Miss Morgan in
reality and Julie onstage blended so thoroughly that in retrospect it is impossible to think of Show Boat without Julie
[or] without Helen Morgan” (Story 53).
121
The adapters also emphasized this essential quality in Julie’s Act I song “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,”
linking her undying love for a “lazy, “slow” man to her mixed-race origins (Libretto 60). As Julie equates her need
248
for her man to the impulses governing the natural world, Queenie, the black cook, foreshadows the revelation of
Julie’s race explaining, “ah didn’t ever hear anybody but colored folks sing dat song” (Kern and Hammerstein,
Libretto 24).The song thus links Julie’s eventual disappointment in love, caused by her “natural” inclination to love
an unworthy man, specifically to her connection with black culture rather than the discrimination the interracial
couple faces in a racist society.
122
Critics often criticize the musical’s artificially happy ending but make no acknowledgement that it is
Kern and Hammerstein’s main point of departure from the source material, a departure Hammerstein later regretted
(Kreuger, “Some Words”17).
123
Frank draws attention to this parallel, saying, “Funny how you always get yer chance, ain’t it? . . . That’s
how you got your first chance – Remember – Julie?” Magnolia replies, “Yes, I remember. I often wonder what ever
became of her” (Kern and Hammerstein, Libretto 84).
124
This is not to say that Ferber’s novel offers a more truthful depiction of race than the musical. Ferber’s
depictions of characters such as Jo and Queenie are problematic reifications of racist stereotypes.
125
Earlier versions of the script have Magnolia weeping as the men change her ballad into an up-beat rag.
However, Kern and Hammerstein later altered the script so that Magnolia joins them in altering the song (McMillin
56).
126
Andy’s instructions to Magnolia appear in the libretto based on the 1946 production. Hammerstein
stated that this version “kept the libretto and score of Show Boat substantially as they were when originally written
in 1927” (Kern and Hammerstein, Libretto 5).
127
Kern and Hammerstein further removed issues of emotion and suffering from this scene by changing
Magnolia’s debut song from an African American spiritual to the 1892 waltz “After the Ball.”
128
Although Zeke Colvan, the production’s stage manager, received directorial credit, Hammerstein
actually directed the musical (Kreuger, Story 64).
129
In his biography of Helen Morgan, Gilbert Maxwell reports that Ferber advised Morgan to hire Ina
Claire as an acting coach since Morgan had no experience outside of revue performances (37). Maxwell also
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recounts how Morgan was asked to walk barefoot in front of Ziegfeld and Ferber as part of the audition process. His
account, as well as Ferber’s influence on Morgan’s training, indicates that Ferber assisted with casting decisions.
130
An early script for the musical with minor changes penciled in by Ferber resides in the Wisconsin
Historical Society, which houses a large collection of Ferber’s papers (box 20 folder 7). Many of her changes appear
in the final libretto. The script in Ferber’s papers contains the part of Hetty Chilson and does not mention “Bill” as
Julie’s song in Act II. It is therefore most likely a copy issued before rehearsals started in September 1927. The
script does not name an actor for the role of Joe, and it is therefore likely that this script dates from after August 3,
1927.
131
Ferber suggested a top hat and long coat with velvet lapels for Ravenal, both of which Marsh wears in a
photo from the World’s Fair scene in the production (Kreuger 42). Richard and Paulette Ziegfeld also note that
Ziegfeld adopted Ferber’s advice concerning Terris’s hat (145). In her letter, Ferber also urges Ziegfeld to have the
African American chorus members act as if they are working on the levee at the top of act one during the Cotton
Blossom song rather than remaining still in “long straight lines.” Ziegfeld also incorporated this suggestion into the
final staging.
132
The Royal Family ran for over three hundred performances, making Ferber one of the most profitable
theatre writers of the year.
133
Several historians have noted Ziegfeld’s initial trepidation towards the project, but Kreuger notes
Ziegfeld’s enthusiastic response to Kern and Hammerstein’s early efforts and argues that historian tend to
exaggerate Ziegfeld’s initial hesitation (Story 25).
134
According to Clough, Ziegfeld initially disliked “Ol’ Man River,” and would “mumble” and “swear and
swear” when the song was played during rehearsals (Kreuger, “Goldie” 39-40). Clough also recalled that Ziegfeld
wept on opening night when the audience failed to applaud and declared to her, “The show’s a flop. I knew it would
be” (Kreuger, “Goldie” 40). Reputedly, Ziegfeld’s opinion of the show’s prospects did not change until the next day
when he saw the long line of people waiting to buy tickets (Kreuger, “Goldie” 41).
135
Ziegfeld so successfully established his aesthetic in the production that many critics referred to the show
as “Ziegfeld’s Show Boat” and reviewed the production as his creation (Bordman 284).
250
136
Terris entered the entertainment industry as a chorus girl in Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic of 1920 and
continued with his company in the Nine O’Clock Review in 1921.
137
Show Boat was the second show presented in the new Ziegfeld Theatre, (Rio Rita was the first) a
building dedicated to promoting the Ziegfeld entertainment empire.
138
Ziegfeld preferred small mouths because, according to Mizejewski, this feature signaled racial whiteness
(109). See Mizejewski’s chapter “Racialized, Glorified American Girls.”
139
Reputedly, Hammerstein consulted Ziegfeld in rehearsal regarding a major alteration to the second act,
but, as Hammerstein described the alteration, Ziegfeld interrupted him to tell one of the women on stage to change
her hairstyle (Fordin 85). According to Fordin, Hammerstein decided not to consult Ziegfeld on further changes to
the script. Terris recalls a hat she adored but that sent Ziegfeld into fits of laughter because it accentuated the length
of her chin; the hat was abruptly removed from the show (Ziegfeld, Richard and Paulette 145-6).
140
Early versions of the Show Boat script included a parade of girls during an “Ol’ Man River” reprise in
the middle of act two (McMillin 57). Hammerstein’s directions for the parade instruct, “As he [Joe] sings, girls pass
on behind him – visions of the passing years – but not treated fantastically as to costume – they wear real clothes as
marks of their respective periods . . . and we will know we are down to the present when a flapper with a very short
skirt bounds across with a young collegian in very long trousers” (qtd. in McMillin 57). This sequence was later cut
from the production.
141
The novel describes Magnolia’s life during the couple’s first year in Chicago: “Magnolia had her first
real evening dress, cut décolleté; tasted champagne; went to the races at Washington Park race track; sat in a box at
Hooley’s; was horrified at witnessing the hootchie-kootchie dance on the Midway Plaisance at the World’s Fair”
(272).
142
This character, originally played by Dorothy Denese, is a reference to Farida Mazar Spyropoulos who
used the stage name Fatima. Spyropoulos danced as part of the Streets of Cairo exhibit on the Midway Plaisance at
the World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and later became known as Little Egypt. In 1934, censors
prohibited Denese from performing her “black pantheress” dance, which involved her dancing while wearing black
grease paint and a loin cloth, at Chicago’s Century of Progress World’s Fair.
251
143
Mizejewski specifically discusses how the comedy of Fanny Brice and Sophie Tucker’s coon shouting
functioned in this manner (131-2).
144
This number appeared in the 1917 edition of the Follies and featured Allyn King.
145
Although some sources list Piera’s name as “Pierre,” contemporary articles refer to her as “Piera.”
146
As Ries, explains, the Sidells’ dance contained “throws, swings, slides, and lifts” (76). The Sidells
performed their Apache to Jacques Offenbach’s Valse des Rayons from the balled Le Papillon, a song often used for
Apache dances (Ries 74).
147
The Sidell Sisters performed with Show Boat for three years and then traveled to Europe where they
eventually signed with the Folies Bergere (Harter 1).
148
This number appeared in the summer edition of the show. While Ziegfeld’s shows regularly contained
actors, such as Eddie Cantor and African American performer Bert Williams, who appeared in blackface, the women
in the shows rarely darkened their skin tone for performance numbers.
149
Linda Mizejewski provides a detailed discussion of the emphasis on whiteness in defining the Ziegfeld
girl as American in her chapter “Racialized, Glorified American Girls.” Mizejewski posits competition from the
Darktown Follies, an African American version of the Ziegfeld Follies, as the reason for Ziegfeld’s 1925 logo:
“Florenz Ziegfeld Glorifying the American Girl, an American Revue Made in America for Americans” (130).
150
While this is true, it is important to note that the Variety article advertising for “‘Dark Brown’
Negresses” announced this casting preference as a trend in Broadway revues and night clubs, not just Ziegfeld’s
choices for Show Boat.
151
Snelson’s article describes Catherine Pearce, Alma Smith, Dorothy Bellis, and Irene (Billie) Cain, all
women hired as dancers for Show Boat’s African American chorus.
152
The chorus for Show Boat contained sixteen white men in the chorus and thirty-six white chorus girls,
twelve of whom were designated as dancers. The black chorus contained sixteen female singers, sixteen male
singers, and twelve female dancers. Since the show did not stage any interracial pairings, the majority of the white
chorus girls and all of the black female dancers remained without male partners during the chorus numbers.
252
153
Photographs of these costumes from the original production are reprinted in Kreuger’s book (Story 41-
154
Ironically, this “primitive” style of dance led critic Herman L. Dieck to conclude that the black chorus
2).
girls possessed a “natural” ability that made them more competent dancers in this style than their white counterparts.
Dieck reported that “They [the black chorus girls] are the natural dancers in their metier and they do not need
instruction, as would be the case with the Caucasian chorus girl—only repression” (qtd. in “Critic Says”). While this
language rehearses stereotypes of black excess and lack of control, it stands as an interesting contrast to
contemporary images of the mechanized, white chorus girl as a performer requiring male control in order to perform
well.
155
The women and men in the white chorus flee, singing, “They [the Dahomey Village performers] are
acting vicious, They might get malicious. It might make them cheerful To make me a spearful” (Kern and
Hammerstein, Score 153-4).
156
See Mizejewski’s chapter “Racialized, Glorified American Girls.”
157
After Show Boat, Ziegfeld focused on producing musical comedies because they cost less to fund than
his Follies shows (Ziegfeld, Richard and Paulette 149).
158
Bessie Allison was incorrectly listed in the Show Boat cast as “Betty Allison.” In 1929, she married
Charles Buchanan and later became the first black woman to hold a seat in the New York Legislature.
159
Teresa Gentry’s name appears as “Theresa Jentry” in the Show Boat program and as “Theresa Gentry”
in the Defender article.
160
The show did include the tap-dancing act of Buck and Bubbles, two male African American performers.
161
In her article “Tempest in Black and White: The 1924 Premier of Eugene O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun
Got Wings,” Glenda Frank recounts the public debates in the press regarding displays of affection between the white
wife (played by a white actress) and the black husband (played by a black actor) in this performance. Frank
describes the numerous letters of protest as well as the threats O’Neill received from the Ku Klux Klan over this
issue.
253
162
Mizejewski demonstrates how Dixie to Broadway, a show featuring black chorus girls, similarly
employed a mammy image to counter displays of black female sexuality (126).
163
Revivals of Show Boat continue to proliferate in American theatre, including the Chicago Lyric Opera’s
2012 revival.
164
Wharton’s standards for décor formed the body of The Decoration of Houses, an interior decorating and
design guide she published in 1898 with architect Ogden Codman.
165
During the war, Wharton remained in France where she founded the American Hostels for Refugees and
the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee. In 1918, Belgium awarded Wharton the Médaille Reine Elisabeth for
her work with refugees. Wharton also wrote poems, articles, and letters meant to prod America into joining the war.
Although she continued writing, the economic impact of the war prevented her from acquiring the same literary fees
and advances she had earned before the conflict. In addition to her diminished literary income, property values in the
United States fell during this period and taxes increased, decreasing the revenue from her U.S. assets. While
Wharton was not in dire financial straits, she was responsible for supporting herself and her staff as well as
contributing to the support of various family members and several charities and, thus, did not welcome additional
financial strain during the renovations for Pavillion Colombe and Ste. Claire. See Hermione Lee’s chapter
“Pavillon/Château.”
166
“Boche” is a derogatory slang word or Germans and was especially popular during World War I. Prior
to Wharton’s dispute with Hearst, Cosmopolitan magazine, a Hearst publication, purchased Wharton’s novel
Summer. In 1916, a Hearst publication defended Irish revolutionary Roger Casement who was executed for working
with Germany to promote unrest in Ireland and distract British forces during the war. Wharton withdrew Summer,
agreeing instead to offer a series of articles on France, which Wharton viewed as pro-Ally war propaganda
(Wharton, Letter to Jones 19 Feb. 1919). This series was later included in French Ways and their Meaning.
Wharton’s boycott continued until 1934 when Cosmopolitan offered her $5,000 for “Bread Upon the Waters,”
$2,000 more than Appleton had offered, and assured her that Hearst had nothing to do with their editorial policy
(Lee 687).
254
167
Additionally, Hearst’s publishing contracts often entailed movie interests, so writers publishing in
Hearst magazines forfeited any revenue they might receive from film adaptations.
168
The Pictorial Review originated in 1899 as a fashion magazine specializing in publishing dress patterns,
but, beginning in 1907, under the editorial leadership of Arthur Vance, former editor of the Woman’s Home
Companion, the magazine introduced articles advising women on domestic and social concerns and began featuring
fiction.
169
The April 1920 edition of the Pictorial featured a detailed image the $3,000,000, twelve-story building
that “the tremendous increase in the circulation of the magazine has compelled us to erect” (1).
170
The Ladies’ Home Journal maintained its position throughout this period as the number one women’s
magazine.
171
The announcement of this price increase appears in the fine print on the first page of the April 1920
172
In 1912, Wharton began moving her work from the publishers at Charles Scribner’s Sons to Appleton, a
issue.
firm known for aggressive marketing, in hopes of increasing her earnings. By 1918, Appleton represented Wharton
in almost all of her publishing contracts. Scribner’s last Wharton novel was A Son at the Front published in 1923
after it was refused by Appleton (Lee 423).
173
In an effort to mitigate Vance’s anxiety, Wharton offered to change the title of the piece to Their Son,
arguing that the story portrayed the family’s response to their son’s war service rather than focusing specifically on
the war.
174
Wharton also insisted that the Pictorial uphold the contract for A Son by publishing it the following
year. Vance agreed but then balked again at the idea a year later (Lee 596). Eventually, Scribner’s published A Son
at the Front as a serial and a novel in 1923.
175
Culturally accepted racial prejudices permeated magazine content, bestowing an inherent superiority on
American women over women from other nations, particularly nations with populations understood as non-white. In
addition, American women’s magazines uniformly portrayed American women as superior to women viewed as
racially white but belonging to foreign nations. See, for example, Irwin’s story “Ham and Eggs.”
255
176
Wharton articulates this argument in The Age of Innocence when Ellen attempts to obtain her “freedom”
by seeking a divorce, and Archer succinctly responds, “Our legislation favours divorce—our social customs do not”
(144).
177
The fable describes the journey of a little girl who struggles to climb out of a valley, and, through her
experiences in the world outside the valley, grows to become a woman. Deciding to return to the valley, she meets a
man, one of her former playmates, also journeying back to the valley. The man tells her of “his plans for building
bridges and draining swamps and cutting roads through the jungle” (467). Upon returning to the valley, the pair
discover that none of their playmates have matured. Dismayed, the woman attempts to aid the man with his plans,
but the man explains that he is “too busy” and neglects his industrious ideas in order to play with “a dear little girl”
who claps and crows, “she was too young to speak articulately,” as he builds her a garden out of shells and flowers
(467).
178
The Fruit of the Tree and The Children both portray men who choose relationships with young women,
a fifteen-year-old in the case of The Children, instead of marrying the mature female characters in the books who
share their cultural views and interests.
179
“The long hypocrisy,” Wharton states, “which Puritan England handed on to America concerning the
danger of frank and free social relations between men and women has done more than anything else to retard real
civilization in America” (“Frenchwoman” 112-3). The quotations here are taken from a revised version of the 1917
article, which appeared in 1919 as the chapter “The New Frenchwoman” in Wharton’s book French Ways and Their
Meaning.
180
Wharton set her critique in 1870s America and focused her criticisms on Victorian values. However, she
believed such problems persisted in the modern age, and her planned sequel for The Age of Innocence, centering on
the lives of the next generation during the 1920s, revealed their “grief over the same old difficulties” in spite of their
modern views and attitudes (qtd. in Lee 571).
181
Wharton emphasizes the primitive nature of the American male preference for ignorant women by
evoking the image of the Moroccan harem in her descriptions of May. Archer’s fears about the effect of an isolated
existence on May’s future development and her potential inability to develop into a mature woman echo Wharton’s
256
description of the effect of harem life on the sequestered women in her book In Morocco. Such parallels aligned the
American practice of enforced feminine ignorance, as portrayed in The Age of Innocence, with images epitomizing
stereotypes of Eastern barbarism and excessive sexual appetites.
182
“Harems and Ceremonies” appeared in the Yale Review in 1919, the year Wharton began completing
The Age of Innocence for the Pictorial, and was also published in 1920 as part of the collection In Morocco.
183
Wharton establishes the difference between Ellen’s exotic affinities and May’s conventional nature
through a comparison of their taste in home décor. As Archer visits Ellen for the first time, he confronts Ellen’s
“swarthy foreign-looking maid” who speaks no English (110). Archer then enters “a room unlike any room he had
known” (110) with Italian pictures “like nothing that he was accustomed to look at” (111) all scented by a perfume
like “the scent of some far-off bazaar, a smell made up of Turkish coffee and ambergris and dried roses” (112).
Enchanted by Ellen’s foreign taste in décor, Archer mentally compares her home to what he expects May will do
when decorating the house her parents plan to purchase for them. Archer surmises that since “She [May] submitted
cheerfully to the purple satin and yellow tuftings of the Welland drawing-room . . . He saw no reason to suppose that
she would want anything different in her own house” (112).
184
Several critics have read The Age of Innocence as a retelling of “The Valley of Childish Things.”
Katherine Joslin discusses this trend in criticism, citing such studies as Elizabeth Ammons’ Edith Wharton’s
Argument with America, Carol Wershoven’s The Female Intruder in the Novels of Edith Wharton, and Judith
Fryer’s Felicitous Space (148).
185
As Ammons points out, Ellen shares many characteristics with Wharton: “Both value original,
inquisitive conversation, Both are sexually experienced women. . .Both seek divorces. Both—unlike their
relatives—prize the life of artistic and intellectual achievement above all other lives” (“Cool Diana” 220).
186
As stated earlier, The Fruit of the Tree portrays a man who chooses to marry a young woman instead of
marrying a mature woman who shares his cultural views and interests. The Custom of the Country centers on Undine
Spragg, whose initials position her as representative of the U.S., and her series of mercenary marriages that bring her
monetary success but leave her emotionally dissatisfied.
257
187
Scribner’s advertisement for The Custom of the Country, for example, hailed the serial as “The Great
Novel of the Year,” “a story of contemporary American social life [examining] The varied social strata of a great
city like New York, where money and the power it gives appear the only way to the goal of the socially ambitious”
(“Custom”). Such praise targeted both female and male readers by appealing to literary taste as well as an
intellectual interest in “American social life” rather than framing the story as a romance, the predominant theme in
advertisements for women’s magazine fiction.
188
Scribner’s carried illustrations but featured them as art work independent from the magazine’s fiction
offerings. Editions of Scribner’s also contained two paginated sections, the advertising section at the beginning of
the magazine and then the content section following the ads.
189
Jewett agreed with Wharton saying, “As you know, I share your feeling about illustrations which seldom
illustrate. Our personal prejudice in this matter, however, is not of interest to the magazine editor” (Letter to
Wharton 25 Sept. 1919).
190
“Her Eyes Fled to His Beseechingly” accompanied an illustration for of Archer glancing at May during
a party in the July 1920 issue (7), and “‘I Have Never Made Love to You,’ He Said, ‘and I Never Shall,” appeared
with an illustration of Archer gazing into Ellen’s eyes as he holds her hand in the September 1920 issue (25).
191
Vance then requested that Wharton structure her stories “so that each part [installment] leads up to a
climax or interesting situation that will leave the reader in suspense and eager to get the next issue of the magazine.”
He continued saying, “I do not expect Mrs. Wharton to do a dime novel or a family-story-paper break, but it can be
done in a dignified, artistic way. That is all I am asking. I hope the story Mrs [sic] Wharton writes for us will have
more than literary interest” (qtd. in Jewett, Letter to Wharton 14 Oct. 1920).
192
Jewett later shifted his opinion about the quality of women’s magazines. When encouraging Wharton to
sell her autobiography to the Ladies’ Home Journal, Jewett explained to Wharton that “The relative position of these
[literary] magazines has changed radically as the years have passed. Once they stood aloof in splendid literary
isolation. That day has gone by. The best writers are now selling their work to the popular magazines. I do not mean
simply fiction. Autobiography and biography are also included in the so called popular periodicals” (Letter 6 Jan.
1928).
258
193
The Pictorial touted Wharton’s reputation as a writer, but, unlike Scribner’s, continuously tied her skill
to her ability to portray romance. The June issue, for example, enticed readers with the promise that Wharton,
“Recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as foremost of living novelists,” would masterfully convey the upcoming
story about “the course of true love [which] did not always run according to form” (“Age” 1). Later in the June
issue, the Pictorial’s editors invoke Wharton’s previous literary successes to market the upcoming serial,
exclaiming, “Our next serial is by no less a personage than Edith Wharton, well known as the author of ‘The House
of Mirth,’ and ‘Ethan Frome,’ etc.” (“Age” 22). Lest readers balk at the despair infusing these tales, the Pictorial
assures readers that, “This new story is about New York’s society life forty years ago, when romance bloomed into
full flower and good, old-fashioned love was quite the rage!” (“Age” 22).
194
Due to cultural perceptions of a national marriage crisis, the Pictorial offered an extensive discussion on
marriage, which included articles and opinions from experts, such as, Dr. Havelock Ellis, Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
and ex-Senator Helen Ring Robinson, along with reader opinion (“Marriage”). The Pictorial also explored modern
marriage in numerous articles running in the same issues as Wharton’s serial, including, “Taking ‘The Cure’ at
Reno” (Oct. 1920), “On Being Disappointed in Love” (July/Aug. 1920) and “What Kind of a Wife Are You?” (Nov.
1920).
195
In January 1921, Elizabeth Marbury of The American Play Company offered Wharton a deal with Mr.
Shubert, indicating that Zoe Akins would dramatize a version starring Doris Keane. This deal included the film
rights as well, a sticking point for Wharton, and the play was never completed. Marbury acted as theatrical agent for
the three Shubert brothers, Sam S., Lee, and Jacob J. Sam Shubert passed away in 1905, and Marbury’s
correspondence regarding The Age of Innocence does not specify whether she is representing Lee or Jacob in this
particular offer. Marbury’s correspondence regarding this offer resides in the Edith Wharton Collection at the Yale
Collection of American Literature in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, box 31, folder 961.
196
The film starred Beverly Bayne as Ellen Olenska and Edith Roberts as May Welland.
197
The accident fractured Barnes’s skull, spine, and three of her ribs.
198
Sheldon used stationary listing his address as Roof Bungalow, 35 E. 84th Street.
259
199
A letter from Loos (12 Feb. 1926) thanking Sheldon for his hospitality and expressing a desire to visit
again is held in the Helen Hayes Papers, *T-Mss 1990-026, series I box 1 folder 18, Billy Rose Theatre Division,
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
200
Sheldon’s influence on Barrymore was so significant that Lionel Barrymore later attributed John’s
development as a dramatic actor to “one man, Edward Sheldon” (qtd. in E. Barnes 228).
201
In 1941, the New York Times described Sheldon’s apartment as America’s “theatrical center,” saying,
“To his bedside come the theatre greats for inspiration and advice, and his informal salon is a kind of hub for the
best theatre of the country” (qtd. in E. Barnes 245).
202
On March 16th, for example, Sheldon telegrammed saying that he had enjoyed seeing her and then later
that same day forwarded a short note saying simply “sleep well dear Margaret” (16 Mar. 1926).
203
Barnes later wrote to Sheldon saying, “I felt SO ridiculously inadequate as I sat by your side in New
York, jotting down your happy thoughts” (8 Nov. 1926).
204
The punctuation in this telegram was added later by hand. Quotes from all telegrams appearing in this
dissertation will use standard cases rather than appearing in all uppercase letters as originally printed.
205
The two communicated regularly, often discussing literature and their enthusiasm for fiction thrillers
(Lee 599). Jones confided to Sheldon that “Edith is a lonely woman who has many friends, but none of them close to
her, so she holds to you and me” (qtd. in E. Barnes 133).
206
Barnes, Wharton, and Jones insisted that Sheldon take co-author credit, but Sheldon adamantly refused,
claiming that Barnes was truly the sole author of the play.
207
The Edith Wharton Collection at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library contains two draft
copies of Barnes’s playscript for The Age of Innocence, which appear to be copies sent to Wharton for comments
(box 1, folders 17-20). The copy in folders 18-20 is likely the script Wharton received around July 4th, 1927. This
copy contains several notes, presumably penciled in by Wharton. The notes mainly address anachronistic word
usage and eliminate contractions.
260
208
An undated draft of Wharton’s telegram to Sheldon states that these changes would “destroy character
of play.” This phrase is crossed out, and the final version claims that the changes would “entirely destroy
significance of social picture” (Telegram to Sheldon, n.d.).
209
This letter accompanied the first draft of Act I, which was sent to Sheldon November 3, 1926.
210
Quotes from the adaptation by Margaret Ayers Barnes are taken from the version of the script located in
box 2 folder 22 of the Margaret Ayer Barnes Papers in Special Collections at Bryn Mawr. The citations follow the
pagination system used in this manuscript with the first number indicating the act and the number following the dash
indicating the page number within that act. This version appears to be the final version of the script as it contains an
accurate cast list as well as several notes on sound cues and costumes. Bryn Mawr also holds two earlier versions of
the script, one written after May 10, 1927 (folder 23) and one dating around January 19, 1927 (folder 24). Their
collection also holds several folders (24-26) of undated loose pages of various drafts.
211
Barnes found Archer’s sudden political career at the end of the novel an inconsistent anomaly for a
character whom she believed showed no political interest in his early life. Hermione Lee, however, believes this is
intentional and reads The Age of Innocence as Wharton’s condemnation of the American preference for inaction,
particularly in relation to the Great War (Lee 576-7 ).
212
Wharton’s objections stemmed from class prejudices which, as several critics have noted, permeated her
work and world view. Lee discusses Wharton’s “snobbery, racism, anti-Semitism and anti-feminism” (607), all
issues imbricated with Wharton’s understanding of class. As Michael Nowlin points out, feminist scholarship in the
1980s and early 1990s focused on Wharton’s work, but “the feminist case for Wharton is [currently] being refined
and shaken somewhat by questions about the nationalist, imperialist, racist, and most understandably, class
implications of her work” (24).
213
This appears to be a reference to the author Sherwood Anderson who wrote mainly about small-town
America.
214
Wharton and Theodore Roosevelt were friends and distant relatives raised in the same upper-class social
circles (Lee 154-5).
261
215
In an earlier version of the script Ellen’s protests indicate that sacrificing Archer’s political career means
sacrificing future generations of Americans. She continues, declaring, “You’re dedicated to all those boys and girls
of the future. Be true to them! They need you! They have no one else! And you can’t help them, you can’t defend
them, Newland, with a stain on your honor!” (2-49 Margaret Ayer Barnes Papers box 2 folder 23).
216
These lines are found in the undated revisions found in box 2 folder 25 of the Margaret Ayer Barnes
Papers, Special Collections Department, Bryn Mawr College Library. The folder contains various versions of
several scenes as well as a few notes from Sheldon.
217
After criticizing the inactive dialogue about “American women versus European women,” Barnes
forwarded a revised version of the scene, presumably deleting this dialogue, to Sheldon later the same day. In a
letter accompanying the revised scene she reported, “I think nothing essential is gone” (21 Feb. 1927).
218
Barnes crafted Ellen’s description of the enchantress who diverts the knight from his duties as a “direct,
though of course on Ellen’s part unconscious, description of May—of what happens to Archer” (10 May 1927).
219
While the male, white, social elites of old New York society conduct extra-marital affairs in the novel,
they understand Beaufort and the count as foreign in their sexual practices because they, unlike the old New
Yorkers, pay their lovers (67, 90).
220
It could be argued that Wharton implies Beaufort’s ethnicity through his activities as a financier, a
common use of racist stereotyping in early twentieth-century literature. However, while several characters in the
novel remark on Beaufort’s origins as foreign, they do not explicitly mention his ethnicity.
221
When beginning the play, Barnes explained to Sheldon that “Anastasia might well be dago-ed up a bit”
by translating her dialogue into Italian (3 Nov. 1926). Anastasia simultaneously serves as a reminder of Ellen’s
foreign past and a foreign contrast to Ellen’s American origins.
222
Ellen’s name and her situation with the count closely resemble that of Eleanor Patterson, an American
socialite who married Count Josef Gizycki, a Russian Polish count, in the early 1900s. The count confessed to
marrying Patterson only for her money and proceeded to conduct open affairs with prostitutes. Isolated in the
count’s remote estate, Patterson conspired with her servants and escaped by sleigh with their only daughter. Count
Gizycki followed Patterson and kidnapped their daughter, restoring her to her mother only after his arrest, which the
262
Tsar authorized at the request of President Taft. Patterson finally obtained a divorce in 1917, two years before
Wharton began The Age of Innocence (Dannatt).
223
Critics uniformly praised Arnold Korff’s performance as the love-stricken Beaufort. Even Atkinson,
who did not care for the play as a whole, wrote that, in this scene, “Mr. Korff was magnificent” (“The Play:
Wharton”). Padraic Colum in The Dial enthused, “This is a triumph . . . (especially for Arnold Korff; his speech
about the clock-strokes, his sudden aging after Ellen’s refusal, are amongst the memorable things I have known in
acting) but it is a triumph for the producer.”
224
In this draft, the count also forces Ellen to listen while he rapes a young girl. This draft is found in the
undated revisions in box 2 folder 25 of the Margaret Ayer Barnes Papers, Special Collections Department, Bryn
Mawr College Library. The final version includes the rape, but not the act of forcing Ellen to listen.
225
Earlier versions of the script also tied such disregard for morals specifically to European women. As
Ellen explained to Archer, “It [marriage and infidelity] was just a game – this thing that we Americans take with
such high seriousness. The [European] women didn’t care” (box 2 folder 25 Margaret Ayer Barnes Papers).
226
It is important to note that not all scientists promoted such bigotry. Cultural anthropologist Franz Boas
and his students, particularly Ruth Benedict, challenged contemporary definitions of race, claiming race did not
determine culture or intelligence and pointing out the political interests determining the widely-accepted definitions
of race in this period.
227
Films such as The Inside of the White Slave Traffic (1913), Smashing the Vice Trust (1914), House of
Bondage (1914), and Is Any Girl Safe? (1916) were popular during the 1910s. The 1913 film Traffic in Souls was so
popular that it was later published as a novel (Lindsey 2).
228
Given the ambivalence of Archer’s affection, as expressed through his musings in the novel, this loss is
less tragic to the reader than to Ellen.
229
Machine.
See Carlson’s chapter “The Haunted Body” in his book The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory
263
230
Wharton’s sister-in-law Mary Cadwalader Jones approved of Cowl and described her to Wharton
saying, “Jane Cowl is very handsome, about thirty-five, although looking younger, and has a great following; if she
really likes the part of Ellen I think she could make a considerable success of the play” (Letter 9 Aug. 1927).
231
Cornell felt The Age of Innocence too closely resembled Sheldon’s Romance. She had played a character
role in Romance in 1918 and, perhaps, feared the affiliation between the two plays would diminish her present
standing as a leading lady. Cornell also may have worried that starring in a play reminiscent of Romance would
prompt comparisons between her and Doris Keane, who played Mme. Cavallini, the central character in Romance,
for over 1,000 performances in London. Keane also played Mme. Cavallini in the 1920 silent film and revived the
role on Broadway in 1921.
232
In a letter to Sheldon, Barnes mentions changes she is making to Beaufort’s character at Cowl’s request
but does not specify the nature of these changes (13 Sept. 1927).
233
In November 1927, Sheldon informed Wharton, “Katharine Cornell is the first actress we plan to
approach. She would bring a kind of personal poetry to Ellen which would be very valuable, but there are others in
case she is unavailable” (Letter 22 Nov. 1927).
234
At this time, Barnes and Sheldon were completing Jenny, which Cowl starred in in 1929, and
Dishonored Lady, which Cornell starred in in 1930.
235
This letter is held by the Margaret Ayer Barnes Papers, Special Collections Department of Bryn Mawr
College Library. At the time of my research, the letter had not yet been catalogued.
236
Barnes enclosed a copy of her letter to Claire in a letter sent to Sheldon. It is this copy that resides in the
Margaret Ayer Barnes Papers at Bryn Mawr College Library.
237
Sheldon enclosed a copy of his letter to Cowl in a letter he sent to Barnes. It is this copy that resides in
the Margaret Ayer Barnes Papers at Bryn Mawr College Library. At the time of my research, the letter had not yet
been catalogued.
238
(204).
According to Mosel and Macy, 200,000 copies of Cornell’s hat from the show sold across the country
264
239
Mosel and Macy claim Cornell turned down the role in Jealousy (218), but Cornell’s scrapbooks contain
clippings announcing her upcoming role in the play and subsequent articles describing her collapse and breakdown
in California, which, the articles claim, prevented Cornell from continuing in the production.
240
Claire had also requested this edit, which Barnes resisted. However, Barnes ultimately conceded that “so
much criticism on that one point is certainly to be taken seriously” (Letter to Sheldon 5 Aug. 1928).
241
The contract granted Cornell $1,000.00 per week for the first eight weeks. After the play grossed
$50,000 over and above the initial cost of production, Cornell would receive ten percent of all additional profits.
McClintic received $500.00 per week during rehearsals and one percent of the gross weekly receipts during the run.
242
Ferris acknowledges that “the details on Guthrie’s homosexuality are even more sparse than Cornell’s”
(201) and advises “a cautious embrace of gossip and rumor” in discussing their relationships (200). Barnes
encountered the rumors surrounding McClintic through Ina Claire and what Barnes referred to as Claire’s “uncalled
for characterization, ‘that fairy’,” in reference to McClintic (Letter to Sheldon 19 Mar. 1928).
243
Ferris claims the lavender marriage “came into its own in Hollywood in the twenties, when known
homosexuals and lesbians were married by the studios as a ploy to cover up or divert attention from their same-sex
relationships” (218).
244
Clippings in Cornell’s scrapbook reveal that Cornell turned down $11,000.00 from a cigarette company
that wanted her to endorse their product and credit their cigarettes for her distinctive voice. Her refusal led the
February 1929 issue of Advertising & Selling to dub her “The Incorruptible Actress.”
245
Barbier designed the costumes which Worth’s of Pairs produced. Cornell considered arranging a
meeting with Wharton while she was in France for fittings, but ultimately decided against it because she feared she
would be unable to convey to Wharton her intentions for the character (Cornell 85).
246
Cornell later recalled this as her favorite costume from the show (Cornell 85).
247
Critic Francis R. Bellamy acknowledge a connection to the modern generation but only in as much as
the play highlighted its disconnect from the old. Bellamy seemed relieved by “the gulf that lies between such a
world and this present” remarking that the Victorian code of conduct produced a subterfuge about infidelity that
modern individuals would find dishonorable (“The Theatre”).
265
248
Bellamy informs readers that he has not read Wharton’s work, so his impressions stem entirely from the
249
Jones recorded Wharton’s earnings for each week for the entire run, including previews, Broadway
play.
performances, and the tour, in a notebook held in the Edith Wharton papers at the Beinecke library (box 50, folder
1498). Her totals match those recorded in Barnes’ correspondence (Bryn Mawr Box 1 folder 18). Jones calculated
that the production earned Wharton $22,545.63. Barnes, who shared equal royalties with Wharton, earned the same
amount minus the $500.00 she paid to Sheldon to reimburse him for the money he paid Wharton for the adaptation
rights.
250
While there are no official numbers for Cornell’s earnings, her contract stipulated that she receive 10%
of the gross receipts, while Barnes and Wharton received approximately 2.85% each.
251
Cornell and McClintic later formed their own management company, the Cornell-McClintic
Corporation, so that she would have more artistic freedom and authority over her productions (Cornell 98).
252
Wharton biographer Hermione Lee observes that, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes “hits all the targets
Wharton was fond of attacking herself, like ‘Bolshevicks,’ the Ritz, motion pictures, Jewish sugar-daddies, Dr Froyd
[sic] . . . and Americans abroad” (615).
253
Ziegfeld also stated that he preferred blue or brown eyes, claiming, “Grey eyes cannot be beautiful.
They are too hard, too intellectual. They are the eyes of the typical college girl” (“How I Pick” 158).
254
Both Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Age of Innocence satirize their protagonists, Archer through his
self-righteousness and hypocrisy and Lorelei through her upper-class pretentions. Both characters serve to satirize
the social systems they represent, but Archer has an inkling of his hypocrisy whereas Lorelei has no such awareness.
255
As Churchwell points out, education does not always stand in for sex in the novel as Loos also employs
this term for shopping and spending money. However, the substitution of education for sex is the most frequent use.
256
Quotes from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes are taken from the thirteenth printing of the book, May, 1926.
Loos edited the serial version for book publication, but the changes, while “occasional but careful,” as Churchwell
observes (160), were also minor.
257
According to Loos, newsstand sales of Harper’s tripled during the serial’s run (A Girl 270).
266
258
This view influenced Loos’s perceptions, and in A Cast of Thousands she relates, “I’ve always thought
there’s something rather monstrous about any female who writes” (86).
259
Loos describes her “first thrilling experience of being considered stupid” while being escorted in Berlin
by a gentleman unable to communicate with her because of the language barrier (A Girl 249). Loos recounts, “On
one of our lunch dates he pretended I was too frail to cut up my apfelstrudel [sic], and when he proceeded to do it for
me I experienced the unwonted ecstasy of being cherished as a helpless female” (A Girl 249). However, on her
second visit, she explains, “[I] spoiled everything by knowing enough German to make a few wisecracks . . . and I
went right back to being a neglected brunette” (A Girl 249).
260
For information on Loos’s contributions to the development of film titles see Laura Frost’s article
“Anita Loos and the Language of Silent Film.” In addition, Anita Loos Rediscovered, edited by Cari Beauchamp and
Mary Anita Loos, offers a discussion and collection of several of Loos’s film scenarios.
261
Carey states that Loos and Emerson married on June 21, 1920 (68), but Loos states that it was in June
1919 (A Girl 198), which Beauchamp confirms (44).
262
This incident led Emerson and Loos to separate but not divorce and prompted Emerson, who controlled
Loos’s finances, to offer Loos a regular allowance. According to Loos, Emerson refused to divorce her exclaiming,
“I’ll never leave you; you’re so gullible you might fall into the hands of some crook who’d get hold of your money!”
(Kiss Hollywood 14). After the stock market crashed, Emerson revoked Loos’s allowance because, he reasoned,
Loos was healthy and could find work (Kiss Hollywood 14). In 1937, after he attempted to strangle Loos, Emerson
was diagnosed with schizophrenia and confined to a sanatorium (Carey 172). Emerson was healthy enough to use
his condition, which worsened whenever Loos pursued divorce, to manipulate Loos who continued to pay for his
care until his death in 1956 (Carey 178).
263
Reflecting on their marriage in her autobiography, Loos writes that because Emerson depended on her
financially, “he envied me. And until the day he died he resented me” (A Girl 182).
264
Emerson opposed publication of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as a book, concurring with magazine editor
Frank Crowninshield that the scintillating nature of the narrative would harm Loos’s reputation (Loos, A Girl 271).
However, once the galley proofs were prepared, Emerson presented Loos with the dedication he wished her to place
267
in the book: “To John Emerson, except for whose encouragement and guidance this book would never have been
written” (Loos, A Girl 271). Loos settled for “To John Emerson.”
265
William Faulkner, for example, wrote to congratulate Loos for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, particularly
Dorothy’s character. Faulkner concluded his letter saying, “I am still rather Victorian in my prejudices regarding the
intelligence of woman, despite Elinor Wylie and Willa Cather and all the balance of them. But I wish I had thought
of Dorothy first” (qtd. in Loos, Fate 63-4).
266
Edward Paramore’s 1926 article in The New Yorker, for example, claims Loos was writing for Griffiths
“while still in her early teens,” and emphasizes this amazing fact in the article’s title “The Child Wonder” (26).
267
According to Carey, Loos, who bore most of the financial responsibility for supporting her household,
routinely arose at four in order to be at work writing by six (74). Cari Beauchamp describes Loos’s work ethic
saying, “Anita wrote almost every day for more than seventy of her ninety-four years” (1).
268
Well aware of this issue with Loos’s capital, publisher Boni & Liveright sought permission from
Wharton to quote her praise for the novel in their advertisements. Wharton granted them permission, and her
accolades appeared in subsequent ads.
269
Loos also belittles her “little critique” in her autobiography A Girl Like I but focuses in this account on
the romantic inspiration of her efforts rather than the childish impulse (267). In this version, Loos speaks of the
tremendous financial success of the book, but then relates, “Any such female accomplishment could have been
motivated only by sex” (266). Rather than youth, her comments here diminish her efforts on the basis of sex,
suggesting that men accomplish literary and, hence, intellectual greatness independently while women can only
venture near greatness when inspired by love.
270
Loos estimated that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes earned her over a million dollars by 1930 (Carey 103). In
1974, Loos wrote that the book had seen eighty-five editions and fourteen translations (Kiss 272).
271
Loos stated, “I am hard put to describe Menck’s enormous charm; based on extreme masculinity, at the
same time it never seemed to be quite that of a grown-up” (A Girl 213).
272
Biographer Gary Carey places their meeting around 1919 (64), but Loos describes meeting him in the
early 1920s (A Girl 214).
268
273
Loos retells this story in A Girl Like I (264-9), Cast of Thousands (73-80), Kiss Hollywood Good-By
(12, 191), and Fate Keeps on Happening (53-7), which is a reprint of her introduction to the 1963 edition of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and appeared in the 1983 edition as well.
274
The spelling of Harper’s Bazar changed in 1929 when the magazine placed another “a” in “Bazaar.”
275
A. E. Hotchner indicates that rather than sending the piece to Mencken as a joke, as Loos implies, she
intended the piece as a serious literary submission to Mencken and George Jean Nathan, then editors of Smart Set
Magazine. Nathan later recalled that they rejected the narrative because “we were fools” (qtd. in Hotchner 94).
Hotchner states that Loos then sold the piece to Cosmopolitan, but the publication did not print her story.
276
Ralph Barton was a friend of Sell and a frequent contributor to Harper’s. His modern and comic style
suited Loos’s narrative. His illustrations appeared with the serialized version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and were
reprinted in the novel version. Barton was married to Carlotta Monterey who divorced Barton in 1926 and married
Eugene O’Neill. Barton committed suicide in 1931.
277
Barton was also about to depart for Europe, and, according to Leckie, Sell arranged a meeting between
Barton and Loos before they left for Europe (77). Loos claims that men started purchasing Harper’s for her serial,
and “Advertisements for men’s apparel, cigars, whisky, and sporting-goods began pouring into the magazine” (Cast
80). While Loos’s claim is often repeated, the look of the magazine remained consistent during the serialization of
Blondes, and the advertising remained largely similar to advertizing in Harper’s before the series. Ads for
automobiles did increase, but many featured fashionable women at the wheel, conveying a strong desire to attract
female, rather than male, readers.
278
Churchwell’s essay “‘Lost Among the Ads’: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the Politics of Imitation”
offers one of the few analyses examining a work of 1920s literature within the context of its serial publication.
279
William Randolph Hearst purchased Harper’s, which had struggled financially for several years, in
1913. Because of the magazine’s failing sales, Hearst was able to purchase the publication for only $10,000 (Gribbin
139). From 1913 to 1934, Harper’s operated under six different editors (Gribbin 139).
269
280
Initially stonewalled by French designers nursing post-war animosity towards the United States, Sell
eventually entered the Parisian elite and courted designers by hosting lavish parties with Hearst’s money (Leckie 56,
62-3). Sell also enticed French advertisers by allowing them to advertise in French (Leckie 67).
281
Vogue also served as a class magazine and was Harper’s main competitor. In 1926, Vogue’s ad income
was second only to that of the Saturday Evening Post (Zuckerman, History 115).
282
While understandings of race and class complicated this construct of femininity as a natural inheritance,
1920s constructs of gender drastically distanced, but not altogether divorced, femininity from Victorian
understandings of gender as an innate quality.
283
Each issue featured an advertising section suggesting establishments for readers to visit while shopping
284
Much of the scholarship on Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, including studies by Faye Hammill,
in Paris.
Laura Frost, and Susan Hegeman, centers on issues of elite and mass culture in the narrative as well as in relation to
the classification of and critical response to the work itself.
285
Churchwell focuses her analysis on these issues of capital because, as she explains, “most readers, then
and now, have focused on the story’s sexual politics, [but] Blondes is also pervaded by contemporary anxieties about
cultural capital, advertisement, imitation, and the middlebrow” (135). Accordingly, in her focus on cultural capital
and “the middlebrow,” Churchwell tends to separate anxieties about capital and consumerism from contemporary
“sexual politics” and gender. Churchwell discusses gender in relation to the role and work of the writer as well as
genres of fiction but tends to discuss issues of capital in the magazine as if they are disconnected from a specifically
female consumer.
286
Contemporary stereotypes of the female gold-digger, an unintellectual, working-class woman, often
represented as a chorus girl using her sex appeal for entrance into the upper-class also worked to construct this
“low” mode of accumulation as feminine. Magazines and newspapers in the early twentieth century participated in
this gendering by featuring sensationalized tales of chorus girls winning and wedding society men (Mizejewski 69).
Such narratives implied that, unlike men, with the option to work and earn their way into a higher tier of the middle-
270
or upper-middle class, women, particularly young, stylish women, could aim for immediate entrance to the top with
little more than a strategically-aimed flirtation.
287
While I do not agree with Bourdieu, who speaks of women as lacking agency in attaining capital and
serving only to display the capital of their husbands, it is clear that Harper’s represented its readers in a manner
consistent with Bourdieu’s assessment.
288
Marketing for the print and stage versions of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes promoted reading or seeing the
work as a sign of smartness. Ads for the novel called the book “culturally indispensible to the smart man and woman
of today,” and Brooks Atkinson noted that the play had been “Heralded for months as the smart comedy of the
season, indispensable to all smart people who profess even the slightest sense of social responsibility” (“Speaking”).
289
As discussed earlier in this chapter, Harper’s and Vogue were known as “class magazines” because they
maintained strong subscription numbers among high-income readers and featured high-end fashions and
advertisements for luxury items (Zuckerman, History 133, 164).
290
A 1929 Armand advertisement featuring eight types of women includes the “Lorelei Type,” describing
her as, “Blond and aggressive, she ‘gets her man’” (reprinted in Peiss, Hope 147). Such ads proliferated throughout
the programs for the stage production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The Times Square Theatre program for the
week beginning September 27, 1926, for example, includes an advertisement for The Rogers Peet Company
reading, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes[.] Blondes prefer gentlemen when they’re well-dressed; so do brunettes”
(Rogers Peet16). In the same program, another ad references the play declaring, “Blonde or Brunette . . . [sic] You’ll
Prefer this Corset Comfort” (Corset 13).
291
Since the narrative is written in Lorelei’s voice, “brains” is her term for what the gentlemen find
interesting, one of the many ambiguities Loos uses to tantalize the reader (12, 25, 51).
292
Lorelei participates in this façade by ignoring the sexual nature of the men’s interest and insisting that
they are gentlemen and that she is a lady.
293
Lorelei recounts the conversation, saying, “he never thought that I really had brains but now that he
knows it, it seems that he has been looking for a girl like me for years” (56). The intentional ambiguity Loos uses in
271
Lorelei’s phrasing leaves it open to question whether Bartlett now knows she has no “brains” or whether he now
believes she is intelligent. In either case, Lorelei clearly interprets his comments as a compliment of her intellect.
294
The gentlemen’s attraction to Lorelei’s ignorance and their attempts to mold Lorelei through reading
and cultural experiences mirror Archer’s conflation of sexual and cultural initiation in The Age of Innocence
(Wharton 60).
295
The narrative implies that Eisman is Jewish, a characterization made explicit in the play.
296
Anxiety about women’s culpability in such situations held center stage in the public conscious at this
time due to the widely publicized 1924 trials of Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner , women accused of murdering
their paramours, which Maurine Watkins later adapted into the 1926 play Chicago.
297
Throughout the novel, Lorelei attributes the events in her life to fate (25, 43, 56, 162). “Fate Keeps on
Happening” was the title of the July installment of the story in Harper’s and also served as the title of the 1984
collection of Loos’s essays and articles.
298
While Emerson received credit as co-author for the play, given his habit with other Loos creations, it is
likely he assisted with little, if any, of the adaptation process.
299
While Theatre Magazine claimed that producer Edgar Selwyn prompted Loos to adapt Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes, Loos received numerous proposals soon after the novel was published. Due to the serial and novel’s
tremendous popularity, producers clamored for the rights. Loos soon signed a contract with Edgar Selwyn but later
regretted this agreement which prevented her from accepting a subsequent offer from Florenz Ziegfeld, who wished
to turn the novel into a musical (Fate 58).
300
Loos estimated that between 1912 and 1915 she wrote one hundred five film scenarios and sold all but
four of these (A Girl 71). Loos wrote several scripts for Constance Talmadge and wrote The Redheaded Woman
(1932), which made Jean Harlow a star.
301
Loos and her husband John Emerson wrote The Whole Town’s Talking and The Fall of Eve, which
played at the Booth Theatre in 1925. While Emerson is credited as co-author of these works, his habit of taking
credit for Loos’s work makes his contribution difficult to determine. Following Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Loos
272
wrote more than eight additional plays, including the stage adaptation of Gigi, which brought Audrey Hepburn to the
United States.
302
This eliminated Lorelei’s meeting with Freud and her visit to an art museum with Spoffard.
303
These items are listed in the property plot in the script (n.p.).
304
Critic Gordon Leland especially praised the set for Act III, saying that Sovey’s design alone made the
play worth attending and describing his design for the opulent apartment “a work of art.”
305
Quotations from the script are taken from the copy held by the New York Public Library. The citations
conform to the pagination used in this script with first number indicating the act of the play and the number
following the hyphen indicating the page number within that act. On May 30, 1926, the Chicago Daily Tribune
announced that the script for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which was playing at Chicago’s Selwyn Theatre, would be
revised (“Odds-and-Ends,” 30 May 1926). The article explains that the new version would transfer the speech
revealing Lorelei’s spending habits from Dorothy to Gus. The script held by the New York Public Library contains
this change as well as a detailed properties list, wardrobe requirements, and set plans. It is therefore evident that this
version of the script originated after the Chicago alterations and likely, given the production details and lack of a
cast list, that this version was intended for use in future productions. Following the Chicago alterations, Loos altered
the script again for the New York production. While the goal of these revisions remains unknown, critics who
viewed both productions did not remark on any differences in the script, indicating that the revisions were minor.
306
Wharton’s The House of Mirth presents an interesting parallel to this arrangement as Lily Bart engages
in similar transactions and cannot escape, as Lorelei does, the consequences of her implied promises.
307
In the play, Loos compounds Lorelei’s treachery against Lady Beekman by making her the former
owner of the tiara. Lady Beekman unknowingly sells her family heirloom for her husband’s cash and only later
learns that Lorelei has seduced her husband into supplying the funds.
308
Connie uses a French phrase she does not understand to ask French taxi drivers to drive carefully. When
Dorothy explains that the phrase means Connie is pregnant, Connie “jumps up, Xes to table L. and touches wood,”
actions indicating pregnancy is a possibility she hopes to avoid through luck rather than virtue (2-12).
273
309
Carey notes the similarities between Lorelei and a specific Ziegfeld girl, Lillian Lorraine, who
accumulated a massive collection of jewelry from various admirers and sent herself orchids to teach a stingy suitor a
lesson (100-1).
310
As a child, Loos had performed under Belasco’s direction in May Blossom, and she referenced this
previous relationship in her appeal for Hibbard (A Girl 25-6).
311
See the discussion of Marvin Carlson’s theory of ghosting in chapter three.
312
Manuel Transformations, a wig company, carried an ad in Vogue featuring a photo of Walker as Lorelei
and a quote from the actress thanking the company for “the finest transformation anybody ever had” (Manuel).
313
Photos from the original production housed by the New York Public Library’s Billy Rose Theatre
Collection depict these costume choices.
314
See discussion in chapter one.
315
Critic Gilbert W. Gabriel applauded Walker’s escape from such casting saying “Her cleverness was sure
to break the bounds of those bedraggled, quaint slavies her recent seasons had assigned her” (“Gentlemen”).
316
While Loos often downplayed her work as frivolous, it is unlikely she expressed outright disdain for
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
317
Iris West replaced Walker for the final weeks of the Chicago production so that Walker could rest before
the Broadway opening. Selwyn also had three touring companies preparing, so there were several possible options
for Walker’s replacement.
318
The Times Square Theatre shared a façade and marquee with the adjacent Apollo theatre. While
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes played at Times Square, the George White’s Scandals, a Follies-esque show, played at
the Apollo, placing Loos’s satire side by side with its target.
319
Both Gilbert W. Gabriel (“Gentlemen”) and the writer of “Odds-and-Ends” (9 May 1926) used this
adjective to describe Walker in their discussions of the play.
320
Mary Ricard played the role of Dorothy in this production.
321
Paramount also produced a film version in 1927, which contained one scene with sound. Loos worked
on this as well as the 1949 musical by Joseph Fields, Jule Styne, and Leo Robin, but did not assist with the 1953
274
film directed by Howard Hawks. Her play version also received many performances in New York during the 1930s
as part of the federal theatre project.
322
In 2012, Encores! produced a concert staging of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes starring Megan Hilty and
Chicago Lyric Opera produced a revival of Show Boat.
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