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• 1 media/Littlewoman2.jpg 2018-03-04T06:00:37-08:00 Little Women (George Cukor 1933) 50 Tomboyism: Negotiating and Celebrating a Strong, Sprited Woman in the Great Depression plain 2018-03-11T17:36:11-07:00  
  
   
  Dyer notes that films and the textual construction of star images reflect the times in which they are produced. Katharine’s second film, “Little Women” was released at the height of the Great Depression. This was a particularly difficult time for women because they were expected to work both inside and out of the home yet they were also expected to step aside and give their jobs to unemployed men. Films during this time period, often had leading ladies who were strong, smart, “fast-talking” dames, who basically told it like it was (Sklar 170-172). Released in the fall of 1933, “Little Women” is  not only one of the earliest full length features after the advent of sound, but is the perfect construction of a “Woman’s film.”  “Little Women” was breaking Radio City Music Hall’s box-office records, with more than 20,000 fans still storming the theater weeks after the opening, and Katharine stood alone at the top of the Marquis (Variety, December 26, 1933). Solidifying her star power, Variety crowned her the second most popular female star in America (Mae West was first) (Pierpont).
  
  Hepburn's Jo both reinforces and contradicts the social ideals of the Great Depression time period. Hepburn’s spirited, strong Jo provides a character that young women in the Depression could model their behavior after. Even when the film reverses gender roles, at least temporarily, Hepburn’s Jo is still a woman necessary for the hardships of the Great Depression.
  
  Set in the Civil War, like the Great Depression women in the audience, Jo March is smart, authentic, and kind-hearted. Except for stingy, rich Aunt March, the family does charity work, and she is one of the first to give up her Christmas breakfast to an ill single immigrant mother with starving children (something very important to a Great Depression audience). Jo also chops off her hair to ensure her mother has enough money to travel to her ill father.
  
  
  Hepburn masterfully constructs a Jo that has both feminine and masculine qualities. Jo fences, puts on self-written plays (and pants) to act the role of a mustachioed villain and the handsome blonde hero, cuts her hair like a boy, throws snowballs, climbs down walls, yells “Christopher Columbus” and talks like a boy, has the economic freedom to turn down a marriage proposal to her wealthy best friend Laurie, and moves alone to New York to pursue her writing. Jo also explicitly states that she wishes she were a man, and her long stride, rough and tough manner, physical strength and even her name highlight her masculinity.
  
  
  Yet, Jo's feminine side is equally evident. We are reminded that she is emotionally vulnerable throughout the film, and her gown for Laurie’s ball and later the opera provide young women fashion and beauty ideals. The opera scene also reminds us that, in reality, Katharine Hepburn is a stunning socialite woman.And, the film promotional campaign targets young women (and men) with the promise that they would see lovely costumes and lovely women.
  
  
  
  In contrast, the men are largely effeminate or peripheral to the story line.
  
  In the end, under an umbrella in the rain, the film reinforces the 1930s cultural value that happiness can only be found in family and marriage.  Jo’s elderly suitor, Professor Bhaer, asks her to marry him. This is a man who darns his own socks and takes her to operas and will not stand in the way of her independence or freedom. And, with not even a single kiss on screen, Jo says yes. Yet, based on the popularity of this film and the ease it negotiated gender reversal, as Susan Ware in “Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s” noted, the status of women was improving in the 1930s, and Hepburn’s Jo contributed to the negotiation of this new status.
  
  
  Hepburn’s star image and Jo's image both tell the story of a tomboy who wants the freedom to be an author and have a successful career, just like a man. The idea that Hepburn was the parts she played quickly became a studio gambit. Publicizing “Little Women,” Cukor announced at the time of the film’s release that she’d been “born to play Jo,” since she came from the same educated, upper-class New England family as the Marches. Kate is “tender and funny, fiercely loyal…  Kate and Jo are the same girl” (Pierpont New York Magazine).  From this film, Kate's star image of an Independent, intelligent woman with a boyish figure and masculine mannerisms would be set for her cinematic career.   The remaining three films studied will explore confirmation and contradiction of this "Jo" star image by examining construction of and identification with Hepburn's on-screen and off-screen public persona.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
• 1 2018-03-09T14:14:36-08:00 Androgyny and Negotiating Queerness in Sylvia Scarlett 8 Androgynous Kate plain 2018-03-09T20:05:13-08:00 During the 1930s, Kate had a clear preference for films where her character was more masculine or androgynous.  This preference included short hair but should come as no surprise to anyone who knew her as a child. Kate told biographer Charlotte Chandler that, "she had shaved her head and wore her older brother's clothes as a child,"insisting she be called "Jimmy.  
  
  Despite enjoying this masculine construction of identity,  Hepburn also explained that she never felt like a "Jimmy" inside (I Know where I'm Going: Katharine Hepburn: A Personal Biography).  But, in a 1981 interview with Barbara Walters, Hepburn concede that: “I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man.”
   
  Therefore, while she may have embraced sexual or gender ambiguity, it is ambiguous if she intended for heterosexual audiences to blatantly see her as a bisexual or lesbian character in any of these films.  Moreover, my position for purposes of a star's image and this book is that Hepburn's private self (and Hepburn was very private) is irrelevant. It is the construction of the various texts and cultural norms surrounding the star that determine identity. Here, even if she had bisexual relationships herself, they did not become part of the public texts.
  
  
  However, the cultural norms of a 1935 largely white heterosexual audience likely found this text highly troubling. Moreover, although not known by the public in 1935, Cukor was gay, cast a masculine lead actress in the role,  and the film has become a popular text for Feminist and Queer Film theory studies, makes it highly likely that a 1935 audience would have been equally sensitized the code words and images used in this text. 
  
  Putting aside Sylvia's rapid embrace of the freedoms boys have, her inability when she puts on a dress to return to and part of the "silly girl" we saw at the beginning is telling. There is also the first scene with Michael Fane (the Artist), where he is oddly attracted to the beautiful young boy. And, then later, when he discovers Sylvester's true gender, his hysterical laughter and relief that he was not having queer feelings. Yet, given how much Hepburn looks like a young boy, it is difficult to draw the line. An argument can also be made that the jail scene of Sylvester (Sylvia) and Michael is a metaphor for two characters being imprisoned by their sexuality. Monkley is also problematic when he calls Sylvia a “proper little hot water bottle” when he believes she is a boy and wants to snuggle with him.  I also wonder if this film was Kate's attempt to see if her public would accept her no matter what her sexuality was--something that was more of a concern in the 1930s than at the end of the 20th century. But, as Dyer has stated repeatedly in his text, the "real" Kate we will never know.
  
  
  
  Hepburn's reluctance to be a woman is a critical clash with contemporary cultural norms that cannot be easily resolved for most heterosexual men and women. Hepburn failed to address this question in the construction of her star image, and by not proffering alternative images to the public, this failure led to her  box office downfall in 1938.
  
  Some images of Kate with shorn hair include: