"The Stuffing in the Pudding": Character Actors in Classical Hollywood Cinema
| العنوان: | "The Stuffing in the Pudding": Character Actors in Classical Hollywood Cinema |
|---|---|
| المؤلفون: | Lönroth, Linn, 1988 |
| المساهمون: | Florin, Bo, Professor, 1961, Dahlquist, Marina, Professor, 1964, Garwood, Ian, Professor |
| مصطلحات موضوعية: | film history, classical Hollywood cinema, film actors, character actors, supporting actors, non-starring actors, minor characters, film stars, the Hollywood star system, the studio system, Preston Sturges, the Preston Sturges stock company, Cinema Studies, filmvetenskap |
| الوصف: | This thesis investigates the place of the character actor in classical Hollywood cinema. Drawing on extensive archival research into the industry practices and popular discourses of the classical era, the study traces the emergence of the character actor in the mid 1910s through to the end of its “heyday” within the studio system in the 1930s and 1940s. As the thesis proposes, the case of the Hollywood character actor provides an illuminating example of how the US film industry established and upheld the idea of the “non-star” as a site of attraction and, increasingly over the years, affirmed its importance to classical filmmaking. To a large degree, the significance of this category of performers can be traced to the ways in which non-starring actors in general, and character actors in particular, were conceived of as counterpoints to the stars. Within the film industry itself, and in the contemporaneous popular discourse and fan culture, character actors were constructed as figures who carried the potential to offer a much sought-after relief from, break with and contrast to the dominant values and meanings attached to the leading stars. In place of beauty, glamour and extraordinariness - values with which the stars were consistently associated - character actors were defined by (and celebrated for) their down to earth nature, physical imperfections, and comedic eccentricities. Put simply, it was the character actors’ perceived and constructed difference from the leading stars, and the widespread cultural appeal of the values and meanings that this difference evoked, that made them so invaluable to the film industry.Chapter 1 examines the developments of the star system in the mid-1910s and the (type)casting traditions that saw the formation of the category of the character actor in Hollywood. The chapter is also concerned with the wider popular discourse that emerged around these performers in the silent era.Chapter 2 begins at the onset of sound and investigates the character actors’ position as workers. It further goes on to explore the continuous development of the industry’s typecasting traditions in the 1930s and 1940s, and the increasingly pronounced distinction between different types of film actors during this period. Chapter 3 focuses on how the US film industry promoted its character actors during the first two decades of the talkies. Even if the stars were prioritised by this promotional framework, the major film studios were well aware of the market value of their character actors and they devoted considerable time and effort to integrating them into their advertising campaigns.Chapter 4 shifts the focus to how character actors were received in the press and by the public. Building on extensive research into opinion and debate found in newspapers, fan magazines and fan-targeted acting manuals, it explores the lively popular discourse and fan culture that centred around these actors at the height of the studio system.Finally, Chapter 5 takes the form of a case study of the so-called “stock company” of character actors that became associated with the writer-director Preston Sturges in the 1940s. Although Sturges’s collaboration with these performers can be viewed as a quintessential example of Hollywood’s heavy reliance on character actors in the studio era, it is also an atypical example of how a group of small-part actors functioned as a trademark for a particular director and his films. |
| وصف الملف: | electronic |
| URL الوصول: | https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-227562 https://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1848358/PREVIEW01.jpg https://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1848358/FULLTEXT02.pdf |
| قاعدة البيانات: | SwePub |
| الوصف غير متاح. |