| A Great Big Girl Like Me: The Films of Marie Dressler Contributor(s): Sturtevant, Victoria (Author) |
|
 |
ISBN: 0252076222 ISBN-13: 9780252076220 Publisher: University of Illinois Press OUR PRICE: $22.77 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 2009 Annotation: A captivating study of one of classic Hollywood's most fascinating bodies |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Entertainment & Performing Arts - Social Science | Women's Studies - Performing Arts | Film - History & Criticism |
| Dewey: 792.028 |
| LCCN: 2008034986 |
| Series: Women & Film History International |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5.9" W x 8.9" (0.75 lbs) 208 pages |
| Themes: - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In the first book-length study of Marie Dressler, MGM's most profitable movie star in the early 1930s, Victoria Sturtevant analyzes Dressler's use of her body to challenge Hollywood's standards for leading ladies. At five feet seven inches tall and two hundred pounds, Dressler often played ugly ducklings, old maids, doting mothers, and imperious dowagers. However, her body, her fearless physicality, and her athletic slapstick routines commanded the screen. Sturtevant interprets the meanings of Dressler's body by looking at her vaudeville career, her transgressive representation of an "unruly" yet sexual body in Emma and Christopher Bean, ideas of the body politic in the films Politics and Prosperity, and Dressler as a mythic body in Min and Bill and Tugboat Annie. |