"Winner of the 2018 Best First Book Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS)?
Histories of women in Hollywood usually recount the contributions of female directors, screenwriters, designers, actresses, and other creative personnel whose names loom large in the credits. Yet, from its inception, the American film industry relied on the labor of thousands more women, workers whose vital contributions often went unrecognized.
Never Done introduces generations of women who worked behind the scenes in the film industry-from the employees' wives who hand-colored the Edison Company's films frame-by-frame, to the female immigrants who toiled in MGM's backrooms to produce beautifully beaded and embroidered costumes. Challenging the dismissive characterization of these women as merely menial workers, media historian Erin Hill shows how their labor was essential to the industry and required considerable technical and interpersonal skills. Sketching a history of how Hollywood came to define certain occupations as lower-paid ""women's work,"" or ""feminized labor,"" Hill also reveals how enterprising women eventually gained a foothold in more prestigious divisions like casting and publicity.
Poring through rare archives and integrating the firsthand accounts of women employed in the film industry, the book gives a voice to women whose work was indispensable yet largely invisible. As it traces this long history of women in Hollywood, Never Done reveals the persistence of sexist assumptions that, even today, leave women in the media industry underpraised and underpaid.
For more information: http://erinhill.squarespace.com"
By:
Erin Hill
Imprint: Rutgers University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 626g
ISBN: 9780813574875
ISBN 10: 0813574870
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 05 October 2016
Recommended Age: From 16 to 99 years
Audience:
College/higher education
,
A / AS level
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1 Paper Trail: Efficiency, Clerical Labor, and Women in the Early Film Industry 2 Studio Tours: Feminized Labor in the Studio System 3 The Girl Friday and How She Grew: Female Clerical Workers and/as the System 4 “His Acolyte on the Altar of Cinema”: The Studio Secretary’s Creative Service 5 Studio Girls: Women’s Professions in Media Production Epilogue: The Legacy of “Women’s Work” in Contemporary Hollywood Appendix: Work Roles Divided By Gender as Represented in Studio Tours Films NotesBibliographyIndex
ERIN HILL worked in film development before returning to academia to study the media industry. She is currently a visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Dartmouth College’s Foreign Study Program in Los Angeles.
Reviews for Never Done: A History of Women's Work in Media Production
Erin Hill's book is an eye opening look at 'women's work' in the entertainment industry. If you are asking why there aren't more women in the executive suite or the director's chair, the answer is here. --Diane English writer, producer, director Exactly the history we need! Erin Hill provides a fascinating account of the work women have always done at all levels of the movie industry. --Shelley Stamp author of Lois Weber in Early Hollywood At a time in which revelations about industry sexism and brutal power games emerge on a seemingly daily basis, Hill's book stands as a valuable chronicle of not just the struggles but also the successes of studio-era Hollywood women. Enhancing our understanding of the past while helping to place present-day crises in their historical context, Hill demonstrates that a woman's work in Hollywood is, indeed, never done. --Media Industries An absolutely essential work. Erin Hill's Never Done is elegantly researched and analyzed and profoundly moving, taking us through all the roles women created in early motion picture history. Exhilarating! --Allison Anders film and TV director and screenwriter In addition to its commendable social agenda, Never Done's meticulous research, direct, elegant prose, and novel approach to an under-researched topic secure its status as an essential contribution to film history. --Film Quarterly Hill offers a unique and exciting analysis of the largely unacknowledged work done by women in the film industry, providing a new history that shifts our understanding of old ones. Never Done will make a significant impact in the field. --Mary Desjardins author of Recycled Stars: Female Film Stardom in the Age of Television and Video
