Behind the Screen and Off the Stage

Searle Kochberg (Presented paper)

Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference

Description of Activity

Presenting paper on Rita Hayworth: star persona from 'front stage', thru 'back stage', to 'off stage'

As Part of Behind the Screen and Off the Stage: Film and Television Representations of American Entertainment

Thursday 11th to Saturday13th November 2021

Movies and television shows set in the world of American entertainment have been a central feature of the big and small screens since the early days of Hollywood. From the backstage musical to the star biopic, and from the rise-and-fall narrative to critiques of the business of show, screen narratives have repeatedly sought to dramatize life behind the scenes of American entertainment. Their persistent allure is illustrated in film and television history ranging from Show People (1928) to All About Eve (1950), and from Valley of the Dolls (1967) to Fosse/Verdon (2019) and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020). They traverse every genre of film and television, and tell stories of fictional and real-life characters, as well as many who occupy a position in between. These films and television shows take us on mythical journeys through the entertainment industries, illuminate moments of crisis and opportunity, and raise broader issues about what defines American entertainment and the nation’s culture and why.

This three-day virtual conference hosted by the Media, Culture and Creative Technologies Research Group in London Met's School of Computing and Digital Media seeks to explore the history and significance of these self-reflective films and television shows. Convened by Dr Karen McNally, Reader in American Film, Television and Cultural History, the event brings together an international group of scholars to consider a wide variety of approaches to the production and reception of these texts and to their representation of American entertainment behind the screen and off the stage.

The conference includes the following keynote addresses:

Steven Cohan, Dean’s Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Syracuse University, ‘And They Lived Happily Ever After: Tarantino’s Rewriting of Hollywood’s History’
Adrienne L. McLean, Professor of Film Studies at University of Texas at Dallas, ‘Making [It] Up: Cosmetics, Coiffures and Self-reflexivity in Classical Hollywood Cinema’

Full programme details can be viewed on the Conference web page.

We look forward to having you join us for this free virtual event as we investigate and reflect upon the impact and significance of entertainment in American film, television and national culture from early cinema to the digital age.

Registration is required for this free event and tickets are limited.

Period	11 Nov 2021
Event type	Conference
Location	London, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International

Keywords

rita hayworth
star
hollywood musical
latin
anglo

Documents & Links

ABTRACT In his 1959 book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman evokes the metaphor of a theatrical production as a way of understanding human behaviour and interaction. He argues that social life is a performance carried out in three places: ‘front stage’, ‘back stage’, and ‘off stage’. This paper applies Goffman’s categories of ‘life’ performance metaphorically to the performance of musical film stars, whereby the personae affect an ideological project that bleeds from ‘front of stage’, to the ‘wings’ to ‘backstage’ and ‘off stage’, all to apparently reconcile aspects of culture that cannot be reconciled in real life (After Dyer 1979). In the history of the American ‘love goddess’ on film, Rita Hayworth’s 1940s’ star persona marks an interesting transition between the ‘30s (very) ‘white’ Anglo Blonde Jean Harlow, and the ‘50s (also very) ‘white’ Anglo Marilyn Monroe. This paper proposes that the Hayworth Latin/Anglo Good-Bad Girl persona (after Wolfenstein and Leites 1950) is perfectly attuned to America’s policy of ‘Cultural Pluralism’ starting during the Second World War and reaching its zenith in the Truman presidential years in the immediate post War. Cine audiences are afforded a mixture of public Latin persona ‘front of stage’ and a more Anglo persona in the ‘wings’ and ‘backstage’. In so doing the Hayworth star vehicle and persona as the Forties progress increasingly allow for an apparent reconciliation of Anglo versus Latin personae - a time that suits the ideological agenda of an expansion of the category ‘White’ (as well as offering a support to official government ‘Good Neighbour Sam’ policy during the Second World War). If Hayworth’s Latin/Anglo love goddess star persona competes more or less equally for screen presence with the hegemonic ‘white’ Grable during the War and in its aftermath, by the next decade - in the heady days of McCarthy and Eisenhower – American screens are dominated by the extreme ‘whiteness’ of the Monroe persona and other all-American imitators such as Jane Mansfield.