Unearthing Californian Girlhood: Scrapbooks Made By Movie-Loving Girls Living in California, 1907 to 1920

Diana Anselmo-Sequeira
Visual Studies
UC Irvine

My dissertation proposes that the invention of female adolescence at the turn of the twentieth century impacted the creation of American cinema’s star system. Such intersection happened when the film industry moved West, becoming primarily located in Southern California. By the mid-1910s, popular and trade press noted that a new California-centered film industry primarily targeted young females, both of middle and working classes. To achieve a well-rounded understanding of early film reception, I argue that it is vital to analyze how school-age Californian girls witnessed and experienced the formation of an incipient Hollywood industry. Researching girls’ letters to movie magazines, their personal film scrapbooks, and their fan mail to major movie actresses, I map a reception history of transitional American cinema that accounts for an often overlooked demographic: a young female audience which seminally redefined Californian movie constituency and its burgeoning fandom.