Senior Lecturer in Cinema and Television History at De Montfort University. I recently completed my doctoral thesis upon cultural discourse surrounding Hollywood glamour and film star pin-ups in WWII UK and US. whilst studying at UEA I was associate tutor and module convenor on several undergrad and post graduate modules on the Film Studies programme. From there I went to University of Lincoln where I taught photographic theory on the Contemporary Lens Media degree. Supervisors: Melanie Williams and Mark Jancovich
After briefly reviewing the extraordinary variety of British magazines for film fans and the impo... more After briefly reviewing the extraordinary variety of British magazines for film fans and the importance of these publications in the construction of stardom, Ellen Wright and Phyll Smith focus on what was the first sustained attempt to cultivate and sustain a fan base for leading English actors through the establishment of their own appreciation societies. In fact, it was not until the 1940s that the London-based studios succeeded in creating star personas and cementing fan loyalty in the way that the Hollywood studios been developing over the previous 20 years. This chapter examines the establishment of studio-approved fan clubs for favorite stars such as Patricia Roc, Jean Kent, Anne Crawford, Richard Attenborough and Michael Rennie—a disproportionate number of these actors being associated with Gainsborough Studios, whose costume melodramas had been highly popular with female audiences.
This thesis examines the cultural politics surrounding public femininity in Britain and the Unite... more This thesis examines the cultural politics surrounding public femininity in Britain and the United States between 1939 and 1949 in relation to glamour and the figure of the film star pin-up. Using Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth – the era’s most popular Hollywood pin-ups - as its case studies, the study reveals the issues of taste, class, national identity, modernity and propriety which informed the wider reception of the film star pin-up in wartime Britain and America. A range of primary sources including magazine and newspaper articles, trade publications, promotional materials and advertising tie-ups, as well as contemporaneous surveys of public opinion which engage with these stars and with pin-up and with glamour are discussed with a view to exposing the varied and nuanced discourse surrounding female sexuality in circulation in Britain during this era and exploring the translation, understanding and acceptance of American mores when such products are imported into differing cul...
A Glimpse Behind the Screen: Tijuana Bibles and the pornographic re-imagining of Hollywood. Holly... more A Glimpse Behind the Screen: Tijuana Bibles and the pornographic re-imagining of Hollywood. Hollywood’s early star system relied on a fine balance of carefully controlled star personas and a fan culture of scandal and rumour; while the studios were increasingly required to present and defend a near puritanical image for all their stars, they were simultaneously sex symbols, and audiences craved insights into the private lives they imagined for their chosen stars. Into this world came the ‘Tijuana bibles’. Illicit, explicit and illegal, the ‘8 pagers’ - comic art pornography of the 20’s - 50’s - revelled in frequently portraying graphic sex acts with little narrative justification, able to feature images, subjects and language impossible in the age of the Hayes Office, while engaging openly with the narratives of scandal and rumour of the time. Miscegenation, bestiality, homosexuality; from Orphan Annie to Donald Duck, Mae West to Clark Gable, these poorly printed booklets were a mafia controlled mass medium which flourished in America throughout the depression and beyond. These film star Tijuana narratives unhampered by an official studio ‘line’, the worry of litigation, or any notion of taste or decency; put a perverse spin on celebrity identities, delivering on what Hollywood could only hint at, offering their readers a furtive peep behind the curtains of celebrity and the cinema screen, reflect a public obsession with celebrity and Hollywood scandal – the dirtier the better.
This article explores the mutually beneficial relationship between the American swimsuit and film... more This article explores the mutually beneficial relationship between the American swimsuit and film industries during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Three examples will be used: Fatty and the Bathing Beauties from 1913 (prior to regulated film content), Footlight Parade from 1933 (when limited self-regulation had been put in place, but was not yet rigorously enforced) and the Tarzan film franchise (which spans both the second period and a later, third period of actual implementation and subsequent negotiation). Using these examples, the paper will consider several of the popular associations attached to the swimmer and the swimsuit. It will discuss the ways in which Hollywood utilised the swimsuit, the swimmer and swimming in both its films and its promotional materials and will demonstrate how through the sporting associations of both the garment and sports stars, film producers negotiated the processes of censorship and self-regulation while allowing the continued use of semi-naked and eroticised bodies, to their own profit and to that of the increasingly fashionable swimwear industry.
ABSTRACT This paper examines the development of British film stars and fan club culture during th... more ABSTRACT This paper examines the development of British film stars and fan club culture during the mid to late 1940s, through studio-sanctioned fan or star-produced magazines for the official fan clubs of British actors Jean Kent, Anne Crawford, Patricia Roc and Richard Attenborough and the British fan club for American actor Deanna Durbin. These previously unexamined resources are contextualised with contemporaneous newspaper articles, novels, film magazines andindustry publications that discuss the British star system and film star fandom. Combined, these artefacts raise prescient issues around the uncredited but essential star labour that nurtured and maintained stars’ brands, star capital and fan followings and around stars as signifiers of Britishness, wealth and status during a period of socio-cultural and film industry upheaval in austerity Britain . By considering the labour and ideologies at the heart of British film star personae and film star fan culture at its zenith, this paper broadens understandings of the British film industry and its relationship with Hollywood, and offers valuable new insights into film fandom more generally, revealing a more complex, differentiated culture of British film fan consumption and authority, British star construction and dissemination, studio control, reflexivity and economic function, than commonly assumed.
Part of my #theyNeverClothed #DMYEngage project. The engagement project itself currently comprise... more Part of my #theyNeverClothed #DMYEngage project. The engagement project itself currently comprises of a pop-up exhibition and a contextual round table discussion which will explore the politics of sexualised performance in contemporary and historic contexts. Both activities are scheduled to be initially held at the 2017 Hebden Bridge Burlesque Festival (HBBF).
An exploration of the terrain of how to engage learners effectively and why that matters. Using f... more An exploration of the terrain of how to engage learners effectively and why that matters. Using fan engagement in the field of film history reveals that encouraging learners to self-identify as fans shifts the power balance, placing the learner in the position of expert, thereby increasing the chances of learner engagement and enabling learners to gain a more nuanced understanding of their field while also making for a more invested, lively, and varied learning and teaching experience. Based on firsthand experience designing and delivering a research-focused undergraduate film history module combined with a multidisciplinary pedagogical approach, this work demonstrates that treating students as fans with affective stakes in history and exploring historical moments experientially offers learners significant benefits.
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2011
Twentieth Century-Fox's prime star throughout the 1940s, Grable was moreover one of the ... more Twentieth Century-Fox's prime star throughout the 1940s, Grable was moreover one of the top box-office revenue generating stars from any studio during that decade. According to polls published in the Motion Picture Herald, she was in the top 10 every year from 1942 ...
Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network
This work will explore some of the broader implications of celebrity group selfies, through the e... more This work will explore some of the broader implications of celebrity group selfies, through the example of Ellen DeGeneres’ star-studded group shot, taken during the 2014 Academy Awards ceremony, Joan Collins’ 2014 Prince’s Trust Award selfie, just days after, and Collins’ subsequent ‘view from the other side’ tweet; exploring notions of authenticity, performance, intimacy, self-promotion, public visibility, identification, imitation, vicarious consumption and audience participation. Engaging with existing work upon celebrity tweeters, Twitter and other online fandom, photographic theory, star studies and, in particular, Bourdieu’s theories surrounding cultural capital, taste formation, and cultural distinctions, this work not only explores some of the reasons behind the frequently negative judgements of celebrity group selfies, but also seeks to identify some of the very real social functions and more personal gratifications, both for celebrity and fan, that the celebrity group sel...
Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network
This work will explore some of the broader implications of celebrity group selfies, through the e... more This work will explore some of the broader implications of celebrity group selfies, through the example of Ellen DeGeneres’ star-studded group shot, taken during the 2014 Academy Awards ceremony, Joan Collins’ 2014 Prince’s Trust Award selfie, just days after, and Collins’ subsequent ‘view from the other side’ tweet; exploring notions of authenticity, performance, intimacy, self-promotion, public visibility, identification, imitation, vicarious consumption and audience participation. Engaging with existing work upon celebrity tweeters, Twitter and other online fandom, photographic theory, star studies and, in particular, Bourdieu’s theories surrounding cultural capital, taste formation, and cultural distinctions, this work not only explores some of the reasons behind the frequently negative judgements of celebrity group selfies, but also seeks to identify some of the very real social functions and more personal gratifications, both for celebrity and fan, that the celebrity group sel...
After briefly reviewing the extraordinary variety of British magazines for film fans and the impo... more After briefly reviewing the extraordinary variety of British magazines for film fans and the importance of these publications in the construction of stardom, Ellen Wright and Phyll Smith focus on what was the first sustained attempt to cultivate and sustain a fan base for leading English actors through the establishment of their own appreciation societies. In fact, it was not until the 1940s that the London-based studios succeeded in creating star personas and cementing fan loyalty in the way that the Hollywood studios been developing over the previous 20 years. This chapter examines the establishment of studio-approved fan clubs for favorite stars such as Patricia Roc, Jean Kent, Anne Crawford, Richard Attenborough and Michael Rennie—a disproportionate number of these actors being associated with Gainsborough Studios, whose costume melodramas had been highly popular with female audiences.
This thesis examines the cultural politics surrounding public femininity in Britain and the Unite... more This thesis examines the cultural politics surrounding public femininity in Britain and the United States between 1939 and 1949 in relation to glamour and the figure of the film star pin-up. Using Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth – the era’s most popular Hollywood pin-ups - as its case studies, the study reveals the issues of taste, class, national identity, modernity and propriety which informed the wider reception of the film star pin-up in wartime Britain and America. A range of primary sources including magazine and newspaper articles, trade publications, promotional materials and advertising tie-ups, as well as contemporaneous surveys of public opinion which engage with these stars and with pin-up and with glamour are discussed with a view to exposing the varied and nuanced discourse surrounding female sexuality in circulation in Britain during this era and exploring the translation, understanding and acceptance of American mores when such products are imported into differing cul...
A Glimpse Behind the Screen: Tijuana Bibles and the pornographic re-imagining of Hollywood. Holly... more A Glimpse Behind the Screen: Tijuana Bibles and the pornographic re-imagining of Hollywood. Hollywood’s early star system relied on a fine balance of carefully controlled star personas and a fan culture of scandal and rumour; while the studios were increasingly required to present and defend a near puritanical image for all their stars, they were simultaneously sex symbols, and audiences craved insights into the private lives they imagined for their chosen stars. Into this world came the ‘Tijuana bibles’. Illicit, explicit and illegal, the ‘8 pagers’ - comic art pornography of the 20’s - 50’s - revelled in frequently portraying graphic sex acts with little narrative justification, able to feature images, subjects and language impossible in the age of the Hayes Office, while engaging openly with the narratives of scandal and rumour of the time. Miscegenation, bestiality, homosexuality; from Orphan Annie to Donald Duck, Mae West to Clark Gable, these poorly printed booklets were a mafia controlled mass medium which flourished in America throughout the depression and beyond. These film star Tijuana narratives unhampered by an official studio ‘line’, the worry of litigation, or any notion of taste or decency; put a perverse spin on celebrity identities, delivering on what Hollywood could only hint at, offering their readers a furtive peep behind the curtains of celebrity and the cinema screen, reflect a public obsession with celebrity and Hollywood scandal – the dirtier the better.
This article explores the mutually beneficial relationship between the American swimsuit and film... more This article explores the mutually beneficial relationship between the American swimsuit and film industries during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Three examples will be used: Fatty and the Bathing Beauties from 1913 (prior to regulated film content), Footlight Parade from 1933 (when limited self-regulation had been put in place, but was not yet rigorously enforced) and the Tarzan film franchise (which spans both the second period and a later, third period of actual implementation and subsequent negotiation). Using these examples, the paper will consider several of the popular associations attached to the swimmer and the swimsuit. It will discuss the ways in which Hollywood utilised the swimsuit, the swimmer and swimming in both its films and its promotional materials and will demonstrate how through the sporting associations of both the garment and sports stars, film producers negotiated the processes of censorship and self-regulation while allowing the continued use of semi-naked and eroticised bodies, to their own profit and to that of the increasingly fashionable swimwear industry.
ABSTRACT This paper examines the development of British film stars and fan club culture during th... more ABSTRACT This paper examines the development of British film stars and fan club culture during the mid to late 1940s, through studio-sanctioned fan or star-produced magazines for the official fan clubs of British actors Jean Kent, Anne Crawford, Patricia Roc and Richard Attenborough and the British fan club for American actor Deanna Durbin. These previously unexamined resources are contextualised with contemporaneous newspaper articles, novels, film magazines andindustry publications that discuss the British star system and film star fandom. Combined, these artefacts raise prescient issues around the uncredited but essential star labour that nurtured and maintained stars’ brands, star capital and fan followings and around stars as signifiers of Britishness, wealth and status during a period of socio-cultural and film industry upheaval in austerity Britain . By considering the labour and ideologies at the heart of British film star personae and film star fan culture at its zenith, this paper broadens understandings of the British film industry and its relationship with Hollywood, and offers valuable new insights into film fandom more generally, revealing a more complex, differentiated culture of British film fan consumption and authority, British star construction and dissemination, studio control, reflexivity and economic function, than commonly assumed.
Part of my #theyNeverClothed #DMYEngage project. The engagement project itself currently comprise... more Part of my #theyNeverClothed #DMYEngage project. The engagement project itself currently comprises of a pop-up exhibition and a contextual round table discussion which will explore the politics of sexualised performance in contemporary and historic contexts. Both activities are scheduled to be initially held at the 2017 Hebden Bridge Burlesque Festival (HBBF).
An exploration of the terrain of how to engage learners effectively and why that matters. Using f... more An exploration of the terrain of how to engage learners effectively and why that matters. Using fan engagement in the field of film history reveals that encouraging learners to self-identify as fans shifts the power balance, placing the learner in the position of expert, thereby increasing the chances of learner engagement and enabling learners to gain a more nuanced understanding of their field while also making for a more invested, lively, and varied learning and teaching experience. Based on firsthand experience designing and delivering a research-focused undergraduate film history module combined with a multidisciplinary pedagogical approach, this work demonstrates that treating students as fans with affective stakes in history and exploring historical moments experientially offers learners significant benefits.
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2011
Twentieth Century-Fox's prime star throughout the 1940s, Grable was moreover one of the ... more Twentieth Century-Fox's prime star throughout the 1940s, Grable was moreover one of the top box-office revenue generating stars from any studio during that decade. According to polls published in the Motion Picture Herald, she was in the top 10 every year from 1942 ...
Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network
This work will explore some of the broader implications of celebrity group selfies, through the e... more This work will explore some of the broader implications of celebrity group selfies, through the example of Ellen DeGeneres’ star-studded group shot, taken during the 2014 Academy Awards ceremony, Joan Collins’ 2014 Prince’s Trust Award selfie, just days after, and Collins’ subsequent ‘view from the other side’ tweet; exploring notions of authenticity, performance, intimacy, self-promotion, public visibility, identification, imitation, vicarious consumption and audience participation. Engaging with existing work upon celebrity tweeters, Twitter and other online fandom, photographic theory, star studies and, in particular, Bourdieu’s theories surrounding cultural capital, taste formation, and cultural distinctions, this work not only explores some of the reasons behind the frequently negative judgements of celebrity group selfies, but also seeks to identify some of the very real social functions and more personal gratifications, both for celebrity and fan, that the celebrity group sel...
Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network
This work will explore some of the broader implications of celebrity group selfies, through the e... more This work will explore some of the broader implications of celebrity group selfies, through the example of Ellen DeGeneres’ star-studded group shot, taken during the 2014 Academy Awards ceremony, Joan Collins’ 2014 Prince’s Trust Award selfie, just days after, and Collins’ subsequent ‘view from the other side’ tweet; exploring notions of authenticity, performance, intimacy, self-promotion, public visibility, identification, imitation, vicarious consumption and audience participation. Engaging with existing work upon celebrity tweeters, Twitter and other online fandom, photographic theory, star studies and, in particular, Bourdieu’s theories surrounding cultural capital, taste formation, and cultural distinctions, this work not only explores some of the reasons behind the frequently negative judgements of celebrity group selfies, but also seeks to identify some of the very real social functions and more personal gratifications, both for celebrity and fan, that the celebrity group sel...
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papers by Ellen Wright