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
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
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.
"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*
"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."
*writer, producer, director*
"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!"
*film and TV director and screenwriter*
"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."
*author of Lois Weber in Early Hollywood*
"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."
*author of Recycled Stars: Female Film Stardom in the Age of
Television and Video*
"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*
"[A] ground‐breaking contribution to women's media
history."
*Gender and History*
"Hill’s well-researched book...excels in exposing readers to female
actors previously ignored by historians."
*H-Net*
"Hill’s project is also a necessary addition to any course on
production studies, or media industry studies because it
demonstrates a viable historical research method on media labor to
students. It does so in a way that calls for further research on
undervalued media laborers. And in conclusion, at a moment when
many academic programs and departments are establishing archives of
their own institutional histories, Never Done reminds us of the
need for inclusive approaches to historicizing labor in our own
communities."
*Cinema Journal*
"Hill’s project is...a necessary addition to any course on
production studies, or media industry studies because it
demonstrates a viable historical research method on media labor to
students. It does so in a way that calls for further research on
undervalued media laborers. And in conclusion, at a moment when
many academic programs and departments are establishing archives of
their own institutional histories, Never Done reminds us of the
need for inclusive approaches to historicizing labor in our own
communities."
*Journal for Cinema and Media Studies*
"[A] highly engaging read and inspir[es] models of historical
scholarship that add volumes to our understanding of the roles that
women played or were blocked from playing in the Hollywood studio
system and the first decade of network television....Never
Done draws from untapped sources to uncover history that few
at the time thought was worth preserving in any systematic
way."
*Signs*
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