Gene Tierney: Star of Hollywood's Home Front

Description

Gene Tierney may be one of the most recognizable faces of studio-era Hollywood: she starred in numerous classics, including Leave Her to Heaven, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and Laura, with the latter featuring her most iconic role. While Tierney was considered one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, she personified "ordinariness" both on- and off-screen. Tierney portrayed roles such as a pinup type, a wartime worker, a wife, a mother, and, finally, a psychiatric patient-the last of which may have hit close to home for her, as she would soon leave Hollywood to pursue treatment for mental illness and later attempted suicide in the 1950s. After her release from psychiatric clinics, Tierney sought a comeback as one of the first stars whose treatment for mental illness became public knowledge. In this book, Will Scheibel not only examines her promotion, publicity, and reception as a star but also offers an alternative history of the United States wartime efforts demonstrated through the arc of Tierney's career as a star working on the home front. Scheibel's analysis aims to showcase that Tierney was more than just "the most beautiful woman in movie history," as stated by the head of production at Twentieth Century Fox in the 1940s and 1950s. He does this through an examination of her making, unmaking, and remaking at Twentieth Century Fox, rediscovering what she means as a movie legend both in past and up to the present. Film studies scholars, film students, and those interested in Hollywood history and the legacy of Gene Tierney will be delighted by this read. Cover Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Introduction: “The Girl in the Portrait” Interpreting Star Images and Subjectivities Hollywood and the U.S. Home Front in the 1940s Gene Tierney’s Star Buildup and Her “First Modern Role” 1. Working It: Beautification and War Effort Gene Tierney Goes to War: Thunder Birds and China Girl Office Politics: The Making of Laura and Tierney’s Image Makeover Laura as War(drobe) Film: Bonnie Cashin’s Costumes Coda: A Bell for Adano 2. Women on the Edge: Demobilization and Domesticity The Dark Side of the Moon: Leave Her to Heaven Gene & Ty: The Razor’s Edge and That Wonderful Urge 3. The Front Lines of Life and Death: Motherhood and Mortality Boom Years: The U.S. Maternal Ideal and Gene Tierney as Star Mother The Redemptive Maternal: Heaven Can Wait Maternal Plentitude: Dragonwyck The Resisting Maternal: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir 4. Into the Whirlpool: Psychological Disorder and Rehabilitation Gene Tierney Reframed: Publicity and Press Commentary Playacting and Sleepwalking: Whirlpool Conclusion: The Reproducible Gene Tierney Acknowledgments Notes Gene Tierney’s Credits Film Television Selected Bibliography Index