Universal Women
Filmmaking and Institutional Change in Early Hollywood
Eleven women directed 170 films at Universal before 1920, then the doors closed.
Between 1912 and 1919 eleven women directed around 170 films for Universal, and by the mid-1920s there were effectively none. Cooper reconstructs how they got the job in the first place, treating the studio as an institution with changing rules rather than a stage for individual genius, and argues that the same institutional logic that admitted them later closed the door.
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Marya E. Gates
Cooper shows how they became directors, then suggests what may have led to the decline in their ranks in the 1920s.
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