Episode Details

Kathy Feeley, professor of history at the University of Redlands, wrote Mary Pickford: Hollywood and the New Woman, so it makes sense that two of her picks center the film icon and pioneer, still in the early years of her career. But the rest of Kathy’s selections also paint a picture of women’s contributions before and behind the camera in an era before mass corporatization and the sidelining of women in various roles across the film industry.

Kathy co-edited, with Jennifer Frost, When Private Talk Goes Public: Gossip in American History. She is also, again with Jennifer Frost, co-author of the forthcoming “‘Of Inestimable Value to All of Us’: Olivia de Havilland, the Studio Contract, and the Screen Actors Guild, 1943-1945” in Labor: Studies in Working Class History.

Visit the5bestfilmsofeveryyearever.com/list to submit your top five for 1911!

Films and resources mentioned:

• Their First Misunderstanding (1911) - Thomas H. Ince and George Loane Tucker
• Sweet Memories (1911) - Thomas H. Ince
• Rosalie and Léontine Go to the Theatre (1911) - Romeo Bosetti
• A Heroine of ‘76 (1911) - Lois Weber, Phillips Smalley, and Edwin S. Porter
• Cupid and the Comet (1911) - Alice Guy-Blaché
• Bringing Up Baby (1938) - Howard Hawks
• Women Film Pioneers Project
• Media History Digital Library
• Cinema’s First Nasty Women