Books by Agata Frymus
Damsels and Divas European Stardom in Silent Hollywood, 2020
Damsels and Divas investigates the meanings of Europeanness in Hollywood during the 1920s by char... more Damsels and Divas investigates the meanings of Europeanness in Hollywood during the 1920s by charting professional trajectories of three movie stars: Pola Negri, Vilma Bánky and Jetta Goudal. It combines the investigation of American fan magazines with the analysis of studio documents, and the examination of the narratives of their films, to develop a thorough understanding of the ways in which Negri, Bánky and Goudal were understood within the realm of their contemporary American culture. This discussion places their star personae in the context of whiteness, femininity and Americanization. Every age has its heroines, and they reveal a lot about prevailing attitudes towards women in their respective eras. In the United States, where the stories of rags-to-riches were especially potent, stars could offer models of successful cultural integration.
Journal Articles by Agata Frymus
Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 2023
Best journal article award 2023, British Association for Film and TV Studies (BAFTSS)
Film History, 2022
This study draws on popular press and oral histories to examine moviegoing in Kuala Lumpur, Malay... more This study draws on popular press and oral histories to examine moviegoing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during the 1970s. It interrogates the memories of cinema and their relationship with the conditions of life in the burgeoning metropolis and makes explicit connections between ethnicity—or, more precisely, linguistic proficiencies—as forces structuring the experiences of moviegoing. Many participants’ memories oscillate around American films and stars, attesting to the global appeal of Hollywood at the time. Ultimately, if cinematic sites were entrenched in racial dynamics of the city, they were also physical manifestations of their leakiness, of penetrability between diasporic affiliations.
Studies in European Cinema, 2021
Special issue background This collection is the result of a 2018 conference that was held at the ... more Special issue background This collection is the result of a 2018 conference that was held at the University of Leeds and funded by White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities (WRoCAH). As organizers, we were brought together by our broad interest in silent film and film heritage, more generally. Yet, it was clear to us that our respective work drew on vastly different approaches to the subjects. While Luca Antoniazzi (2018, 2020) deals with policy issues of digital preservation and curatorship, Agata Frymus's (2020, 2021) primary research focus is on silent film audiences and stardom. Laurence Carr was, at the time, completing a PhD thesis on the visual representations of sound in Weimar cinema. Intrigued by the differences in our ways of thinking, and our subsequent methods, we became interested in the idea of crosspollination-and the potential overlaps-between these distinctive approaches and lines of enquiry. Therefore, we envisioned an event that would provide a space for dialogue between archivists and media scholars, who often work in isolation. Broadly speaking, the conference aimed to bridge the gap between various types of expertise that essentially exist on the same subject, across various sub-fields and institutions. The conference also aimed to explore how different disciplines viewed key debates on digital technology, curatorship, access and the visibility of silent cinema and archival collections in the public sphere. 1
Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 2021
This article examines promotional material linked to Pocahontas, Child of the Forest (Edwin S. Po... more This article examines promotional material linked to Pocahontas, Child of the Forest (Edwin S. Porter, 1907) and Pocahontas (director unknown, 1910), placing them in the wider debates about colonialism, film exhibition, authenticity, and the role of film as an educational medium in the early 1900s. Since its emergence, cinema played a pivotal role in promulgating the ideas of assimilation into dominant, white Protestant values. As American society was becoming increasingly heterogeneous, Pocahontas, an Indigenous woman central to the national mythologies of the United States, offered a problematic model of cultural integration.
Feminist Media Studies, 2021
Evelyn Preer was an African American stage and film performer who
achieved popularity in late 192... more Evelyn Preer was an African American stage and film performer who
achieved popularity in late 1920s. Before her untimely death in
1932, at the age of 36, Preer starred in 16 films, most of which
were directed and produced by a prolific Black filmmaker Oscar
Micheaux. Although a potent symbol in Black domain, her status as
a screen star remained largely unexamined by contemporary white
critics. Instead, the popular press concentrated on stage performances,
such as Preer’s titular role in Broadway adaptation of
Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. This article examines the debates that surrounded
Black female entertainers—especially Preer, but also
Florence Mills—by drawing on Chicago Defender, New York Age
and other African American newspapers of the era. It uses Preer
as a primary case study to characterise the ways in which Black
stardom was discursively similar to, but also necessarily different,
from the constructions of dominant, Hollywood stardom. It situates
African American within the gendered rhetoric of respectability, the
New Negro discourse, and patriarchal ideas of the acting profession.
Preer’s visibility in the white domain constituted an act of resistance,
and a reminder of the Black struggle for equality.
Alphaville Journal of Film and Screen Media, 2020
My project (Horizon 2020, 2018-20) traces Black female moviegoing in Harlem during the silent fil... more My project (Horizon 2020, 2018-20) traces Black female moviegoing in Harlem during the silent film era. The main challenge in uncovering the women's stories is that historical paradigm has always prioritised the voices of the white, middle-class elite. In the field of Black film history, criticism expressed by male journalists-such as Lester A. Walton of New York Age-has understandably received the most attention (Everett; Field, Uplift). Black, working-class women are notoriously missing from the archive. How do we navigate historical records, with their own limits and absences? This paper argues for a broader engagement with historic artefacts-memoirs, correspondence and recollections-as necessary to re-centre film historiography towards the marginalised. It points to the ways in which we can learn from the scholars and methods of African American history to "fill in the gaps" in the study of historical spectatorship.
Historical Journal of Radio, Film and Television, 2018
Jetta Goudal commenced her rise to Hollywood stardom in 1923. Like many other players hailing fro... more Jetta Goudal commenced her rise to Hollywood stardom in 1923. Like many other players hailing from the continent, her publicity was built upon the notion of temperamentality and represented Goudal as a volatile and irrational woman, prone to abrupt fits of rage. This perception soon started to work against her own professional interests. Her consecutive Hollywood contracts – first with Distinctive Pictures, then with Famous Players-Lasky – were both terminated prematurely, which resulted in Goudal suing them for a breach of contract. She promptly signed a new agreement with Cecil B. DeMille, but again ran into difficulties which found their way to the court room. In depicting her legal struggles, public commentators used the association between Goudal, Frenchness and problematic behaviour to explain her actions in terms of irrationality and impulsiveness rather than framing it within the context of wider power dynamic. This paper interrogates legal suits between Goudal and three of her former employers, discussing the ways in which a star image can function not only as a commodity, but also as an instrument of control. In constructing her in terms of an unruly persona, the public discourse denied Goudal her own stance in the matters relating to labour.
Other Modernities, 2018
Before the Second World War, the majority of London's modest Chinese population –consisting of ap... more Before the Second World War, the majority of London's modest Chinese population –consisting of approximately 900 people – resided in Limehouse, the East part of the city. The popular discourse saw Chinatown as synonymous with an exotic underworld filled with opium dens and exotic indulgences; a place where respectable Englishwomen were threatened by the lechery of Chinese men, and where less respectable Londoners could indulge in their vices. In this paper, I examine cultural texts that validated and reinforced the image of Limehouse as a place existing outside of Anglo-Saxon norms, where, to quote HV Morton, 'queer things happen in a mist of smoke.' Placing my focus on the ways in which Chinese community was represented in the popular media, I combine the analysis of Broken Blossoms (1919) and London (1926) with the critical opinions expressed by film editors and contemporary movie-goers. I also investigate the threat of miscegenation, usually inherent to the representation of Limehouse in the popular press. London Evening News, for example, encouraged their readers to pity 'degraded' white women who fell for 'the Yellow Man.' In line with the 1920s' rhetoric of eugenics, other newspapers suggested that wives of immigrants living in London's Chinatown were declining physically – gradually acquiring Chinese-like features – and mentally, as a result of their morally transgressive behaviour. Was Limehouse represented in universally pejorative terms, and, if so, what kind of social forces made such narratives reverberate?
Early Popular Visual Culture, 2017
The early 1920s witnessed a spike of interest in the import of European stars to Hollywood, as th... more The early 1920s witnessed a spike of interest in the import of European stars to Hollywood, as the film studios hired talent scouts to keep a constant watch on successful stage and film actors on the continent. Vilma Bánky’s Hollywood career began when she was signed to Samuel Goldwyn’s film studio in 1925. This paper analyses the characteristics of Bánky’s star image, particularly in relation to her conspicuously white features and the story of her discovery, which successfully located her within the Cinderella narrative. To the movie going public, Bánky achieved stardom through being discovered by a film producer rather than through conscious efforts, thus, her story was encoded as a patriarchal text that denied her any form of agency. Bánky’s star publicity suggested she incarnated the highest ideals of whiteness; her gentle way of being and feminine charm was a natural extension of her physical attributes. Fan magazines propagated the concept of perfect white womanhood by emphasising tranquillity, elegance and grace as characteristics inherent to her persona. ‘Miss Banky’s charm is a subtle, winsome appeal which one associates inevitably with the truly feminine’, declared one columnist writing for Picture Play. The fan discourse also showed Bánky as an eager subject of Americanisation, as an actress who owed her ‘lucky break’ not only to her producer, but an individual in debt to transformative power of America at large.
Celebrity Studies Journal, 2017
The Polish actor Pola Negri embarked on her American film career in 1922, after signing a lucrati... more The Polish actor Pola Negri embarked on her American film career in 1922, after signing a lucrative contract with Famous-Players Lasky. She was promoted as a fiery, European woman of temperament and ‘a wild cat … who doesn’t calculate’. Hollywood star discourse paid particular attention to romantic alliances between Negri and a number of successful screen actors; in generating this type of publicity, the studio ensured its chief star was portrayed as a passionate, continental diva. Yet the strategy proved to be a double-edged sword. First of all, the highly publicised, brief relationships with non-American men suggested a strong, active sexuality and unwillingness to settle down. Secondly, Negri’s public disclosure of grief after the death of her fiancé Rudolph Valentino violated the more reserved American norms of mourning, attracting criticism. Her marriage to Prince Serge Mdivani shortly after Valentino’s death caused outrage and reinforced her position as a star placed on the margins of the main current of American society. Fan magazines such as Photoplay ascribed Negri with the fixed, static persona of an Old-World diva, resistant to all attempts at Americanisation. As a result, Negri came to symbolise the most dreaded aspects of modernity in the person of the foreign woman, which effectively impeded the advancement of her Hollywood career.
Chapters by Agata Frymus
New Perspectives on Early Cinema History: Concepts, Approaches, Audiences, ed. Mario Slugan and Daniel Biltereyst (London, Bloomsbury), 2022
Women Film Pioneers Project, 2020
https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/stefania-zahorska/
Women Film Pioneers , 2020
https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/nina-niovilla/
Re-visiting Female Evil: Power, Purity and Desire. ed. Melissa Dearey, Susana Nicolas and Roger Davis, 2017
This chapter looks at the construction of Pola Negri's persona by discussing her films, as well a... more This chapter looks at the construction of Pola Negri's persona by discussing her films, as well as her off-screen antics. Negri's figure was emblematic of a representation of an exotic and threatening foreign woman, the association which inevitably incapacitated her career in the American movie industry. Firstly, I position the iconography of the vamp in the cultural context of the era. The figure of a pagan, earthy female sexuality has been popularised at the end of the nineteenth century by symbolist painters and consequently re-invented in the America of the 1920's to mobilise fears surrounding women's growing independence and reflect concerns linked to the new wave of immigration. I will analyse the ways in which Negri's movies re-enacted those anxieties through their gender portrayal. The femme fatale crosses the boundaries of patriarchal norms, class and ethnicity, and produces a threat. In films such as Spanish Dancer 1 Negri not only personified threat to status quo, questioning rigid limitations of sexuality but above all represented an ethnic hazard. Her exotic otherness threatens to undermine the existing cultural order, making Negri a unique symbol of the possibility of foreign invasion. From the outset of the star's relationship with media, the journalists insisted on seeing her mainly through the prism of her European otherness. Some went as far as to deliberately misspell her quotes in interviews to convey the idea of Negri's English being far from fluent. By the late twenties the representational scheme Negri was widely associated with fell out of fashion, marking a turning point in her career. The fact she could not escape the role of a vamp (nor dismiss the threatening characteristics of the figure) contributed to her demise as an artist.
Conference papers by Agata Frymus
HoMER conference, 2021
Video presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpIjZJNJbqY
BAFTSS annual conference , 2021
Evelyn Preer was an African American stage and film performer who achieved popularity in late 192... more Evelyn Preer was an African American stage and film performer who achieved popularity in late 1920s. Before her untimely death in 1932, at the age of thirty-six, Preer starred in sixteen films, most of which were directed and produced by a prolific Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. Although Preer was a potent symbol in Black circles, lauded as “The Colored Queen of Cinema” and “pioneer in the cinema world for colored women” (“Movie Queen” 1927, 2; “Evelyn Preer Ranks First” 1927, 13) her cinematic legacy remained under the radar in the white press. Instead, the popular press concentrated on stage performances, such as Preer’s titular role in Broadway adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé.
SCMS, 2021
The 1934 marked the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille’s lavish Orientalist spectacle, Cleopatra, starr... more The 1934 marked the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille’s lavish Orientalist spectacle, Cleopatra, starring Claudette Colbert in the titular role. Writing for Chicago Defender, famous black periodical, J.A. Rogers (1934, 8) disapproved of the film and its historical inaccuracies, admitting it was ‘even a bigger disappointment’ than he expected. The journalist also predicted that the costume drama will fail at the box office, as it is suitable only for ‘six year olds and morons.’ Another African American commentator expressed an outrage similar to Rogers’ more explicitly, calling the feature ‘a colossal farce,’ as well as advising DeMille to realise that if Cleopatra lived in the present-day America, ‘she would be referred to as anything from a colored woman to a Negress and even N****(Vere E. Johns 1934, 4). This presentation charts African American responses to Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra as well as those to the later historical epic starring Elizabeth Taylor. In doing so, it examines two distinctive strands of such film discussions. Firstly, it looks at the critiques of representing the Egyptian rulers as a white woman. Secondly, it interrogates more positive coverage of Cleopatra movies as an opportunity to black extras. Chicago Defender, for instance, praised DeMille’s efforts for hiring a number of dark-skinned actors to portray Nubian servants.
Audience Lost: Minority Women and Spectatorship, 2019
Established film histories discuss the burgeoning movie culture of the 1910s and 1920s in relatio... more Established film histories discuss the burgeoning movie culture of the 1910s and 1920s in relation to female fans, explaining how mounting numbers of female spectators generated new anxieties. Kathy Peiss highlighted this was mainly due to the heterosocial component of commercialised amusement and the concurrent opportunities to employ cinemas as sites for unsupervised interaction between men and women. (Here, we see how the darkness of the picture theatre is conducive to all sort of transgressions) Slide 3: Black girls Shelley Stamp, amongst others, have written about the increasing presence of white women during the nickelodeon period. Different aspects of identity, however-race, gender, age, class-impact each other to create unique forms of disadvantage. We know that debates relating to the cinemas as threatening spaces proliferated in the 1910s but to what extent were they replicated in the black-produced discourse? What were the contours of black girls' engagement with commercial leisure? How was it represented by African American commentators? Slide 4: Segregation Before I investigate this, just a quick note about the conditions of black cinemagoing in New York city. The segregation in Northern cities was not legalised, like in Jim Crow states. (So this situation, with separate entrances for black patrons, would not take place). Slide 5: Segregation continues But de facto segregation persisted, as black patrons were routinely relegated to balcony seating. This is why Harlem had a number of desegregated cinemas, that advertised specifically to black audiences. Slide 6: Map First cinemas oriented towards black patronage, Crescent and Lincoln, opened in late 1909, on the same block of buildings. In 1912, Lafayette opened its doors, but it did not institute a racially egalitarian policy until the end of the following year. Here I outlined theatres that operated within the boundaries of the black settlement in 1923. Slide 7: Magazines Now, going back to the discussion of black discourse: African American magazines were important agents in reinforcing the communal values.
Small Cinemas Small Spaces bi-annual conference
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Books by Agata Frymus
Journal Articles by Agata Frymus
achieved popularity in late 1920s. Before her untimely death in
1932, at the age of 36, Preer starred in 16 films, most of which
were directed and produced by a prolific Black filmmaker Oscar
Micheaux. Although a potent symbol in Black domain, her status as
a screen star remained largely unexamined by contemporary white
critics. Instead, the popular press concentrated on stage performances,
such as Preer’s titular role in Broadway adaptation of
Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. This article examines the debates that surrounded
Black female entertainers—especially Preer, but also
Florence Mills—by drawing on Chicago Defender, New York Age
and other African American newspapers of the era. It uses Preer
as a primary case study to characterise the ways in which Black
stardom was discursively similar to, but also necessarily different,
from the constructions of dominant, Hollywood stardom. It situates
African American within the gendered rhetoric of respectability, the
New Negro discourse, and patriarchal ideas of the acting profession.
Preer’s visibility in the white domain constituted an act of resistance,
and a reminder of the Black struggle for equality.
Chapters by Agata Frymus
Conference papers by Agata Frymus
achieved popularity in late 1920s. Before her untimely death in
1932, at the age of 36, Preer starred in 16 films, most of which
were directed and produced by a prolific Black filmmaker Oscar
Micheaux. Although a potent symbol in Black domain, her status as
a screen star remained largely unexamined by contemporary white
critics. Instead, the popular press concentrated on stage performances,
such as Preer’s titular role in Broadway adaptation of
Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. This article examines the debates that surrounded
Black female entertainers—especially Preer, but also
Florence Mills—by drawing on Chicago Defender, New York Age
and other African American newspapers of the era. It uses Preer
as a primary case study to characterise the ways in which Black
stardom was discursively similar to, but also necessarily different,
from the constructions of dominant, Hollywood stardom. It situates
African American within the gendered rhetoric of respectability, the
New Negro discourse, and patriarchal ideas of the acting profession.
Preer’s visibility in the white domain constituted an act of resistance,
and a reminder of the Black struggle for equality.
According to the long-standing, visual tradition of Western culture, Cleopatra is represented as a conspicuously non-African woman, whose ethnic whiteness is often heightened through juxtaposition to the racial ‘Other.’ The potency of her myth lies in the fact she embodies several powerful narratives: she is not only a female emperor, but also a seductress positioned between the affections of two powerful men, Marc Anthony and Caesar; a woman in-between the Orient and Occident and a gendered, sexualised spectacle. This paper investigates how Cleopatra (1963) capitalised on established narrative conventions, and how contemporary public discourse evaluated the film.
Most of scholarship concerned with Egyptomania in American culture frames it as a dominant phenomenon, focusing on the meanings Cleopatra had for white people. Whilst the Egyptian queen continues to carry complex meanings, such connotations are assigned different importance, depending on the historical circumstances and audiences that analyse her. In examining the conflation between Taylor’s off and on-screen persona, particularly in the ways in which popular press commented on her adulterous affair with Richard Barton, I suggest that Taylor’s incarnation of Cleopatra became synonymous with seduction and immoral excess, rather than political influence.
New York is a fruitful site for the investigation of debates of race and mass entertainment because of the high concentration of black migrants and cinemas: according to US census data, over 109,133 Manhatanittes were black in the 1920s. In 1930, the figure doubled, with the percentage of blacks rising to 12 percent of the entire population of the borough. 305 film venues operated in Manhattan in 1927, whilst other 39 were planning to open or were under construction.
In drawing on a plethora of multidisciplinary resources – personal correspondence, diary entries, cinema records, fan letters, local news stories and articles from historical black press – it will investigate the roles played by cinema, the dominant form of entertainment at the time, in shaping the lives of African-American women in Manhattan.
I argue that through accessing Bánky’s figure as utterly natural and classically beautiful, the studio entered a safe representational terrain; effectively discarding the threat posed by the fact their star was a foreigner. A strong connotation between white features and extraordinary moral standing reached beyond the movie screen; it was not only Bánky’s heroines that were blonde and virtuous, the star herself was cast in the same mould.
Vilma Bánky’s position as a harmless, safe vision of female sexuality was further reinforced in the years following the hot, humid summer of 1927, when she married a fellow actor, Rod La Roque. Finding an all-American husband erased any trace of foreign danger from the picture of a blonde star who already has been far from being overly threatening. Immersed in a life of domestic bliss, the Hungarian star made her intentions of retiring public as soon as she became Mrs La Rocque. Her apprehension of American cultural norms played into the dominant view that (despite the fleeting popularity of the flapper) women should remain submissive and pliant.