Among early Hollywood's most renowned filmmakers, Lois Weber was considered one of the era's "three great minds" alongside D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille. Despite her accomplishments, Weber has been marginalized in relation to her contemporaries, long ensconced as fathers of American cinema. Drawing on a range of materials untapped by previous historians, Shelley Stamp offers the first comprehensive study of Weber's remarkable career as director, screenwriter and actress. "Lois Weber in Early Hollywood" provides compelling evidence of the extraordinary role that women played in shaping American movie culture. Weber made films on capital punishment, contraception, poverty and addiction, demonstrating early cinema's power to engage topical issues for popular audiences. Her work also grappled with the profound changes in women's lives that unsettled Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century and her later films include sharp critiques of heterosexual marriage and consumer capitalism. Weber mentored many women in the industry, demanded a place at the table in early professional guilds, decried limited roles available for women on screen, protested the growing climate of hostility towards female directors in the 1920s, and, in the final decade of her life, tried against all odds to ensure her own historical legacy. Through her examination of Weber's career, Stamp demonstrates how female filmmakers who once served early Hollywood's bid for respectability were written out of that industry's history in the end. "Lois Weber in Early Hollywood "is an essential addition to histories of silent cinema, early filmmaking in Los Angeles, and women's contributions to American culture.

"Movie-Struck Girls" examines women's films and filmgoing in the 1910s, a period when female patronage was energetically courted by the industry for the first time. By looking closely at how women were invited to participate in movie culture, the films they were offered, and the visual pleasures they enjoyed, Shelley Stamp demonstrates that women significantly complicated cinemagoing throughout this formative, transitional era. Growing female patronage and increased emphasis on women's subject matter did not necessarily bolster cinema's cultural legitimacy, as many in the industry had hoped, for women were not always enticed to the cinema by dignified, uplifting material, and once there, they were not always seamlessly integrated in the social space of theaters, nor the new optical pleasures of film viewing. In fact, Stamp argues that much about women's films and filmgoing in the postnickelodeon years challenged, rather than served, the industry's drive for greater respectability.

White slave films, action-adventure serial dramas, and women's suffrage photoplays all drew female audiences to the cinema with stories aimed directly at women's interests and with advertising campaigns that specifically targeted female moviegoers. Yet these examples suggest that women's patronage was built with stories focused on sexuality, sensational thrill-seeking, and feminist agitation, topics not normally associated with ladylike gentility. And in each case concerns were raised about women's conduct at cinemas and the viewing habits they enjoyed, demonstrating that women's integration into motion picture culture was not as smooth as many have thought.

Among early Hollywood's most renowned filmmakers, Lois Weber was considered one of the era's "three great minds" alongside D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille. Despite her accomplishments, Weber has been marginalized in relation to her contemporaries, long ensconced as fathers of American cinema. Drawing on a range of materials untapped by previous historians, Shelley Stamp offers the first comprehensive study of Weber's remarkable career as director, screenwriter and actress. "Lois Weber in Early Hollywood" provides compelling evidence of the extraordinary role that women played in shaping American movie culture. Weber made films on capital punishment, contraception, poverty and addiction, demonstrating early cinema's power to engage topical issues for popular audiences. Her work also grappled with the profound changes in women's lives that unsettled Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century and her later films include sharp critiques of heterosexual marriage and consumer capitalism. Weber mentored many women in the industry, demanded a place at the table in early professional guilds, decried limited roles available for women on screen, protested the growing climate of hostility towards female directors in the 1920s, and, in the final decade of her life, tried against all odds to ensure her own historical legacy. Through her examination of Weber's career, Stamp demonstrates how female filmmakers who once served early Hollywood's bid for respectability were written out of that industry's history in the end. "Lois Weber in Early Hollywood "is an essential addition to histories of silent cinema, early filmmaking in Los Angeles, and women's contributions to American culture.