Abstract
The 1913 film Fashion’s Toy (Lubin) follows the travails of a young country girl named Nora Burton. Nora’s chaste beauty attracts a socialite named Mrs. Morison, who takes her back to the city to transform her from a country bumpkin into a fashionable urbanite. The experiment progresses well, until Mrs. Morison’s beau shows romantic interest in the newly stylish Nora, prompting Mrs. Morison to throw the girl out of her home. Nora’s country beau comes to her rescue and she soon sees the error of her ways, proving that she is, in the words of the contemporary movie reviewer, an honorable girl rather than a “fashionable libertine.” The “Cinderella” story is a common one in the Progressive era because it allowed for a contrast between the lives of the wealthy with those of the working classes. The double appeal is obvious: viewers from a lower socio-economic background could relate to the storyline, yet also lose themselves in an escapist world of wealth and extravagance. As evidenced by the title, the most important aspect of the plot, however, was the moral message.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
The nickelodeon period, 1905–15, is defined as an era that saw the rise of the small moving picture house. Originating in storefront theaters with shows that cost only a nickel, the Vaudeville style of presentation consisted primarily of moving pictures, and often included illustrated song slides and/or live entertainment. See Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990), 417–89.
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” (1935) reprinted in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (New York: Oxford University, 1999), 744.
Ellen Boris, “Social Change and Changing Experience,” in Pat Kirkham, ed., Women Designers (New Haven, CT: Bard Graduate Center and Yale University Press, 2000), 37.
Claudia Kidwell and Margaret C. Christman, Suiting Everyone: The Democratization of Clothing in America (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1974), 53.
Grace Rogers Cooper, The Sewing Machine, Its Invention and Development (2004), 13, http://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/HST/Cooper/CF/(accessed Dec. 10, 2010).
Joseph J. Schroeder, Jr., ed., The Wonderful World of Ladies’ Fashion (Northfield, IL: Digest Books, 1971) reprint of page from Ladies’ Home Journal 1894, 147–8.
Twenty years after its initial capitalization in 1895, the assets of Sears, Roebuck and Company exceeded $100 million; S.J. Perelman, “Introduction,” in Fred. L. Israel, ed., 1897 Sears, Roebuck Catalogue (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1993) , v. Schroeder, The Wonderful World., 1905 Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog page reprints, 187–93.
The first shirtwaist factories were established in 1891–92 and after 1895 witnessed explosive growth. In New York City, between 1900 and 1910, the factories began to make dresses as well, with approximately 600 waist and dress manufacturers by 1910, employing approximately 30,000 workers. See Louis Levine, The Women’s Garment Workers (New York: Arno and the New York Times, 1969 reprint of 1924 book International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union), 145.
Maureen Turim, “Seduction and Elegance: The New Woman of Silent Cinema,” in Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferriss, eds., On Fashion (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 143.
Edna Woolman Chase and Ilka Chase, Always in Vogue (New York: Doubleday, 1954), 53.
Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt, Making Both Ends Meet: The Income and Outlay of New York Working Girls (New York: Macmillan and Company, 1911), viii.
This information is supported by an article that was originally published in the March 1913 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal entitled “The Dishonest Paris Label: How American Women Are Being Fooled by a Country Wide Swindle,” by Samuel Hopkins Adams. The article recounts how rolls of fake Paris couture labels were being sold by the yard to millinery and dress manufacturers. See Ladies’ Home Journal (March 1913), reprinted in Dress 4, 1978, 17–23. Adams was a successful muckraker, a term that was coined in the Progressive era, who exposed patent medicine fraud in the early twentieth century, also on the pages of The Ladies’ Home Journal. See Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 156.
Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890–1940 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 13.
Robert Hendrickson, The Grand Emporiums: The Illustrated History of America’s Great Department Stores (New York: Stein and Day, 1979), 65, 66; Macy’s advertisement reprinted in A Perfect Fit: The Garment Industry and American Jewry, 1860–1960 (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2005), 23. Ellen Leopold argues that the use of the sewing machine encouraged more elaborate embellishment because the garment maker could readily multiply the number of tucks or other fashion details, as evident in the Macy’s ensemble; see Leopold, “The Manufacture of the Fashion System,” in Juliet Ash and Elizabeth Wilson, eds., Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 105.
Nancy L. Green, “Sweatshop Migrations: The Garment Industry between Home and Shop,” in David Ward and Olivier Zunz, eds., The Landscape of Modernity: Essays on New York City 1900–1940 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992), 214.
George Mitchell, “The Consolidation of the American Film Industry 1915–1920,” Cine-Tracts 2 (2) (Spring 1979), 28.
Steven J. Ross, Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
Edward Alfred Steiner, The Immigrant Tide: Its Ebb and Flow (New York: F.H. Revell, c. 1909).
Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Films (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 3.
C.N. and A.M. Williamson, Winnie Childs Shop Girl (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1914). This book was reissued in 1916. Another example of popular fiction related to the genre is Margaret Böhme, The Department Store: A Novel of To-Day (Toronto: Thomas Langton, 1912).
Margaret I. MacDonald, review, Moving Picture World, 18 Jul. 1916, 265; advertisement for the film, from the “Blue Ribbon Series,” Photoplay, 1 Jul. 1916, n.p.
Tom Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectators and the Avant-Garde,” in Joanne Hollows, Peter Hutchings, and Mark Jancovich, eds., The Film Studies Reader (London: Arnold, 2000), 162.
Lady Duff Gordon, Discretions and Indiscretions (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1932), 144.
Anthony Slide, The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 142.
Edward Wagenknecht, The Movies in the Age of Innocence (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962), 41.
William M. Drew, Speaking of Silents: First Ladies of the Screen (New York: Vestal Press, 1989), 65.
Marie Dressler, My Own Story (Boston: Little, Brown, 1934), 130.
Léon Barsacq, Caligari’s Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions: A History of Film Design (New York: Plume, 1978), 19.
Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Films (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 65.
Copyright information
© 2013 Michelle Tolini Finamore
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Finamore, M.T. (2013). The Working Girl and the Fashionable Libertine: Fashion and Film in the Progressive Era. In: Hollywood Before Glamour. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230389496_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230389496_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-35117-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-38949-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)