Asta Nielsen, the Film Star System and the Introduction of the Long Feature Film Asta Nielsen, the Film Star System and the Introduction of the Long Feature Film. Special Journal Issue Guest Editor: Yvonne Zimmermann, 2021 Early Popular Visual Culture (Abingdon: Routledge) v.19, n.2–3, pp. 107–274

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Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1 Stephen Bottomore, ‘‘The Great Favorite, Miss Asta Nielsen’: Asta Nielsen on Australasian Screens’, in Importing Asta Nielsen: The International Film Star in the Making, 1910-1914, ed. Martin Loiperdinger and Uli Jung (Eastleigh: John Libbey & Company, 2013), 308–20.2 The soon-to-be megastar, Charlie Chaplin, receives only 31 hits, purely because he only started appearing in films in 1914; and fellow megastar Mary Pickford (194 hits) only made a big impact from around 1913.3 Some information about this group: Florence Turner was a major film star who worked in Britain as well as America. Max Linder is hailed as the first film star in a recent study (Andrew Shail, The Origins of the Film Star System: Persona, Publicity and Economics in Early Cinema (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019). Maurice Costello may have been the first star to appear in films (from 1906, says MacCann, 1992), and a contemporary guide (B. M. Wood, Who's Who in the Motion Picture World (New York: Who's Who in Pictures Publishing Co., c1915, p. 50) states that he was ‘the first internationally famous motion picture star’, that he pioneered the modern style of film acting and directed all his own films. He won a film star popularity contest in 1912. John Bunny was the most-mentioned film star in the pre-war period, and was making nearly a film a week by the summer of 1913. All these except Linder have been rather overlooked by historians/biographers: there is no book devoted to Turner, only a self-published one on Bunny (2017), and only a family biography (2019) for Costello: Kevin Scott Collier, Funny Bunny: Film Comedian John Bunny (Scotts Valley, CA: CreateSpace, 2017); Terry Chester Shulman, Film's First Family : The Untold Story of the Costellos (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2019).4 And indeed begs a more general question of how and why historians choose their subjects to study.5 Steve Massa, Rediscovering Roscoe : The Films of "Fatty" Arbuckle (Orlando, FL: BearManor Media, 2019); Anthony Slide, ‘Early Women Filmmakers: The Real Numbers’, Film History 24, no. 1 (March 2012): 114–21.6 Given this project model and the relative neglect of the three above-mentioned film stars, perhaps one could propose a ‘Vitagraph performers project’?7 See https://wfpp.columbia.edu/essay/shaping-the-craft-of-screenwriting-women-screen-writers-in-silent-era-hollywood/ and https://wfpp.columbia.edu/2023/01/07/afi-catalog-launches-wtta-website/8 Ann Martin, Virginia M. Clark and Maria Schlesinger, What Women Wrote: Scenarios, 1912–1929 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1987) [microform].9 https://aficatalog.afi.com/wtta/10 Anthony Slide, ‘Early Women Filmmakers: The Real Numbers’, Film History 24, no. 1 (March 2012): 114-121.11 Establishing such figures for women’s authorship is an inexact science, as Slide explained in his article, and there are many works where the author is unknown, where the Christian name is only represented by an initial, or where there are multiple authors of either sex, etc. https://devaficalmjediwestussa.blob.core.windows.net/images/sites/3/2023/01/AFI-Women_Gaines.pdf12 I also noticed that Vitagraph Life Portrayals of January and March 1913 give credit to Florence Turner as scriptwriter, a role hinted at in the entry about her in WFP.13 One could make a vast roll-call of men active in the silent cinema who have no substantial biographies. Just among cameramen who I am researching, the names Joseph Rosenthal, John Mackenzie and Emile Lauste come to mind. And in other fields the names are legion, including Marc Edmund Jones and Monte Katterjohn, scenarists; Paul E. Glase, exhibitor and collector; Horace Plimpton, producer. And those are just some from the English-speaking world. In truth it is almost pointless mentioning these few names because there are so many others, and this undertaking would best be tackled systematically, perhaps by a project. Fortunately, a list of American silent era achievers (men and women) has already been created in the form of Annette d’Agostino’s magnificent Filmmakers in the Moving Picture World…, which bases its selection on contemporary assessment of worth (though it omits exhibitors). What is then needed is the will to organise a project to put biographical flesh on these bare (male and female) bones. Annette d’Agostino, Filmmakers in the Moving Picture World, an index of articles, 1907–1927 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997).14 David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge; Columbia University Press, 1985). An alternative approach to studying film style had been taken by Barry Salt, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis (London: Starword, 1983 [and later editions]). Note also Salt’s ASL method, developed further by Yuri Tsivian as ‘cinemetrics’.15 One could say there is something of the anthropological about it, with the historian as observer (if not ‘participant observer’). In my case this approach perhaps derives from my undergraduate years spent studying social anthropology at one of the homes of that subject, King’s College, Cambridge.16 Stephen Bottomore, I Want to See This Annie Mattygraph: a Cartoon History of the Coming of the Movies (Gemona; Bloomington: Giornate del Cinema Muto; Indiana University Press, 1995).17 Bill Jay, Cyanide and Spirits: An Inside-Out View of Early Photography (Munich: Nazraeli Press, 1991).18 The term ‘presentist’ is sometimes used these days with a similar meaning to the ‘outside-in view’. An extreme example of this is what is called ‘speculative historiography’, whereby history is re-imagined.