scholarly journals A ‘Somewhat Homely’ Stardom: Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray and Refurnishing Domestic Modernity in the Postwar Years

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-44
Author(s):  
Hollie Price

The husband and wife acting duo, Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray, achieved popular acclaim in British cinema during the 1940s, Gray in They Were Sisters (1945) and Denison in My Brother Jonathan (1948). Following the success of My Brother Jonathan (in which Gray also appeared), the couple's star status was soon cemented by roles together on screen, including notably The Glass Mountain (1949), The Franchise Affair (1951), Angels One Five (1952) and There Was a Young Lady (1953). As a result of these roles in popular films and images of the couple in extra-cinematic culture, a picture of cosy, domestic consensus became irrevocably associated with Denison and Gray's status as British film stars, much to Denison's later chagrin.Rachael Low's History of the British Film suggests that British actors and actresses have not been deemed worthy of the glamorous connotations of star status because they are ‘somewhat homely in comparison with legendary international figures’ (1971: 263). In this period, the Denisons’ star image was characterised by the ‘homely’: by a vision of their domestic life together as at once aspirational, ordinary and English. However, this article argues that their stardom can be resituated as a postwar reformulation of modes linking British stars with ideas surrounding domestic modernity in the middlebrow culture of the interwar years. Therefore, Low's label of homeliness can be redefined as a key characteristic of the distinction, promotion and reception of popular British stardom in the immediate postwar period.

Tanaka Kinuyo ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 82-103
Author(s):  
Michael Smith

Smith’s chapter uses My Love Has Been Burning (Waga koi wa moenu, Mizoguchi Kenji, 1949) as a case-study for an analysis of Tanaka’s embodiment of feminine subjectivity. Grounded by an examination of the postwar gender reforms and their application, he argues that Tanaka and Mizoguchi’s creative partnership is complex to define politically, often expressing conflicting ideas on gender equality which in turn reflected the moral, social and practical paradigms which underpinned gender politics in Japan. Although produced in the postwar period, the film’s plot is set in the Meiji era and the chapter bridges these crucial periods in the history of Japanese women, using Tanaka’s star image to illuminate ideological connotations within both settings. The close reading of Tanaka’s feminist character in the film complicates the critical conception of her star persona as being tied to the Japanese stereotype of yamato nadeshiko - a type of conservative, restrained, traditional femininity.


Richard Nichols, The Diaries of Robert Hooke, The Leonardo of London, 1635-1703 . Lewes, Sussex: The Book Guild, 1994, Pp. 185, £15.00. ISBN 0- 86332-930-6. Richard Nichols is a science master turned historian of science who celebrates in this book Robert Hooke’s contributions to the arts and sciences. The appreciation brings together comments from Hooke’s Diaries , and other works, on each of his main enterprises, and on his personal interaction with each of his principal friends and foes. Further references to Hooke and his activities are drawn from Birch’s History of the Royal Society, Aubrey’s Brief Lives , and the Diaries of Evelyn and of Pepys. The first section of the book, ‘Hooke the Man’, covers his early years of education at home in Freshwater, at Westminster school and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he soon joined the group of experimental philosophers who set him up as Curator of the Royal Society and Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, Bishopsgate. Hooke’s domestic life at Gresham College is described - his intimate relationships with a series of housekeepers, including his niece, Grace Hooke, and his social life at the College and in the London coffee houses.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 40-41
Author(s):  
Robin George Manappallil

Typhoid fever is caused by Salmonella typhi, while typhus fever is a rickettsial infection. In both cases the patients present with almost similar pattern of illness and are often misdiagnosed. This is the case of a young lady who presented with 10 days history of fever and was diagnosed to have typhoid fever. She continued to be febrile despite ceftriaxone therapy. She was later found to have a typhus coinfection and improved with addition of doxycycline.Asian Journal of Medical Sciences Vol.8(6) 2017 40-41


Race & Class ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 32-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neville Hoad

The author remembers his friend and colleague Barbara Harlow and provides an introductory context for the selection from her book-in-progress on Ruth First published in this special issue of Race & Class 60, no. 3 (2019). He describes just how Ruth First became of interest to Harlow, explaining the intersections of Ruth First’s personal history as a public intellectual with the history of decolonisation and the anti-apartheid movement, and the intersection of a ‘public’ and ‘private’ or domestic life. He speculates as to why the project of over thirty years remained unfinished in terms of a final publication.


Hawwa ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amira El-Azhary Sonbol

AbstractWhile religious guidance may be central in choosing a spouse or expectations from marriage, until the nineteenth century, it was the contractual nature of marriage that defined the actual union entered into by husband and wife and according to which they lived together. Most importantly, marriage contracts could and often did include specific conditions agreed upon by the parties to the contract. The modern period will witness a shift toward privileging the religious side of marriage at the cost of the contractual and women's agency would experience a serious shift due to modern personal status laws.


Author(s):  
Linda Berkvens

This paper examines the construction of the star image of Barbara Stanwyck from her first role at Columbia studio in 1930, until 1935, when she became a freelance actress. I will focus especially on Stanwyck’s status as a female performer and the possible models of womanhood she portrayed. The work she did, and the accompanying publicity, raises questions about female representation, which I seek to address through this research. I will mainly use archival resources such as fan magazines, press books, and studio publicity material, contemporary to the period to examine how Stanwyck’s star image was constructed in this period. Traditionally, scholars look at film stars as part of the filmic text. My research method includes the use of other material (publicity, studio documents, etc.) contemporary to Stanwyck, and demonstrates my intention to look at stars and their images from a different angle. This paper challenges the traditional way of looking at stars as fetishised objects, instead moving toward a more practical examination of the construction of the female star image.


Author(s):  
Aleksei Dmitrievich Medvedev

The goal of this research consists in determination of the place and role of French cinematography of 1960s – 1970s in the political history of postwar France. The object of this research is the process of transformation of political discourse in the context of transfer of power from Charles de Gaulle to Georges Pompidou. The subject of is reflection of the history of collaborationism in the films “Sadness and Pity” (1969) and “Lacombe Lucien” (1973). The author examines such aspect of the topic as reflection of the political and cultural elites on the Vichy regime. Special attention is given to the political consequences of the screening of films about collusion of the Nazi to French citizens. The scientific lies in the analytical overview of the popular films of French national cinematography of 1960s – 1970s, which interpret the phenomenon of “collaborationism” and “opposition" of the period of German occupation. As a result, it is proven that these films distorted the silence on collusion of a number of citizens to the occupier that prevailed in the French political and public discourse. The author notes that resign of Charles de Gaulle as the head of the French Republic led to the emergence of the products of popular culture that revise the previous interpretations of the military past and have a capacity to change the political situation in the country.


Author(s):  
Steven A. Barnes

This chapter focuses on the Gulag during the Armageddon of the Great Patriotic War. It shows how the institutions, practices, and identities of the Gulag shifted in accord with the demands of total war. The war was an era of mass release on an unprecedented scale side by side with the highest mortality rates in the history of the Gulag system. After four years of brutal, exhausting warfare and a disastrous initial stage, the Soviet Union emerged from its Armageddon victorious. The early postwar period offered no indication that the Gulag would cease to be a mass social phenomenon within fifteen years. Rather, the Gulag remained a pillar in the reestablishment of the Soviet system, following the Red Army into liberated territories, so that every liberated district received its own corrective labor colony. By 1944, the camp and colony population began to grow again.


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