Old Acquaintances and New Sisterhoods: Female Friendship in Classical Hollywood Cinema

This dissertation examines representations of female friendship in Hollywood films from 1930-1953. I seek to demonstrate that the first half of the twentieth century was a crucial period of transition in thinking about female friendship and how women relate to each other. The period I consider is largely marked by an increasing distrust of close friendships between women and a subsequent pivot towards a redefinition of and reinvestment in heterosexual courtship and marriage. At the same time, widespread socio-cultural changes were bringing about circumstances through which women were spending increasing amounts of time with their peers. Women were meeting, learning about, and forming bonds with increasing numbers of women, including those with lives and experiences radically different from their own. Hollywood movies played a role in creating this connectivity between women, both as a public, social space and, most pertinently for this dissertation, as a platform for female viewers to connect with and relate to other women. Many of the films I examine pick up and reinforce ideas about female friendship already circulating in popular discourse, albeit with a distinctly Hollywood spin. Broadly speaking, I identify the early twentieth-century as marking a shift in female friendship styles away from the intense, dyadic friendships of the Victorian period towards social, collective friendship groups. This does not mean, however, that Victorian style friendships disappear entirely. Indeed, the period I examine is marked by continuous negotiations and contradictions, allowing multiple friendship styles to exist simultaneously. I argue that many of the traits prized in Victorian friendships, most notably emotional intimacy, reciprocity, equality, and supportiveness, continued to define the new friendship styles that would emerge in the twentieth century. At the same time, these Victorian traits were re-imagined in a new context. Group friendships are emblematic of the increasingly public lives of twentieth-century women as well as both the new opportunities and new challenges that came with these lives. Women’s friendships took on a newly pragmatic function as practical support became increasingly important. The films I examine take up many of these key elements of female friendship, translating them into visual and narrative terms.Ph.D