Girls Will Be Boys
September 21, 2007 - September 30, 2007
The cross-dressed actress captivated audiences throughout the first decades of the twentieth century. D. W. Griffith cast the adolescent Edna Foster as the recurring character "Little Billy" in a series of short films. Critics—charmed but fooled—praised the "naturalness" of the "boy actor." Stars like Mary Pickford and Katharine Hepburn built personas that incorporated a Fairbanksian athleticism, and continental imports Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich cultivated an androgynous sexuality.
Female entertainers had adopted masculine identities before. Actresses had worn the breeches on the "legitimate" stage for more than a century, and male impersonators had been vaudeville staples since the 1860s. However, questions of gender difference intensified at the turn of the century as industrialization, urbanization, and World War I provided women new opportunities for economic independence. Feminists campaigned for dress reform, suffrage, and birth control. Meanwhile, scientists in Europe collected case histories of a new type of "Third Sex," "invert," or "homosexual," found in Parisian literary salons, Harlem house parties, and Berlin cabarets. Consequently, the women in pants who leapt about the silver screen during this period inspired a combination of fascination, ridicule, and anxiety—and, most of all, good box office.
In the mid-1930s, Hollywood adopted the Hays Production Code, which prohibited the portrayal of "sex perversion or any inference of it." The Code pushed underground the rampant gender and sexual play of the movies' first few decades. Featuring a wealth of archival prints, this series is the first to trace the history of cinema's girls who would be boys.
Laura Horak
Guest Curator
Friday, September 21, 2007
6:30 p.m. Hamlet
Introduced by Jennifer Bean. Bruce Loeb on Piano. Asta Nielsen is a marvel of expressive restraint as a girl raised to be a prince in this 1920 film drawing on pre-Shakespearean sources. With short Le duel d'Hamlet.
Friday, September 21, 2007
9:00 p.m. Viktor und Viktoria
Introduced by Sanjay Hukku. A woman pretends to be a man pretending to be a woman in this nimble German operetta. With short Know Thy Wife.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
3:00 p.m. A Florida Enchantment
Introduced by Chris Straayer. Judith Rosenberg on Piano. Swallowing an African seed turns a young woman into a surprising Casanova. With shorts.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
5:00 p.m. Sylvia Scarlett
Introduced by Jenni Olson. Katharine Hepburn as "Sylvester" catches Cary Grant's eye with her coltish charms in George Cukor's comedy.
Friday, September 28, 2007
6:30 p.m. Little Old New York
Introduced by Nan Boyd. Bruce Loeb on Piano. Marion Davies is an Irish lass playing laddie for an inheritance in 19th-century New York.
Friday, September 28, 2007
9:00 p.m. Queen Christina
Introduced by Patricia White. Greta Garbo as a powerful, cross-dressing, girl-kissing woman—not much of a stretch. With short Rowdy Ann.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
1:00 p.m. Panel and Discussion
Featuring: Patricia White (Swarthmore), Clare Sears (SFSU), and Laura Horak (UC Berkeley). Nestrick Room, 142 Dwinelle Hall. Free; no tickets needed.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
3:00 p.m. Little Lord Fauntleroy
Introduced by Laura Horak. Judith Rosenberg on Piano. Mary Pickford plays both a plucky young boy and his mother in a sprightly silent that still charms viewers of all ages.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
3:00 p.m. Shanghai’et!
Introduced by Laura Horak. Judith Rosenberg on Piano. A woman must rescue her shanghaied fiancé in a gender-reversed Danish version of the "white slave" narrative.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
5:00 p.m. Morocco
Introduced by Laura Horak. Marlene Dietrich is insouciant in top hat and tuxedo exchanging innuendos with Gary Cooper in von Sternberg's masterpiece of artifice. With short Behind the Screen.
Curated by Laura Horak, with the assistance of Lucy van de Wiel, Kristen Loutensock, and Lucy Laird. Girls Will Be Boys is a project of the UC Berkeley graduate course in film curating taught by PFA curators Kathy Geritz, Edith Kramer, Susan Oxtoby, and Steve Seid. Cosponsored by Film Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, The Center for the Study of Sexual Culture, the Berkeley Film Seminar, and the Consortium for the Arts at UC Berkeley. With thanks to Edith Kramer and Russell Merritt for their advice and assistance.
Archival and restored prints and musical accompaniment for silent films are presented with support from the Packard Humanities Institute.
Laura Horak is a doctoral student in film studies at UC Berkeley, a filmmaker, and a writer for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
