Abstract—1930s is defined by many scholars as the golden
age of Hollywood. Women’s roles were changing along with the
social transformations. Film became a powerful tool to portray
women’s images. This paper analyzes women’s images on
screen in 1930s using
Grand Hotel (1932) as an example, as well
as some other representative films, aiming to explain how and
why women were portrayed in certain ways on screen in golden
age Hollywood. It interweaves key principles and methodologies
including feminist theory, gender studies, spectatorship, and
film history. It is found that the most influential factors are
female filmmakers’ status in the industry, psychological needs
of the spectators, and the controls on motion pictures.
Index Terms—Feminist theory, film studies, gender and
communication, women studies.
Dan Li is with the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712 USA
(e-mail: danli@utexas.edu).
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Cite: Dan Li, " Grand Hotel: Portrayal of Women in Golden Age Hollywood," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 303-307, 2014.