• Part of
    Ubiquity Network logo

    Read Book Online
  •  Read EPUB Now
  • The Divo and the Duce

    Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America

    Giorgio Bertellini

     Read Book

    In the post–World War I American climate of isolationism, nativism, democratic expansion of civic rights, and consumerism, Italian-born star Rodolfo Valentino and Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini became surprising paragons of authoritarian male power and mass appeal. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States and Italy, Giorgio Bertellini’s work shows how their popularity, both political and erotic, largely depended on the efforts of public opinion managers, including publicists, journalists, and even ambassadors. Beyond the democratic celebrations of the Jazz Age, the promotion of their charismatic masculinity through spectacle and press coverage inaugurated the now-familiar convergence of popular celebrity and political authority.

    “A fantastic and an eminently readable milestone in the study of celebrity. Bertellini sets a new standard for archival and analytical approaches to movie stardom in the 1920s while also illuminating the political stakes of celebrity that resonate with twenty-first-century culture.” GAYLYN STUDLAR, author of Precocious Charms: Stars Performing Girlhood in Classical Hollywood

    “This is a remarkable and timely study, and a model of interdisciplinary and transnational scholarship. Only someone with Bertellini’s cross-disciplinary expertise and meticulous research skills could pull together these cases and weave them into a compelling account of the ‘cinema effect’ on American politics.” BARBARA SPACKMAN, University of California, Berkeley

    “Bertellini’s brilliant book shows clearly how celebrity and promotional culture became integral to new practices of mass governance in the early twentieth century. It is a crucial history, essential also to any genealogy of the mediatized present and the rise of modes of authoritarian and neofascist governance.” LEE GRIEVESON, author of Cinema and the Wealth of Nations: Media, Capital, and the Liberal World System

    GIORGIO BERTELLINI is Professor of Film and Media History at the University of Michigan. He is the author and editor of the award-winning volumes Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque and Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader.

    Language: English

    ISBN:
    EPUB 978-0-520-97217-9
    Mobi 978-0-520-97217-9
    Paperback 978-0-520-30136-8
    PDF 978-0-520-97217-9

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.62

    Metrics:

    Recent Activity


    How to cite this book
    Bertellini, G. 2019. The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America. California: University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.62
    Bertellini, G., 2019. The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America. California: University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.62
    Bertellini, G. The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America. University of California Press, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.62
    Bertellini, G. (2019). The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America. California: University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.62
    Bertellini, Giorgio. 2019. The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America. California: University of California Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.62




    Export to:




    License

    This is an Open Access book distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (unless stated otherwise), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright is retained by the author(s).

    Peer Review Information

    This book has been peer reviewed. See our Peer Review Policies for more information.