Jennifer M. Bean is the director of the cinema studies program and an associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Washington. She is coeditor of A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema and a recipient of the prestigious Katherine Singer Kovacs Essay Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. G. M.Anderson: “Broncho Billy” among the Early “Picture Personalities”2. Mary Pickford: Icon of Stardom3. Lillian Gish: Clean, and White, and Pure as the Lily4. Sessue Hayakawa:The Mirror, the Racialized Body, and PhotogÉnie5. Theda Bara: Orientalism, Sexual Anarchy, and the Jewish Star6. Geraldine Farrar:A Star from Another Medium7. George Beban: Character of the Picturesque8. Pearl White and Grace Cunard:The Serial Queen’s Volatile Present9. Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle: Comedy’s Starring Scapegoat10. Douglas Fairbanks: Icon of Americanism11. Charles Chaplin:The Object Life of Mass CultureIn the WingsWorks CitedContributorsIndex

"Finally, in the ongoing series 'Star Decades,' arrives the volume on the delightful and original decade of the 1910s--a book that takes the reader back to yesteryear for the earliest luminaries of the celestial Hollywood heavens, even before Hollywood. Bean wraps up this fascinating study of the historical evolution of these cinematic icons with previews of coming stars. Highly recommended." (Choice) "Finally, in the ongoing series 'Star Decades,' arrives the volume on the delightful and original decade of the 1910s--a book that takes the reader back to yesteryear for the earliest luminaries of the celestial Hollywood heavens, even before Hollywood. Bean wraps up this fascinating study of the historical evolution of these cinematic icons with previews of coming stars. Highly recommended." (Choice)