Images of women during the Great Depression and the Golden Age of American film

The purpose of this study was to analyze the strengths of the sexual roles of women as portrayed in popular American films during the 1930s decade of Hollywood's Golden Age of Film. As subordinate problems this work describes the characteristics and traces the modifications of women's film roles as they related to structural pressures and to aspects of women's sexual roles in American society during the decade of the Great Depression.;Content analysis of top box office women's most popular 1930s films was chosen as the method for obtaining information concerning the characteristics of women's film roles. Data concerning women's status in society was drawn from letters, biographies, government reports, polls and surveys, and ongoing studies relevant to the status of 1930s women. Data pertaining to the film industry was collected from original sources on file at film archives and from the ongoing scholarly studies of film, mass media, and popular culture.;This study suggests that the 1930s decade was a watershed period in the representation of strong women's roles in films. Unmatched in film history, top box office women outnumbered men. Heroines of the precensorship early 1930s years explicitly expressed their arguments for cultural legitimation of new models of idealized femininity based upon viable alternative preferences for sexual and economic parity and autonomy. Following middecade censorship women were featured as historic women of courage, and contemporaries of intelligence and wit equal to male counterparts but preferring the traditional feminine role as "natural." Films reflected continuity and change, and long term trends already evident in society. For the decade of the Great Depression was also a historic period for women in society who met the challenges of the economic crisis with, for example, record rates of singlehood, advanced education, premarital sexual activity, fertility, abortion, and were major economic contributors to family survival.