Special issue on “The Actress-Manager and Early Film” in Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film is out now!

WFPP contributors Victoria Duckett (Deakin University) and Vito Adriaensens (Columbia University | University of Antwerp) are happy to announce the publication of a special issue on The Actress-Manager and Early Film in the journal Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film (Vol. 45, no. 1, 2018). 

 The Betty Nansen Theatre – Opening in September (1917) – Courtesy of The Danish Royal Library

In this issue, they explore how female entrepreneurial engagement in new commerce, new markets and new forms of theatre might help us interpret the rich and productive relationship between theatre and film, in carefully chosen case studies from the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and the United States, tackling actresses such as Sarah Bernhardt, Betty Nansen, Eleonora Duse, Helena Cortesina, and Marion Davies. Articles include: 

Victoria Duckett and Vito Adriaensens

• Editorial: The Actress-Manager and Early Film

Ann Featherstone

• ‘A Good Woman of Business’: The Female Manager in the Portable Theatre

Victoria Duckett

• The Actress-Manager and the Movies: Resolving the Double Life of Sarah Bernhardt

Vito Adriaensens

• The Bernhardt of Scandinavia: Betty Nansen’s Modern Breakthrough

Maria Pia Pagani

• Eleonora Duse: An Actress-Manager for the Italian film Industry in the 1910s

Elena Cordero-Hoyo, Begoña Soto-Vázquez

• Women and the Shift from Theatre to Cinema in Spain: The Case of Helena Cortesina (1903-84)

Denise Mok

• Transcending Categories, Staging Autonomy: Marion Davies’s Transitions from Showgirl to Screen Star and Producer-Manager