Paper Summary:

This paper explores the roles of women in three films, starting with "His Girl Friday" from the 1940's, "Semi-Tough" from the 1970's and "Flirting With Disaster" from the 1990's. The various roles and stereotypes played by the female stars of these films are contrasted and compared as to their characters and their motivations.

From the Paper:

"The history of women in the cinema can be traced back to the early days of film production, beginning ca. 1896 with films by director Alice Guy Blache, such as "The Cabbage Fairy" and "The Bewitched Fiance." With the advent and popularity of the so-called "silent era" of film production, women began to be depicted as various stereotypes, such as "damsels in distress," weak-minded, timid city girls and impoverished "white trash," while men played an overwhelming majority of lead roles, usually as heroic figures who rescue these "damsels" from a plethora of dangerous situations. In a study of one hundred films released between 1930 and 1940, part of the "Golden Age" of American cinema, "eighty percent focused on the love/hate of a man with a good/bad girl, while fifty percent had the good/bad girl opposing another bad girl" (Doane 134)."

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