Women in Hollywood: From Vamp to Studio Head

While there is a need for an exhaustive examination of the long-neglected role women have played in the film industry since the turn of the century, this isn't it. According to Sova, a frequent contributor to Cosmopolitan and Redbook, the first film to feature a woman was John Rice-May Irwin Kiss in 1896, three years after Thomas Edison introduced his Kinetoscopes as a peep-show novelty. By 1908, French-born Alice Guy Blaches became the first woman to write, direct, produce and star in a movie. Sova notes female pioneers among the ranks of screenwriters (Anita Loos, Sonya Levien, Elinor Glyn), producers (Mary Pickford), film editors (Margaret Booth) and directors (Lois Weber, Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino), but her real focus is the legacy of actresses in front of the camera, and here her book falters. Sova sums up decades-long careers in colorless thumbnail sketches but finds little room for supporting character actresses, whose careers often outlasted those of the leading ladies, or actresses of color, only two of whom are discussed (Dorothy Dandridge and Whoopi Goldberg). The chapters are divided by decade, which poses organizational problems, as some profiles (Streisand, Fonda, Hawn) are spread over several chapters, while other, multi-decade careers (Davis, Hepburn, Bergman) are summed up in one. Ally Acker's definitive Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema (1991), which is regrettably out of print, is still the benchmark on this subject. 22 pages of b&w photos. (Jan.)