Wartime Film Stardom and Global Leadership

Chapter 3 reveals how Hollywood sought to gain national and international relevance beyond its status as a purveyor of spectacle. First, the film industry’s alliance with the U.S. government during and after the war enabled it to acquire a remarkable cultural respectability at home, nation-wide commercial development, expansion, and vertical integration—mainly through an infusion of capital from Wall Street, as well as international markets. Key vectors in Hollywood’s national and international expansion were celebrities. Following their involvement in the Liberty Bond Drive campaigns, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, for instance, acquired a new political relevance at home and abroad as ambassadors of the Hollywood lifestyle and of Americanism more broadly. When their fame waned in the early 1920s, new, more cosmopolitan icons were ready to take their place.