Making the 'Studio Girl': The Hollywood Studio Club and Industry Regulation of Female Labour

An examination of the throngs of 'film-smitten girls' who arrived in early Hollywood in search of stardom, which demonstrates how the influx of single, transitory women to Los Angeles prompted early attempts to regulate not only female labour, but private conduct as well. The 'problem' of the 'extra girl' in Hollywood became not only an important labour issue but a key ideological concern as well, because it foregrounded how the industry's interests and economic power negotiated with civic, cultural, and social elites a 'proper place' for movies, especially the right role female spectators might play in relation to the cinema and the act of film consumption.