Famous Faces Yet Not Themselves: The Misfits and Icons of Postwar America

Just as the industrial context of film production evolved dramatically in the decades after the war, Kouvaros asserts, so too did the iconography associated with the figure of the actor. Photographs of Hollywood stars such as Monroe, Gable, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, and Humphrey Bogart form the basis of an evocative analysis of the way photography gave shape to fundamental shifts in the nature of screen acting, perceptions of celebrity, and the relationship between actor and audience.