Paula Marantz Cohen is Professor of Humanities and Director of the Literature Program at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Her books include Alfred Hitchcock: The Legacy of Victorianism and The Daughter's Dilemma: Family Process and the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Novel.

Much of Cohen's stimulating book deals with a conjunction in American history, the arrival of film around 1900 just at the right time for a vibrant national mythology to find its perfect medium... She posits a strong case for a marriage made in historical heaven between this mythology and film. Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic

• Introduction 1: Literary Antecedents of American Silent Film 2: Houdini, Keaton, and the Rise of the Body 3: Hart, Fairbanks, and the Vitalization of Landscape 4: Griffith, Gish, and the Narrative of the Face 5: The Birth of the Star System and the Shaping of the Modern Self 6: The Transition to Sound Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

Paula Marantz Cohen is Professor of Humanities and Director of the Literature Program at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Her books include Alfred Hitchcock: The Legacy of Victorianism and The Daughter's Dilemma: Family Process and the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Novel.

Much of Cohen's stimulating book deals with a conjunction in American history, the arrival of film around 1900 just at the right time for a vibrant national mythology to find its perfect medium... She posits a strong case for a marriage made in historical heaven between this mythology and film. Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic

• Introduction 1: Literary Antecedents of American Silent Film 2: Houdini, Keaton, and the Rise of the Body 3: Hart, Fairbanks, and the Vitalization of Landscape 4: Griffith, Gish, and the Narrative of the Face 5: The Birth of the Star System and the Shaping of the Modern Self 6: The Transition to Sound Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

Paula Marantz Cohen is Professor of Humanities and Director of the Literature Program at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Her books include Alfred Hitchcock: The Legacy of Victorianism and The Daughter's Dilemma: Family Process and the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Novel.

Much of Cohen's stimulating book deals with a conjunction in American history, the arrival of film around 1900 just at the right time for a vibrant national mythology to find its perfect medium... She posits a strong case for a marriage made in historical heaven between this mythology and film. Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic

• Introduction 1: Literary Antecedents of American Silent Film 2: Houdini, Keaton, and the Rise of the Body 3: Hart, Fairbanks, and the Vitalization of Landscape 4: Griffith, Gish, and the Narrative of the Face 5: The Birth of the Star System and the Shaping of the Modern Self 6: The Transition to Sound Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index