The History of Hollywood Fan Mags

This may surprise my readers, but I'm not the hugest fan of fan culture. Don't get me wrong, once they're dead I love to dig into the life history of a legitimate Hollywood personage. But until then, I'm not terribly interested in who they're dating, what restaurants they eat at, or what their man cave looks like. That being said, the history of the fan magazine is intimately linked to Hollywood history and many of the decisions made at these publications had huge impacts on how movies were marketed and made, and the careers of film actors and actresses great and small.

The Guardian's Pamela Hutchinson has written a great story about the birth of Photoplay Magazine- a veritable who's who and what who did in Hollywood from 1910 right up until the 1980's. There are some interesting tidbits about silent film greats Florence Lawrence, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Theda Bara, Gloria Swanson, and Fatty Arbuckle to name a few. At the end of the article is a link to the Media History Digital Library. Several lifetimes would be insufficient to leaf through all the film reviews, star "confessions", and unbelievable advertisements that are contained here. But since I have to do important things like write this blog, I'll settle for just looking at the magazines with Joan in them.