Downriver:: A Tale of Moving Pictures Before Hollywood
- ISBN-10
- 1543972675
- ISBN-13
- 9781543972672
- Pages
- 344
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2019-07-29
- Publisher
- Bookbaby
- Author
- Evan Anderson
Description
Anne Blackstone is a sixteen year old girl from a small Missouri River town at the turn of the twentieth century. Suddenly orphaned, she is sent to a "school" run by the black-clad members of the Ladies' Aid Society. She escapes, leaves town with the company of a traveling showboat, and later joins a touring motion picture exhibitor. Along the way, Anne learns the craft of directing: for the stage, then for the infant industry of moving pictures, pre-Hollywood. She enters the field before it becomes a big business, when motion picture language was being written, and when women, even from a lower class, had access to its creative tools. Downriver gives readers the experience of what it was like to be alive at the origins of an industry which is, today, so much a part of our lives.
