During the early era of cinema, moviegoers turned to women editors and writers for the latest on everyone's favorite stars, films, and filmmakers. Richard Abel returns these women to film history with an anthology of reviews, articles, and other works. Drawn from newspapers of the time, the selections show how columnists like Kitty Kelly, Mae Tinee, Louella Parsons, and Genevieve Harris wrote directly to female readers. They also profiled women working in jobs like scenario writer and film editor and noted the industry's willingness to hire women. Sharp wit and frank opinions entertained and informed a wide readership hungry for news about the movies but also about women on both sides of the camera. Abel supplements the texts with hard-to-find biographical information and provides context on the newspapers and silent-era movie industry as well as on the professionals and films highlighted by these writers. 

An invaluable collection of rare archival sources, Movie Mavens reveals women's essential contribution to the creation of American film culture.

"This book is even more essential now than when these voices were first heard. It deals with a movement that is so much a symbol of American hope that it's in a class by itself. I strongly recommend Voices from the Catholic Worker." --Studs Terkel This rich oral history weaves a tapestry of memories and experience from interviews, roundtable discussions, personal memoirs, and thorough research. In the sixtieth anniversary year of the Catholic Worker, Rosalie Riegle Troester reconfirms the diversity and commitment of a movement that applies basic Christianity to social problems. Founded in 1933 by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, the Catholic Worker has continued to apply the principles of voluntary poverty and nonviolence to changing social and political realities. Over 200 interviews with Workers from all over the United States reveal how people came to this movement, how they were changed by it, and how they faced contradictions between the Catholic Worker philosophy and the call of contemporary life. Vivid memoirs of Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and Ammon Hennacy are interwoven with accounts of involvement with labor unions, war resistance, and life on Catholic Worker farms. The author also addresses the Worker's relationship with the Catholic Church and with the movement's wrenching debates over abortion, homosexuality, and the role of women.