Picturesque Italianness in Early Hollywood: The case of film star George Beban
Journal title STORIA E PROBLEMI CONTEMPORANEI
Author/s Giorgio Bertellini
Publishing Year 2023 Issue 2021/88 Language Italian
Pages 20 P. 51-70 File size 252 KB
DOI 10.3280/SPC2021-088004
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In this essay I examine the film career of American-born actor, George Beban, one of the most celebrated star character actors you never heard of. A specialist of in the representation of Italian immigrants from 1915 to 1926, Beban was the first one to interpret the roles of Italian characters as protagonists of feature-length films. In the essay I identify both the novelty of his cinema and its links to the urban and all-American development of a much older aesthetic form, that of picturesque. Taming the racialized otherness of the Italian immigrant in heartbreaking stories of tragic loss and fatalism allowed Beban to train American audience to entertain emotional sympathy for these Latin foreigners, which in a few years prepared the way for the experience of a different kind of emotional contiguity, that related to star Rudolph Valentino.
Keywords: Italian immigrants, early Hollywood, picturesque, racial melodrama, stardom
Giorgio Bertellini, L’italianità pittoresca nella Hollywood dei primi anni: il caso della star George Beban in "STORIA E PROBLEMI CONTEMPORANEI" 88/2021, pp 51-70, DOI: 10.3280/SPC2021-088004