Venue: Room 101, 5 University Gardens, Glasgow University.
TLW are thrilled to be hosting Professor Helen Hanson from the University of Exeter on Tuesday 9th October. We can’t wait to hear Prof. Hanson’s talk, “Putting “Rebecca” on Trial: Daphne du Maurier and Hollywood’s mid-century Adaptation Industry.” This is definitely one for our film buffs, and anyone interested in women and film, Daphne du Maurier, Alfred Hitchcock, or film noir. Read on to find out more about what we’ll be discussing on the evening.
As with all our events, this talk is free and open to all. We’re a friendly and welcoming bunch here at TLW, so please do come and join us from 5pm for drinks and refreshments, with the talk beginning at 5.15pm in room 101, 5 University Gardens.
“Putting “Rebecca” on Trial: Daphne du Maurier and Hollywood’s mid-century Adaptation Industry,”
Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca (1938) has continued to grip and seduce its readers in the 80 years since its publication. The novel’s success springs from du Maurier’s brilliant control of her plot, and her bravura evocation of the gothic mood. Rebecca is a sensational story, but with its roots in the long tradition of female gothic literature, it reads like a classic. These qualities made Rebecca a highly attractive property for screen adaptation, and Alfred Hitchcock’s film version released in 1940, was huge critical and box office success; the film won the Oscar for Best Picture and it inaugurated a trend for dark gothic films for women during the 1940s. However, in the background of the film’s success Daphne du Maurier, and the film’s producer David O. Selznick, were fighting a lawsuit which contended that Rebecca infringed copyright. The story of the case, which was eventually resolved in favour of du Maurier, is intriguing. The talk will examine some of the legal documents, correspondence and statements from the legal process, and papers from the Daphne du Maurier archive at the University of Exeter. These documents provide fascinating insights into du Maurier’s writing process, as well as offering a judgement on Rebecca as a novel that is both highly original and part of the wider gothic genre.
Speaker bio: Professor Helen Hanson is an Associate Professor in Film History at the University of Exeter. She has written widely on the history of American cinema, and she has particular interests in the history of creative processes ‘behind the scenes’ in the Hollywood Studio Era. She is the author of Hollywood Heroines: Women in Film Noir and the Female Gothic Film (2007) and Hollywood Soundscapes: Film Sound Style, Craft and Production in the Classical Era (2017) and the co-editor of The Femme Fatale: Histories, Images, Context and The Companion to Film Noir.
Transatlantic Literary Women 