As living subjects rather than static icons, studio-era Hollywood actresses actively negotiated a balance between their public personas, film roles, and corporeal presence. The contemporary audiences engagement with the experience of these actresses unsettles the traditional model of narcissistic identification, which divides the off-screen spectator from his/her on-screen ideal.  Exploring the fans desire for a material connection to the performer as well as the stars own dialogue between embodied experience and idealized image Beyond the Looking Glass traces on- and off-screen representations of narcissistic femininity in classical Hollywood through studies of stars like Greta Garbo, Ava Gardner, and Marilyn Monroe. Merging historical and theoretical concerns, with particular attention to the resonance of golden-age Hollywood in new media, this book explores the movie screen as a medium of shared experience between spectator and star.

Ana Salzbergis a lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Dundee. She received her PhD in Film Studies from the University of Edinburgh, and has published on pre-Production Code cinema, HitchcocksVertigo, and stars including Rita Hayworth and Grace Kelly.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements

Introduction:The Narcissistic Woman: Reflections and Projections

Chapter 1.Garbo Talks: Expectation and Realization
Chapter 2. Katharine Hepburn and a Hollywood Story
Chapter 3. Vanishing Differences inMildred Pierce andLeave Her to Heaven
Chapter 4.One Touch of Venus: Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, and the Production Code
Chapter 5. Wherever theres magic: Performance Time inSunset Boulevard andAll About Eve
Chapter 6. Marilyn Monroe: The Last Glimmering of the Sacred
Chapter 7. Neo-Screen Tests, Part One: Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor
Chapter 8.Neo-Screen Tests, Part Two: Kidman, Lohan, and the Search for Scarlett

Works Cited
Index