(Middle Tennessee State University, 2013)
Helford, Elyce Rae; English
This study considers the ways in which Jewishness figures in the production of the
1947 film A Double Life, contextualized within Hollywood director George Cukor's
personal experience, film oeuvre, and the post-World War II era in which it was
released. Issues of cultural assimilation and discourses of gender, race, class, and
ethnicity are evident in film form, content, and especially process, including casting,
direction, narrative, and visual design. From the film's mobilization of blackface to
its condemnation of "ethnic" femininity, this little-studied, Oscar-nominated thriller
about a murderous Shakespearean actor offers valuable commentary on Jewish
identity and anxieties in mid-twentieth-century America.