Colleen Moore (1902-1988)
The release of the film a Flaming Youth in 1923 transformed its female lead, Colleen Moore, into a major Hollywood star. Her performance, however, represented more than a mere career advancement. Between her Dutch bobbed hair, the raised hemlines of her costumes, and the cocktail-sipping ways of her character, she had introduced moviegoers to the "flapper," a model of emancipated womanhood that women across the country were soon imitating. Many of her subsequent films such as The Perfect Flapper and We Moderns popularized the flapper persona yet further , and it has been said that after Moore American women were never the same again.
Moore is pictured here in a poster for Lilac Time, her first talking picture. The poster was painted for the movie palace owned by photography pioneer George Eastman in Rochester, New York. Hoping to raise the movies in the cultural pecking order, Eastman wanted every element in his theater to be of the finest quality. Instead of settling for the cheap, often mediocre printed images generally used to promote films, he commissioned the artist Batiste Madalena to paint one-of-a-kind posters .
Batiste Madalena (born 1902)
Pencil and gouache, 1928
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
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