Lois Weber's new feminine screen type

Returning from a trip to Europe in 1922, [director Lois Weber] announced her plan to create a new feminine 'screen type' to counter the flappers and vamps who clouded Hollywood's imagination - 'cute little dolls dressed up in clothes that they do not know how to wear'. In contrast, Weber proposed the 'womanly woman' who possessed 'brains and character', and was, above all, 'able to act'. She had been inspired, she said, by European actresses, women whose primary attributes were not beauty or glamour, but depth of personality and range of dramatic talent. This effort is evident in three of Weber's later films, The Marriage Clause, Sensation Seekers and The Angel of Broadway, each of which features a remarkably reflexive meditation on the industry's glamour culture and a leading female role designed to challenge conventional female types. Even as these films helped revive her reputation, Weber spoke publicly about the difficulties she faced as a woman directing in Hollywood and the increased control exercised by studios now run like corporations. If her early publicity had promoted the unique opportunities available to women in the fledgling movie business, by the end of her career, Weber was becoming known as Hollywood's 'only' female film maker, a distinction that celebrated her achievements even as it marginalised them. Weber became the exception that proved the rule. For a filmmaker so renowned and distinguished in early Hollywood, Weber is remarkably unknown.

- Shelley Stamp, 'Lois Weber', in Fifty Hollywood Directors, Abingdon, 2015, p.50