Friday, September 16, 2016

Fangirls Gonna Fan

by Rachel Dworkin, archivist

I am, I confess, something of a fangirl. These days there are a lot of ways for fangirls like me to get our geek on. There are entire industries which market toys and apparel to them.  Tabloids and Twitter help fans keep track of their favorite celebrities. Social media offers fans across the world a platform where they can discuss the latest episode of their favorite shows. Fans can cosplay and meet both fellow fans and content creators at conventions. They can share their fanfic, fanvids, and other fan-created stuff on websites like fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own.  Unless they’re stalking Jody Foster and shooting Ronald Reagan, there’s no wrong way to be a fan.
While there have always been fans, it wasn’t until the early 20th century when industries rose to cater to their interest. The first fan magazine, that is to say a magazine geared towards fans of a specific aspect of popular culture, was called Photoplay. When it first appeared in 1911, each issue was basically a condensed tie-in novel for recently released films.  In 1915, they reformatted to include reviews of films, actor interviews, and celebrity gossip. This became the hallmark of later fan magazines for all sorts of fandoms including film, radio, TV, and sports.

Screen Secrets, March 1930
Back during the 1920s and ‘30s, local teen Ruth Collin took full advantage of the fandom industry of her day.  Her first foray into fandom was a scrapbook made between 1926 and 1928, which she filled with advertisements and reviews of every one of the 87 films she watched during that period.  Starting in the late 1920s, she began subscribing to film magazines including The New Movie Magazine, Movie Mirror, Silver Screen, Screen Romances, and The Modern Screen Magazine. She got studios to send her autographed portraits of her favorite stars.

New Movie Magazine, April 1930
 
Signed photo of Joan Crawford sent by MGM Studio.  The dog did not sign.
 
In addition to the collection documenting Ruth Collin’s fanish obsession, we also have a collection of baseball scrapbooks from the 1940s and ‘50s, and a bunch of 1990s boy band posters.  Now all we need is a Star Trek fanzine from the 1960s and we’ll be all set.  Seriously though, if you have one of those, we really do need one.

1 comment:

  1. Very Interesting to learn about "Fandom" and being a "FAN" of all sorts of things to inclue magazines, blogs, storylines, TV, Soaps, Movies, Talk shows etc and how through time its evolved into what we have today, Thanks for sharing this unique blog !!

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