Geraldine Farrar: A Star from Another Medium
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Despite the brevity of her screen career, the experiences of soprano Geraldine Farrar (18821967) in Hollywood and Fort Lee, New Jersey, define many of the most significant trends in stardom of the mid-teens to the early 1920s. Her entrance into filmdom in 1915 and her exit from it in early 1920 similarly bracket a period of major transition for American film as a whole, marking the moment when directors came to rely less on stage talent and more on talent created within the film industry (Koszarski 228). Farrars career marks the peak of the importance of stardom derived from the stage, or, in her case, the opera, taking, as Jesse Lasky observed, "the curse off movie work for stage personalities" (118).