TY - BOOK AU - Bertellini, Giorgio AB - In the climate of isolationism, nativism, democratic expansion of civic rights, and consumerism that America experienced after the First World War, Italian-born movie star Rudolph Valentino and Italy’s dictator, Benito Mussolini, became surprisingly appealing emblems of authoritarian male power. Drawing on extensive research in the United States and Italy, Bertellini’s work shows how the political and erotic popularity of Valentino, the Divo, and Mussolini, the Duce, was not just the result of spontaneous popular enthusiasm. Instead, Bertellini argues, it also depended on the efforts of public opinion managers, including publicists, journalists, and even ambassadors. As such, the fame of the Divo and the Duce reveals both the converging publicity work undertaken in Hollywood and Washington since the Great War and the extent to which their foreignness was put to work in managing postwar anxieties about democratic governance. Beyond the democratic celebrations of the Jazz Age, this promotion of charismatic masculinity, while short-lived, inaugurated the now-familiar convergence of popular celebrity and political authority. DO - 10.1525/luminos.62 ID - OAPEN ID: 1004264 ID - OAPEN ID: OCN: 1048014934 ID - OAPEN ID: http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/25825 KW - silent cinema KW - fascism KW - celebrity KW - film stardom KW - dictatorship KW - democracy KW - promotion KW - publicity KW - charisma L1 - https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25825/1/the-divo-and-the-duce.pdf L1 - https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25825/1/the-divo-and-the-duce.pdf L1 - https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25825/1/the-divo-and-the-duce.pdf L1 - https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25825/1/the-divo-and-the-duce.pdf LA - English LK - https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/35453 PB - University of California Press PP - Oakland PY - 2019 SN - 9780520301368 TI - The Divo and the Duce : Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America ER -