Background.

Hollywood's golden age of the 1930s and 1940s had been a showplace for tough, career-minded women. Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Arthur, and Rosalind Russell were seen as models of feminine independence. But in the 1950s and early 1960s the cinematic image of women had softened, becoming more romanticized or more sexually exploitative. Heroines such as Doris Day, Jane Wyman, Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr, and June Allyson were appealing to many, but their decorative, often virginal roles hardly reflected women's real lives. Nor did sexpots such as Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, and Brigitte Bardot. In the 1960s the image of women began to shift, becoming more three-dimensional again. Emerging stars such as Anne Bancroft, Patricia Neal, Natalie Wood, Shirley MacLaine, Joanne Woodward, and British imports Vanessa Redgrave and Julie Christie fleshed out characters that...