The 1950s

This chapter evaluates the feature film industry in the 1950s. It begins by focusing on production context and women's union representation as shop stewards — within the broader social context of debates about women and work. The chapter provides an overview of women in the British film industry through union membership application data. It then turns to four complementary case studies that characterize women's work in film production during the 1950s: the production secretary, publicity assistant, paint and trace artist, and editors in the documentary sector. In a decade dominated by debate about women's place in the workforce, relative to the home, the chapter uses women's accounts to trace multiple instances of occupational autonomy and the performance of skilled labor, revealing not only how women sought out and secured avenues for professionally satisfying work but also how their careers bring into view forms of creativity that have been neglected in existing film histories.