Letters from the Pacific: Race in Silent Hollywood’s Transnational Reception

Stars’ fan mail collections can help broadening silent Hollywood’s histories of reception. This article explores a rare archive composed of fan letters from the Philippines, Japan, and British India. Sent to actress Dorothy Gish between 1922 and 1924, this personal cache sheds light on the intersections of race, gender, and power in early transnational film fandom. Never before studied, Gish’s epistolary archive affords firsthand insight into the unknown voices of Southeast and East Asian moviegoers in the aftermath of World War I. An analysis of the racial and colonial power differentials subtending exchanges between a white US movie star and nonwestern fans of colour illuminates how new made-in-America conceptions of ‘movie fandom’ and ‘stardom’ influenced Japanese, Philippine, and British Indian self-representation through mediated performances of race, gender, class, nationality, and expertise.