“Stage of Conversion”: Suffragists’ Mobilization of Stage and Film in Gotham, 1910–17

This paper focuses on suffragists’ use of film and popular entertainment in New York City from 1910 until 1917, the year New York State enfranchised women. More specifically, it analyzes how activists used the city's entertainment resources—its actresses, theatrical venues, plays, and film companies—to draw attention to their campaign within the incredibly diverse and crowded metropolis that surrounded them, and how they used these resources to broadcast their message to the rest of the nation. Rather than a history of the New York City suffrage movement, this paper is an exploration of the complicated relationship between the woman’s rights campaign and the nation’s largest metropolis, New York City, using film and the stage as a lens through which to view this relationship. 

It argues that Gotham’s role as the center of entertainment, drama, and film helped to change the tone of the suffrage campaign. The metropolis attracted celebrated actresses whose participation in the struggle for political equality challenged stereotypical images of suffragists. Moreover, suffrage plays allowed activists to capture the attention of apathetic individuals who might otherwise have avoided convention meetings and street parades. Employing the New York-based film industry enabled leaders to target an even broader audience both within the city and across the country. Indeed, through film, activists captured inspirational, but fleeting, moments in the campaign and thereby allowed individuals across the nation to vicariously participate in the New York movement. In the face of a city that many assumed leaned toward conservatism and of a nation divided on the question of the ballot, suffragists employed the stage and cinema to try to convince New Yorkers and Americans more generally to support enfranchisement.