'A new and exceedingly brilliant star': L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, and Mary Miles Minter

Hammill, Faye (2006) 'A new and exceedingly brilliant star': L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, and Mary Miles Minter. Modern Language Review, 101 (3). pp. 653-671. ISSN 0026-7937 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/20466900)

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Abstract

Following the success of Anne of Green Gables (1908), and of the first film version (1919), both L. M. Montgomery and the actress Mary Miles Minter found themselves being reinvented in Anne's image. The relationship between author, heroine, and actress was played out through the public circulation of celebrity names and images. Journalists projected onto Montgomery the qualities they discerned in her heroine, notably wholesomeness and an association with the pastoral, while Minter strategically identified herself with the same values. But whereas Minter turned Anne into an American girl, the media image of Montgomery-as-Anne depended on a conception of Canada as a refuge from American modernity.