Broncho Billy and the Problem of the Male Movie Fan

Abstract

This essay examines the decline of the male movie fan in the early 1910s in relation to one of silent film’s first serial franchises—G. M. Anderson’s Broncho Billy series. Much has been written in recent years about the rise of the female fan during this period, but few scholars have sought to explain why studios and other media so actively courted the female spectator in favor of the male audience that had sustained early hobbyist and fan publications. Looking at a Broncho Billy–inspired shooting from 1914, I argue that the decline of male fans (as subjects to whom the film industry at large, and Essanay Studios in particular, appealed) was intimately related to anxieties over feeblemindedness, mental illness, juvenile delinquency, and adolescent violence.