Male Seducers and Female Gold-Diggers

Abstract

As the Depression deepened, sexual harassment and exploitation were portrayed vividly in a number of films. Some films showed male bosses taking advantage of their female workers by seducing them. The number of cross-class romances with gold diggers increased. Musicals associated gold diggers with chorus girls, but gold diggers appeared in a range of occupations and milieu. The representations of gold diggers in films related to economic and social anxieties of both women and men, which had been accentuated by the Depression. The films with gold diggers transformed these anxieties in ways that conformed to gender norms and allowed for imaginary solutions. Comedy could make palatable the theme of an unredeemed gold digger, but in dramas, women who exploited their sexuality to gain wealth and social status were almost invariably punished in some way unless they underwent redemption. Most cases of redemption were through the gold digger’s conversion to disinterested love, and they were rewarded by love and wealth after they endured hardships. Whereas gold diggers were all-American girls and mostly sympathetically portrayed, gigolos had accents and were either clownish characters in comedies or unpleasant villains in dramas.1