There Can Be No Error, There Is No Excuse for a Mistake:
Hollywood's Ideals of Perfection in Makeup and Hairdressing
Wednesday, September 23, 2026 · 6:30 PM · Times Ten Cellars
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Dr. Adrienne McLean is a film historian and author of All for Beauty: Makeup and Hairdressing in Hollywood's Studio Era (Techniques of the Moving Image) studio labor, physical alteration, and image control. Her talk examines that transformation as a case study in Hollywood's ideals of manufactured identity, beauty, and stardom. Dr. McLean is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.
About this evening
Dr. Adrienne McLean examines the machinery behind Hollywood's studio-era image: the makeup artists and hairdressers who built and maintained the faces of stardom. Drawing from her book All for Beauty: Makeup and Hairdressing in Hollywood's Studio Era, she treats physical transformation as a case study in manufactured identity, beauty standards, and the labor that sustained them. The talk centers on how studios controlled appearance, and what that control reveals about the ideals of the era.
This is a look at Hollywood's technical apparatus, not its mythology. McLean's focus is the work itself, the people who did it, and the system that demanded it.
Dr. Adrienne McLean is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas and author of All for Beauty: Makeup and Hairdressing in Hollywood's Studio Era, Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema, and Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom.
A complimentary glass of wine or beer, on us. Must be 21+ to enjoy.
AM
Tonight's speaker
Adrienne McLean
Dr. Adrienne L. McLean is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is the author of All for Beauty: Makeup and Hairdressing in Hollywood's Studio Era (2022), Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema (2008), and Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom (2001). She specializes in film history and theory, women and film, and classical narrative cinema.
Come hang with us.
Times Ten Cellars · Dallas, TX
