Background

Jeanine Basinger was born on February 3, 1936, in Ravenden, Arkansas. She is the daughter of John and Sarah Deyling.

Education

Jeanine Basinger received a Bachelor of Science degree with honors from South Dakota State University in 1957. Next year, she received a Master of Science degree also with honors.

Career

After getting degrees, Jeanine Basinger worked from 1958 till 1959 at South Dakota State University as an instructor in introductory English. In 1960 she took a job in the advertising department at a scholastic publisher in Middletown, Connecticut. Within a decade, she was piloting one of the nation's first film study classes. When Jeanine Basinger became a film studies professor at Wesleyan University, she began to examine the so-called dichotomy of the classic "women's film" of Hollywood's Golden Age. Her studies have resulted in several published works, including A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960. In this book Basinger invites a new look at American social attitudes toward women as expressed in such classics as Imitation of Life, Mildred Pierce, and Kitty Foyle, as well as less-remembered efforts like Day-time Wife and The Guilt of Janet Ames.

Basinger is the author of numerous articles and book reviews in such publications as The New York Times, American Film, Film Quarterly, and Opera News, as well as ten books on film including The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre, and Anthony Mann: A Critical Study. She contributed to Collier's Encyclopedia, Dictionary of Literary Biography, University of Connecticut Film Series Publications, Films Inc. Catalog, Audio Brandon Teaching Guides, Kit Parker Films Catalogue, Post-Newsweek Stations, Royal Film Archive of Belgium. She was also a co-author and co-editor of books Women and Film: A Resource Handbook, Fat: An Anthology, The Movie Buff's Book, Women and the Cinema: A Critical Anthology, Closeups: The Movie Star Book, Great Film Makers, Great Films, and Actors and Actresses.

In 1999 Basinger produced her Silent Stars, an appreciation of silent-era luminaries from Rudolph Valentino and Clara Bow to Gloria Swanson and John Gilbert. Basinger continues her examination of Hollywood in her 2007 title, The Star Machine. In this work she focuses on the studio system from the 1930s to the 1950s and the manner in which studio bosses discovered talent and then groomed that person into star quality, separating him or her from a legion of other character actors. Public taste was of utmost importance in the packaging of these stars, Basinger shows. Her other books include Shirley Temple (1975), Gene Kelly (1976), Lana Turner (1976), American Cinema: One Hundred Years of Filmmaking (1994), and The Star Machine (2007).

She served as an advisor to Martin Scorsese's film foundation project, The Story of Movies, co-produced and American Masters episode on Clint Eastwood, and was the head consultant on the PBS special "American Cinema: 100 year of Filmmaking" for which she also wrote the companion book. She has consulted on numerous film documentaries and projects funded by both NEA and NEH. She has also appeared in numerous documentaries, and also in a dramatic role in A Better Way to Die (2000). In 2006 she participated in Wanderlust, a documentary film on road movies and their effect on American culture. She is currently continuing to study films and to write books. Her most recent book is The Movie Musical! (2019). In her new book, Basinger tells the whole story of the Hollywood musical.

Achievements

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  Basinger has been described as "one of the most important film scholars alive today." She received 1996 Wesleyan's Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching, 1999 National Board of Review's William K. Everson Prize, Theatre Library Association Award, and Connecticut Governor's Award for her contribution to Film and the Arts. She was also awarded an honorary degree by the American Film Institute in June of 2006 - the first time it was awarded to an academic - for her contribution to film studies and for the number of her students who work in the field. Her book Anthony Mann: A Critical Analysis was nominated as Best Film Book of the Year by National Film Society.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Silent Stars

    (Film scholar Jeanine Basinger offers a revelatory, percep...)

    1999
  • I Do and I Don't: A History of Marriage in the Movies

    (From one of our leading film historians and interpreters:...)

    2013
  • The Movie Musical!

    (Leading film historian Jeanine Basinger reveals, with her...)

    2019
  • Gene Kelly

    (The Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies is a series...)

    1976
  • Anthony Mann

    (Director of such often-revived films as Winchester '73, T...)

    1979
  • A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930–1960

    (In this highly readable and entertaining book, Jeanine Ba...)

    1994
  • The Star Machine

    (From one of our most distinguished film scholars, comes a...)

    2007
  • The "It's a Wonderful Life" Book

    (The "It's a Wonderful Life" Book tells the entire story o...)

    1986
  • World War II Combat Films: Anatomy of a Genre

    (One of America’s most renowned film scholars, Jeanine Bas...)

    1985
  • American Cinema: One Hundred Years of Filmmaking

    (The movies, like no other art form, are deeply embedded i...)

    1994
  • Shirley Temple

    (The book Shirley Temple is a delightful synopsis of Shirl...)

    1975
  • Lana Turner 1976

Views

Quotations: "A small town is automatically a world of pretense. Since everyone knows everyone else's business, it becomes the job of the populace to act as if they don't know what is going on instead of its being their job to try to find out."

"The movie woman's world is designed to remind us that a woman may live in a mansion, an apartment, or a yurt, but it's all the same thing because what she really lives in is the body of a woman, and that body is allowed to occupy space only according to the dictates of polite society."

"In most movies, it's a rule that shortly after people start quoting poetry, something ghastly is going to happen."

"Magic in cinema is a bit like ventriloquism on the radio."

"Everyone will tell you how rigid I am, but a teacher has to be flexible. You can't cut the student to your cloth; you have to cut yourself to theirs."

"When I started teaching at Wesleyan, I realized the students were fabulous - they had so much imagination, intelligence, originality."

Membership

Jeanine Basinger is a member of the Steering Committee of the National Center for Film and Video Preservation and Phi Kappa Phi. She is also a trustee emeritus of the American Film Institute and one of the Board of Advisors for the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "Truly one of my favorite people." - Clint Eastwood
  
  "She always shows an exquisite sensitivity." - Isabella Rossellini
  
  "Jeanine Basinger’s love of cinema - and the people who make it - is joyful and infectious. It’s overflowing. She makes you want to sign up! That’s why she’s left such a lasting impression on so many filmmakers and critics. She’s starting from a place of joy and love, and she’s transmitting it to everyone she meets." - Martin Scorsese
  
  "Jeanine may look like your great aunt who bakes the best apple pies, but she is a badass of film knowledge and the biggest inspiration of my film career. She’s a legend in inspiring people." - Michael Bay
  
  "Nobody loves the movies more than Jeanine and nobody knows more about the movies than Jeanine." - Julia Louis-Dreyfus
  
  "She has an analytical mind and a rigorous work ethic - yet I have never seen her not have fun." - Bruce Eric Kaplan
  
  "There's nothing she doesn't know." - A.O. Scott

Connections

Jeanine Basinger married John Basinger on May 10, 1967. The marriage produced one child, Savannah Lee.

Father:

John Deyling

Mother:

Sarah Deyling

husband:

John Basinger