CHISHOLM, Anna. Missing Persons and Bodies of Evidence.

Copyright © by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences Library, Beverly Hills, CA.
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Common lore in film history has it that the first film star, Florence
Lawrence, emerged, ironically enough, precisely at the same
moment she was nowhere to be found.
1
The apocryphal tale that
Carl Laemmle orchestrated Lawrence’s disappearance in order
to secure additional publicity and, in so doing, inadvertently
began the star system is not unfamiliar. Likewise, the notion that
presence and absence might converge in a relation of mutual
implication is not altogether new. What has been overlooked in
most histories of US cinema and in most contemporary works on
stardom, however, is the fact that the absence of a star’s body and
the presence of its double or substitute is, and has been, crucial
not only to the phenomenon of the film star but also to cinematic
production, representation, and pleasure.
Body doubles can be defined briefly as persons whose
bodies or body parts are filmed for the purpose of replacing
the bodies or body parts of motion picture actors. Body doubles
occasionally perform stunt work, but the American film industry
has defined and positioned the two occupations quite differently.
Although body doubles often are constitutive of pivotal plot
points in many films, in the context of US film production they
Missing Persons
and Bodies of Evidence
Ann Chisholm
Copyright © 2000 by Camera Obscura
Camera Obscura 43, Volume 15, Number 1
Published by Duke University Press
123
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have been coded as nonessential. Emerging from the ranks of
extras, as opposed to those of principal players, they are rele-
gated to the margins of the film industry. Nevertheless, thanks to
the efforts of body doubles, Julia Roberts poses as the stunning
prostitute (and model for Rodeo Drive fashions) in Pretty Woman
(1990), Janet Leigh flails in Psycho’s shower sequence (1960),
Greta Garbo falls through the ice in the final scenes of Love
(1927), and Vivien Leigh returns to Tara.
2
Mapping the nature and functions of doubling, however,
is not an easy, straightforward task. In large part, direct refer-
ences to body doubling are absent from the majority of industry
documents available for historical study. Likewise, body doubles
often do not receive screen credit for their work and are asked to
sign contracts agreeing not to reveal their part in the production
of cinematic illusion.
How is it, then, that body doubling can be a historical
effect that has been devalued within the US film industry and yet
at the same time yields effects that are vital to the industry and to
the texts it produces? How can these circumstances be investi-
gated when direct references to body doubling (in terms of its sta-
tus both as an effect and as a generator of effects) have been
ignored and masked in industry records and in film texts?
3
In addition to the obvious strategy of collecting and analyz-
ing the few existing references pertaining directly to body dou-
bles, solutions to the problem posed by this second question
regarding their near erasure can be found by interrogating the
conditions of their absence in available artifacts. This approach to
historical inquiry in turn necessitates circumventing the impulse
to define body doubling as a singular, uncomplicated vocation
that is the culmination of a series of points leading from the past to
the present in the causal chain of history. Body doubling instead
can be understood in relation to other functions of the cinematic
apparatus that historically have been granted a greater degree of
discursive visibility within the US film industry—in relation to the
stand-in, the extra, the stunt double, and the star.
4
This study examines cracks and crevices in the narratives
of received histories in order to delineate and to understand the
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complexities of body doubling, while parsing its functions histor-
ically and theoretically. An effect of diverse moments of insti-
tutionalization, body doubling has been constructed and posi-
tioned in terms of constellations of binary oppositions. The
residue of those earlier genealogical moments and relations still
clings to the filmed bodies of doubles and simultaneously reveals
the means through which these ostensibly secondary and supple-
mentary bodies also function to guarantee the economies under-
girding filmic discourse.
At this point, my first question regarding the paradoxical
nature and functions of body doubling reappears. How is it that
body doubling is a historical effect that has been devalued within
the US film industry and yet at the same time yields effects that
are vital to the industry and to the texts it produces? Answers to
this question should be pursued not through efforts to resolve
the contradictions that attend body doubling but rather through
efforts to exploit them.
Due to the operations of doubling and redoubling, body
doubles cannot help but evidence contradictions and excesses
that threaten the economies upon which Hollywood cinema
depends.
5
Doubling, then, is positioned as a dangerous supple-
ment within the economies of cinematic production and repre-
sentation. My allusion here to Jacques Derrida’s remarks con-
cerning Rousseau’s “dangerous supplement” is not accidental.
Among the suppositions offered by Derrida in this context is the
logic of supplementarity, derived by Derrida from Rousseau’s
account of an autoerotic fantasy “summoning absent beauties.”
6
This logic can be summarized briefly as follows: “What adds itself
to something takes the place of a default in the thing, that the
default, as the outside of the inside, should already be within the
inside, etc.”
7
In this respect, binary oppositions that describe and posi-
tion body doubles within the film industry do not describe fully
the meaning and functions of those bodies because the filmed
bodies of doubles violate the integrity of such binaries and tra-
verse the bar between terms and categories that appear to be
opposed absolutely. Therefore the bodies of doubles are effective
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not only in the sense that they produce effects that are pivotal to
cinematic representation but also in the sense that they embody
and mediate contradictions and ruptures in the codes deployed
within the Hollywood film industry in specific ways. For these rea-
sons, instances of body doubling have been defined and con-
tained vigilantly within the US cultural imagination and the film
industry.
The Emergence of the Stand-In
The 1920s marked the height of what film historians refer to as
the era of standardization. The development of the central pro-
ducer system roughly five years earlier was accompanied by that
of both the feature-length film and the continuity script.
8
Within
this milieu, and in the midst of a national movement toward sci-
entific management in manufacturing such as Taylorism, produc-
tion practices in the film industry were subject to subdivision and
specialization.
By 1922, for example, as rehearsals became commonplace,
the stand-in emerged.
9
The stand-in’s job was to save the energies
of film stars by filling in for them while the lighting was checked.
Initially, this function was fulfilled either by a dummy or by an
extra who had the same skin tone as the star (although the stand-in
did not officially join the extra ranks until more than a decade
later).
10
At the outset, then, the stand-in was not necessarily associ-
ated with a conscious, functioning, human presence. It was merely
an ancillary physical presence that filled the space left absent by
the star prior to filming, as opposed to the fundamental human
attributes such as talent or magnetism that were necessary for a
successful actor’s or actress’s performance in a photoplay per se.
11
As the technology involved in film production and thus as
the process of rehearsing, blocking, lighting, and testing became
more elaborate, stand-ins were required to duplicate the appear-
ance of particular stars rather closely. In this vein, Sylvia Lamar, a
stand-in for Heddy Lamar and Joan Crawford, has recalled her
duties as follows: “In the old days . . . we rehearsed the star’s dia-
logue with the director, we copied their mannerisms, and had our
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wardrobe and make-up done.”
12
Described (quite carefully, I
might add) during the studio era as having “the same height, col-
oring, and general appearance” in each particular case as a spe-
cific star, stand-ins were dressed in identical costumes made of less
costly fabric, were expected to imitate the stars and, occasionally,
were asked to run dialogue. These more stringent requirements
for stand-ins, in other words, yielded virtual doubles for the star.
13
Accordingly, a stand-in often would work in tandem with the same
star for a number of years. Therefore, because they were situated
as perfect candidates for doubling and because they were readily
available, stand-ins often performed doubling functions on cam-
era as photodoubles (substitutes for the star in long shots), as
doubles for inserts (substitutes for particular body parts of the star
such as hands, legs, and shoulders), and as stunt doubles.
14
In its fullest incarnation as the substitution of entire nude
bodies, body doubling in films did not in fact become common-
place until after the Motion Picture Production Code had been
annulled (and replaced by autoregulation) in the late 1960s. By
retracing the practice of doubling to earlier moments of institu-
tionalization through the lineage of the stand-in, however, a few
factors that are pivotal to the construction and positioning of
body doubling (which still is referred to occasionally as photodou-
bling) become clear. The common heritage of stand-ins and dou-
bles, for example, can help to illuminate the relationship between
the emergence of body doubling and the industry’s move toward
efficiency and replication. In this respect, the practice of dou-
bling can be linked to the cost-effectiveness of replicating the
appearance of stars during distinct moments of the production
process (e.g., in long shots on location, in scenes that might be
either uncomfortable for or potentially harmful to the body of the
star constructed as being vulnerable and thus insurable, etc.).
The body of the double, therefore, not only provides labor but is
also an object of work that guarantees surplus value in its own
right, and very often the surplus value generated by stars as well.
15
Nevertheless, by delineating the circumstances of the
stand-in, both the near contempt for body doubles within the
industry and the perception that they, like stand-ins, are neither
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central to production nor active components of the actual
process of filming can be understood more fully. What becomes
clear most vividly, in turn, is the degree to which body doubling
has inherited the negative valences associated with being a
second-rate physical copy (e.g., “same height, weight, general
appearance”) devoid of talent, charisma, and star quality. For
instance, during the late 1920s one of Greta Garbo’s doubles,
Geraldine de Vorak, was said to have been allowed to double as
Garbo in public.
16
This double was described as an exact replica
of Garbo in every respect except one: she had “everything that
Garbo has except whatever it is that Garbo has”; she had “every-
thing that Garbo had except the mysterious ingredient that made
Greta Garbo.”
17
According to Durgnat and Kobal, however, the
physical resemblance between the two was precise enough to
prompt “a French journalist to speculate that until 1933 Garbo
had never appeared in an American film.”
18
The ancestry of various types of body doubling is far more
complex than that outlined thus far. Stand-ins did not always per-
form doubling functions and certainly did not do so exclusively.
In fact, doubles frequently were chosen in much the same way
that stand-ins were selected: they were drawn directly from the
masses of extras employed for mob scenes and the like.
Moreover, the pervasiveness of doubling nearly always was
shrouded or contained by industry publicity releases and, conse-
quently, in entertainment reports that featured stand-ins. Body
doubling on film, which rarely received entertainment coverage
in its own right, more often than not went unmentioned in such
articles. Thus, discourses pertaining to the stand-in illustrate Fou-
cault’s contention that particular discourses or elements estab-
lishing a program for an institution at one moment in time may
also “function as a means of . . . masking a practice which itself
remains silent.”
19
In the few instances when body doubling was
mentioned in passing, it was incidental to story angles that
emphasized the novelty of offscreen physical similarities between
stars and stand-ins and the stroke of luck (again due to physical
similarity) that enabled an average person to find a small niche
working offscreen in the film business. These accounts, which
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almost always pertained to women, frequently directed attention
away from the doubling functions stand-ins frequently per-
formed, emphasizing instead the “small-town girl makes good”
angle and stressing the stand-in’s close relationship with the
benevolent stars who were cast as their benefactors.
Concomitantly, a certain slippage occurred between the
binary actor/extra—a slippage facilitated by the phenomenon of
doubling and necessary to the success of the Hollywood star
system and the Hollywood film.
20
Between 1920 and 1950, stories
about the young women and men who were discovered in Holly-
wood, and in particular those about extras who made good and
became stars, were mobilized to encourage and facilitate audi-
ence identification.
21
In this context, doubling of all kinds
assumes particular importance to the extent that standing-in,
photodoubling, insert work, and stunt doubling were, in fact,
means through which otherwise unknown individuals not only
could become part of the film industry but also could literally
take on the role of film stars. This view of the double rehearsing
for stardom still underwrites the discourse of doubles today.
22
Here lies the motivation for the particular attention given
to stand-ins over the years (particularly during the studio era). By
featuring the stand-in, studios could generate publicity and could
facilitate identification through the relative novelty of doubled
physical similarity, while containing the effects of doubling per se
in two ways: first by invoking explicitly the stand-in’s more lim-
ited, administratively defined role as a substitute who did not
appear on film (as opposed to a double who did), and second by
deploying the carefully phrased, spare definition of the stand-in’s
body (“same height, color, and general appearance”), which pre-
served the luminous “magic” of the star—in spite of the fact that
some of the star’s “magic” might be attributed to that very body if
the stand-in also performed doubling functions on-screen.
Actors and Euphemisms in the Academy
Actors, meanwhile, began to negotiate the first “minimum basic
agreement” with producers in 1927 through the newly formed
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Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Extras,
including those who performed doubling work, were defined by
AMPAS as “players receiving $15.00 a day and under or $65.00 a
week and under” and “did not come under the Academy’s juris-
diction” in administering a minimum contract but, instead, were
governed by California State Work Order #16A.
23
Of note in the agreement negotiated by the Academy
between producers and actors, the Academy Minimum Contract
for Artists (effective 1930), is the fact that circumstances linked
with doubling are discussed immediately after the signatories
affix their names and specify the role, the film, and the salary to
which the contract was to refer.
24
The two paragraphs that dealt
with doubling both indirectly and directly read as follows:
2. . . . If after the expiration of the term hereof the producer should
desire the services of the artist in making retakes or in making added
scenes, or in making any “transparencies” or trick shots, or in making
“trailers,” or in making any change or changes in said photoplay, or in
making any foreign version or versions of said photoplay, then and in
either of said events the artist agrees to render such services in
connection therewith as and when the producer may request unless
the artist is otherwise employed, but if otherwise employed the artist
will cooperate to the fullest extent in the making of such retakes,
added scenes, “transparencies” or trick shots, “trailers,” changes and/
or foreign versions.
5. The producer agrees that it will not “dub” or use a “double” in lieu of
the artist, except under the following circumstances: (a) when necessary
to expeditiously meet the requirements of foreign exhibition; (b) when
necessary to expeditiously meet censorship requirements, both foreign
and domestic; (c) when, in the opinion of the producer, the failure to
use a “double” for the performance of hazardous acts might result in
physical injury to the artists; (d) when the artist is not available; (e) when
the artist fails or is unable to meet certain requirements of the role, such
as singing or the rendition of instrumental music or other similar
services requiring special talent or ability other than that possessed by
the artist. The artist does hereby agree that under either or any of the
conditions hereinabove in subdivisions (a) to (e), both inclusive, of this
paragraph 5 set forth, the producer shall have the right to “double”
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and/or “dub” not only the acts, poses, plays and appearances of the
artist, but also the voice of the artist, and all instrumental, musical and
other sound effects to be produced by the artist, to such extent as may be
required by the producer.
25
The first minimum contract adopted for actors, then, addressed
the issue of doubling within the first five points of the original
seventeen-point document. That the fifth point of this agreement
dealt explicitly with doubling is all the more noteworthy inso-
far as it pertains to persons who are not covered by the contract
and who are ostensibly unimportant. Therefore the extra who is
ostensibly absent both in the contract and on the screen, the
extra who doubles for the artist, is a significant presence in the
minimum contract for artists.
The second paragraph of the 1930 minimum contract
required that artists commit to working after the expiration of
the contract if they were needed for retakes, for added scenes, for
“transparencies,” for trick shots, for trailers, for making any
change in the film, or for foreign versions of the film. If the artist
was employed elsewhere at the time, the contract required that
he or she “cooperate to the fullest extent in the making of such
retakes, added scenes, ‘transparencies,’ trick shots,” and so on.
26
To the degree that this paragraph is concerned with the absence
of the artist, it attests to the fundamental importance of film stars
to the production process. What is also interesting, however, is
the fact that, at the same time, technological references assume a
primary position in this paragraph as well. In this regard, in much
the same way that technological advances motivated the evolu-
tion from the early variety of stand-ins to the appearance of nearly
identical doubles for stars, the various technological aspects of
production (transparencies, trick shots, etc.) mentioned in the
contract actually eroded the necessity and the centrality of the
star presence per se—insofar as they potentially made the star, in
fact, replaceable.
Therefore the second paragraph of the 1930 agreement
suggests a concern not only with the absence of the star after the
completion of the term of the agreement but also, potentially,
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with the presence of the absent extra, stand-in, stunt double, or
photodouble (body double). This potential displacement is indi-
cated in the phrase stating that if the star is unable to perform,
he or she is required to “cooperate to the fullest extent.”
27
This
statement, of course, can be read as a requirement that the star
appear. On the other hand, it can also be read as a requirement to
consent to the use of a double, the uses of which are covered by
the fifth paragraph of the contract. The likelihood that the sec-
ond alternative is as plausible as the first is attested by the fact that
many of the conditions set forth in paragraph two are precisely
those set forth in paragraph five, which deals with the issue of
doubling specifically. Among these, the circumstances in which
the “artist is not available” (as well as those tied to “foreign exhibi-
tion”) provide direct links between the two paragraphs (particu-
larly insofar as body doubles today often are used in postproduc-
tion if a star is not available to reshoot a scene).
28
In paragraph five, the contract states that the producers
agree not to use doubles—except under five conditions. In effect,
then, this section of the agreement, wherein the producer agrees
not to use doubles, actually delineates the very circumstances in
which the artist must consent to allow the producer to employ a
double. Accordingly, section five indicates that a double will not
be used unless the artist “fails or is unable to meet certain require-
ments of the role, such as singing or the rendition of instrumental
music or other similar services requiring special talent or ability
other than that possessed by the artist.”
29
The double, often asso-
ciated with a lack of talent, is discussed in such terms here. In this
context, however, the lack of talent is unquestionably that of the
artist rather than that of the extra doubling for that principal
player. The professional/layperson dichotomy that distinguished
most actors from extras, in other words, is elided in the Basic Min-
imum Contract by the double. Again, as a supplement to the tal-
ents of the artist, the double’s talent produces surplus value in two
ways: insofar as it enhances (and perhaps even guarantees) the
surplus value generated by what appears to be the artist’s overall
film performance, and insofar as the extra or double is being paid
as an extra or double outside of the contract rather than as an
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artist covered at a much higher rate of pay by the contract itself.
Moreover, given that the contract stated that either doubling or
dubbing could occur “to the extent required by the producers,”
the degree to which the boundary between the double and the
artist could be ruptured and traversed was substantial.
30
Both the
implication of equality derived from substitutability and the
implication of excess derived from surplus value, however, are
highlighted and simultaneously regulated by the adjective special.
The phrase “other similar services requiring special talent or abil-
ity” functions as a means of containment in this contract because
it is a euphemism. Euphemisms, of course, are acceptable
replacements for that which is unacceptable and unspoken. What
is acceptable and spoken of directly by the contract is vocal and
musical doubling (“singing or the rendition of instrumental
music”); what is unacceptable and unspoken in the contract is the
doubling of body parts and bodies with respect to stand-in work,
insert work, or photodoubling. Hence a distinction is drawn
between dubbing and doubling in this contract, which presages
their eventual separation into entirely different categories.
31
Stunt doubling, in turn, is covered by another condition
under which the actor consented to allow the producers to use a
double. According to this condition, doubles could be used
when, “in the opinion of the producer, the failure to use a ‘dou-
ble’ for the performance of hazardous acts might result in physi-
cal injury to the artist.”
32
Note here that while the contract refers
to a “physical” body, it is that of the actor, not the double. The
body of the stunt double, in contrast, is indirectly conjured by “the
performance of hazardous acts.”
33
At this point in the contract,
however, the function of stunt work, unlike the function of body
doubling, is discussed specifically.
Note also that the binary economy spoken/unspoken
underlying the function of the euphemism is the same as that
underlying the operations of the contract—the linguistic device
that serves to suppress the unspeakable also functions in the con-
tract to suppress any direct reference to the bodies of doubles
that do not speak and presumably do not act (but which provide
“services requiring special talent or ability”).
34
There is, in other
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words, no point in the contract that directly refers to body dou-
bles who “replace the artist unwilling to undergo physical discom-
fort and/or unable to fulfill the aesthetic requirements demand-
ed by the necessity to present his or her body or body parts in a
motion picture role.” The person who doubles bodies and body
parts, then, is the unspeakable subject of the film industry—a
missing person both within the initial documents that might have
delineated the body double’s role in the production process and,
in turn, within cinematic representation.
Regulated Extras
Thus far, I have marked provisionally traces of doubling that
emerged through the institutionalization of the binary functions
star/stand-in and principal player/extra. I also have identified
ambiguities that animate not only body doubling as a category but
also other forms of doubling (stunt doubling and voice doubling)
as they function in relation to stardom. These zones of slippage
with respect to doubling were regulated, delimited, and gendered
by extra reforms instituted in Hollywood throughout the 1920s
and 1930s. An examination of the institutionalization of extra
work during that time, in turn, can explain further the structure,
nature, and function of body doubling in Hollywood. Further-
more, this inquiry provides a framework within which body dou-
bling can be theorized as an element of cinematic representation.
Studios began to formally regulate and institutionalize
extra work in the mid-1920s, a time both when extra work was
considered a questionable occupation at best and when the
domestication of the promiscuous female extra was an underlying
concern.
35
The circumstances of many, although certainly not all,
female extras as well as stray evidence provided in many histories
seems to indicate that a substantial number of these women were
perceived to be the West Coast counterparts of “charity girls,” East
Coast female factory workers who supplemented their income
through various degrees of prostitution. In fact, many of the
women who hoped to become (and who were referring to them-
selves as) film extras eventually entered the dubious profession of
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“gown modeling,” while many women arrested for prostitution in
Hollywood claimed to be film extras.
36
In any event, speculation that female extras were often
prostitutes and rumors that some of the studios were involved in
“white slavery” were not uncommon at the time. Female extras
“making the rounds” between studios, then, sometimes were
thought to be wandering between film work and prostitution, or
simply to be wandering the streets as prostitutes. Therefore, even
before the body double emerged in its fullest incarnation in the
popular imagination as a woman willing to sell her pleasing nude
body to movie studios, the bodies of female extras (including
those performing doubling functions) were thought not only to
evidence female sexuality run amok but also, at its furthest reach,
prostitution. Central Casting, as its name indicates, was designed
in these circumstances to stop extras from wandering between
studio bullpens (the outdoor yards where candidates for extra
work would assemble daily).
37
One of its goals, literally, was to get
extras off the street. The emergence of Central Casting, then,
facilitated the domestication of (female) extras.
38
As one of the chief means for regulating extras, Central
Casting initiated the registration, classification, and regulation of
extra work on a massive scale. In many ways, the move toward clas-
sifying extra work, in tandem with other developments in the film
industry, served more to discredit and to devalue extra work in
general than to increase the importance of any of its particular
subclasses, including body doubling. Take, for example, one of
the primary goals of Central Casting, “decasualization.”
39
This
effort to professionalize extra work was premised on the notion
that extra work was casual work and that most of the 12,000
extras in Hollywood at that time were common folk eager to
appear in films rather than professionals supporting themselves
with acquired skills related to acting.
40
Registering, regulating,
and thus thinning the ranks of extras did not reconstitute extra
work as a craft performed by skilled artisans, however. In fact,
these measures appeared necessary precisely because extra work
was viewed as unskilled labor that could be performed by any
member of the itinerant, aspiring masses. Consequently, Central
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Casting and, in particular, government reports outlining condi-
tions that were the catalysts for its emergence ultimately served to
reinforce oppositions constituted in the industry between the
layperson and professionals, between the extra and the actor, and
between the extra and the star.
Most of Central Casting’s massive registration, notifica-
tion, and record-keeping procedures were required by Work
Order #16A, which emerged in 1926 in the wake of sweeping
legal reforms pertaining to child labor laws and “special” protec-
tions for female workers on a national level.
41
Within a very short
time, all extras were covered by the work order. Nevertheless,
even when the document was applied both to female and to male
extras, the term extra continued to be defined as “any woman
or minor who is employed to act, sing, dance or otherwise per-
form in the production of motion pictures at a wage of $15.00 or
under per day or a wage of $65.00 or under per week.”
42
As late
as 1942, this statement appeared in a compilation of legal docu-
ments regarding extra work that was circulated within the film
industry. The statement in that compilation specifically included
“stand-ins, dancers, cowboys [original emphasis] and all other classi-
fications under the term [extra].” In turn, it effectively gendered
all female and male extras—and, more important for our pur-
poses, all stand-ins and body doubles—feminine.
43
Over the same period of time (1926–42), however, Work
Order #16A did not mention stunt doubling. Stunt doubles
(“stuntmen”), therefore, often negotiated the terms of their
employment separately at a much higher rate of pay.
44
Accord-
ingly, when the Screen Actors Guild ejected extras (including
stand-ins and photodoubles) and forced them to form their own
union, stunt doubles were allowed to remain in the Screen Actors
Guild.
45
The industry, therefore, ultimately aligned stunt dou-
bling with acting (and professionalism), dissociated stuntwork
from the feminization of extra work, and constituted stunt dou-
bles as radically different from body doubles.
Evidence of the circumstances that have positioned body
doubling within the film industry can be revealed by considering
the way the binary stunt doubling/body doubling reproduces the
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traditional binary masculine/feminine. Screen Actors Guild con-
tracts traditionally have valued stunt doubles’ athletic and active
bodies by guaranteeing a lucrative base salary (stunt pay), a claim
on residuals, and a credit at the end of films. Body doubles, on
the other hand, remained classified until recently as “special abil-
ity” extras who received none of these benefits—not even screen
credit.
46
Their contract status as extras was defined not by what
they did, but by what they did not do—by their lack of dialogue,
which also differentiated them from act ors and act resses. The
corresponding association with passivity testified to the inability
of body doubles, as opposed to stunt doubles, to distance them-
selves from the professional descriptions that once had been
applied to both stunt doubles and body doubles—those associ-
ated with the extra and the stand-in. Such assumptions fostered a
telling and patently false contractual distinction between stunt
doubles and body doubles: as principal players, stunt doubles
ostensibly were recognizable on film as individual persons; by
contrast, body doubles were not. This supposed difference once
again constitutes the binary active subject (stunt double)/passive
object (body double), notwithstanding the fact that neither body
doubles nor stunt doubles are supposed to be recognizable in
their own right.
47
Although the number of male body doubles has increased
recently, the gendered valences of the opposition stunt double/
body double are entrenched rather firmly. Stunt doubling, how-
ever, its traditional coding as a masculine occupation notwith-
standing,
48
is subject to a substantial degree of slippage with
regard to gender. In fact, stuntmen have substituted for female
stars for years.
49
Moreover, stuntwomen often substitute for male
stars as well. Since the 1960s, when the first stuntwomen’s associa-
tion emerged, stuntwomen have been representing themselves in
association handbooks either as markedly feminine or as dis-
tinctly masculine figures (a stuntwoman named Stevie is depicted
as a male biker, as a cowboy, etc.). This sort of slippage is less likely
to occur in body doubling, where what seem to be biological sex
differences often are presented directly and unambiguously. As a
consequence, the profession of body doubling, which has been
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linked more obviously and more often with the female body than
with the male body in classical Hollywood cinema,
50
also has been
gendered feminine (sometimes with a great deal of fervor) in the
context of stabilizing and guaranteeing the masculinity of male
stunt doubles.
These events and related moments of institutionalization
coded, situated, and contained the feminized body double within
the rubric of extra work, even as they left the primary functions of
body doubling unmarked and unarticulated.
51
The point here,
however, is not to bemoan the denigrated heritage of contempo-
rary body doubles. Instead, because the erasure of body doubles
in industry documents can be correlated with the move toward
personalization in films, these euphemistic and unvoiced sites of
substitution function to extend and to complicate the status and
function of stardom both in Hollywood films and in contempo-
rary film theory.
Masquerading as Stars
The earliest extra classifications (initially there were three),
like the majority of subsequent, more elaborate classification
schemes, did not include doubling as a distinct division of labor.
Instead, during the 1920s, these classifications were based on
existing studio casting cards that referred to the wardrobe, to
physical abilities (riding, swimming, or fencing), and to the physi-
cal attributes of an extra. These classifications were ranked along
a scale that ranged from costume ownership, which was most val-
ued in terms of pay, to physical activities, to physical traits, which
were valued least.
52
By the 1930s, the first minimum wage rates were estab-
lished. These wage rates validated the existing hierarchy of extra
classifications insofar as they were based on the extensiveness
and suitability of the wardrobe owned by the extra.
53
Moreover,
in concert with the notion that extra work was closer to “atmos-
phere work” than to acting, these categories generally were val-
ued in terms of continua that ran from public to private space
and from group to individual prominence.
54
The economies of
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these classifications, in turn, had ramifications for extras per-
forming stand-in work, photodoubling work, and insert work.
Regardless of the extensiveness and specificity of an extra’s
wardrobe, the extra who performed doubling functions would
not be likely to own costumes that matched those of the actors
starring in any particular film. Furthermore, after the late 1960s
doubles often were nude. Moreover, any sense in which the par-
ticular body (or body part) of an extra performing doubling
work might be considered valuable
55
was diffused further not
only because more value was placed on the extra’s ownership of
wardrobe items than on specific physical qualities, but also
because the function of extras who doubled was to be unrecog-
nizable as individuals in their own right.
56
Thus the very qualities that made body doubles excep-
tional among extras, their physical and sartorial likeness to stars,
resulted in their erasure. Neither the double’s wardrobes nor
the practices of doubling per se were included in the early classi-
fications that were applied to extra work during the 1920s and
1930s.
57
The unmentioned circumstance of the double’s ward-
robe, like the often unremarked or liminal status of the extra
functioning as a body double, then, can be traced to the use of
that wardrobe to masquerade as the actor/star.
58
The masquerade in this context, in turn, constitutes the
nexus between the unstated (the euphemistic) and the over-
stated (the hyperbolic) dynamics of body doubling. A body
double is an extra or substitute masquerading as a principal
player in specific moments on film. These moments by and large
are defined by the need for a particular aesthetic—a particular
visual appearance of a clothed (and often, in later films, an
unclothed) body or body part.
59
As a supplement provided by an
extra, body doubling ultimately has been coded as an un/neces-
sary, decorative enhancement of sorts, one that is linked to gen-
dered physical (and gestural) display.
These particular uses of body doubles as substitutes for
female and male film stars, in other words, generate gendered
excesses in which physical displays of masculinity and feminin-
ity are rendered (still more) desirable. As a masquerade, body
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doubling, therefore, “flaunt[s]” and produces “excess(es) of fem-
ininity” and masculinity associated with stardom.
60
In this sense,
Mary Ann Doane’s description of the masquerade illuminates the
function of body doubling: the masquerade, she writes, “doubles
representation” in combination with “hyperbolizing the accou-
trements of femininity” (and, I would add, masculinity).
61
Such exaggerations occur in three representational con-
texts wherein body doubling occasions gendered performances
that supplement the performances of stars. First, body doubles
often are substituted for stars in order to enhance the appear-
ance of clothing (worn on what is ostensibly the star’s body or
body parts). Second, body doubles often are substituted for stars
in scenes where the appearance of the body part itself is of
greater consequence than that of the wardrobe, but where por-
tions of the wardrobe are still visible (e.g., to substitute more
attractive feminine hands in an insert shot of an arm in a ruffled
sleeve writing a letter, to substitute for “piano legs” in a shot fea-
turing a star’s legs in tennis shorts, etc.).
62
Third, body doubles
are used when the star is unable, unwilling, or unavailable to per-
form a particular action. Yet, again, aesthetic requirements often
are understood to be a primary motivating force for the selection
of a double both insofar as the action is understood to be minor
(e.g., typing, standing in cold water, pulling a turnip out of the
ground) and insofar as the same doubles often are selected to
perform all three functions described above.
In all three cases, identical wardrobes are worn when the
double substitutes for the star (although this does not occur in
the context of nude doubling). In all three cases, the bodies and
body parts of doubles who supplement the appearance of stars
usually embody the aesthetics of gender to a greater degree than
the bodies and body parts of stars themselves. Here, the substi-
tution is not just that of another body or body part, but of a partic-
ular gendered body style identified and selected at times from
hundreds of available options.
63
Body doubling, in these circum-
stances, is more than a mere supplement to gender: it is, in fact,
the necessary condition of a particular kind of gendered per-
formance or representation on film.
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The female body double, then, constructs femininity “as
a mask” that obscures her own participation in the film.
64
She is
a woman who “uses her own body as a disguise,” appearing to
be someone else as she “demonstrate[s] the representation of
a[nother] woman’s body.”
65
Overall, therefore, body doubling
marks those moments when gender is elaborately constructed,
performed, and distanced from the star. In turn, the use of a body
double points definitively to moments when femininity in cine-
matic representation “is constructed as the decorative layer that
conceals non-identity.”
66
If body doubling enacts the construction of gender as a
masquerade, then the result of doubling in this regard is the pro-
duction of a gap. According to Doane, this gap provides a space
between female characters and their gendered performances
and a “denial of the production of femininity as closeness, of
presence-to-itself.”
67
When body doubling occurs in films, such
momentary gaps are particularly apparent. Often signaled by a
cut in conjunction with either the absence or the obscuring of a
star’s face, doubling is not a seamless process that is undetectable
on-screen.
68
The masquerade also can be used to understand male
body doubles in relation to stardom and performances of gender.
In other words, the doubling of male costumed bodies or body
parts—wherein body doubling is in fact the necessary condi-
tion of embodied performances of particular kinds of masculin-
ity, wherein the body double is using his own body as a disguise,
and wherein masculinity is elaborately constructed, performed,
and distanced from the star as “a decorative layer that conceals
non-identity”—functions definitively as a masquerade of mascu-
line display.
In this regard, Stephen Heath has argued that the mas-
querade is comparable to such a display. Specifically, he maintains
that the use of costume, uniform, and the “trappings of author-
ity, hierarchy, position make the man, his phallic identity.”
69
Heath continues by invoking the words of Eugenie Lemoine-
Luccioni to resolve that “if the penis was the phallus, men would
have no need of feathers or ties or medals. . . . Masculine display,
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like the masquerade, thus betrays a flaw: no one has the phal-
lus.”
70
Likewise, Richard Dyer has argued that masculine display,
as embodied by the taut, muscled bodies of male pinups, both
indicates action and aims to avert the look—straining to embody
the phallic mystique and ultimately failing.
71
Masculinity con-
structed in the context of the double’s display, therefore, points
to a crucial instability inherent in performances of masculin-
ity themselves. As an enhanced moment of male display, dou-
bling betrays the absence of the phallus, the (ambivalent) mark
of coded relations to power and the (ambivalent) mark of self-
presence. Jacques Lacan has summarized this state of affairs aptly
by asserting that “virile display itself appears as feminine.”
72
Therefore, the double who masquerades, either male or female,
is feminized both as a subset of extra work and as a means of gen-
dered display that indicates a lack of self-presence in Western cul-
ture as well.
The crux of the matter here is not an extended analy-
sis based on the Lacanian concept of the phallus in all of its psy-
choanalytic complexity, but rather the hyperbolic function of
body doubling as a distinctive and compelling form of gendered
masquerade. Hyperbole, Derrida tells us in “Cogito and the His-
tory of Madness,” is a rhetorical figure that induces excess and
threatens self-presence.
73
Thus, as I have been arguing, the gen-
dered hyperbole often generated by body doubling eventu-
ates the “non-identity” (of femininity and masculinity and of self-
presence) common to both the star and the double.
74
Stardom, in turn, is (partly) the result of the excessiveness
and of the gaps that attend body doubling. Therefore, as a figure
of representational excess and difference, body doubling is both
the limit and the condition of presence. Because the condition is not
presence (of stardom, of gender, of representational codes) per se
but the desire for presence—because the condition is différence—we
can conclude not only that the body double masquerades as the
star, but also that the star masquerades as the body double.
75
In short, there are two absences necessary to the economy
of body doubling: the absence of the star’s body and the absence
of the body double’s body. That body doubling is predicated on
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the disappearance of the star is apparent; that body doubling is
predicated on the disappearance of the body double is less obvi-
ous. In many ways, the body double has served its purpose in
those moments subsequent to its appearance, in those moments
when the star (re)appears and audiences believe the identically
clothed body they see in the present is that of the double, which
they have seen in the past.
Peggy Phelan has discussed a similar dynamic in terms of
both performance and the masquerade, arguing that the bodies
disappear into costumes, props, gestures, prostheses (and, I
would argue, makeup, musculature, implants, etc.) that mark the
body as appearance.
76
Doubling, in this sense, can be understood
as mimed self-effacement, as that which occasions distinctive, pre-
cise analyses attending not only to the historical specificity of gen-
dered representation, but also to potential sites of rupture within
representational codes.
These Boots Aren’t (Simply) Made for Streetwalking:
Pretty Woman, the Masquerade, and Body Doubling
As masquerade and as the miming of both femininity and mas-
culinity, body doubling embodies hyperbolic excesses that are
compelling insofar as they highlight the coded markers of gen-
dered norms behind which bodies disappear. Yet, simultane-
ously, they are of consequence insofar as they destabilize particu-
lar cinematic articulations of femininity and masculinity by
distancing their gendered performances from those of the star
or principal player. Furthermore, in challenging what Richard
Dyer refers to as “the individuated assumptions linked with the
pseudo-unification of stardom,” body doubles interrupt stars’
mediations of textual/cultural contradictions and often perform
that function themselves (thus occupying sites of textual rupture
and negotiation).
77
Many of these dynamics are discernible in the film Pretty
Woman. Although Julia Roberts had been recognized in Holly-
wood for her earlier work in Mystic Pizza (1988) and Steel Magno-
lias (1989), her successful performance of the title role in Pretty
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Woman made her a bankable star.
78
When a body double, Shel-
ley Michelle, revealed on tabloid television that her body, not
Roberts’s, was used both in the poster promoting the film and in
several scenes of the film itself, a scandal of sorts ensued. Michelle
returned to television, intimating on various talk shows that she
had been threatened with a lawsuit. An examination of the scenes
in which Michelle doubled for Roberts illuminates not only the
threat doubling poses to the illusion of stardom but also many
characteristics of doubling described earlier in this essay.
Julia Roberts’s first appearance in Pretty Woman is pre-
ceded by that of her body double (whose function and whose
name were not mentioned in the film credits). Thus, it is the dou-
ble, rather than Roberts herself, who introduces Roberts’s char-
acter (Vivian). The first shot of the double depicts her buttocks,
clad in black panties. The camera pans up the double’s body as
she rolls over in bed and reaches over to turn off a ringing alarm
clock. Her head is covered by a pillow. The shots that follow, in
which the body double rises and dresses, are preceded by close-
ups of photographs pinned on the wall. These pictures, which
provide the first glimpses of Julia Roberts’s face, orchestrate the
film’s earliest negotiations between the body of the double and
the absent star. These negotiations between the presence of the
double and the absence of the star, in turn, construct the charac-
ter Vivian.
In the sequence that follows, only the torso, arms, and legs
of the body double are visible. This sequence comprises close-ups
of the double in which she pulls the top of her dress over a black
lace bra, dons cheap bracelets, uses a magic marker to fill in flaws
on a pair of boots held between her black-stockinged thighs, and
zips up one thigh-high black patent leather boot with a safety pin
that serves as the zipper head (the camera pans up her leg follow-
ing the zipper as she does so). Here, the presence of the body
double is distinctly perceptible at the precise moment in the film
when femininity is presented overtly as a masquerade coded in
terms of stereotypical prostitute garb.
The hyperbolic femininity instantiated by the double’s
body in these opening scenes signals the distance between the
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performance of the prostitute body and the woman. The body of
the double, in other words, is the body that first constitutes the
gap between the hooker and the heart of gold—a space crucial to
the narrative’s progression and a space from which the film’s
articulations of femininity spring.
Although two consecutive shots of Roberts’s face are in-
serted between shots of the double’s arms and legs, the sequence
culminates with a close-up of the thigh-high patent leather boots
entering the frame behind a railing at the top of stairway. Here,
the boots function both to establish continuity between the dou-
ble and the star and to retain the impression left by the earlier
shots of the double’s legs (even though the double has disap-
peared). Roberts’s body appears for the first time in this shot, as
she walks along the railing and turns toward the camera to walk
down the stairs. She wears a large bulky jacket, one that camou-
flages differences between herself and the double seen in the
prior sequence. Specifying these differences, Roberts’s double
has stated that “Julia has these straight legs and they wanted
somebody shapely. . . . and on top I was bigger—enough to make
her look better.”
79
Thus in this shot, which immediately follows
the diegetic masquerade performed by the double, Roberts mas-
querades as that double, who masqueraded as Roberts.
The implications of these scenes are redoubled in a later
sequence, one common in romantic comedies, wherein a fashion
makeover signals the Pygmalionlike transformation of a lower-
class female character. In this portion of the film, Vivian overtly
flirts with a new mode of femininity. The body of the double once
again is perceptible in this second unmistakable diegetic per-
formance of femininity as a masquerade.
Shots of the double are inserted at the nucleus of the
sequence—a sequence synchronized with the title song of the
film, Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman,” which is synecdochic
with the film in its entirety.
80
The double appears in four shots. In
the first, the double’s buttocks face the camera. Clad again in
black panties, the tresses of a red wig (presumably matching
Julia Robert’s hair) tumble down her back as she shimmies into a
pink silk camisole while turning her torso clockwise toward the
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camera. The top of the frame crosses the double’s shoulders,
effectively decapitating her. Roy Orbison’s voice accompanies
this shot, crooning the lyrics “I don’t believe you, you’re not the
truth.” A similar close-up of the double pivoting clockwise toward
the camera in a Chanel-style suit follows, accompanied by the
lyric “No one can look as good as you.” The lyric “Mmmercy”
introduces a slightly longer shot of the double’s torso modeling a
polka-dot sleeveless designer dress that Roberts’s character will
wear to a polo match later in the film. Finally, a close-up of the
double’s foot appears. The camera pans up her leg as her hands
pull on a cream-colored stocking, while Orbison growls on the
soundtrack (“grrrrr”).
Here, the body double (not the star) specifies relations
between body style and class-specific norms of attractive (white,
heterosexual, bourgeois) femininity: the double literally enacts
those norms both with respect to particular items of appropriate
and attractive apparel and with respect to norms regarding the
ideal appearance of feminine bodies in those clothes. This pivotal
scene in the film, a scene that unpacks the particulars of physical
appearance in relation to feminine class mobility, depends on the
supplementation of an extra(’s) body.
81
When Vivian (Julia
Roberts) leaves the boutique in a new ensemble (the object of
admiring glances from well-suited white men as she walks down
Rodeo Drive), and when she attends the polo match in one of the
dresses modeled in the “fashion show” sequence, her screen pres-
ence and perceptions of her femininity are again the culmination
of the prior substitution of another woman’s body.
In this regard, the double’s body, the supplement, signals
more than its own fundamental participation in particular articu-
lations of femininity. When Orbison intones, “I don’t believe you,
you’re not the truth,” the double’s body (in combination with the
wig seen in three of the four shots) functions ironically, indicating
that the image, in fact, is not “true” in the sense that the substitu-
tion of better (toned, sleek, well-maintained) buttocks and better
breasts constitutes the ultimate construction of femininity—a
pretty woman twice, even three times, removed.
82
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Furthermore, in this film the body double finesses class
contradictions that are typically “resolved” and suppressed by
romantic comedy. The recommodification of Vivian’s body from
that of the prostitute who is paid for the use of her body to that of
the woman who purchases items and services to redefine (and
shape) her body is fundamental to the film’s narrative. Here the
myth of the American dream, the myth that people can pull
themselves up by their bootstraps, presumes and depends upon
the existence of class distinctions. In Pretty Woman, these distinc-
tions are straddled by the double’s body. Both the boots of the
prostitute and the cream, silk stockings of the transformed
“pretty woman” are filled by the long, lithe legs of the double
(insured by Lloyd’s of London for $1 million).
83
The body that
establishes class distinctions at the outset of the film by embody-
ing the prostitute body, then, also erases those distinctions inso-
far as it is a vehicle for class mobility and recognition as an object
of desire among upper-class white men.
Moreover, the body double in Pretty Woman is a fundamen-
tal means for queuing the transgressive fantasy of the prostitute, a
fantasy that often involves racial desire. Here again, the perform-
ance of the body double—not the star—subtly invokes, negoti-
ates, and redirects that fantasy (and all that it implies).
The film’s credit sequence, which immediately precedes
the initial appearance of the body double dressing to walk the
streets as a prostitute, introduces the terms of the fantasy she
embodies. The credits begin to roll as Richard Gere (Edward)
drives to Hollywood after leaving a posh party in a wealthy
enclave of Los Angeles. The establishing shots depicting Holly-
wood Boulevard include an image of a muscular, black man on
a billboard that covers the side of a high-rise and a close-up of
two hands, one black hand and one white hand wearing a black
leather handgrip, exchanging money for drugs. These stereo-
typical images signal that, by driving to Hollywood, Edward trav-
erses not only class boundaries but racial boundaries as well. The
second image also indicates that the financial exchanges that
take place in this milieu—as opposed to those that occur in the
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environs Edward usually frequents—often contain a racial com-
ponent as well.
The film constructs prostitution in similar terms. A set of
two shots initially portrays (presumably) female prostitutes plying
their trade from a distance. In the opening two shots, the first
prostitute visible in the frame is a black woman wearing a short
spandex dress that reveals almost the entire length of her leg.
The second prostitute in this shot is a white woman, who is simi-
larly clad with the exception of her black, thigh-high stockings.
The next shot is similarly constructed. In this shot, a black prosti-
tute, the first to be presented in medium close-up and the first
to utter an audible line of dialogue, solicits a john (“You look-
ing for a date, honey?”). The soundtrack that accompanies
Edward’s foray into Hollywood, “The King of Wishful Thinking,”
also frames these shots.
Against this background, both the ensuing sequence in
which the body double wears black lingerie in every shot and, in
particular, the striking shot of the double zipping up the thigh-
high black boot connote more than sexiness per se—they con-
note racial desire. The body of the white double that constructs
the masquerade of prostitution by wearing a black bra, black
panties, black nylons, and black boots mediates this desire by con-
structing and conveying a subtly doubled fantasy. This fantasy is
whitewashed convincingly (but not erased completely) as a con-
dition of class mobility during the modeling sequence in the bou-
tique, when a second, identical shot of the double’s leg replaces
the tacky black boot with the white silk stocking.
Overall, then, the doubling sequences in Pretty Woman are
crucial to the film’s mobilization of desire. In the film, the overtly
coded, ultimate object of desire is rendered by the absence and
the presence of both the star and the double: it is a not quite pres-
ent mode of (white, heterosexual, bourgeois) femininity consti-
tuted by a not quite present double and star. Thus, negotiations
of the star’s and the double’s images are subverted by absence, yet
bolstered by the desire for presence—a presence desired in this
film because of its function in conveying class-based ideology and
repressed race-based fantasy.
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Notes
I would like to thank Sasha Torres and Jeanne Scheper. I also
would like to express my deep appreciation to Marita Sturken for
encouraging me to pursue this project and to Dana Polan for
reading an earlier draft of this manuscript.
1. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The
Classical Hollywood Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press,
1985), 101; Gillian Hanson, Original Skin: Nudity and Sex in
Cinema and Theater (London: Tom Stacey, 1970), 60; Gerard
Lenne, Sex on the Screen: Eroticism in Film, trans. D. Jacobs (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978), ix; Anthony Slide, The American
Film Industry: A Historical Dictionary (New York: Greenwood,
1986), 325. Arguing for a “more precise chronology” that
includes the theatrical star system, Janet Staiger’s essay “Seeing
Stars” has challenged historical accounts that assume “Carl
Laemmle’s promotion of Florence Lawrence led to the star
system.” See Janet Staiger, “Seeing Stars,” in Stardom: Industry of
Desire, ed. Christine Gledhill (New York: Routledge, 1991), 3.
2. Pretty Woman, dir. Gary Marshall, perf. Richard Gere and Julia
Roberts, Touchstone, 1990; Psycho, dir. Alfred Hitchcock,
perf. Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh, Shamley Productions,
1960; Love, dir. Edmund Goulding, perf. Greta Garbo and John
Gilbert, MGM, 1927; Gone with the Wind, dir. Victor Fleming,
perf. Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, MGM, 1939.
3. This second question regarding the near erasure of body
doubles recalls the charges of hypocrisy leveled by feminists
against genealogies that do not, in fact, consider female bodies—
presumably (and this is the point at which the irony becomes
almost impenetrable for the indicted genealogist) because such
bodies previously had been absented from the majority of
cultural discourses and documents available for historical study.
See Sandra Lee Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, and the
Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” and Irene Diamond and
Lee Quinby, introduction to Feminism and Foucault, ed. Irene
Diamond and Lee Quinby (Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 1988), 63–64, xvi–viii.
4. In “The Confession of the Flesh,” Michel Foucault defines
apparatuses as “heterogeneous ensemble[s] consisting
of discourses, institutions, . . . regulatory decisions, laws,
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administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical,
moral and philanthropic propositions—the said as much as the
unsaid” (Michel Foucault, “The Confession of the Flesh,”
in Power/Knowledge, ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Colin Gordon
et al. [New York: Pantheon, 1980], 194). Accommodating the
exigencies of time, apparatuses, like the interests of power and
constellations of knowledge with which they are infused, shift
and develop perpetually. This study relies on several constituents
of the cinematic apparatus circa 1920. Chief among these are
documents pertaining to the administrative measures and state
laws that governed the regulation of employees (particularly
film extras) in the film industry at that time. The moral and
philanthropic propositions that helped to motivate the
regulation of promiscuous female extras are discussed later
in this essay.
5. Jacques Derrida, “The Double Session,” in Dissemination, trans.
Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981),
198–202.
6. Jacques Derrida, “. . . That Dangerous Supplement,” in Of
Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 153.
7. Derrida, Of Grammatology, 215.
8. Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema,
128, 136.
9. Ibid., 151. Inez Klumph and Helen Klumph, Screen Acting:
Its Requirements and Rewards (New York: Falk, 1922), 175.
10. Klumph and Klumph, Screen Acting, 175.
11. By 1937, stand-ins were promoting a road company composed
entirely of members drawn from their profession, who aimed
to prove that they were, in fact, talented. “Stand-Ins Forming
Road Co.,” Citizen, 5 October 1937, General Subject File for
Stand-Ins, Margaret Herrick Library, Beverly Hills, CA
(hereafter cited as Margaret Herrick Library).
12. Liza Wilson, “The Stand-In’s Dilemma: A Matter of Status,” Los
Angeles Herald Examiner California Weekly, 17 May 1964, 8–9.
13. In 1940, John Chee wrote the following: “Most stand-ins double
for their stars—that is they appear in long shots in scenes where
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the character is supposed to get rained on or is otherwise
subjected to actual discomfort. . . . Fewer of them, however, do
stunt work. Mostly professional stuntmen and women take those
chances” (John Chee, “‘Stand-Ins’ Live Amid Glamour yet Are
Not Noticed at All,” Evening News, 31 January 1940, 3, 35,
Margaret Herrick Library). Likewise, Daniel Foster states that
during the studio era “cinematographers required stand-ins to
be virtual doubles for stars” (Daniel Foster, “Standing in the
Spotlight for a Star,” Los Angeles Times, 29 May 1992, Valley
Edition: F17A, F17C, Margaret Herrick Library).
14. Chee, “‘Stand-Ins,’” 3, 22. Robin Coons, “Stand-Ins for
Stars Carving Out Own Fortune,” Citizen, 5 January 1935,
Margaret Herrick Library. John Scott, “Screen Star’s Stand-In
Has Thankless Job,” Los Angeles Times, 11 February 1935, 7,
Margaret Herrick Library.
15. Documents pertaining to negotiations between the Motion
Picture Producer’s and Director’s Association (MPPDA) and
Screen Actors Guild (SAG) indicate that stand-ins often were
“photographed as the photographic double of the Principal
for whom he has been engaged as Stand-In, wherein such
doubling is incidental to and a part of the work of the first unit
(as distinguished from a second unit)” (“From the Stand-Ins of
the Motion Picture Industry,” letter to the Motion Picture
Producer’s and Director’s Association, 1937, Margaret Herrick
Library, 2–3).
16. Raymond Durgnat and John Kobal, Greta Garbo (New York: E. P.
Dutton, 1965), 38.
17. Rilla Page Palmborg, The Private Life of Greta Garbo (Garden City,
NY: Doubleday, 1931), 64–65; Norman Zierold, Garbo (New
York: Stein and Day, 1969), 83.
18. Durgnat and Kobal, Greta Garbo, 38–39. Garbo, who had been
marketed unsuccessfully on the basis of her figure as an athletic
star, was constantly dieting to lose weight and was stricken with
anemia. Garbo, in turn, relied on her double “to save [her]
energy whenever she could” (Palmborg, Private Life, 64).
19. Foucault, “Confession,” 194. Although the masking of body
doubling is illustrated most vividly by discourses pertaining to
the stand-in, discourses pertaining to stardom and extra work
often operate in a similar manner.
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20. Other related binaries identifiable in this analysis of the stand-in
include the following: primary/secondary, active/passive,
professional/layperson, talented/untalented, animated/inert,
special/ordinary, destiny/luck, first unit/second unit, etc.
21. Murray Ross, Stars and Strikes: The Unionization of Hollywood (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 85.
22. This conception of the double rehearsing for stardom often has
negative implications. While many doubles express their
desire to be actors, the stand-in who doubles has been referred
to as an “actor manqué.” See “The Stunted Hopes of a Stand-In,”
The London Observer, 19 December 1993, 21, Margaret Herrick
Library.
23. Both contracts are significantly different than the agreement
made with “day players,” those players employed on a daily
basis at a salary in excess of $15 per day. Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences Bulletin, No. 42, Hollywood, CA, 1 March 1932,
15, 19.
24. About the signature, Derrida writes the following: “Does the
absolute singularity of the signature as event ever occur? Are
there signatures? Yes, of course, every day. Effects of signature
are the most common thing in the world. But the condition of
possibility of those effects is simultaneously, once again, the
condition of their impossibility, of the impossibility of their
rigorous purity” (Jacques Derrida, “Signature, Event, Context,”
Limited Inc., trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman
[Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1977], 20). These
“effects” include the fact that the written signature implies the
absence of the signer and the fact that its iterability corrupts “its
identity and its singularity.”
25. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Bulletin, No. 42,
Hollywood, CA, 1 March 1932, 16–17 (hereafter cited as AMPAS
Contract).
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.; P. K. Lerner, “Double Duty,” Los Angeles Times, 2 June 1991,
86, 92.
29. AMPAS Contract, 16–17.
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30. Ibid.
31. Most important here is the fact that voice doubles eventually
were granted membership in SAG, whereas other doubles
continued to be classified as extras.
32. AMPAS Contract, 16–17.
33. Ibid.
34. The same document also deploys the term services to describe
the contracted duties of the actor. The first paragraph states that
“the producer hereby engages the artist to render services as
such in the role of ________” (ibid.). The services discussed in
the context of doubling, again, are described in the phrase that
follows: “When the artist fails or is unable to meet certain
requirements of the role such as singing or the rendition of
instrumental music or similar services requiring special talent or
ability other than that possessed by the artist.” That the body
double’s services are equivalent both to those required by the
artist’s role and to those required of either singers or musicians
substituting for the artists is obfuscated by the fact that they are
unspecified and contained euphemistically.
35. Although extra work was perceived as a “feminine” occupation
(primarily because a larger number of women composed
the extra ranks), women were placed only half as often as men.
See Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of California, Twenty-
Second Biennial Report (Sacramento, CA, 1926), 151–54; Ross,
Stars and Strikes, 73. Even as late as 1941 it was assumed that most
extras, particularly women, had some form of “supplementary
income.” See Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of California,
Twenty-Second Biennial Report , 147; Ross, Stars and Strikes, 78.
Of note in this respect is the fact that historians suggest that
they are baffled when trying to delineate the ways that these
extras actually supported themselves. Even after regulation,
data from a poll taken by the Association of Motion Picture
Producers in 1939 indicates that two-fifths (40 percent) of
extras surveyed did not respond to the question concerning the
source of their earnings outside of extra work. See Ross, Stars and
Strikes, 78.
36. Ross, Stars and Strikes, 78.
37. Ibid., 70.
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38. Thus, in many ways, the policing of extras can be linked
specifically to the regulation of women. In this regard, it is not
surprising that the women traveling to and from the studios were
the object of some attention in this document. According to the
work order, the studios were required to provide transportation
for women working at night. Industrial Welfare Commission for
the State of California, Work Order 16A (San Francisco, CA,
1925), sec. 5f. Furthermore, as I indicate later in this essay,
attempts to regulate extras through Central Casting and Work
Order #16A closely mirrored concurrent attempts by
conservatives to contain changing norms of sexuality and modes
of femininity (embodied quite vividly by the frankly sexual
flapper and the New York “charity girl”), which were more
sexualized than Victorian definitions of femininity in the sense
that women’s sexual needs were seen to be as important as those
of men. See Steven Seidman, Romantic Longings: Love in America,
1830–1980 (New York: Routledge, 1991), 86.
39. Central Casting was just one of many efforts at “decasualization”
that were initiated in the mid-1920s. Louis B. Perry and Richard
Perry, A History of the Los Angeles Labor Movement, 1911–1914
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 345; Ross, Stars
and Strikes, 25.
40. Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of California, Twenty-Second
Biennial Report, 146–47; Ross, Stars and Strikes, 25.
41. Among the more interesting “protections” required by Work
Order 16A was the established maximumwage of $15 a day (a
woman paid more than this could no longer be defined as an
extra). Industrial Welfare Commission for the State of California,
Work Order 16A, sec. 1–4.
42. Association of Motion Picture Producers, compilation printed
for members of the Association of Motion Picture Producers,
Association of Motion Picture Producers Compilation of Legal
Documents (1943), 25, 69 (hereafter cited as AMPP Legal
Documents). Work Order 16A defined an extra as “any woman or
minor who is employed on a daily basis to act in motion pictures
at a wage of $15.00 or under per day” (Industrial Welfare
Commission for the State of California, Work Order 16A, 1).
43. AMPP Legal Documents, 25, 34, 69. Along these lines, Murray Ross
wrote in 1941 that “contrary to the general belief that extra work
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is a feminine occupation, despite the fact that more women
extras are registered with central casting, men get more work
because men predominate in most motion picture crowds”
(Ross, Stars and Strikes, 75).
44. AMPP Legal Documents, 25, 34, 69. By 1943, stuntmen were paid
“at the rate of $200 per week, for a six-day week, unless employed
under term contracts at the rate of at least ten out of thirteen
weeks (or longer in the same minimum proportion), in which
case their minimum salary shall be at the rate of $100 per week,
for a six day week” (ibid., 69–70). At the time, the practice of
body doubling was not mentioned in the pay scales for extras,
although stand-ins were paid $8.25 a day or $49.50 per six-day
week (ibid., 28, 30–34).
45. Ibid., 25, 69.
46. Most telling in this regard is a statement made by Jennifer Beals’s
double regarding credited screen appearances in the film
Flashdance: “The dog got credit and I didn’t” (Lerner, “Double
Duty,” 92). More recently, body doubles have formed an
organization, Body of Doubles (BOD), to negotiate with SAG’s
Work and Wages Committee for benefits equivalent to those of
stunt doubles. Consequently, in July 1995, they secured pay as
principal performers, but still do not receive either screen credit
or residuals.
47. Of course, Marx’s views concerning the ideological import of
the “individual” to the capitalist mode of production explain to
a certain extent the greater symbolic and material valuation of
the recognizable individual in this context, both in terms of
production and in terms of representation. See Karl Marx,
“Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy,” in The German
Ideology, ed. C. J. Arthur (New York: International Publishers,
1986), 124–23. More important, however, is the fact that neither
body doubles nor stunt doubles are supposed to be recognizable
as individuals in their own right on-screen. Actually, the more
salient point of differentiation between the two modes of
doubling in this regard seems to be the fact that the stunt
double’s body is most often filmed in its entirety—in contrast
to the body double’s body, which often is used for its parts.
48. The term stuntman has been used customarily in industry
documents pertaining to stuntwork. Likewise, the appellation
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stuntman typically has been assumed by groups (such as The
Stuntmen and The Stuntmen’s Association of Motion Pictures
Incorporated) representing the interest of stuntworkers in the
industry. See The Stuntmen, letter to the Association of Motion
Picture Producers, 17 March 1941, Motion Picture Producers
of America Files for Extras, Motion Picture Producers’
Association, Sherman Oaks, CA; Hollywood Stuntmen Hall of
Fame, January–February 1974, Special Collections, Margaret
Herrick Library. See Falling for Stars, July–August 1974, Special
Collections, Margaret Herrick Library.
49. In spite of the fact that one stuntman has explained that women
did not work often as stunt doubles because the necessary
padding did not fit under their dresses, the practice of male
stuntworkers wearing padding under their dresses while
substituting for actresses was not unusual. See Falling for Stars,
July–August 1974, 2, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick
Library. In fact, handbooks distributed throughout the industry
by the Stuntmen’s Association of America not only describe
the vital statistics and specialties of stuntmen but also include
stills from films in which they have doubled for women as a
matter of course.
50. That this is so can be discerned by considering the much
discussed phenomena of classical Hollywood cinema’s
representations of the female body as both narrative and visual
object of desire. From this critical and theoretical vantage point,
I submit that the female body occupies a crucial position within
the narrative and specular economies of classical Hollywood
cinema, that completely nude female bodies have been far more
prevalent in this regard in US films than completely nude male
bodies, and that historically there have been more women than
men working as body doubles in the US film industry. In fact, a
woman who previously managed an in-house modeling agency
for Playboy Enterprises owns and operates the premier doubling
agency in Hollywood, which primarily places former Playboy
models. In tandem with shifting cinematic articulations of
masculinities, nude doubling among males (the doubling of
male posteriors in particular) has become more prevalent
during the last decade, but even so the ratio of males to females
is skewed sharply toward the latter. Moreover, media coverage
concerning doubling practices focuses almost exclusively on,
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and constitutes more pronounced conceptions of, female
doubles in the popular imagination.
51. The unarticulated status of body doubling in Hollywood is best
illustrated by the fact that since extra work was regulated by Work
Order #16A, references to doubling in the basic contracts for
extras were either omitted or noted at the end of elaborately
constructed wage scales that were sometimes based on elaborate
descriptions of clearly stated extra classifications (e.g., “dancers
employed or used for dance routines [including square dancing
especially routined for a picture]”) (Screen Extras Guild [Los
Angeles], “Agreement of 1964,” 1 December 1964, 3). Often
indicated by an asterisk (coordinated with one previously
appearing beside the header “classification” that introduced the
wage-scale section), this notation at the end of the Minimum
Basic Agreement indicated a special, additional, yet incidental
adjustment—but not a pay-scale classification per se. When
mentioned, doubling was dealt with in this way between 1926
and 1995, including those years following the dissolution of the
Screen Extras Guild and its merger with the Screen Actors Guild.
The only exceptions to this circumstance occurred in the Screen
Actors Guild Basic Contract for Extras between the years 1950
and 1959, when photodoubling was a distinct category of extra
work compensated not at the rate of a stand-in but at the rate of
a dress extra. Screen Extras Guild (Los Angeles), Basic Minimum
Agreement of 1950, 22 May 1950, 4; Screen Extras Guild (Los
Angeles), Basic Minimum Agreement of 1952, 29 April 1952, 4;
Producer’s Screen Extras Guild (Los Angeles), Basic Agreement
of 1954, 29 March 1954, 4; Producer’s Screen Extras Guild
(Los Angeles), Basic Agreement of 1956, 16 July 1956, 5.
52. Klumph and Klumph, Screen Acting, 163, 164, 166, 170–71;
Ross, Stars and Strikes, 68, 72–74.
53. These wage rates were applied to three groups of extras: the
dress group ($7.50 per day); the character group ($5 per day);
and the mass group ($5 per day). Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences Bulletin, No. 25, 23 September 1933, 6.
54. Actually, the hierarchy within the extra ranks initially
differentiated extra talent, extras eligible to be Extra Players,
from atmosphere work performed by extras “who are not to be
classified as dependent on motion pictures for a livelihood but
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may be recorded, listed, and called upon for occasional special
qualifications not possible of being filled from the registered
Extra Players” (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Bulletin,
No. 30, 26 September 1933, 4; AMPP Legal Documents, 31). These
distinctions are qualified, however, by a subsequent statement
that “any ‘extra player’ may accept atmosphere work without
losing or jeopardizing his registration as an ‘extra player.’” See
AMPP Legal Documents, 31.
55. Female extras, in particular, often were listed in terms of their
more outstanding features, “pretty hands, pretty arms, pretty
feet, pretty legs—piano playing hands” (Greta Palmer, “Funny
Ways to Make a Living,” Los Angeles Times This Week Magazine,
19 August 1945, 4–5).
56. Early on, the features of many extras who doubled were
subsumed under the more general notion of type. Later, the
features of such extras were not deemed unique insofar as they
were correlated with those of the star. See “Film Stand-Ins File
to Form Corporation,” Associated Press, 9 December 1939.
57. This omission of the double and the double’s wardrobe is
unusual, to say the least, given the tremendously detailed extra
classifications and wage scales based on wardrobe at the time.
58. The doubling of wardrobes also was a condition of stunt
doubling. But, as indicated previously, stunt doubles were
classified, albeit uneasily, as actors.
59. Accordingly, I am restricting my commentary in this essay to
instances in which body doubles are used for aesthetic purposes.
Thus, while both Janet Leigh and Tony Perkins were doubled in
their much-discussed shower scene in Psycho, this essay suggests
implications only for the former instance of doubling.
60. Mary Ann Doane, Femmes Fatales (New York: Routledge, 1991),
25.
61. Ibid., 26.
62. “The use of body part doubles dates back to the silent era when
they were used for actresses with ‘piano legs’ or actors with ugly
hands” (Lerner, “Double Duty,” 86, 92).
63. Today, body doubles frequently register at casting agencies
and submit their photographs and measurements. They respond
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to casting notices that contain precise physical specifications
(e.g., 5'7", 114 lbs., 32B–25–35, long blond hair, olive skin) and
vivid descriptions (great legs, etc.). Body doubles audition
(more often than not, by removing their clothes) for the film’s
directors, who select the double on the basis of comparative
inspection. See Richard Panek, “Some Films Need a Hand,
a Hip . . . ,” New York Times, 19 January 1992, 13–14.
64. Doane, Femmes Fatales, 25.
65. The first quotation deployed in my text and in Doane’s is taken
from Michele Montrelay: “The woman uses her own body as
a disguise” (Doane, Femmes Fatales, 26; Michele Montrelay,
“Inquiry into Femininity,” m/f [1978]: 91–92). The second
quotation, also used both in my text and in Doane’s, is taken
from Silvia Bovenschen: “We are watching a woman demonstrate
the representation of a woman’s body” (Doane, Femmes Fatales,
26; Silvia Bovenschen, “Is There a Feminine Aesthetic?” New
German Critique 10 [1977]: 129).
66. Doane, Femmes Fatales, 25–26.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid., 25. In this sense, body doubling, as opposed to stardom,
might be considered the paradigmatic case of the masquerade:
when you determine that a body double is being used, you
determine very often that a hyperbolic gendered presentation
of gendered bodies is taking place on screen, that a gap appears,
etc. Instances of digital imaging, used more recently in the
history of doubling practices, complicate the issue of
detectability.
69. Stephen Heath, “Joane Riviere and the Masquerade,” in
Formations of Fantasy, ed. Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora
Kaplan (New York: Methuen, 1986).
70. Eugenie Lemoine-Luccioni, La Robe (Paris: Seuil, 1983), 34.
71. Richard Dyer, “Don’t Look Now: The Male Pin-Up,” in The Sexual
Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality (New York: Routledge, 1992),
274–75.
72. Jacques Lacan, “The Meaning of the Phallus,” trans. Juliet
Mitchell, in Feminine Sexuality, ed. Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline
Rose (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 85.
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73. Jacques Derrida, “Cogito and the History of Madness,” in Writing
and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1978), 60–61.
74. In the context of describing the masquerade as a contradiction
in the system, one that constitutes “distance, alienation, and
divisiveness of self” rather than “closeness or excessive presence,”
Doane writes that “for Jacques Derrida, the specificity of
language, as exemplified by the structure of writing, is the very
violence of the separation from presence and immediacy”
(Doane, Femmes Fatales, 35–37).
75. Derrida, Of Grammatology, 143.
76. In this context, Phelan writes that “the performative record
of the disappearance of [Cindy] Sherman’s body is the Lure
that keeps the spectator looking” (Peggy Phalen, Unmarked:
The Politics of Performance [New York: Routledge, 1993], 68).
77. Richard Dyer, Stars (London: British Film Institute, 1979),
119–20, 149 .
78. Mystic Pizza, dir. Donald Petrie, perf. Annabeth Gish and Julia
Roberts, Samuel Goldwyn Co., 1988. Steel Magnolias, dir. Herbert
Ross, perf. Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Dolly Parton, and Julia
Roberts, Tri-Star, 1989.
79. Anthony Haden-Guest, “Make Mine a Double,” Spy, August
1997, 58–63.
80. Roy Orbison, “Oh, Pretty Woman,” Pretty Woman (Soundtrack),
EMI/Capitol, 1990.
81. Shelley Michelle was an uncredited extra in Pretty Woman.
82. When I refer to the performance of femininity at a third
remove, I am indicating that at the heart of the performances
of femininity in Pretty Woman are two diegetic performances
of femininity as masquerade—each performed by two bodies,
that each masquerade as the other. Moreover, the possibility that
the double has altered her body in some way (implants, rigorous
training, etc.) also suggests another level of constructed
femininity.
83. The recommodification of the character is dependent on
not one, but two commodified bodies: that of the star and that
of the double.
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Ann Chisholmis an assistant professor in the Department of
Communication Studies at California State University, Northridge.
She is currently writing a book about body doubling in the US film
industry.
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