LGM Film Club, Part 313: Those Awful Hats

I’m reading Emily Remus’ 2019 book A Shoppers’ Paradise: How the Ladies of Chicago Claimed Power and Pleasure in the New Downtown. One of the chapters discusses the late 19th century effort to ban ridiculously large hats from theaters. Remus put this in context of theaters once being a male space but women–and especially upper class women–were making claims on these spaces, much to the chagrin of some men. On the other hand….these were some exceptionally large hats. In fact, in 1909, D.W. Griffith made a film about it. Welcome to Those Awful Hats.