The Revolt of Mamie Stover

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This article is about the book. For the film, see The Revolt of Mamie Stover (film).

1951 Signet edition

The Revolt of Mamie Stover is a 1951 novel by William Bradford Huie about a Mississippi prostitute living in Honolulu. A movie version directed by Raoul Walsh was filmed in 1956 with Jane Russell in the title role.

The fact of Holywood taking up the book was rather ironic, considering that the book's first two chapeters were a very sharp indictment of Holywood itself. The book's protagoniost is described as having been cruelly abused - physically and sexually - by Holywood studio directors during her futile efforts to start a film career, and was diretly driven into prositution by a bullying film star who cynically exploited and discarded her. The book describes Holywood as "a jungel where everybody is either predator or prey". This aspect of the book was, however, toned down in the film version.

Over a decade later, Huie wrote a sequel, Hotel Mamie Stover (1963).

The film The Revolt of Mamie Stover served as the basis for critique of Claude Levi-Strauss' kinship system and its evaluation of the exchange of women in Elizabeth Cowie's Woman as Sign.