Celebrity Culture and the Gold Rush Metropolis

With the gold rush, San Francisco almost instantaneously became an important stop for a host of international entertainment tours that expanded well beyond the Atlantic world, to Australia as well as the Pacific Coast. The term celebrity was first employed as a noun in the 1840s and 1850s, and from its inception, this cultural phenomenon was intrinsically linked with and profited handsomely from transnational exchange networks—the conduits for the transmission of print and visual culture, as well as the migration of people and capital. Theatrical entertainment flourished in nineteenth-century San Francisco, as did the trade in celebrity portraits. In this context, certain charismatic individuals emerged: notably female stars, including Lola Montez and Adah Isaacs Menken, who embodied the trend of self-representation that overtook the city. The celebrity thrived in a place where human identity could become a consumable commodity—in turn, it often became all-consuming..