This video offers a short introduction to my current book project, Out of a Misty Dream: Gene Tierney, Female Stardom, and Hollywood's Homefront, which I am completing as a 2021 SU Humanities Center Faculty Fellow from the College of Arts and Sciences. Gene Tierney was the star of studio-era Hollywood films such as The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), and, most famously, Laura (1944). Through a brief overview of her career as one of the top stars at Twentieth-Century Fox during the 1940s, I suggest how "the girl in the portrait" from Laura has made her recognizable as an icon even as it "reframes" certain meanings of her star image. I also discuss my "star studies" methodology and the primary sources in my research.