On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
Working hard every day on my book on Giuseppe Garibaldi — “In Search of Unity” — for the Mentoris Project.
Done by the end of Summer.
My Previous Mentoris Project Title
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When Women Wrote Hollywood – 10 in a series – Frederica Sagor Maas
Frederica Alexandrina Sagor Maas (/ˌfɹɛdəˈɹikə səˈgɔɹ mæs/; July 6, 1900 – January 5, 2012) was an American dramatist and playwright, screenwriter, memoirist, and author,[1] the youngest daughter of Russian immigrants. As an essayist, Maas was best known for a detailed, tell-all memoir of her time spent in early Hollywood.[2] She was one of the oldest surviving entertainers from the silent film era.[3]
Once in Hollywood, Maas negotiated a contract with Preferred Pictures to adapt Percy Marks’s novel The Plastic Age for film. Based on this, she was signed to a three-year contract with MGM for $350 per week, though in her words: “I had the peculiar feeling that wily Louis B. [Mayer] was less interested in my writing ability than in signing someone who had worked for Ben Schulberg and Al Lichtman.”[5] It was in this period that she wrote the screenplays for silent films Dance Madnessand The Waning Sex. — Wikipedia
More about Frederica Sagor Maas
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Check out this profile of professor Laura Kirk, who contributed 2 chapters to When Women Wrote Hollywood, published by the University of Kansas where she teaches film acting for the Department of Film & Media Studies.
Her chapters involve Silent Era writer Eve Unsell and musical scenario writer Bella Spewack.
Read more about these – and all the great early female screenwriters in the book!
LAWRENCE — After working for many years as an actor and producer, Laura Kirk returned to her native Kansas in 2012 and joined the University of Kansas Department of Film & Media Studies as a lecturer, teaching film acting.
Now, in her first big work of academic scholarship, Kirk has contributed two chapters to “When Women Wrote Hollywood” (McFarland), a new book aimed at bringing the secret female history of Hollywood to light.
Kirk wrote about Kansan Eve Unsell, a screenwriter whose career spanned the silent and talkie era, and Bella Spewack, the journalist, author and screenwriter best known for “Kiss Me Kate.”
“When this industry started, women wrote 50 percent of the screenplays,” Kirk said. “And yet Eve Unsell was not in the index of any history book. Many of the women who have chapters in this book have not been written about in any real way.”
Unsell, for instance, got a two-line obituary in the Los Angeles Times when she died in 1937 at age 50. She was born in Chicago and grew up in Caldwell, a small Kansas town in Sumner County.
“She has 96 credits on IMDb,” the Internet Movie Database, Kirk said. “She was credited with training Alfred Hitchcock. She ran the Paramount studio in England. … I talk about how she was one of the first people to settle in Malibu when it was wild and natural and scenic.”
Read this entire article – Uncovering the secret history of women in Hollywood, University of Kansas
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Through Franklin Filippo met Thomas Adams of Virginia, another colonist living and doing business in London. “No relation to that other Adams family, the one from New England,” Adams said when Franklin introduced them at a salon one night. “While John and Samuel carry my surname they are no relation to me, yet they are making Adams a name that causes eyebrows to raise and certain doors to be closed to me.”
From America’s Forgotten Founding Father — Get Your Copy Today!
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Watch this entire presentation: Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse: Paving the Way for a Lady Doctor with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (36:58)
For her 5th Doctor Who lecture to the CPP community, Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses how society – and the show’s writing staff – prepared the audience for a major change in this 50-year franchise – the creation of the first Lady Doctor!
Transcript:
Have to give Steven for laying the groundwork finally and, as I said, if you look at his writing, when Matt changed he gave us “Not a girl. Still not ginger.” — a little ginger joke there. Which is fine. he made everyone think they were going to pick — oh my gosh I never forgot his name — Ron Weasley — yes — Rupert Grint, thank you so much. There was discussion that Rupert Grint would become a new Doctor, so a little joke there, the ginger is referencing that. So he knows what’s happening in culture. What people are saying about his program, right? So he laid that in. he also laid in in “The Doctor’s Wife” which is a marvelous episode — written by Neil Gaiman, wh you might know form American Gods and the other very cool novels. So they invited Nei Gaiman to come in and write an episode and they found old, dead, Timelords trapped in these little boxes and this is what he said about this guy, right? “He didn’t feel himself unless he had the tattoo. Or herself, a couple of times. Ooooo, she was a bad girl.” So Timelord who switched their gender It is possible. So Steven is writing or Executive Producing the writing in all these episodes. So he’s laying the groundwork for all this to happen.
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Rosanne Welch, PhD
Rosanne Welch PhD teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.
Writing/producing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. In 2016 she published the book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia; and placed “Transmitting Culture Transnationally Via the Characterization of Parents in Police Procedurals” in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Essays appear in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television and Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology. Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild.
Watch Dr. Welch’s talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP.
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More on When Women Wrote Hollywood – Adela Rogers St. Johns – Yesterday’s Children: A Cosmopolitan Book-Length Complete Novel
Adela Rogers St. Johns was a prolific writer in many different formats besides screenwriting. This novel was published in the June 1939 issue of Cosmopolitan
More information on Adela Rogers St. Johns
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This series will focus on material I found while researching my book, America’s Forgotten Founding Father: A Novel Based on the Life of Filippo Mazzei.
While I only used a portion of my total research, there are a host of little tidbits of information on this amazing man which I wanted to share here. — Rosanne.
2 Passionate grape grower, liberal thinker, and “citizen of the world”. Best represents the innovative, visionary, and entrepreneurial spirit that has always characterized the Mazzei family. (1730-1816)
3 Through Philip Mazzei, the family claims a very strong and special link to the history of the United States
4 Borne and brought up in the liberal Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Philip moved to Virginia in 1773, spurred by his curiosity to explore the New World There he strengthened his friendship with Jefferson, Washington, Franklin and Adams, with whom he shared his modern, progressive ideals He was the first to introduce in the colony vines from Tuscany and other regions of Europe The vines were planted on Thomas Jefferson’s property at Monticello
See the entire slide show presentation
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I can’t recommend the new Mr. Rogers documentary strongly enough.
“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” is about so much more than the man behind one children’s program. It’s about the way you can dedicate your life to a cause. It’s about the obvious point that if we teach children they are loved and give them security in their early years, we can avoid so much of the issues in their later lives. It’s about standing up for what you believe in. It’s about how hard it is to fight our society’s glorification of toxic masculinity. And, to me, most importantly, it’s about the power of television – a topic we all need to consider.
The two quotes I can’t forget – from a set of interviews with Fred Rogers that contained many worthwhile quotes (which is why you need to see the film so I don’t have to replicate them all here) — are:
“What we see and hear on television molds our lives”
and
“Television has the capability of being a neighborhood for the whole country.”
People far too often ignore television but because it comes into our homes effortlessly and is ever present, it does have the ability to shape ideas and opinions and it has always had the ability to educate. I don’t mean it only has to teach us multiplication and fractions, but like any good genre of storytelling, it teaches us empathy and understanding of others. Mr. Rogers did that gently and quietly because he was addressing children as they formed their identities, and for that we ought to be grateful.
On top of all that, when he says “The greatest thing you can teach someone is that they are loved, and are capable of loving,“ he validates a frequent comment I make to writing students – that every story, in the end, is a love story. And this one is one you should not miss.
It almost makes me sad that children today on their iPads are watching the animated adventures of Daniel Tiger. While I’m happy they are being exposed to Mr. Rogers’ stories and lessons, I hope they don’t forget to show this new generation the actual episodes starring Mr. Rogers because seeing a gentle man in real life is probably more instructive than all the messages an animated tiger can give.
Learn more about Fred Rogers
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More on the Monkees: Flip Magazine, December 1966 via Sunshine Factory
Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition
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