Academic – Page 160 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

From The Research Vault: Interview on Headquarters Radio Show: with Ward Sylvester (Part 2), (1989)

In 1987, Paris Stachtiaris and John Di Maio began a weekly Monkees radio program on WBAU, the radio station of Adelphi University on Long Island, New York. Entitled Headquarters, the show featured Monkees music (including material that hadn’t been officially released at the time), soundbites and clips from the TV show, and interviews with a host of Monkees notables, including Bobby Hart, Chip Douglas, Jerry Shepard, Lester Sill, Jack Good, David Pearl, Ward Sylvester, Coco Dolenz, and the individual Monkees themselves.

In the 38th episode of the Headquarters radio show, Paris and John continue their discussion with Ward Sylvester. Sylvester managed Davy Jones before he was a member of The Monkees, served as an associate producer for The Monkees television series, oversaw the first Monkees tour, acted as executive producer for The Monkees’ 1969 TV special, and worked with Michael Nesmith on various projects throughout the 1980s and 1990s. All four Monkees selected Sylvester as their manager in 1995 in preparation for the group’s 30th Anniversary activities.

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When Women Wrote Hollywood – 7 in a series – La Fee aux Choux | The Cabbage Fairy – Alice Guy Blaché (1896)

To highlight the wonderful yet largely forgotten work of a collection of female screenwriters from the early years of Hollywood (and as a companion to the book, When Women Wrote Hollywood) we will be posting quick bits about the many films they wrote along with links to further information and clips from their works which are still accessible online. Take a few moments once or twice a week to become familiar with their names and their stories. I think you’ll be surprised at how much bold material these writers tackled at the birth of this new medium. — Rosanne Welch

When Women Wrote Hollywood – 7 in a series – La Fee aux Choux | The Cabbage Fairy – Alice Guy Blaché (1896)

La Fée aux Choux (The Fairy of the Cabbages) is one of the earliest narrative fiction films ever made. It was probably made before the first Méliès fiction film, but after the Lumière brothers’ L’Arroseur Arrosé. The confusion stems from the uncertainty in the dating of these three films. Many film historians have accepted that La Fée aux Choux was made in April 1896, just a month or two before Méliès made his first fiction film. L’Arroseur arrosé (generally considered the earliest fiction film) was screened in December 1895.

La Fée aux Choux is sixty seconds long, possibly making it the earliest known film with a running time of at least one minute.

The film is based on an old and popular French (and actually, European) fairy tale. According to it, baby boys are born in cabbages, and baby girls are born in roses.

Alice Guy-Blaché, the director of La Fée aux Choux, is one of the early cinema’s most important figures, and had an extensive career as a director, producer and studio owner, working in both France and the United States. In a remake called Sage-femme de première classe (Midwife to the Upper Classes) from 1902, Guy Blaché appears, dressed as a man. — Wikipedia

Watch La Fee aux Choux | The Cabbage Fairy

More about Alice Guy Blaché

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06 TV Before The Monkees from How The Monkees Changed Television [Video] (1:10)

What this entire presentation — How The Monkees Changed Television with Rosanne Welch, PhD (Complete Presentation and Q&A) [Video] (45:06)

Rosanne Welch, PhD, Author of Why The Monkees Matter, presents “How The Monkees Changed Television” at a Cal State Fullerton Lunch Lecture on May 8, 2018.

In this talk, she shows how The Monkees, and specifically their presence on television, set the stage for large changes to come in the late 1960s.

Transcript

Before the show went on the air, this is what you were watching on television. Notice most of them are black and white. Nothing wrong with black and white. Sometimes I have students who say “Oh, for a black and white movie that wasn’t so bad.” And I have to remind them that it’s not the writer’s fault that technology didn’t have color yet, but this is — you can see that these are more or less quieter, gentler, blander, family shows. Nothing wrong with them. Andy Griffith was quite fun. Dragnet, you know, was as serious as one could be in tv back in the day, but this is what you had going on. You notice in the far corner just for fun. See that face? Circus Boy? 1950’s. That’s Micky Dolenz as a ten-year-old. He was a child star. he already had a tv show before The Monkees ever happened. His father was a tv star. George Dolenz, he was The Count of Monte Cristo in 1958 and so gee one day his agent said, “They’re doing a show called Circus Boy. Do you think your kid could be the Circus Boy?” and the Dad said, “You know how much money they’ll pay. Yeah, my kid could do that.” but they blonded his hair out because they thought he looked too ethnic because he was Italian. Ethnic.Italian back in the day. That was as ethnic as we were going to go.

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

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About Rosanne Welch, PhD

Rosanne Welch, PhD is a writer, producer and university professor with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, Touched by an Angel and ABC NEWS/Nightline. Other books include Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture (McFarland, 2017) and Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection (ABC-CLIO, 2017), named to the 2018 Outstanding References Sources List, by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association. Welch has also published chapters in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television (I.B.Tauris) and The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color (Lexington Books, 2018) and essays in Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology and Outside In Makes it So, and Outside in Boldly Goes (both edited by Robert Smith). By day she teaches courses on the history of screenwriting and on television writing for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting programs. Her talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP is available on YouTube.

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The Package Arrives!

A box arrived today and it contained my first print copies of this collection of essays written by the original cohort of students in our first Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting which I edited and for which author Cari Beauchamp wrote a wonderful forward covering the life and influence of Frances Marion. — Rosanne

“These 23 essays cover a range of female screenwriters from the early years of film through the 1940s, women whose work helped create the unforgettable stories and characters beloved generations of audiences but whose names have been left out of most film histories. Not this one. This collection is dedicated to those women and written by a group of women grateful to stand on the shoulders of those who came before – as a beacon to those who will come after.”

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Cal State Fullerton expert finds the Monkees were a steppin’ stone to cultural change — Rosanne in The Orange County Register

When two Monkees fans get together, magic always happens, as you’ll see when you read what Wendy Fawthrop of the Orange County Register thought of my last Monkees lecture, which was open to the public. — Rosanne

Cal State Fullerton expert finds the Monkees were a steppin’ stone to cultural change — Rosanne in The Orange County Register

She’s a believer.

And after Rosanne Welch spoke recently to a gathering of Cal State Fullerton students and faculty, many of them were left also believing that the Monkees, the 1960s boy band, had a greater impact on television, music and pop culture than they had thought.

Illustrated with slides of the Monkees with Paul McCartney and Janis Joplin, on cereal boxes and in pop culture references long after their heyday, Welch’s talk laid out evidence that the group’s TV show made strong feminist statements and advanced such TV practices as characters addressing the audience, used today on such shows as “Modern Family” and “House of Cards.”

“They influenced so many of today’s modern-day performers and yet people keep forgetting about that,” said Welch.

Read this entire article — Cal State Fullerton expert finds the Monkees were a steppin’ stone to cultural change

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

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Quote from “America’s Forgotten Founding Father” by Dr. Rosanne Welch – 17 in a series – Royals

Finding some royals deeply intelligent and others deeply ignorant fed Filippo’s distaste of the act of royal succession and fueled his later interest in supporting the colonists in their overthrow of King George III. In the meantime, Filippo decided to go to Rome to face the Tribunal of the Inquisition himself, letters in hand, though he would be without a passport so if they chose to incarcerate him, he would be trapped.

From America’s Forgotten Founding Father — Get Your Copy Today!

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More on Mazzei: Jefferson Library Collections including The Filippo Mazzei Archive

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.

Jefferson Library Collections including The Filippo Mazzei Archive

The Jefferson Library is a gateway to information on Thomas Jefferson’s life, times, and legacy. To this end, the library collects comprehensively, including books, journal and newspaper articles, ephemera, unpublished research, websites, microforms, audio-visuals, photographs, and digital full-text files. In addition to all materials about Thomas Jefferson and Monticello, we acquire materials on colonial and early federal periods, revolutionary America and Atlantic history, worldwide religions and philosophy, and European arts and culture. Topics of particular interest include wine and cuisine, slavery and natural rights, science and exploration, the University of Virginia, Jefferson descendants, and the legacy of Jefferson’s actions and ideas.

The Filippo Mazzei Archive, courtesy of Sister Margherita Marchione, MPF. This collection includes comprehensive manuscript facsimiles of this Italian Founding Father; also included are the expansive research files of Sister Margherita. Hundreds of publications are included uncatalogued by other libraries.

Visit This Site: Jefferson Library Collections includingThe Filippo Mazzei Archive

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From The Research Vault: Sunshine Factory – 1960s Magazine Articles

From The Research Vault: Factory – 1960s Magazine Articles

Receive on-going info about “Why The Monkees Matter” book and more!

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

Buy Your Copy Now!

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

05 Books by Dr. Rosanne Welch from How The Monkees Changed Television [Video] (0:52)

What this entire presentation — How The Monkees Changed Television with Rosanne Welch, PhD (Complete Presentation and Q&A) [Video] (45:06)

Rosanne Welch, PhD, Author of Why The Monkees Matter, presents “How The Monkees Changed Television” at a Cal State Fullerton Lunch Lecture on May 8, 2018.

In this talk, she shows how The Monkees, and specifically their presence on television, set the stage for large changes to come in the late 1960s.

Transcript

In the book world, not only have I don the Monkees book, but I’ve done — in our library here — the Women in American History. It’s a four-volume encyclopedia series — I think they have an ebook version of it here — that I just put out last year, as well, which is really interesting because we cover women in history and popular culture and often you don’t blend those,. So our little tagline was you’ll meet Lady Bird Johnson and Lady Gaga all in the same book. So That;s Cool. My most recent one is a novel on Filippo Mazzei who was the man who owned the plantation next door to Thomas Jefferson. he was an Italian immigrant and he wrote the words “All Men Are Created Equal” in a pamphlet and Thomas Jefferson liked it and you know where it appeared later. He’s a pretty cool guy. I liked him. So that’s what I do. I’m also on the book review board for the Journal of Screenwriting and, as I just noted, Written By Magazine.

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?

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About Rosanne Welch, PhD

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Quote from “America’s Forgotten Founding Father” by Dr. Rosanne Welch – 16 in a series – The Inquisition

A letter arrived from Raimondo Cocchi, his oldest friend in the city. “I wanted to warn you that a letter against you has been filed here. It is alleged that you sent a large number of banned books on a ship bound for Genoa, Livorno, Civita, Vecchia, Naples and Messina, for the purpose of infecting all of Italy. The matter is one for the Inquisition and may cause you some trouble.

From America’s Forgotten Founding Father — Get Your Copy Today!

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