New York Nights is a 1929 American pre-Code crime film, directed by Lewis Milestone, and based on 1928 play Tin Pan Alley by Hugh Stanislaus Stange.[2] The film is known for being leading actress Norma Talmadge’s first sound film.
Jill Deverne is a chorus girl married to alcoholic composer Fred. She wants to show Fred’s latest song, A Year From Today, to racketeer Joe Prividi. Prividi is the producer of the musical show in which she is working, and agrees to use his song. Fred, however, refuses any favors and rejects Prividi’s offer. When Prividi uses the song anyway, Fred and his friend Johnny Dolan become drunk and show up at a nightclub.
In a raid, the police discover Fred with chorus girl Ruthie. Jill is disgusted with his behavior and dumps him. She is soon courted by Prividi, who is very overprotective. At a private party, a gambler forces himself on her and is shot by Prividi. Prividi is arrested and sent to jail. Jill does not want to be left behind, and plans a future with Fred. Prividi becomes jealous and sends gunmen to shoot and kill Fred. He is eventually stopped and put in jail, while Jill and Fred ride off in a train to start a new life.– Wikipedia
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So that’s the story of the pilot whereas in the films you didn’t have the sister, the parents were just goofballs and, as I said before, Moondoggie, the boy, made all the decision. So right away in the pilot, we get a Gidget who has power and is moving forward in her life. So, Ruth is bringing back the real character from the book. I think Ruth is a pretty funny writer. I didn’t realize this until I watched all her episodes. She names some of Gidget’s friends and she gets away with a double entendre in American television. I’m not sure how she got away with that in the 60’s and her sister, in one episode, calls all Gidget’s friends “sexteen” year olds. So it was kind of amazing that she got away with it if you ask me and I can see that she is being ironic and kind of sliding into what people think. So the other important thing about the TV show is that surfing is ever-present. She is almost always going to the beach to surf with the men and get better and better at surfing. Even here, I love, doing her homework at the beach on her surfboard. We do not forget that that is the definition of Gidget.
“How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto by Accident (and How We Can Get Her Out of it): Demoting Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas from Edgy Coming of Age Novel to Babe on the Beach Genre Film via Choices made in the Adaptation Process.”
It’ a long title, as I joke up front, but covers the process of adapting the true life story of Kathy Kohner (nicknamed ‘Gidget’ by the group of male surfers who she spent the summers with in Malibu in the 1950s) into the film and television series that are better remembered than the novel. The novel had been well-received upon publication, even compared to A Catcher in the Rye, but has mistakenly been relegated to the ‘girl ghetto’ of films. Some of the adaptations turned the focus away from the coming of age story of a young woman who gained respect for her talent at a male craft – surfing – and instead turned the focus far too much on Kathy being boy crazy.
Along the way I found interesting comparisons between how female writers treated the main character while adapting the novel and how male writers treated the character.
Dr. Rosanne Welch 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.
The Screenwriting Research Network is a research group consisting of scholars, reflective practitioners and practice-based researchers interested in research on screenwriting. The aim is to rethink the screenplay in relation to its histories, theories, values and creative practices.
Students from @tennstateu and @uofmichigan came to our campus as part of a week-long industry immersion course. These students are pursuing careers in film and TV production, and the Television Academy Foundation was happy to connect them to professionals in their field!
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:
So the silliest stereotype — the silliest gender stereotype — is that men must be strong and women must be sensitive and these are boring and untrue because, in fact, humans must be strong and humans must be sensitive and that’s the truth of it. Right? But we get wrapped up in these stereotypes and I think that that is a waste of time. So we’re going to look at them. I also want to talk about — or stress the idea — that representation does matter. You hear a lot of people saying that right now and what do they mean by that, but if you don’t see yourself in the narrative of the place that you from, you don’t feel that you belong and this is a problem. It’s been a problem through media through literature. We talk a lot about what kind of books that you read as children. Who were your faces in your books? What does it take to get that? And it’s a slow process but we are beginning to see how important it is for children to see themselves in stories.
Dr. Rosanne Welch 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.
Students from @tennstateu and @uofmichigan came to our campus as part of a week-long industry immersion course. These students are pursuing careers in film and TV production, and the Television Academy Foundation was happy to connect them to professionals in their field!
So some differences right away. We see a TV show in the pilot that Ruth wrote, Gidget makes all the decisions. The show is built around the father/daughter relationship. So it’s a much more — the father takes his daughter seriously and they speak as equals in terms of education and making choices in her life. Nothing and that didn’t happen at all in the films. She has a sister in the film, where she has a mother — in the TV show she has a sister. The sister makes the mistake of reading Gidget’s diary and when Gidget describes the beautifulness in which “melted into the sand” the sister assumes it means she had sex at the beach and she tells the Dad and the Dad yells at the older sister for stepping into her younger sister’s privacy. That she didn’t have a right to read he diary. Those are her private words. The Dad is not worried that she had sex. He’s worried that he privacy has been invaded and that’s such a respectful stand between a father and a daughter. They come later to realize the “melting into the sand” is a description of surfing. So it all turns around.
“How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto by Accident (and How We Can Get Her Out of it): Demoting Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas from Edgy Coming of Age Novel to Babe on the Beach Genre Film via Choices made in the Adaptation Process.”
It’ a long title, as I joke up front, but covers the process of adapting the true life story of Kathy Kohner (nicknamed ‘Gidget’ by the group of male surfers who she spent the summers with in Malibu in the 1950s) into the film and television series that are better remembered than the novel. The novel had been well-received upon publication, even compared to A Catcher in the Rye, but has mistakenly been relegated to the ‘girl ghetto’ of films. Some of the adaptations turned the focus away from the coming of age story of a young woman who gained respect for her talent at a male craft – surfing – and instead turned the focus far too much on Kathy being boy crazy.
Along the way I found interesting comparisons between how female writers treated the main character while adapting the novel and how male writers treated the character.
Dr. Rosanne Welch 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.
The Screenwriting Research Network is a research group consisting of scholars, reflective practitioners and practice-based researchers interested in research on screenwriting. The aim is to rethink the screenplay in relation to its histories, theories, values and creative practices.
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:
So this is really what allowed the show to make this change. Which is the big, radical, crazy, progressive change which is to have a lady Doctor. That is a big thing that has been in discussion for a little bit so we’re going to kind of trace that to see how males and females have been portrayed across time in the show and then just kind of wrap it out with what Jody represents and where they might take that character. Right? So, hopefully, we’ll all enjoy ourselves. Are we ready? Are we ready? Alright. So we’re talking about this and I couldn’t resist this when I saw it online because we’re thankful;y in a generation where you all are much less wrapped up in these old stereotypes and that’s a beautiful thing. I can’t say as much for my generation. So, I’m happy to see that in yours. So we’re going to see what are some of these things over the years.
Dr. Rosanne Welch 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.
The film centers on the relationship between Lady Mary Loam (Swanson), a British aristocrat, and her butler, Crichton (Meighan). Crichton fancies a romance with Mary, but she disdains him because of his lower social class. When the two and some others are shipwrecked on a deserted island, they are left to fend for themselves in a state of nature.
The aristocrats’ abilities to survive are far worse than those of Crichton, and a role reversal ensues, with the butler becoming a king among the stranded group. Crichton and Mary are about to wed on the island when the group is rescued. Upon returning to Britain, Crichton chooses not to marry Mary; instead, he asks a maid, Tweeny (who was attracted to Crichton throughout the film), to marry him, and the two move to theUnited States. – Wikipedia
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So then we come to the television show, which stars Sally Field. This was her first major job. She’d never done a film or anything large before, so she is the active character in every episode which is the thing that we do in television so maybe that helped Ruth bring the story back to being about Gidget’s decisions. I don’t know, but I am sure that contributed to it and later in her career Flippen is going to write these other “plucky” women. That Girl being the first single woman on television to live without her parents and have a career. We always think about Mary Tyler Moore who did that but it was That Girl who did it first and her career was acting so that wasn’t taken quite seriously but she lived on her own. She supported herself, right? And Bewitched who, of course, had the power of magic and always ended up saving the day for her husband and I would say maybe see the Brady girls had some power in their lives — they brought Davy Jones into their world, so that’s a big deal. So I think it’s interesting that she always wrote female characters that are well remembered.
“How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto by Accident (and How We Can Get Her Out of it): Demoting Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas from Edgy Coming of Age Novel to Babe on the Beach Genre Film via Choices made in the Adaptation Process.”
It’ a long title, as I joke up front, but covers the process of adapting the true life story of Kathy Kohner (nicknamed ‘Gidget’ by the group of male surfers who she spent the summers with in Malibu in the 1950s) into the film and television series that are better remembered than the novel. The novel had been well-received upon publication, even compared to A Catcher in the Rye, but has mistakenly been relegated to the ‘girl ghetto’ of films. Some of the adaptations turned the focus away from the coming of age story of a young woman who gained respect for her talent at a male craft – surfing – and instead turned the focus far too much on Kathy being boy crazy.
Along the way I found interesting comparisons between how female writers treated the main character while adapting the novel and how male writers treated the character.
Dr. Rosanne Welch 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.
The Screenwriting Research Network is a research group consisting of scholars, reflective practitioners and practice-based researchers interested in research on screenwriting. The aim is to rethink the screenplay in relation to its histories, theories, values and creative practices.
![03 Stereotypes and How Representation Matters from Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse [Video] (0:56)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/gender-dw-03.jpeg)
![12 Gidget Television and Films Compared from How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto [Video] (1:07)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/gidget-srn-12-tv-films.jpeg)
![02 How Did We Get To A Woman As The Doctor? from Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse [Video] (0:47)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/gender-dw-02.jpeg)
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![11 Gidget On Television from How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto [Video] (0:58) – Dr. Rosanne Welch – SRN Conference 2017](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/gidget-srn-11-gidget-tv.jpeg)