I was visiting — along with my IGE class — the fine folks at the Special Collections Room at the Cal Poly Pomona Library today.
They were happy to show me —in preparation for a Women in Leadership conference coming to the university this quarter — that they’ve filled their display cases with samples of the work of female professors across the history of CPP.
This means, of course, that my and Peg Lamphier’s encyclopedia (Women in American History) is on display along with photos of us from a campus newspaper interview about that project.
This is from the very beginning with D. W. Griffith. It’s not his movie. Right? He shouldn’t get the credit. Then again, it’s a terrible movie and I hope nobody ever teaches this movie. I always tell my students, we’ll never touch this movie. It’s all awful and everything that someone says you’re supposed to learn from about it close-ups and tracking shots are in all the movies by all these women that I’m telling you about. So watch one of their movies that show those things. Don’t watch his movies.
I love John Carpenter because he’s the one who said…Let’s be fair. It’s a collaboration. Be honest about it. I do this. They do that. We blend together and that is what makes a product really good.
Torrent was the first American film starring Swedish actress Greta Garbo.[6] The film also starred Ricardo Cortez as the son of a domineering mother, played by Martha Mattox.
The title refers to a flood that occurs in the small town where most of the action takes place, which draws the two romantic leading characters closer together. — Wikipedia
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So, we’ll start with the real woman. This is the real woman in the modern day. She’s still alive. She works in — she works as a Maitre D of a restaurant in Malibu and she’s still known as the “Real Gidget.” That’s kind of her — everyone in Hollywood is a bit of a celebrity so you can go that restaurant and meet the “Real Gidget” and have dinner. It is pretty funny. She also did a documentary a few years ago about her life that traveled the festival circuit. She’s trying to bring back the real story out of all the Hollywood glitz and glamour. So that’s Kathy Kohner and this was said about the book in the introduction and which I found very interesting. This is what connected me to it, that when it came out there was a thought that this was essentially a female Catcher in the Rye. Catcher in the Rye being the JD Salinger book that every high school student in America is still made to read and I don’t understand. It’s about a kid who decided whether or not to go to a hooker and I’m not really sure why that’s the most important book for teenagers to read.
“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.
The other thing we argue about at the Writers Guild all the time is that we have this business where we have a credit that’s always “A Film By” the director. If he is a writer/director, fine. Ok, but if there’s nothing of that than why does he get this credit and why don’t the writers get that credit and we can’t get rid of that because the Director Guild will not get rid of it. Makes me nuts. Makes me nuts. Makes me nuts. But it’s true.
So this perpetually puts it in the audience’s and the student’s mind that this is the person to credit for that movie and it is not true. Same thing, obviously we know all these wonderful movies by Spike Lee. In the beginning, yes, he did write and direct “She’s Gotta Have It” but he did Malcolm X with Arnold Pearl. We don’t remember Arnold Pearl and he did Chi-Raq with Kevin Willmott and of course, he adapted that from Aristophanes and Lysistrata. So, let’s remember that there were other writers involve but they’re still only A Spike Lee Joint. That’s the only credit that’s given above the title and that’s something that we’re fighting against in our classes.
Runs Thursday, January 18, 2018 to Sunday, July 15, 2018 Central Library, History and Genealogy Department, LL4
From Lucy to ALF, from game shows to talk shows, from local news to the made-for-TV movie, The Industry In Our Backyard: Television Production In Los Angeles 1940s-1980s showcases four decades in the life of the medium that dominated American culture, yet for Angelenos, was just another part of daily life. The images displayed in the exhibit were largely taken by photographers from the Herald Examiner and the Valley Times newspapers, who were granted exclusive access to back lots, sound stages and location shoots around town for their TV sections. These photos, which have not been seen in as many as sixty-five years when they first ran in the papers, provide rare glimpses of the earliest L.A. stations, the crews at work and the stars in action.
The exhibit runs from January 18 through July 15, 2018, along with a series of presentations given by television industry professionals and archivists.
Exhibit sponsored by Photo Friends, a nonprofit organization that supports the Los Angeles Public Library’s Photo Collection/History & Genealogy Department at Central Library.
“It” is a 1927 silentromantic comedy film that tells the story of a shop girl who sets her sights on the handsome, wealthy boss of the department store where she works. It is based on a novella by Elinor Glyn that was originally serialized in Cosmopolitan magazine.
This film turned actress Clara Bow into a major star, and led people to label her the It girl.
The film had its world premiere in Los Angeles on January 14, 1927, followed by a New York showing on February 5, 1927. “It” was released to the general public on February 19, 1927.
The picture was consideredlostfor many years, but aNitrate-copy was found inPraguein the 1960s.[1]In 2001,“It”was selected for preservation in the United StatesNational Film Registryby theLibrary of Congressas being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. — Wikipedia
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* 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 at the LA Public Library
Now, this piece of dialog really made me really made me cringe. Oooh, why would a girl ever say that about her own life and yet this is the line given to Gidget by the male writers. So this is something that I found along the way.
As far as the adaptation of Gidget, it all started again with an actual real girl and her real words. Kathy Kohner was a Jewish young girl and her father was a television writer. She lived in Beverly Hills and one summer in her year between 16 and 17 she went to the beach every day and discovered this community of surfing males — no girls allowed — and she didn’t fall in love with the boys. She fell in love with the sport and what really bothered me was that is what her book is about. How hard she tried to be such a good surfer the men would take her seriously.
“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.
Also, if you look at the differences between the novel and the movie, in the novel, they’re kind of flighty and silly. In the movie, they love each other. They’re adorable to each other. This is the marriage of Frances and Albert Hackett. This is not Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman because they were never actually married, because, as we know, Hammett never left his wife. So that wasn’t a marriage and that wasn’t two people who understood a marriage. They had a relationship that was entirely different than the one that appears on the screen. That comes from the writers who adapted the movie who don’t get any credit which makes me nuts. So, why do we study screenwriting history? Because we need to know these stories and we need to pass those stories on to our students so they pay attention to who wrote the movie because that’s the person who’s message you’re accepting into your life when you see that movie.
The film, a romantic action-war picture, was rewritten by scriptwriters Hope Loring and Louis D. Lighton from a story by John Monk Saunders to accommodate Bow, Paramount’s biggest star at the time. Wellman was hired as he was the only director in Hollywood at the time who had World War I combat pilot experience, although Richard Arlen and John Monk Saunders had also served in the war as military aviators. The film was shot on location on a budget of $2 million at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas between September 7, 1926 and April 7, 1927. Hundreds of extras and some 300 pilots were involved in the filming, including pilots and planes of the United States Army Air Corps which were brought in for the filming and to provide assistance and supervision. Wellman extensively rehearsed the scenes for the Battle of Saint-Mihiel over ten days with some 3500 infantrymen on a battlefield made for the production on location. Although the cast and crew had much spare time during the filming because of weather delays, shooting conditions were intense, and Wellman frequently conflicted with the military officers brought in to supervise the picture.
Acclaimed for its technical prowess and realism upon release, the film became the yardstick against which future aviation films were measured, mainly because of its realistic air-combat sequences. It went on to win the firstAcademy Award for Best Pictureat the first annualAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciencesaward ceremony in 1929,[5]the only fully silent film to do so.[b]It also won theAcademy Award for Best Engineering Effects(Roy Pomeroy).Wingswas one of the first to show two men kissing, and also one of the first widely released films to shownudity. In 1997,Wingswas selected for preservation in the United StatesNational Film Registryby theLibrary of Congressas being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”, and the film was re-released toCinemarktheaters to coincide with the 85th Anniversary for a limited run in May 2012. The film was rereleased again for it’s 90th anniversary in 2017. TheAcademy Film ArchivepreservedWingsin 2002.[6] — Wikipedia
Learn More About Clara Bow with these books
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* 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 at the LA Public Library
![Film Is A Collaborative Effort from Giving Voice to Silent Films and the Far From Silent Women Who Wrote Them with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ufva-17-collaborative-effort.jpeg)
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![The “A Film By” Credit and Writers from Giving Voice to Silent Films and the Far From Silent Women Who Wrote Them with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ufva-16-film-by.jpeg)
![Dr. Rosanne Welch presents Opening Remarks at The Industry in Our Backyard: Television Production in Los Angeles 1940s-1980s [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/la-industry-backyard.jpeg)
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![More on Goodrich and Hackett from Giving Voice to Silent Films and the Far From Silent Women Who Wrote Them with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ufva-15-hacketts-2.jpeg)
