Read Lois Weber: More than a Writer-Director She’s the Auteur Activist of Early Cinema
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On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
Congratulations to my friend and editor Anna Weinstein!
The first book in her “Screen Storytellers” series, which is on The Works of Shonda Rhimes is on Bloomsbury’s Essential New Books list for film students.
I’m proud to have a chapter in the book discussing the idea that while most people think Rhimes is ‘only’ a feminist, her writings have always expressed an even wider humanist philosophy.
I can only hope that my upcoming The Works of Susan Harris will make the same list. Look for it in late 2026.
Women Making History Series now in Paperback!
I’m excited to announce that the book series I co-edit with my dear friend and colleague Peg Lamphier – Women Making History – are now available in paperback which makes the books more affordable for birthday and holiday gift-buying!
Our original publisher – ABC-Clio – (who published our award-winning Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection [4 volumes]) mostly sold to libraries, so hardbacks were the way to go, but Bloomsbury recently purchased them. That means ALL our previous biographies are now in paperback. That makes them much more affordable to our friends and colleagues.
The even cooler first news is that in the last few weeks 2 more of the biographies we shepherded saw publication – one on Dolores Huerta and the other on Sally Ride — so congratulations to authors April Tellez and Jackie Perez! And these 2 new ones will be in paperback about 18-24 months after release.
Here is the email blast Bloomsbury sent out to their list of 20,000 School librarians, 10,000 Academic librarians, and 9,000 public librarians for Women’s History Month:
That means our earlier co-written books: American Women’s History on Film and The Civil War on Film are also in paperback!
But never forget even in hardback it’s worth reminding folks to ask their local libraries to stock a copy so everyone in the neighborhood can read about these accomplished women.
Finally, we have 3 more books in the works right now on Bessie Coleman, Maria Tallchief, and Frida Kahlo with a few more in the works.
I sat down for an interview about my time as Chair of the Screenwriting Research Network during our last conference in Olumouc, Czech Republic, last September.
I had the chance to discuss the conference we held at Stephens College the year before, how we chose the theme, and the benefit of being a smaller group where real connections have been made. This is part of a series of oral histories on past created by the Executive Council which have morphed into these “Conversations”recorded by EC member Lucian Georgescu (with Camera and editing by Marius Donici).
You can see several other members interviewed on the SRN YouTube Channel as well.
Born just 4 years after the end of the Civil War in Boonville, Missouri, the scripts Julia Crawford Ivers wrote (and sometimes directed) often tackled issues of prejudice. After the war, her family emigrated to Los Angeles. As with many female creatives in this era, Ivers used her screenplays to highlight women’s issues from forced marriage to domestic abuse to prejudice.
Read Julia Crawford Ivers: From Rich Widow to Writer-Director
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Born on Christmas Day in 1876 in Massachusetts, Dix and her family lived in various cities around the historic state until she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to study English and History at Radcliffe College. There she became the first female to be granted the Sohier Literary Prize, for the best thesis of a Harvard or Radcliffe student. From there it seemed a quick move into the world of writing.
Dix began with books about her favorite subject – the history that surrounded her in Massachusetts. In 1899, at the age of 23, she published Soldier Rigdale: How He Sailed in the Mayflower and How He Served Miles Standish. Her first play, A Rose of Plymouth Town ran for a month in 1902, followed by The Road to Yesterday, which ran for 8 months in 1907. Altogether Dix wrote 18 books and 5 plays before moving into the new world of film.
Read Meet Beulah Marie Dix: Award-Winning Scholar and Anti-War Novelist Turned Screenwriter
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Running Down the Rabbit Hole of Research
It’s always fun to fall into the rabbit hole of research. It always teaches me new things about other eras, along with reminding me that one of the ways women disappear in history. They change their names, making it harder and harder to find them. I was reminded of this as I was writing a column on novelist turned silent screenwriter Beaulah Marie Dix. In one of many short bits about her online, I found mention of daughter Evelyn Flebbe Scott on the very helpful Women Film Pioneers Project. There, I also found that Evelyn had herself become “an industry writer” and had written a Hollywood memoir, Hollywood When Silents Were Golden (Internet Archive) that can also be ordered from the Los Angeles Public Library.
An online search for Evelyn Scott led to a southern novelist – Evelyn Scott (born Elsie Dunn) – so not the Evelyn Scott I was researching. Luckily, I had my Evelyn Scott’s father’s name, so I added the Flebbe to the search, and that’s when Evelyn Flebbe Scott came up on Goodreads as the author of 2 children’s books + the aforementioned memoir. It also gave the next tidbit, giving me her father’s profession: “was the daughter of screenwriter/author Beulah Marie Dix and book importer Georg Heinrich Flebbe” along with the explanation of where ‘Scott’ came from: “She married film editor David Scott in 1935” AND, the confirmation that “Evelyn F. Scott worked for decades in Hollywood as a story editor at MGM.”
Then, in looking up a tiny smidgen of a clue on IMDB – that she had a play that “the Technicolor Corporation to be adapted as one of their Great Events short color film series” I searched the play’s title Allison’s Lad in IBDB, the Internet Broadway Database – it wasn’t listed. So I broadened to a larger search and found it listed on a new fun site: The Unknown Playwrights site “Where unknown playwrights become known”.
There I learned that “Dix had a thing for history and wars” and the one-act “is set during the bloodletting known as The English Civil War” and “appears in a volume of one-acts set entirely during wartime.” Their Link Heaven took me to the Internet Archive where a printed copy of the play had been scanned.
Now I need to read some books on the MGM scenario department to see if Evelyn worked with Kate Corbaley, the famous head of the story department at MGM in the 1930s, who you can read more about here – How Kate Corbaley, Powerful Reader at MGM in the 1930s, Paved the Way for Today’s Hollywood Literary Scouts.
That’s a tiny example of the rabbit hole of research one can hop into and like Alice in Wonderland, find oneself racing through all sorts of interesting eras and fascinating lives.
The surname DeMille (or de Mille) brings up thoughts of the famous line from Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler’s Sunset Boulevard “Mr. de Mille, I’m ready for my close up” which references silent screen director Cecil. Perhaps people remember his brother, William, who started as a playwright and became a Hollywood director and joined 3rd wife Clara Beranger in founding the film school at the University of Southern California. And sometimes the surname conjures of memories of Tony Award-winning choreographer Agnes de Mille (daughter of William/granddaughter of Beatrice). From now on it should bring up the writer, producer and mentor who worked frequently in both Broadway and Hollywood – Beatrice DeMille. (From here on out we will call her Beatrice to avoid confusion).
Read Writer, Producer, Agent, and Mentor (And Mom to the DeMille Boys)
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