Film – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch Interview, Screenwriting Research Network Conversations [Video]

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.

Writing Successful Films into her 60s? Zelda Sears Did It! – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, February 2025

In the decade between 1924 and 1934 Zelda Sears earned credits on over 27 films for everything from having one of her plays adapted to adapting her own theatrical scripts to writing original scripts directly for the screen.

Born Zelda Paldi in 1873 in Brockway Township, Michigan she made her way to Broadway as an actress first, as many women did – and often still do. Since her father, Justin Lewis Paldi had immigrated from Italy the family spoke three languages in their home – Italian, English, and French. Her ability to write helped the family financially from the time as a 12-year-old when she won an essay contest for a local store. The prize – a job as a runner for the store, her first job. At night, Sears studied secretarial skills which earned her a promotion but when she told the boss she really wanted to be a writer, he shifted her to the other business he owned – a newspaper.

Read Meet Writing Successful Films into her 60s? Zelda Sears Did It!

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Meet Beulah Marie Dix: Award-Winning Scholar and Anti-War Novelist Turned Screenwriter – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, January 2025

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.

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Running Down the Rabbit Hole of Research, Dr. Rosanne Welch

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.

Writer, Producer, Agent and Mentor (And Mom to the DeMille Boys) – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, December 2024

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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From Silent Murder Mysteries to Andy Hardy’s Americana, Agnes Christine Johnston Wrote it All – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, November 2024

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Save 35% on McFarland Books – One of My Publishers is offering a 35% Discount on Their Catalog This Week!

Save 35% on McFarland Books – One of My Publishers is offering a 35% Discount on Their Catalog This Week!

Along with your other holiday shopping over this Thanksgiving weekend, I’m happy to pass along this lovely discount from McFarland Publishing, the fine folks who published two of my favorite books:

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

AND

When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry

Direct from the McFarland site, From now through December 2, they are offering a full 35% off ALL of their titles with coupon code HOLIDAY24 at checkout.

See the entire McFarland Catalog

You can buy one of my books — or any other cool pop culture book you find — for yourself or anyone else on your gift list this year.

Happy Holidays!

Rosanne speaks as part of Art for Healing and Renewal, Part ar the Jacksonville Museum of Science and History, November 21, 2024, 6pm

On November 21st I’ll be in Jacksonville, Florida on a panel at the MOSH (Museum of Science and History) to discuss a chapter I wrote in the upcoming book Stories Of The Holocaust: Art for Healing and Renewal, edited by Dr. Karen Berman and Dr. Gail Humphries.

I was honored when Dr. Humphries invited me to write the opening reflection to a section in Vol. 2: On Screen and in the Gallery. Then, being me, I asked if they had a chapter on screenwriters Frances and Albert Hackett who adapted The Diary of Anne Frank from book to Pulitzer-Prize-winning Broadway play and then into the film. The editors hadn’t planned such a chapter but it sounded valuable to the collection so they commissioned me to write it. Now I’ll have the chance to tell even more people about the brilliant work of this married team of screenwriters who also gave film fans The Thin Man, Father of the Bride, Easter Parade, and It’s a Wonderful Life.

Joining Dr. Humphries:

Elizabeth Gelman, Senior Director of Arts and Cultural Programming for Creative Pinellas, previous director of The Florida Holocaust Museum (Pinellas County, Florida)

Ruth Gordon, Former social studies teacher in Miami-Dade County and founder/current advisor for Holocaust Impact Theater (Miami, Florida)

Dr. Laurence Sherr, Award-winning composer of international stature, concert producer, and professor of music, Kennesaw State University (Kennesaw, Georgia)

Dr. Rosanne Welch, Executive Director of Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Program, author and screenwriter (Los Angeles, California); also author for Reflection

Link on MOSH Site

Celebrate the Daring Dialogue of Women Writers with Dr. Rosanne Welch – Screenwriting Research Network Conference 2004, Palacky University, Olomouc, Czechia

With the conference theme “A Conversation Beyond Script,” I decided to use my presentation time to “Celebrate the Daring Dialogue of Women Writers,” which allowed me to introduce the audience to the work of famous female screenwriters, from Anita Loos to Mae West to Lillian Hellman.

Then I delved into some names lesser-known to our international SRN members because they came from the TV world before the great sharing that streaming has offered us. From Gertrude Berg of The Goldbergs in the 1950s to Susan Harris (Soap, Golden Girls) and Linda Bloodworth Thomason (Designing Women) we covered the progressive (and often controversial) topics they brought to mainstream Americans.