At first I was puzzled by the certificate-sized envelope that appeared in the mail the other day. It came from the alma mater of my first college degree – Bowling Green State University. I couldn’t imagine what they had to send me after all these years. Then my son opened it and said, “It’s an award for something.”
Turns out it is the certificate commemorating the previously announced fact that When Women Wrote Hollywood was this year’s runner up for the Susan Koppelman Award, “given to the best anthology, multi-authored, or edited book in feminist studies in popular and American culture” by The Popular Culture Association. And then I remembered that my alma mater is the home of The Popular Culture Association. 🙂 What a nice surprise on all counts.
* 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
Marion Fairfax, while almost entirely unknown today, is an everywoman example of the plight of female screenwriters of the silent era. From the origins of her career through her mysterious disappearance from the Hollywood scene after the advent of talkies, there is little information available on her work as an actress, playwright and screenwriter and the information that is available is not consistently correct.
Silent Screenwriter, Producer and Director: Marion Fairfax by Sarah Phillips
* 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
These are some ladies you probably don’t know. Does anybody recognize any of them? She’s the most likely one for anyone to know because she’s also an actress. If you saw Harold and Maude, Rosemary’s Baby? That’s Ruth Gordon. Ruth Gordon was a four-time oscar-nominated screenwriter as well as winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Rosemary’s Baby. So we’re gonna talk about these ladies and who they are.
Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.
* 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
Frederica Sagor Maas was a screenwriter whose career spanned decades and was full of imagination, hard work and disillusionment. Taking a decade to write her memoir, which she finally published at the ripe age of 99, Maas expressed her feelings for the Hollywood industry and how her husband Ernest and she saw their ideas stolen and turned to trash before eventually being accused of communism and being blacklisted.
The Best Revenge Is Outliving Them All: The life and heartbreak of Frederica Sagor Maas by Mikayla Daniels
* 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
…and we recognize Shonda Rhimes. We can’t not recognize Shonda Rhimes. She owns television thank to this show getting her started but, of course, Scandal, How To Get Way With Murder, all of these things have made Shonda Rhimes Shondaland, She’s got her whole production company as her “land” and the way she runs things. We recognize her? (Audience: Tina Fey) Tina Fey. Exactly. We sometimes forget she’s a writer. There’s a reason that this show existed. 30 Rock is basically a fictionalized version of working on Saturday Night Live. For which she got several Emmys and then, of course, she did Mean Girls, the movie and the Broadway show which was nominated for several Tonys last year or 2 years ago. So, you know, Tina’s doing pretty well.
Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.
* 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
Bess Meredyth continued to cultivate an enormously successful screenwriting career. Meredyth was one of the thirty-six artists—including fellow screenwriter Jeanie Macpherson—who founded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1928 (Sturtevant). Her name can be found in more than a dozen Academy bulletins as a member of the Awards of Merit committee, which was one of the first committees established.
You’d Better Learn to Hold Your Liquor: Bess Meredyth and A Career in Early Hollywood by Sydney Haven
* 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
Alice Guy-Blaché (July 1, 1873 – March 24, 1968) was a pioneer filmmaker, active from the late 19th century, and one of the first to make a narrative fiction film.[2] From 1896 to 1906 she was probably the only female filmmaker in the world. [3] She experimented with Gaumont’s Chronophone sound syncing system, color tinting, interracial casting, and special effects. She was a founder and artistic director of the Solax Studios in Flushing, New York, in 1908. In 1912 Solax invested $100,000 for a new studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the center of American filmmaking prior to the establishment of Hollywood. That same year she made the film A Fool and his Money, with a cast comprised only African-American actors. The film is now at the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute.[4] — Wikipedia
* 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
Next, I don’t know most important , I don’t how I ordered these except they came to this order but Callie Khouri — anyone that can name the movie that she’s famous for? (Audience: Thelma & Louise) Thelma & Louise! Thank you. Thank Goodness. Thelma & Louise! An amazing film, right, that is still being talked about and debated in women’s studies, in Cinema Studies. Do we like the ending Don’t we like the ending? Is it how it could have ended? I think that’s pretty brilliant. Susannah Grant is probably not a name you recognize off the top of your head but you’ve seen these movies. Erin Brockovich is a huge film, right? Charlette’s Web – she has a lot of early kids work which is adorable. And Pocahontas, which is a very very famous Disney film so Suzanne has been one of our newer people and then as you recognized, Diablo Cody, right? Diablo Cody showed up doing Juno and then she did the United States of Tara with Spielberg on television. She’s moving and grooving through town so we’ll see what her next project is but she won an Oscar for Juno. That was her first outing as a screenwriter.
Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.
* 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
Sixty-three of the movies that Alice Guy Blaché made while working for Gaumont are collected on the DVD Gaumont Treasures. Disk 1 is dedicated entirely to Blaché. While just a drop in the bucket of the work she did when she was there, it is a fascinating exploration of how quickly her work and voice grew.
The Nature and Genius of Alice Guy Blaché by Khanisha Foster
* 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
I was pleased to be asked to attend the first Italian Stories Day hosted by the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers and the Istituto Luce Cinecittà and Italian Audiovisual Producers Association at Mr. C in Beverly Hills. The three groups share the mission of helping more Italian authors see their work produced for the international film and television markets.
I had the pleasure of hearing about new books that we Americans will be able to read once their English translations are complete (within the next year) from authors like Tiziana Triana, author of Luna Nera – Le Città Perdute (Vol I) (Black Moon – The Lost Cities, Vol 1) which deals with witch hunters of 17th century Italy and how that affected women who yearned to gather knowledge; Stefania Auci, a Sicilian teacher and author of the historical novel Florence, published in 2015 by Baldini e Castoldi; and Edoardo Albinati, author of La Scuola Cattolica (The Catholic School).
I also had the chance to reconnect with Leonilde Callocchia, the Attaché at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura who hosted our Mentoris Book Launch last year, and a few producers I was able to invite to come to our Stephens College MFA workshops this August while we all munched on some marvelous brunch.
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