Film – Page 64 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Pioneer Screenwriter Lois Weber’s Birthplace Honored With Pennsylvania Historical Marker

It has taken too long but finally many of the female screenwriters that appear in our collection are being recognized – and often honored. Such is the case with Lois Weber who birthplace has now been given a historical marker. She deserves it.

Read more about her in Chase Thompson’s chapter on Weber in When Women Wrote Hollywood. — Rosanne

Senator Costa Announces New Historical Marker in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, Pa. − March 29, 2018 − Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa, Jr. today announced the addition of an official Pennsylvania Historical Marker in Pittsburgh: film director Lois Weber.

Lois Weber was the first American woman film director and a pioneer in early film making.

In the era of silent films, she mastered superimposition, double exposures, and split screens to convey thoughts and ideas rather than words on title cards. She also used the nude female figure in the 1915 film Hypocrites and took on progressive and provocative topics, inciting both censorship and artistic praise.

“Lois Weber was a trailblazer for women and all filmmakers in the early 20th century,” said Senator Costa. “She is a worthy addition to this exclusive list.”

Her historical marker will be placed at 1230 Federal Street in Pittsburgh, in front of the new Carnegie Free Library Allegheny. She was born three blocks south of the spot and her childhood home was one block east.

The new markers, selected from 51 applications, will be added to the nearly 2,300 familiar blue-with-gold-lettering signs along roads and streets throughout Pennsylvania.

Read Senator Costa Announces New Historical Marker in Pittsburgh

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Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library

03 Women Writers Get Lost In History from “When Women Wrote Hollywood”, Dr. Rosanne Welch, Cal State Fullerton

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

Watch this entire presentation

Transcript:

We’re gonna talk a little bit about why women get lost behind in history and see if we can think about fixing that in our own work — our own writing — our own conversations. I’m also the book editor for The Journal of Screenwriting. So I do book reviews — I hire book review people for that. So that’s always something I’m interested in getting folks who want to do and I’m on the editorial staff of Written By magazine which is the magazine the Writers Guild so we decide who gets interviewed and every month it’s either a famous TV writer or a film writer and I think it’s a wonderful way to stay involved because if you have those people come into your class and the guest speaker so that’s all the stuff I do.

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.

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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

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Dr. Rosanne Welch Appears Twice at Denver Pop Culture Con, May 31, 2019 – June 2, 2019

I’m happy to announce that I will be appearing on two panels at next month’s Denver Pop Culture Con in Denver.

For the 1st session, I’ll be moderating a panel of contributors to When Women Wrote Hollywood covering female screenwriters of Hollywood’s early days.

For the 2nd session, I’ll be discussing the subjects of my first book, Why the Monkees Matter.

Hope to see you there!

DENVER POP CULTURE CON

Friday-Sunday May 31-June 2, 2019
Colorado Convention Center
Denver, Colorado

Saturday June 1, 2019 :: 12:30 pm to 1:20 pm

When Women Wrote Hollywood: A History of Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry
ROOM 504 – Reel Heroes (sm)
Dr. Rosanne Welch, Amy Banks, Mikayla Daniels, Toni Hull, Laura Kirk, Kelley Zinge

Did you know that in the early days of Hollywood there were more women writers than men? And they made more money than most men while essentially inventing the iconic stories that have filled our movie screens ever since? Many of them ran their own production companies but their names have been left out of the textbooks. Help us bring their names back into the conversation by joining Dr. Rosanne Welch as she moderates a panel of writers – Amy Banks, Mikayla Daniels, Toni Hull, Laura Kirk, Kelley Zinge – who researched the lives of these creative female writers you need to know.

Sunday June 2, 2019 :: 2:30 pm to 3:20 pm

Why the Monkees Matter – Even 50 Years Later
ROOM 504 – Reel Heroes
Dr. Rosanne Welch

Whether you’re a fan of The Monkees as a television show or a band – or both – come join Dr. Rosanne Welch as she discusses how they changed television by bringing new ideas about identity, celebrity and popular culture to the teenagers of their day – and all the generations that followed — all in the span of the 2 season run of their wildly influential program.

Denver Popular Culture Con Tickets

Quotes from When Women Wrote Hollywood – 28 – in a series – Telling Film’s Her-story

Do you know about these women screenwriters? Many don’t. Learn more about them today!

Get “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!

These Stephens College MFA candidates (now, graduates), found research in huge archives such as the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and in tiny tidbits in hometown newspapers scanned into digital copies for the information age. The goal was to provide a clearing house of information on which other future historians can continue to build so that they can find new facts, and even contradict some of these, as is the way of history – and herstory.

Buy a signed copy of when Women Write Hollywood or Buy the Book on Amazon

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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 from the LA Public Library

“When Women Wrote Hollywood” selected as runner-up for the Popular Culture Association’s Susan Koppelman Award

The Popular Culture Association has named When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry 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.

Congratulations to all the writers who contributed chapters and many thanks to Cari Beauchamp for her wonderful Forward! It was a pleasure putting this collection together and continues to be a pleasure sharing the stories of these trailblazing women with the world. Thanks to McFarland for believing in this project from the start.

01 Introduction from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute)

The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne

Transcript:

All right everybody. Hello. How are you? Thank you for coming today. Hopefully you’ll find what I have to say interesting. Some of you are in my class so it kind of suits what we’re talking about. Some of you have wandered in from nowhere. So luckily you’ve seen your poster and that’s very nice of you. Our College does a lot of really cool things. I think it’s important to remember that it’s above and beyond just going to class. There’s a lot of stuff you can pick up from around here. We were talking about Earth Day before. See what’s going on. What suits you particularly. A lot of times when you’re going off to do — again — interviews or visiting with people — the fact that you did above and beyond — that you tried other things — that’s gonna make you look like an interesting, engaging person right? So so thank you for coming today. We’re going to be discussing the Sisterhood of Science Fiction. I’m basically going to go through a run of interesting female science fiction writers you may or may not have heard of and then some characters that are very iconic especially in American science fiction in film and television and kind of what they stood for what they said to us what we’ve learned from them.

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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

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02 My Writing and Books from “When Women Wrote Hollywood”, Dr. Rosanne Welch, Cal State Fullerton [Video] (1 minute, 7 secs)

Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.

Watch this entire presentation

Transcript:

If you ever watched 90210 because he was the son of a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai, so he grew up in Beverly Hills and he treated those characters like real people, not like stick figures and I think that’s what really came out. It doesn’t matter how rich you are if your mother’s on drugs. That’s a problem that many other kids could have a universal connection to so writing is all about that it’s about making universal connections. It’s about pulling out some raw emotions and I think that’s what real writers do. So that’s where I came from into a lot of writing as John said now. These are a bunch of books I have chapters in. I’m very into Doctor Who. I’ve gone to some conventions and some some conferences on that. I’ve got a piece in the American Civil War on film and TV on how women were portrayed in films taking place during the Civil War and then I have the books I have with me today. The Monkees, who I talked about last year. Again, sadly, the passing of Peter Tork last week makes a whole new interest in that subject and the book that I’m talking about today “When Women Wrote Hollywood” — which is a series of chapters on famous women from the silence into about the 40’s who wrote movies that we all kind of know and we should know their names.

Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood

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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 from the LA Public Library

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Quotes from When Women Wrote Hollywood – 27 – in a series – Strikingly close as man and wife

Do you know about these women screenwriters? Many don’t. Learn more about them today!

Get “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!

While they only wrote four films together, the Gordon/Kanins continued to collaborate on each other’s individual creative efforts without taking formal credit for the rest of their careers. Kanin’s obituary in The New York Times notes the intense intimacy they shared. “For most of his life, Mr. Kanin and his first wife, the actress Ruth Gordon, were a team. They were feisty, argumentative collaborators as playwrights and strikingly close as man and wife for 43 years.

A Team In Passionate Action: Ruth Gordon And Garson Kanin
by Rosanne Welch, PhD

Buy a signed copy of when Women Write Hollywood or Buy the Book on Amazon

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

* 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

Females, fiction and uprising in the Poly Post, Cal Poly Pomona

Cal Poly Student journalist Daniela Avila did a great job summing up the points I made in my recent library lecture on my favorite female science fiction writers. — Rosanne

Education on the role of women in science fiction — which has been gravely overlooked — was brought by Rosanne Welch at Cal Poly Pomona’s University Library last Thursday, April 25.

Welch discussed several different women in this genre.

Not only in books and written works, but also in television and movies.

She was very passionate about the subject and the significance of women in the genre which many fail to acknowledge.

“It’s a place where audiences and writers go to discuss the issues of the world in a safe place,” Welch said, in regards to science fiction.

Welch began the lecture with the woman that started it all — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Shelley is responsible for writing the famous novel “Frankenstein.”

This was written in 1818; however, she asked that the book remained anonymous due to the reactions of a woman writing such a dark and challenging work. Her intentions were to sit back and wait for the book to be judged based off of merit not the author.

It wasn’t until 1823 that her name was placed on the cover.

Read Females, fiction and uprising by Daniela Avila in Poly Post