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.
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.
* 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!
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.
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
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
* 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
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.
Thanks to Kris Zoleta for inviting me to give yet another library lecture last week.
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.
Thank you so much for being here. I hope that you find what I have to tell you enlightening and interesting. We’re going to unearth the names of some women who have written some things that either began ideas and tropes that went on and on through Hollywood or are people that you already know their work but you never realize that those pieces were written by women. That’s my personal interest. Before we get to that though I’ll give you a couple rounds of where I come from. I was a screenwriter and a television writer and my first second career I’m not sure sometimes which one it was. So I was on Touched By An Angel, Picket Fences. I’ve worked for ABC News Nightline and I’m kind of ending today with my first job which was on 90210 because, of course, we’re all very sad to have heard that Luke Perry died the other day at 52, which is to just way too young. He was one of the nicest men on the show. It’s very sad but it was a wonderful show to work on and obviously very iconic in America and I’m going to credit that not to a female writer — they didn’t have one in charge — a male writer named Chuck Rosen. He really deserves the credit for why that show worked.
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
Here’s a great photo of my current (and nearly graduated) Columbia College Writers Round Table class together with the marvelous actors who joined us for the last 3 weeks. The did table reads of all 9 student scripts. The actors are: Erron Jay (on the right in the back row), Khanisha Foster (2nd row #6 from the left/standing next to me), Juan Villa (last one on the right in the 2nd row) and Christina Nieves (in the middle in the front row). Kudos to Khanisha for gathering them all for us because they went above and beyond the call of duty by giving great notes for the (inevitable with all writing) rewrites to come. All in all, a fun and productive 3-week collaboration!
Jane Murfin has been lost somewhere in Hollywood history like nitrate film, the Vitascope and most other female screenwriters. Let us strive to relieve her of her obscurity.
Murfin (née Macklem) was born October 27, 1884 in Quincy, Michigan and lived 70 years, dying August 10, 1955. Between these dates she wrote plays, films and was a director, animal trainer and founding member of the Screenwriter’s Guild.
* 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
Thanks to another invite from Kris Zoleta and the wonderful staff at the CPP Library I presented another lunchtime lecture yesterday.
This talk was on famous female writers of science fiction both in books (from Mary Shelley to Octavia Butler) and on television with a side tangent on important and influential female characters of science fiction (from Lt. Nyota Uhura to Dana Scully).
The audience responded well, many asking me for recommendations for summer reading) and the nicest compliment I received came from an engineering student who came up to me afterward to say she was either going to do homework or come to my talk during her lunch break and she was ever so happy she had chosen to come to the talk.
* 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
![01 Introduction from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/scifi-rmw-cpp-01.png)
![02 My Writing and Books from “When Women Wrote Hollywood”, Dr. Rosanne Welch, Cal State Fullerton [Video] (1 minute, 7 secs)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/csuf-rmw-w3h-2019-02.jpeg)
![The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love [Video] (36 Minutes)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/RMW-PHD-signature-2015.jpeg)
![01 Introduction from “When Women Wrote Hollywood”, Dr. Rosanne Welch, Cal State Fullerton [Video] (1 minute, 6 secs)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/csuf-rmw-w3h-2019-01.png)
