“As Zoë Akins attempted to prove the legitimacy of her work, the need for commercial success could not be ignored. Like her characters, Akins had to secure her own economic future. While her parents lived a comfortable life, they did not support her fiscally. Such restraints meant setting aside the high-minded rebellion of Papa. She needed to fill theatre seats, so she had to fulfill specific story requirements. Akins wrote, “…I longed for the freedom which money alone could buy” (OTM 127). She used that declaration as the foundation for her next work.”
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Kevin Willmott is located at Kansas University, much farther than Los Angeles and he’s come in through Skype. Where he’s not gonna fly up to LA. So we can get guest speakers who are current working writers. We need to do more of that. in the second year, we go into looking at screenplays right — so William Goldman is the head guy there and I’m happy to use books that I found out about from my coming to these conferences and also I wanted to expand their studies so — because I’m — my grandparents were Italian so that’s how come I get to call myself Italian, so I said “Oooo let’s do some Italian films. What’s my excuse? Global neo-realism affected American film so let’s study that!” So this turned out to you great piece because there are essays by followers in many countries so it’s also pretty international which is also something made for me to bring to the Americans. We aren’t the only ones who do movies. Sometimes we pretend we are but we should not think that way and we learn a lot from international films. So I do that.
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But the beauty of both my books (I hope) is the fact that they bring much needed attention to writers and performers who weren’t necessarily lauded in their own time. —Rosanne
You know how you are going to lecture on topics from your new book and then something happens in the big old world that touches on your previous book?
Such is happening to Rosanne Welch, who is a writer and adjunct professor at Cal State Fullerton, Cal Poly Pomona, Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut and Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.
She is scheduled to give one of the Faculty Noon Time Talks in CSUF’s Pollock Library from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday, March 5. These events are based on faculty research, which in Welch’s case is partly encapsulated in her most recent book, When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry (McFarland & Co., 2018).
However, on Feb. 21, actor/composer/musician Peter Tork, who is best known as the bass player/keyboardist with the Monkees, passed away, which prompted the re-release of something Welch had said about him:
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“The lesson learned by this emerging scholar is that researching with the goal of establishing factual history of who, what, when, where, and why is a serious responsibility and details cannot be taken for granted.
The longer litany of errors begins at the end, with one of Heerman’s obituaries, published by Variety November 7, 1977. Film Pioneer Victor Heerman Dies reads, “His wife, the former Sarah Mason, shared his Little Women writing chores and the Oscar.”
The Six Degrees of Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman by Pamela L. Scott
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You never know how much of an effect – if any – you’re having on students who are sometimes quiet in class, or looking at their computer screens when you think they ought to be looking at you… but this article was a wonderful reminder that they are listening, sometimes even amidst their multi-tasking lives. And what this MFA student took away didn’t come from any long lectures, really, but rather from the opening of all my classes where I bring in articles from recent newspaper stories about the film and television business and discuss what they mean to them and their futures. In this case, it had to do with which gendered writers are usually chosen for which genre films…a topic of deep interest to me – and through this article she published, I learned it was a topic of deep interest to Chelsea as well.
I can only lend my stream of consciousness to the screenwriting instructors I have had the pleasure to learn from in the MFA program. Specifically, when it comes to this filmmaker Michael Bay-type realization, I had to give the credit to lecturer Rosanne Welch. This woman has taught me more about what it is to be a female writer in Hollywood than I ever thought I needed to know. I would never have made this connection with the tone and the story of this film had it not been for her classes.
She has taught me that as a woman I need to speak up. I have to raise my voice, and in the way that I know how; writing. Going into this program I did not imagine I would grow as much as I have. Thank you to all my classmates and our faculty that push me every day to be better. I will miss learning from all of you when this wild ride of a program is over.
What’s interesting about video game companies is they’re not just doing the games. They’re doing the cinematics you can look up online little five and six minute movies based on the characters and their games. Those are entirely written by film and television writers They do digital comic books and they do novels. They do an entire world built around these games. That is very successful. They told us in the meeting that when a movie in Hollywood opens and 100 million dollars is a big deal. When they drop a new game, it’s five hundred million so why aren’t we looking at this business and where our students can go, so it’s great. Now y’all aren’t from Los Angeles. That’s no fun but you’re can have guest speakers all the time on skype. So many people are willing to come in. We brought in English writers who were willing to sit at slightly 2:00 in the morning and talk to my students you know in our time. So I highly recommend you look around and do that.
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“Harrison’s last partnerships with Hitchcock was a return to the war film in 1942’s Saboteur, which tells the story of an innocent man framed for an act of terror and trying to clear his name. Harrison’s first feature without Hitchcock was Dark Waters, in which she wrote and served as associate producer. In the film a woman, recovering from a boating accident, in which she was the sole survivor, seeks refuge from relatives but finds there is an insidious plot to murder her for her inheritance.”
Joan Harrison: Redefining Femininity in Film Noir and Hollywood
by Chelsea Andes
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This time I’ll discuss the women in my 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 – but 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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Cari Beauchamp wrote “Without Lying Down” which was one of the first books to have covered entirely the career of Frances Marion and all these women I’m speaking of. This textbook does not appear in any film history course that I have found in Los Angeles or around the United States and yet it covers all these important women. Cari comes in as well. She lives in Los Angeles. So I am lucky. I’ve also expanded recently to invite the writers of video games because that is a whole new area for our students to move into. A very important area. These gentlemen were early writers of half-hour children’s shows and they moved into video games and now they run the development for Blizzard which is a very major video game company. They do Overwatch.
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“Dorothy Rothschild, however, was not long concerned with embodying society’s ideal for young ladies. Her transformation into Dorothy Parker likely began with her admittance to Miss Dana’s highly exclusive school for girls – both “a finishing school and a college-preparatory one, quite progressive for its time”
The Intimately Unknowable Dorothy Parker A Study of her Life and Art by Elizabeth Dwyer
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