On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
As you may have seen, I received my first box of “When Women Wrote Hollywood” books this week, which means that I can now provide signed copies for all who would like them.
Use the PayPal button below to order, pay and tell me what inscription you would like on your copy. You can use PayPal OR any of your major credit cards.
La Fée aux Choux (The Fairy of the Cabbages) is one of the earliest narrative fiction films ever made. It was probably made before the first Méliès fiction film, but after the Lumière brothers’ L’Arroseur Arrosé. The confusion stems from the uncertainty in the dating of these three films. Many film historians have accepted that La Fée aux Choux was made in April 1896, just a month or two before Méliès made his first fiction film. L’Arroseur arrosé (generally considered the earliest fiction film) was screened in December 1895.
La Fée aux Choux is sixty seconds long, possibly making it the earliest known film with a running time of at least one minute.
The film is based on an old and popular French (and actually, European) fairy tale. According to it, baby boys are born in cabbages, and baby girls are born in roses.
Alice Guy-Blaché, the director of La Fée aux Choux, is one of the early cinema’s most important figures, and had an extensive career as a director, producer and studio owner, working in both France and the United States. In a remake called Sage-femme de première classe (Midwife to the Upper Classes) from 1902, Guy Blaché appears, dressed as a man. — Wikipedia
Watch La Fee aux Choux | The Cabbage Fairy
More about Alice Guy Blaché
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When Women Wrote Hollywood – 6 in a series – Alice Guy Blaché
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 House Divided (Solax, 1913)
More about Alice Guy Blaché
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A fun site to check out is the Writers Guild Foundation Blog where they highlight some of the wonderful scripts in their catalog.
The link below takes you to a fun post about writers who created great chemistry on the page where the blogger excerpts a few pages from 1949’s Adams’s Rib, written by husband-and-wife writing team Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.
Gorden and Kanin appear in an essay of mine, published in our new book, When Women Wrote Hollywood.
…And after that great post, check out this one, on Norma Rae.
This Week’s Script Cavalcade: Adam’s Rib from the Writers Guild Foundation Blog
Lauren Bacall gives Humphrey Bogart some side eye and he grins. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryanargue about orgasms at Katz’s deli. Yammering Paul Newman talks a mostly silent Robert Redford’s ear off in the wild west in the late 1800s. Basically, two characters come together as partners on screen and if we’re lucky, their interactions and friction produce this happy spellbinding effect.
We call it chemistry, but often in the business of creating movies and television we treat it like it’s magic… as if it’s elusive and very difficult to conjure and we shouldn’t talk about it too loudly because we don’t want to squelch the enchantment.
Here’s a question for you.
What if we treated chemistry as what it is?
That is to say, a science.
Click for larger images
When Women Wrote Hollywood – 5 in a series – The New York Hat (1912), Wr: Anita Loos, Dirs: D. W. Griffith
The New York Hat (1912) is a short silent film directed by D. W. Griffith from a screenplay by Anita Loos, and starring Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, and Lillian Gish.
The New York Hat is one of the most notable of the Biograph Studios short films and is perhaps the best known example of Pickford’s early work, and an example of Anita Loos’s witty writing. The film was made by Biograph when it and many other early U.S. movie studios were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey at the beginning of the 20th century.[1][2][3]
Mollie Goodhue leads a cheerless, impoverished life, largely because of her stern, miserly father. Mrs. Goodhue is mortally ill, but before dying, she gives the minister, Preacher Bolton, some money with which to buy her daughter the “finery” her father always forbade her.
Mollie is delighted when the minister presents her with a fashionable New York hat she has been longing for, but village gossips misinterpret the minister’s intentions and spread malicious rumors. Mollie becomes a social pariah, and her father tears up the beloved hat in a rage.
All ends well, however, after the minister produces a letter from Mollie’s mother about the money she left the minister to spend on Mollie. Soon afterwards, he proposes to Mollie, who accepts his offer of marriage.— Wikipedia
Watch ‘The New York Hat”
More about Anita Loos
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When Women Wrote Hollywood – 5 in a series – Anita Loos
Anita Loos (April 26, 1889[1] – August 18, 1981) was an American screenwriter, playwright and author, best known for her blockbuster comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She wrote film scripts from 1912, and became arguably the first-ever staff scriptwriter, when D.W. Griffith put her on the payroll at Triangle Film Corporation. She went on to write many of the Douglas Fairbanks films, as well as the stage adaptation of Colette’s Gigi.
Loos would continue writing, always a constant magazine contributor and appearing regularly in Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. Biographer Gary Carey notes: “She was a born storyteller and was always in peak form when reshaping a real-life encounter to make an amusing anecdote.”[4] Loos began a volume of memoirs, A Girl Like I, which would be published in September 1966. Her 1972 book, Twice Over Lightly: New York Then and Now, was written in collaboration with friend and actress Helen Hayes. Kiss Hollywood Good-by (1974) was another Hollywood memoir, this time about the MGM years and would be very successful. Her book The Talmadge Girls (1978) is about the actress sisters Constance Talmadge and Norma Talmadge.
Loos would become a virtual New York institution, an assiduous partygoer and diner-out, conspicuous at fashion shows, theatrical and movie events, balls and galas.[14] A celebrity anecdotalist, she was also never one to let facts spoil a good story: — Wikipedia
More about Anita Loos
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Free eBook Version of How To Write Photoplays by Anita Loos and John Emerson
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When Women Wrote Hollywood went to the printer today!
We are on schedule for our planned publication date of July 31st AND here’s the first time an ad for the book appears alongside some other fun McFarland titles in Classic Images: The Newspaper of Film Fandom.
Available for Print Pre-Order Now. Electronic Editions Coming Soon!
Use “When Women Wrote Hollywood” in your classroom!
Contact McFarland directly for instructor copies, library and bookstore purchases.
When Women Wrote Hollywood – 4 in a series – Jeanie MacPherson
Jeanie MacPherson (May 18, 1886[1] – August 26, 1946) was an American actress, writer, and director from 1908 until the late 1940s. She was a pioneer for women in the film industry. She worked with some of the best filmmakers of the time period including D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille. While she started in the theater, and then had a brief stint as an actress, she ultimately dedicated her life’s work to screenwriting for DeMille.[2] She was appraised for her new level resourcefulness and attentiveness to the needs of DeMille.[3]
DeMille and MacPherson formed what became one of the most influential and long-lasting partnerships in the industry.[3] She was infatuated with his perfection and force of will, while he was captivated by her high spirited courage. She penned 30 of DeMille’s next 34 films. They admired each other; he would provide the crowd shots and epic sense, while she would humanize the heroine. They both loathed weakness, which they defined as a man being degraded and women, who were shallow and money-hungry, looking for a man to take care of them. They both believed in the power of people to change their ways, which many of their scripts showed.[3] — Wikipedia
More about Jeanie MacPherson
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† Available from the LA Public Library
A beautifully written remembrance from one writer to another – a good read to understand the breadth and depth of a writer’s full life – Josh Greenfield wrote ‘Harry and Tonto’ (with Paul Mazursky, who was one of the co-writers of The Monkees pilot -small world indeed!). Harry and Tonto is a worthwhile character study film to watch over the summer. Art Carney won an Oscar for it and if you don’t know who Art Carney is……. 🙁 But as you’ll learn when you read this, Greenfield also wrote reviews and books about his autistic son — and was friends with other writers we should already know – from Joan Didion to Mario Puzo to Arthur Miller.
Oddly enough, I have a novel based on the movie in my bookshelf – but nowhere does it say it is based on a movie – and nowhere does the movie identify itself as an adaptation. That makes me wonder if, in 1974, it was still thought that a novel based on a movie wouldn’t be worth reading… I’ll have to do more research on that! The one (sadly bad) review of the book on Amazon says it is written like a bad dictation from the film. The movie was released August 12th 1974; the book came out earlier, in January of that year. Again, an odd way of doing things. Maybe the film was held up in post production???
Either way, the movie is GREAT! And Greenfield seems to have lived a fascinating life as a writer – and as a human.
Film critic Kenneth Turan remembers Josh Greenfeld, a screenwriter who taught him about life
I always knew I’d write about my friend Josh Greenfeld. I even started to take notes, long lost, about the piercingly acute things he’d say about Hollywood and the movie business, but I never thought it would be this hard.
Best known in the business as the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of “Harry and Tonto,” the film that won a best acting Oscar for Art Carney in 1974, Josh (who died last month at age 90) was an under-the-radar insider and consummate professional, deft, gifted and successful in a wide range of writing disciplines.
Dorothy Parker’s story is such a classic it keeps being made and remade across the decades – first adapted by Moss Hart, then by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne – this time by Eric Roth (Oscar winner for Forest Gump), Bradley Cooper and Will Fetters. THAT is a successful piece of writing. The trailer already has me teared up- that’s how powerful the story still is.
Video
Books
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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
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