Category: Screenwriting

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 43: COMEDY OUTLOOK SADDENS SPEWACK (1960) – The New York Times

Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.

From The

COMEDY OUTLOOK SADDENS SPEWACK; Calls Times ‘Unfortunate’ for the Writer of Humor — Cites ‘Method’ School as ‘Grim’
By Louis Calta

Available in facsimile version on the NY Times web site.

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† When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry†

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Related posts:

  1. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 19: Algonquin Round Table Web Site
  2. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 23: Satire and Melodrama in a Newspaper Play Entitled “Clear All Wires”, New York Times
  3. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 07: “Frederica Sagor Maas, Hollywood’s ‘Shocking Miss Pilgrim'” The Forward.
  4. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 22: Latitude in Mass-Produced Culture’s Capital: New Women and Other Players in Hollywood, 1920-1941
  5. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 09: “Eve Unsell in New York.” Film Daily 6 August 1936

When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – 9 in a series – Suspense (1913) Wr: Lois Weber

When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies - 9 in a series - Suspense (1913) Wr: Lois Weber

Suspense 1913 film shot

Suspense is a 1913 American silent short film thriller directed by Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley. Weber also wrote the scenario and stars in the film with Valentine Paul. The film features early examples of a split screen shot[1] and a car chase. The Internet Movie Database lists Lon Chaney as having an unconfirmed and uncredited brief role;[2] however, this is disputed by silentera.com, which states “Despite attributions to the contrary, Lon Chaney does not appear in the film.”[3][4][5]

A print of the film is preserved at the film archive of the British Film Institute.[6]

A servant leaves a new mother with only a written letter of notice, placing her key under the doormat as she leaves. Her exit attracts the attention of a tramp to the house. As the husband has previously phoned that he is working late, the wife decides not to ring back when she finds the note but does ring back when she sees the tramp. Her husband listens, horrified, as she documents the break-in and then the tramp cuts the line. The husband steals a car and is immediately pursued by the car’s owner and the police, who nearly but don’t quite manage to jump into the stolen car during a high-speed chase. The husband manages to gain a lead over the police but then accidentally strikes a man smoking in the road and checks to see that he is okay. Meanwhile, the tramp is breaking into the room where the wife has locked herself and her baby, violently thrusting himself through the wood door, carrying a large knife. At that moment the husband arrives, pursued by the police. As the husband runs towards the home, the police fire warning shots into the air, panicking the hobo. He runs down the stairs, to be met by the husband at the front door. After a short struggle, he overpowers the hobo, who is then grabbed by the police. The husband runs upstairs, everything is explained, and all is forgiven as the couple embrace. — Wikipedia

More about Alice Guy Blaché

* 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

Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!

† When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry†

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org

* 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

Related posts:

  1. Chase Thompson, Writer, “Writing Around Lois Weber” from When Women Wrote Hollywood
  2. When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – 7 in a series – “it” (1927, Wr: Eleanor Glyn
  3. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 12: Lois Weber in Early Hollywood by Shelley Stamp
  4. When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – 2 in a series – Lady of the Night (1925): Story By Adela Rogers St. Johns
  5. When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – First in a series – Fanchon, the Cricket by Frances Marion

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 2: The first screenplays? American Mutoscope and Biograph scenarios revisited by Steven Price

Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne

The first screenplays? American Mutoscope and Biograph scenarios revisited by Steven Price

This article builds on the earlier work of Patrick Loughney in discussing a series of texts written by Frank J. Marion and Wallace McCutcheon, and registered by American Mutoscope & Biograph (AM&B) at the Library of Congress in 1904–05. It assesses the arguments for regarding these as the earliest surviving texts that were written specifically in order to be filmed. Significant historical contexts include copyright disputes between the studios, developments in narrative film since 1902, and the problematic classification system at the Library of Congress that prompted AM&B to register a sequence of films as both ‘photographs’ and ‘dramatic compositions’. A comparison of the scenarios to the films provides evidence that they were written prior to filming. The formal arrangement of the scenarios is almost indistinguishable from that for contemporary playscripts, which may have been due to a deliberate attempt to facilitate their registration as ‘dramatic compositions’.

The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!


* 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!

Related posts:

  1. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 2: Lost and gone for ever? The search for early British screenplays by Jacob U. U. Jacob
  2. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 1: Creative decision making within the contemporary Hollywood studios by Alexander G Ross
  3. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 1: No room for the fun stuff: the question of the screenplay in American indie cinema by J. J Murphy
  4. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 1: The protagonist’s dramatic goals, wants and needs by Patrick Cattrysse
  5. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 2: The early screenwriting practice of Ernest Lehman by Ted Nannicelli

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 42: Interpretations, a book of first poems (1912) by Zoë Akins

Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.

From The

Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!

† When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry†

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org

* 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

Related posts:

  1. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 39: A Conversation With Lillian Hellman: A still unfinished woman via Rolling Stone
  2. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 40: Women Screenwriters: An International Guide by Jill Nelmes and Jule Selbo
  3. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 22: Latitude in Mass-Produced Culture’s Capital: New Women and Other Players in Hollywood, 1920-1941
  4. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 41: Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939 by Tino Balio
  5. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 19: Algonquin Round Table Web Site

When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – 8 in a series – Blue Jeans (1917) Wr: June Mathis

When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies - 8 in a series - Blue Jeans (1917) Wr: June Mathis

Perry Bascom comes to the town of Rising Sun, Indiana, to take charge of the sawmills which have for years been managed by his father’s best friend, Col. Henry Clay Risener. His father’s half-brother, Jack, has brought the name into disrepute in the town, so he (Perry) decides to be known as Jim Nelson. Perry sees June, who has been sent away from the poorhouse. He shares his lunch with her and protects her from the attentions of Ben Boone, the political bully of the town. — IMDB

Blue Jeans is a 1917 American silent drama film, based on the 1890 play Blue Jeans by Joseph Arthur that opened in New York City to great popularity. The sensation of the play was a dramatic scene where the unconscious hero is placed on a board approaching a huge buzz saw in a sawmill, later imitated to the point of cliché.[1][2]

Prints survive at several archives including the George Eastman House Motion Picture Collection.[3][1] — Wikipedia

More about Alice Guy Blaché

* 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

Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!

† When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry†

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org

* 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

Related posts:

  1. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 11: Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Screenplay. Wr: June Mathis. Dir. Fred Niblo, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1925 USA 142 mins.
  2. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 33: Blood and Sand. Wr: June Mathis, Dir: Fred Fred Niblo, Paramount Pictures, 1922, USA 80 mins.
  3. When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – 7 in a series – “it” (1927, Wr: Eleanor Glyn
  4. When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – First in a series – Fanchon, the Cricket by Frances Marion
  5. When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – 3 in a series – The Captive (1915) Wr: Jeannie MacPherson

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 2: An uneven marketplace of ideas: Amateur screenwriting, the Library of Congress and the struggle for copyright by Torey Liepa

Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne

An uneven marketplace of ideas: Amateur screenwriting, the Library of Congress and the struggle for copyright by Torey Liepa

In 1912, with demand for story material increasing in a growing market, writing was becoming ever more essential to commercial film production in the United States. With several important legal developments that year, however, the marketplace for story material would begin to collapse as amateur screenwriters failed to gain the same legal protections as those producing finished films, rendering their creative material entirely susceptible to piracy from above. Despite several initiatives by advocates for non-professional writers and a few members of Congress, screenwriters would not receive legal protection for unpublished material until 1978. Throughout the Golden Age of Hollywood, then, but dating back to the origins of copyright protection for finished commercial films, US copyright law encouraged Hollywood to produce story material in a closed, intellectually isolated and commercially protected shop, more closely resembling an enigmatic ‘culture industry’ than a ‘people’s art form’. This article examines a convergence of state institutions, private enterprise and commercial trade press that helped to radically re-define the creative processes underwriting film production and the system of compensation for creative material that would delimit relations of production at the beginnings of the American film industry.

The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!


* 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!

Related posts:

  1. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 1: Teaching screenwriting in a time of storytelling blindness: the meeting of the auteur and the screenwriting tradition in Danish film-making by Eva Novrup Redvall
  2. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 1: An evolving present within a past a history of screenwriting practices in popular Hindi cinema by Anubha Yadav
  3. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 1: Creative decision making within the contemporary Hollywood studios by Alexander G Ross
  4. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 2: The early screenwriting practice of Ernest Lehman by Ted Nannicelli
  5. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 2: First of all, the screenplay problem has to be solved: the public debate on screenwriting in 1930s Finland by Raija Talvio

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 41: Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939 by Tino Balio

Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.

From The

The advent of color, big musicals, the studio system, and the beginning of institutionalized censorship made the thirties the defining decade for Hollywood. The year 1939, celebrated as “Hollywood’s greatest year,” saw the release of such memorable films as Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Stagecoach. It was a time when the studios exercised nearly absolute control over their product as well as over such stars as Bette Davis, Clark Gable, and Humphrey Bogart. In this fifth volume of the award-winning series History of the American Cinema, Tino Balio examines every aspect of the filmmaking and film exhibition system as it matured during the Depression era.

Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!

† When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry†

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org

* 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

Related posts:

  1. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 12: Lois Weber in Early Hollywood by Shelley Stamp
  2. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 23: Satire and Melodrama in a Newspaper Play Entitled “Clear All Wires”, New York Times
  3. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 27: Feminism and the Female Author: The Not So Silent Career of the Woman Scenarist in Hollywood—1896–1930 by Donna R. Casella
  4. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 40: Women Screenwriters: An International Guide by Jill Nelmes and Jule Selbo
  5. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 34: Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood by Karen Ward Mahar

When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – 7 in a series – “it” (1927, Wr: Eleanor Glyn

 

When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies - 7 in a series -

“It” is a 1927 American silent romantic comedy film that tells the story of a shop girl who sets her sights on the handsome, wealthy boss of the department store where she works. It is based on a novella by Elinor Glyn that was originally serialized in Cosmopolitan magazine.

This film turned actress Clara Bow into a major star, and led people to label her the It girl.

The film had its world premiere in Los Angeles on January 14, 1927, followed by a New York showing on February 5, 1927. “It” was released to the general public on February 19, 1927.

The picture was considered lost for many years, but a Nitrate-copy was found in Prague in the 1960s.[1] In 2001, “It” was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.[2][3] — Wikipedia

Elinor Glyn (née Sutherland; 17 October 1864 – 23 September 1943) was a British novelist and scriptwriter who specialised in romantic fiction, which was considered scandalous for its time, although her works are relatively tame by modern standards. She popularized the concept of the It-girl, and had tremendous influence on early 20th-century popular culture and, possibly, on the careers of notable Hollywood stars such as Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson and, especially, Clara Bow. — Wikipedia

More about Alice Guy Blaché

* 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

Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!

† When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry†

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org

* 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

Related posts:

  1. When Women Wrote Hollywood – 17 in a series – “It” (1927) Starring Clara Bow, Wr: Elinor Glyn , Hope Loring , and, Louis D. Lighton , George Marion Jr.
  2. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 10: Elinor Glyn as Novelist, Moviemaker, Glamour Icon and Businesswoman by Vincent L. Barnett
  3. When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – First in a series – Fanchon, the Cricket by Frances Marion
  4. When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – 3 in a series – The Captive (1915) Wr: Jeannie MacPherson
  5. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 33: “Elinor Glyn.”, Denise Cummings , Women Film Pioneers Project. Columbia University

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 2: Lost and gone for ever? The search for early British screenplays by Jacob U. U. Jacob

Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne

Lost and gone for ever? The search for early British screenplays by Jacob U. U. Jacob

The systematic collection and preservation of film and TV scripts at a national level has never been implemented in the United Kingdom. While the British Film Institute National Library (BFI) has a respectable collection of around 25,000 scripts, this has been built up from donations over the 75 years of the BFI’s existence. The silent film period, to 1930, is particularly affected by this lack of national care; the BFI has less than 100 British scripts from this period. Researchers from the University of Leeds spent several months in 2007 and 2008 seeking and collating information from around the world, with grant-aid support from the British Academy. The intention was to find out if any British silent film scripts had found a home in both British and foreign institutional collections, or elsewhere. The results were in general as expected – no major new collections were unearthed – but in part surprising. As a result of this a database has been compiled. Why should we search for scripts? It is now being realized that screenplay and other documentation hold information about the provenance and development of the screen idea that a film cannot provide. For some, the script may be a useful substitute for a lost film, but more importantly understanding how the film was envisaged before principal photography can reveal much about the industrial assumptions associated with film production in general, and about that screen idea in particular.

The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!


* 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!

Related posts:

  1. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 2: Collaboration and control in the development of Janet Green’s screenplay Victim by Jill Nelmes
  2. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 2: Who Writes British Films: A Summary on the UKFC Report and a Call for Further Research by Susan Rogers
  3. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 2: The early screenwriting practice of Ernest Lehman by Ted Nannicelli
  4. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 3: Die Filmprimadonna (The Film Primadonna, 1913): A case study of the fiction of a screenplay and the process of filmmaking in German early cinema by Jan Henschen
  5. From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 2: First of all, the screenplay problem has to be solved: the public debate on screenwriting in 1930s Finland by Raija Talvio

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 40: Women Screenwriters: An International Guide by Jill Nelmes and Jule Selbo

Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.

From The

Women Screenwriters is a study of more than 300 female writers from 60 nations, from the first film scenarios produced in 1986 to the present day. Divided into six sections by continent, the entries give an overview of the history of women screenwriters in each country, as well as individual biographies of its most influential.

 

Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!

† When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry†

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org

* 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

Related posts:

  1. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 32: The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild by Miranda J Banks
  2. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 39: A Conversation With Lillian Hellman: A still unfinished woman via Rolling Stone
  3. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 31: Marion Fairfax, Exhibitors Herald, 17 April 1922.
  4. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 34: Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood by Karen Ward Mahar
  5. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 27: Feminism and the Female Author: The Not So Silent Career of the Woman Scenarist in Hollywood—1896–1930 by Donna R. Casella