When Women Wrote Hollywood – Page 12 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

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Transcript:

Another woman — we’re moving kind of through — now we’re moving to the 40s and 50s — Lillian Hellman. More people know of her because she was a playwright. They know about her winning some Tony’s and then her stuff was transferred to film. The Children’s Hour was almost a Pulitzer Prize winner but it’s the story of two lesbian women who run a girl’s school and one is accused of lesbianism and the Pulitzer Prize committee actually came out and said “we’re not giving an award to a movie that discusses that” — Oh to a play, excuse me. So it was won that year by Zoe Akins for a play that has been falling out of — nobody cares about anymore — et people are still performing The Little Foxes and you can still of course watch the Bette Davis version, which is quite brilliant. So Lillian Hellman is a pretty amazing woman. She’s also famous to us because during the Blacklist there was a threat of blacklisting her and when she was asked to give names to the committee in Washington that’s what she said — which could have destroyed her career.

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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From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 03: Anita Loos Papers 1917-1981., Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library

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.

Anita Loos, screenwriter and novelist, was born on April 26, 1893, in Sisson, CA, the daughter of R. Beers and Minnie Ellen Loos. Miss Loos wrote the subtitles for D. W. Griffith’s film, Intolerance, in 1916. Her best known work is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She died on August 18, 1981, at the age of 93. The Anita Loos Papers consist of scripts, essays and articles from her career as a screenwriter and novelist. The bulk of the collection dates from 1917-1969. There are also adaptations of her works, unfinished scripts and research notes.

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29 A Female Perspective from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (34 seconds)

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

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Transcript:

So we have three women always involved in the original A’Star Is Born”. See anything missing in the current version? Isn’t that interesting and one of the critiques of this current version is that they spend too much time on Bradley Cooper’s character. It becomes the story of the star who is dying not the story of the star who is being born. That’s probably one of the reasons –while it’s making tons of money because Lady Gagas wonderful and they’re good in the film — — critically it didn’t quite work. That, to me is the juice that was missing right? We needed the female perspective.

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From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives: Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood by Robert S. Birchard

Cecil B. DeMille was the most successful filmmaker in early Hollywood history. Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood is a detailed and definitive chronicle of the screen work that changed the course of film history and a fascinating look at how movies were actually made in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Drawing extensively on DeMille’s personal archives and other primary sources, Robert S. Birchard offers a revealing portrait of DeMille the filmmaker that goes behind studio gates and beyond DeMille’s legendary persona. In his forty-five-year career DeMille’s box-office record was unsurpassed, and his swaggering style established the public image for movie directors. DeMille had a profound impact on the way movies tell stories and brought greater attention to the elements of decor, lighting, and cinematography. Best remembered today for screen spectacles such as The Ten Commandments and Samson and Delilah , DeMille also created Westerns, realistic “chamber dramas,” and a series of daring and highly influential social comedies. He set the standard for Hollywood filmmakers and demanded absolute devotion to his creative vision from his writers, artists, actors, and technicians.

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28 Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (43 seconds)

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

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Transcript:

I love Joan because she also wrote some wonderful novels. This novel was written by her husband, John Gregory Dunn, Living Off The Big Screen. If you want to know anything about how a movie gets made. It took them eight years to make Up Close And Personal. How many rewrites? How many notes from the various Studios. That is the best — it’s a nice slim little book but it walks you through the process of everything that had to do until that movie was finally made. It started out as the story of a famous news anchor who had died of a heroin overdose and Disney wanted to make the movie and one of the notes they got was “Does she have to die in the end?” to which Joan Didion said “Well if she’s not named Jessica Savitch she doesn’t have to” and they changed it and they made it a love story. So there you go, but going through the the gyrations they went through is fascinating.

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How Do We Get Hidden Histories Out Into The World with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (3 minutes 46 seconds)

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How Do We Get Hidden Histories Out Into The World Q&A

Dr. Rosanne Welch answers Susan LaTempa’s question during Q&A time after readings from Paperback LA writers

I talk about Eve Unsell and other forgotten women screenwriting pioneers and how I am working to make their stories better known in both Hollywood and around the world using my other book, When Women Wrote Hollywood.

I was among 5 writers highlighted in the Paperpback LA 3 Issue Trilogy and did a reading from my article “Hey, Hey, They Wrote The Monkees!” which was reprinted in Paperback LA #3

It was a great night, with great writing and reading and with a full house of people.

Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement in Comedy.

Capitalizing on the show’s success, the actual band formed by the actors, at their peak, sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined, and set the stage for other musical TV characters from The Partridge Family to Hannah Montana. In the late 1980s, the Monkees began a series of reunion tours that continued into their 50th anniversary.

This book tells the story of The Monkees and how the show changed television, introducing a new generation to the fourth-wall-breaking slapstick created by Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers.

Its creators contributed to the innovative film and television of 1970s with projects like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laugh-In and Welcome Back, Kotter. Immense profits from the show, its music and its merchandising funded the producers’ move into films such as Head, Easy Riderand Five Easy Pieces.

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27 More On A Star Is Born from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (22 seconds)

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

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Transcript:

What’s interesting to me about A Star Is Born is that all of the three first original versions — next one being from the 70s — which is the Kris Kristofferson Barbra Streisand version — all of these had a female co-writer. This is Joan Didion. She and her husband John Gregory Dunn were novelists in New York who also wrote movies. They wrote the third adaptation of A Star Is Born so we have a female perspective in all these movies.

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From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives: ‘Movie Plots Pushed into Prose’: The Extra Girl, Will Hays, and the Novel of Silent Hollywood by Justin Gautreau

Months of research when 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.

Read ‘Movie Plots Pushed into Prose’: The Extra Girl, Will Hays, and the Novel of Silent Hollywood by Justin Gautreau

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

26 Dorothy Parker and A Star Is Born from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (55 seconds)

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

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Transcript:

Dorothy and her husband Alan Campbell wrote A Star Is Born which if you know obviously the story is about a marriage where the woman is far more famous than the man. His career is going while hers is rising. That’s Dorothy Parker and her husband’s story. That’s exactly the emotion she was experiencing. She just put it on an actor and actress. It became such a classic it was remade in the 50s with Julia my brain just went dead. Thank you. Judy Garland. I was saying Julianne and that was wrong. Judy Garland. Thank you and it was written this was adapted by Moss Hart who’s a famous name from Broadway. He wrote it himself however he credited several scenes from the original movie he’d just cut and pasted them out of the first script and put them in his and admitted that when he was doing it. So whenever he got notes from the studio that they wanted to change something he would say “No no no. That’s how Parker had it the first time. It’s good enough. We’re not fixing it.” So essentially it’s Moss Hart and Dorothy Parker together right?

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Quotes from When Women Wrote Hollywood – 50 and End in a series – “…her female-centric work failed to find acclaim with critics.”

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

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Zoë Akins is described as “a perplexing figure in the history of American theatre” by historian Yvonne Shafer (58). Akins was a poet, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. Despite many successful publications, productions, films, and a Pulitzer Prize, she is not considered an obvious success. In creative fields dominated by the male perspective, her female-centric work failed to find acclaim with critics.

Zoë Akins: A Quiet Rebellion
by Sarah Whorton

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Category: When Women Wrote Hollywood

30 Lillian Hellman from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (55 seconds)

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 03: Anita Loos Papers 1917-1981., Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library

29 A Female Perspective from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (34 seconds)

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives: Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood by Robert S. Birchard

28 Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (43 seconds)

How Do We Get Hidden Histories Out Into The World with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (3 minutes 46 seconds)

27 More On A Star Is Born from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (22 seconds)

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives: ‘Movie Plots Pushed into Prose’: The Extra Girl, Will Hays, and the Novel of Silent Hollywood by Justin Gautreau

26 Dorothy Parker and A Star Is Born from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (55 seconds)

Quotes from When Women Wrote Hollywood – 50 and End in a series – “…her female-centric work failed to find acclaim with critics.”