Women – Page 17 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

02 Women Writers Matter from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

Transcript:

Teaching philosophy. Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter and they’ve been far too often forgotten in history. So I love this movie to talk about because we’re going to talk about a very important female writer in Hollywood and yes this is coming out of practice for a chapter that I’m creating on this book on this movie and how it really relies on the female input to make it work in each of the iterations and we will see all of those women in all of those iterations and as Jacob mentioned we’ll notice the last movie is the only one without a female creative in the writing team which is interesting. Anyway, it all begins with Adela Rogers St Johns. She was a journalist out of San Francisco. She moved to Hollywood and she began to write short stories and sometimes scripts. She wrote mostly prose stories that were transformed into films. One of which is a thing called What Price Hollywood and it starred Constance Bennett who was a very very high-end female performer at the time and it’s a really interesting piece but it is not the first Star Is Born. There are parts of it that are similar and we will see the parts that change. She’s quite a fascinating person. If you ever want to read about her, she wrote a couple of memoirs and she used to appear in television shows. You can find her interviews on YouTube. She’s quite cool. She lived for a long time and she was the mother confessor to the stars of Hollywood because she wrote for the Hearst syndicate and so people in scandals would call her and say “you’ve got to come to my house and tell me how to deal with the press because they’re going to kill me because someone just died in my house” right? So she’s a pretty cool lady.

Watch this entire presentation

Connections at conferences matter! Through the most recent SCMS, I met Vicki Callahan, whose film history focus right now is on Mabel Normand. When she learned I could put together a lecture on the importance of the female voice in the A Star is Born franchise she asked me to give that lecture to her master students.

It made for a great opportunity for me to hone the ideas I’m working on for a chapter on that franchise that I’m writing for a new book from Bloomsbury: The Bloomsbury Handbook Of International Screenplay Theory. It’s always nice when one piece of research can be purposed in other ways – and it’s always fun revisiting such a female-centric film franchise – one that drew the talents of such powerful performers as Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland, Barbara Streisand, and Lady Gaga.

Find out why in this lecture!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

07 Emerson and “The Dial” from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

In researching and writing my book on Giuseppe and Anita Garibaldi and the unification of Italy (A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi) I re-discovered the first American female war correspondent – Margaret Fuller — who I had first met in a college course on the Transcendentalists. I was once again fascinated by a life lived purposefully.

Then I found Tammy Rose’s podcast on the Transcendentalists – Concord Days – and was delighted when she asked me to guest for a discussion of Fuller’s work in Italy as both a journalist – and a nurse. — Rosanne

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Tammy: When it comes to the transcendentalist one of the big things is also The Dial right? That’s the biggest magazine. That’s the thing that sort of cements the idea of the transcendentalists and all these writers get published there and Emerson had asked her to be the main editor and he said that he was going to pay her and then he never ended up paying her.

Rosanne: Exactly. She didn’t even get a free place a cabin on his land to live

Tammy: Right right like his friend you know uh but I and and you know he would always put her up in his house whenever she wanted to come visit concord. She had an open invitation but you know his wife Lidian didn’t necessarily appreciate it and it wasn’t the best of relationships. So I and I feel like Margaret was never really maybe comfortable in the Concord world because they the guys here just didn’t understand how to deal with her.

Rosanne: Nor did the women right because you have to imagine they were probably — had they had some education — they knew they could do more but weren’t allowed to and then here’s this woman who’s getting to so there’s going to be this under you know layer of kind of jealousy but I don’t want to be jealous but I want that but I can’t have it.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

01 Introduction from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] [CC]

Transcript:

Here we are. We’re talking about the importance of female creatives in A Star Is Born. For me, that’s really what it’s all about. I like to my begin my lectures about the fact that I would like to acknowledge that this event is happening on the traditional lands of the Tongva people. That’s what Los Angeles is and we should recognize that there were people here before us and we need to respect their history and they’re the people who still exist on this land. So I like to start with that. I learned that when I went to a conference in New Zealand and they start all their lectures that way and I thought that was quite beautiful. As you just said so I don’t need this. These are the shows that I’ve worked on. These are the books that I have written. The lecture we’re speaking on today is going to come up next year in the book. I also am on the editorial board for Written By magazine, which I happen to have a copy of right next to me. It’s free online. So the magazine of the Writers Guild. I recommend people read it and it always has interviews with movie writers or television writers and that’s really good. I also do book reviews for the Journal of Screenwriting. It’s a great place for new academics to get published. If there are books you feel like reviewing or you’d like a free copy of you can write a review for me. So Vicki will get you in touch with me if that’s interesting to you.

Watch this entire presentation

Find out why in this lecture!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

06 The Right to be in the Room from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Tammy: …and she’s constantly reinventing herself. Like that one of my favorite things about her is the conversations that she had with women which are kind of like modern-day podcasts where it’s like let’s just get everybody together and just talk. You know.

Rosanne: Well that’s and that goes into the 1960s. Their rap sessions right? That’s it you know consciousness-raising and in every generation, like we often teach that the beginning of women’s right or whatever you know you go back to Mary Wollstonecraft right and then think about that’s England but here in America those same conversations are being had.

Tammy: Yeah Yeah and I and I feel like she had to do so much fighting and but or not even like necessarily fighting but just like to reaffirm her right to be in that room or to you know be working as a correspondent for Horace Greeley’s paper.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

05 Margaret’s Education from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Tammy: …and it got her all over the place.

Rosanne: It did and I often compare her — when i’m talking to students about her — I compare her to John Quincy Adams, right, who at 10 was translating his own father’s paperwork and knew five or six languages and he’s going to be like — in my opinion — our smartest president. So she’s on par with him but not given the opportunities.

Tammy: Exactly and even in her day she was known as the most widely read woman in America and she talked her way into the Harvard library even though she couldn’t actually attend Harvard you know and she made sure that she could get the education that she wanted. She must have had this like internal drive and curiosity that just kept her going throughout her life.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Jeanie MacPherson – The Genius Behind DeMille — Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script magazine, August 2021

Script contributor Dr. Rosanne Welch shines a light on Jeanie MacPherson, a trailblazing screenwriter from the silent era who would eventually come to write a bulk of famed Hollywood mogul Cecil B. DeMille’s box office hits.

As with many other female Silent Era screenwriters Jeanie Macpherson began her career as an actress (appearing in over 147 films). Then she became a writer/director at Universal (writing 54 films) and eventually met Cecil B. DeMille, for whom she would write the bulk of his box office successes. In 1927, Macpherson became one of only three women, the other two being Mary Pickford and Bess Meredyth (more on her in a future column) who helped found the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (along with thirty-three male screenwriters). She was also a suffragette – and a pilot in those early days of aviation when, like the new world of motion pictures, even the skies were open to female trailblazers.

Read Jeanie MacPherson – The Genius Behind DeMille — Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script magazine, August 2021

Read about more women from early Hollywood

04 Sex and Marriage from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Rosanne: So they knew sex. They talked about sex and they wanted to be careful about it.

Tammy: Right.

Rosanne: Exactly. So funny.

Tammy: Yeah. Well, and Margaret was especially aware of issues about being a woman in a make society and issues of marriage and how it was very hard to actually have an equal balance between two intellectual individuals because it was not something that she had generally seen or that generally happened.

Rosanne: It didn’t. It wasn’t socially acceptable. Women were supposed to accept that, even if you were semi-smart, you had been allowed some learning, which she got lucky because her father believed in that. Then you gave that up when you went home and then you just took care of the kids if you got married.

Tammy: Right and her father started training her when she was a kid. This is not a little thing. He was a strict disciplinarian and wanted her to be translating The Aeneid by the time she was 10 without any hesitation and without any errors and she had nightmares as a child because he was holding her up to such a high standard, but I think she lived by that high standard for the rest of her life.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Now Available: Gloria Steinem: A Life in American History by William H. Pruden III, Edited by Drs. Rosanne Welch and Peg Lamphier

Good Morning to all our dedicated authors in the Women Making History series for ABC-Clio.

Peg and I wanted to share the nice news that Book #2 has been published and congratulate author Bill Pruden for all his hard work on the life of Gloria Steinem. We can’t wait to see the rest of the books in our series come to publication.

We know (being meant for libraries) that the volumes are higher priced so we can’t ask you all to buy a copy – but you can alert your local public or school library to their existence and ask that they buy a copy for their stacks (or their Kindle offerings). (Download A PDF Flyer for the book)

Stay safe and keep reading! — Rosanne and Peg

03 Transcendentalism and the 1960s from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Rosanne: When I used to teach a straight history class I would often compare this era of the transcendentalists and all the utopian societies to the 1960s because we have that same urge going on to make the world a better place and I love that and most people — we know about the 60s. We’ve seen it in movies and stuff but they really don’t know that that urge happened so much earlier and that women were part of it.

Tammy: Exactly. Well, and the women were part of it kind of whether they wanted to be or not because these utopian societies were maybe designed by men. You know Bronson was kind of like, all right this is how I want to run the school. I want to be open and honest with the kids and even Elizabeth Peabody you know she wrote a book called the history of that school and in it she’s like we told the children the right answers to all the questions that they had including when they asked about sex. You know we told them honestly.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

02 Fuller’s Life and Bronson Alcott from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Rosanne: So I was, I was enthralled to find a woman with such a modern mind in that country.

Tammy: Exactly and let’s sort of go through her life. Sort of hit the major time periods before she gets to Italy because she’s in Italy at the very end of her life. So she was born in 1810 in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, which is like 10 miles away from Concord, and she was kind of born into the world of you know she grew up playing with Thomas Wentworth Higginson you know and she very quickly met Emerson and fell in with the Transcendental crowd just as they were actually starting to get going.

Rosanne: Exactly and I think it’s important that she worked you know when she did her early teaching and things like that she worked with Bronson Alcott, who was also someone that — we all knew Louisa May Alcott — which we should and then it was later that I learned her father was involved and you know was maybe not one of the most successful transcendentalists but was trying with ideas — like an integrated school and it was hurting him financially and Margaret was part of that right, supporting that so you can see early on.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS