Category: Women

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

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Transcript:

And when The Great Gatsby came out it was a flop. The book fails. It survived because there were so many extra copies in a warehouse that weren’t sold that when they started sending packages –care packages — to soldiers in World War I they threw in these books nobody wanted and all the soldiers ended up reading it and coming home thinking that was the greatest novel they’d ever read and it became this centerpiece of American literature while her books never gone out of print right and yet we don’t teach it to kids in high school which I can’t fathom. It’s the same era. It’s the same attitude. Anyway she’s very famous for many many films, San Francisco, The Women, which was remade about six years ago by Diane English from the Murphy Brown show and Anita’s version is better. It is really quite lovely and it has a classic line in it. They’re watching two dogs fight and somebody says “What do you call them?” and she says “Witches, with a different letter.” So you know exactly. So Anita Loos deserves to be more famous.

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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Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood

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Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

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

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

Watch this entire presentation

Transcript:

This lady people should know more. You might recognize from the title of her book Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. This is Anita Loos. Anita Loos is probably the most prolific female writer of the silent era and she made the transition into talkies. Many, many writers did not. She did because she could write really witty dialogue but Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a novel that fascinates me. She wrote it because she was on a train with M Somerset Maugham who she loved as an intellectual and a blonde chick got on the train and he started to fawn all over her after they were having this lovely intellectual conversation and it made her mad. So she wrote a book about how blonds aren’t stupid. They’re actually working it and getting out of men exactly what they want. Yeah. So they pretend to be dumb. It’s really Legally Blonde long before there was Legally Blonde and it’s never gone out of publication but it is not taught in American literature class where The Great Gatsby is always taught.

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.

---

Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood

…or via Amazon…

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

* 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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS