Writing – Page 5 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

From ‘Greatest Girl Reporter’ to ‘Mother Confessor of Hollywood’ Adela Rogers St. Johns Wrote Herself into the History of the 20th Century – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, October 2022

Each month I celebrate the female screenwriters who came before us in an article in Script Magazine. This month’s spotlight comes from one of the first Hollywood memoirs I ever read from my small library in Bedford, Ohio – that of Adela Rogers St. Johns. They called her the Mother Confessor of Hollywood since so many stars of the 30s, 40s, and 50s came to her to help them out of a scandal (or two). A journalist who covered the film industry, she was first known as ‘The World’s Greatest Girl Reporter’ and then became ‘Mother Confessor of Hollywood’. Along the way, she garnered 38 writing or story by credits with the 1991 Final Verdict teleplay based on her memoir of sitting in courtrooms watching her famous father, trial lawyer Earl Rogers.

After meeting Jane Murfin in last month’s column and hearing about her contribution to What Price Hollywood? (1932), it is time to meet that film’s co-writer: Adela Rogers St. Johns. Along with Murfin, she earned the Best Writing, Original Story nomination at that year’s Academy Award ceremony. Yet her true fame came in two titles that spanned her career as a journalist who covered the film industry. She began as ‘The World’s Greatest Girl Reporter’ and became ‘Mother Confessor of Hollywood’. Along the way, she garnered 38 writing or story by credits with the 1991 Final Verdict teleplay based on her memoir.

Read From ‘Greatest Girl Reporter’ to ‘Mother Confessor of Hollywood’ Adela Rogers St. Johns Wrote Herself into the History of the 20th Century

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03 Jeanne Macpherson & Suso Cecchi d’Amico From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]

Transcript:

So she wrote just a little bit in this piece that was published all about her theories of screenwriting. Many other women of the day had written in this and what’s interesting is Emilio Cecci came to the states to study how Hollywood did film so he could bring that to Cine Citta and make some money in Italy and he had a daughter named Suso Cecchi d’Amico and she became the core screenwriter in the world of Italian Neo-Realism. She remembered in many interviews that she had read this booklet, as she described it, and that what she kept in mind were these things that Jeanne had said about screenwriting – the three elements: The crucial moment. The beginning of new and the end of the first one. Seems pretty basic but these people were thinking how do we make movies work and so this was new ideas to them. So it’s a woman taking information from another woman mentoring her into how she will run her career in an entirely different country. Which also I think is lovely to fit into in Claus’s theme and she remembered that for many years she was interviewed and there were oral histories done of her and she always kept going back to this one thing she’d read from Jeanne Macpherson which I think is beautiful.

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At the recent Screenwriting Research Network conference in Vienna, I gave this talk titled “From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S.”

In the talk, I trace the ways a manual about screenwriting by silent film writer Jeanne Macpherson influenced Suso Cecchi d’Amici who began to utilize Macpherson’s ideas and became the queen of Italian neorealism screenwriting in Europe. Then those Italian neo-realist screenwriters in turn inspired the Los Angeles School of Black Independent Film Makers (the L.A. School). In turn, such as Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Haile Gerima, and Julie Dash and their ideas fueled Spike Lee. Finally, when he became the first Black man to head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival (where Suso had once served) his choice of films influenced yet another generation of screenwriters.

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02 Who was Jeanne Macpherson? From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]

Transcript:

So we’ll start back with Jeanne McPherson. This is Jeannie McPherson and yes that’s a picture of her with Cecil B Demille. So this is mostly where you see her photographs in the world. She was also an aviator and several years ago at a conference, I saw a marvelous presentation on how women are always there at the beginning of a new thing like the Wild West and women aviators in America and all over the world were doing flying until it became a job that made money and then suddenly women couldn’t be hired to fly anymore and you had to have had experience in the military, where they hadn’t allowed women to fly. So suddenly you couldn’t be a pilot anymore and certainly couldn’t be an astronaut until they broke that rule. So same thing happened in early Hollywood. All these women are working like crazy and then suddenly it becomes the system and they’re all slowly petered out. Often it was because the movie Moguls offered them new contracts – after 20 years of working as screenwriters and being their own directors and casting – they were offered contracts as Junior writers to work with men who would teach them how to do it and to that they said: “I’m going home and writing my own novel.” So they and they didn’t know that by doing that they pulled themselves out of the history and therefore we’re archaeologically discovering all of them.

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01 Introduction From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. [Video]

Transcript:

…The woman I’m going to start with is Jeannie McPherson who is also a famous silent film screenwriter of that period. As famous as Marion was in her own day. Forgotten much in the history books because she wrote for Cecil B. Demille. She wrote all the films that he made that made money. She was also one of his three mistresses and so textbooks tell you she was his mistress and they forget the part where she wrote the movies that made him money. Yes. So I love Jeannie and I borrowed this title from this play which I love “Vanyan and Sonya and Masha and Spike.” It just seemed to suit me perfectly but I wanted to credit the author. I did not make up the title. I’m Rosanne Welch. I am working with Stephens College which is in Missouri but we run our MFA programs in Los Angeles. So it confuses everybody because I live in LA. I don’t live in Missouri. Our theme of our program is Write, Reach and Represent which of course suits everything that everyone’s been talking about today. I’m very excited about that. My background is that I came from being a television screenwriter and wrote on all these shows and then came into Academia and was like how are people learning how to do this because not everybody’s very good at it and then I’ve written on these various Books. Thank you for mentioning “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which has chapters on Jeannie and many of these other women we can talk about. I also am the book review editor for “The Journal Of Screenwriting” so if you want to review a book – you have a book that needs reviewing – let me know because we always need more reviews all right. So that’s a good thing and we’re here doing Global Screenwriting.

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From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S. (Complete)

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The ‘Strongheart’ of Screenwriter Jane Murfin – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, September 2022

Before there was the Lady Gaga remake of A Star is Born there was the 1937 original A Star is Born, written by Dorothy Parker (see Column #3 in this series). Before that, there was What Price Hollywood? (1932), written by Jane Murfin (and Adela Rogers St. Johns) which earned a Best Writing, Original Story nomination for the two female screenwriters at that year’s Academy Award ceremony.

Few Hollywood history books ever reference the name Jane Murfin even though she wrote and co-wrote and directed over 60 produced films in a career spanning over three decades and was a founding member of the Screenwriter’s Guild. She was one of the most prolific writers of the 1920s and ’30s.

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Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks during Screenwriting Research Network Roundtable in Vienna via Instagram [Photography]

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From Ireland To Palestine Gene Gauntier Invented Location Filming – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, August 2022

As with many women in early Hollywood, Gene Gauntier entered the business as an actress. Born Genevieve G. Liggett in Texas sometime in the 1880s, Gauntier had graduated from the Kansas City Academy of Elocution and Oratory. After a couple of years on the New York stage, she auditioned for director Sidney Olcott at the Biograph Studios in 1906. She saw that in the script her character appeared to drown and though Gauntier did not know how to swim, she took the job anyway. On that adventuresome spirit, she built a career in which she served as a writer, producer, director, and production company owner. She also instituted rules that covered adaptations for years.

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Losing the Real Girl in Adapting Gidget with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Losing the Real Girl in Adapting Gidget

On Saturday, August 6th I had the pleasure of giving an Introductory lecture on Adaptation before a screening of the movie Gidget. Written by Gabriele Upton the film was based on the novel by screenwriter Frederick Kohner which was itself based on the diaries of his daughter, Kathy Kohner, about the summer she learned to surf.

Losing the Real Girl in Adapting Gidget with Dr. Rosanne Welch

I focused on the fact that the book is a love story between a young woman and a sport – surfing – whereas the movie became a more generic love story about a girl and a college boy. While it has been enjoyed over the years its saccharine take has kept readers from discovering the real excitement and joy of independence Kathy (nicknamed Gidget) found that summer in Malibu. She made a series of important decisions about her life and proved herself among a group of seasoned male athletes simply by working hard at being good enough to surf alongside them. I ended by illustrating how the TV series (written by Ruth Brooks Flippen and starring Sally Field in her first big role) managed to capture the truth of the novel better than the 3 films made from it – which oddly starred 3 different women in the lead role but the same male lead – as if the films belong to Moondoggie but the TV show belonged once again to Kathy.

Losing the Real Girl in Adapting Gidget with Dr. Rosanne Welch

I had the great treat of bringing my 2 MFA cohorts to the Autry Museum for the event so they could check out the museum before the show. Then we all had the great treat of being joined by the real Kathy Kohner Zuckerman herself along with a group of young female surfers who wanted to watch the movie and meet an idol. Thanks to Ben Fitzsimmons for inviting us all to create this event together. And remember whenever you see a film based on a book that reading the book will make for an even richer experience of the story.

Losing the Real Girl in Adapting Gidget with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Why Emma Thompson’s Writing Stands Out by Dr. Rosanne Welch

In doing some research on YouTube I stumbled onto the speech Hugh Laurie gave in celebration of Emma Thompson receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. What struck me is that at 2:52, after joking a bit about having known each other since they were in their late teens in college together, Hugh gets to the meat of why Emma Thompson deserves the star. It’s for her WRITING.

Yes, her first Oscar came for Best Actress in Howard’s End, which is where Americans first heard of her. BUT her second Oscar came from adapting a Jane Austen novel into one of my favorite films – Sense and Sensibility (and she cast Hugh in a small part!). She then went on to write several other films (including Wit, the 2 Nanny McPhee movies, and Bridget Jones’s Baby) though many still don’t realize she is a writer.

In this clip, he explains what makes her writing so powerful…a good lesson to us all.