As with several silent film screenwriters, earlier careers in journalism and playwriting during the 1910s brought Clara Beranger to Hollywood. She would amass 85 credits between 1913 and 1934, bridging the worlds of silent and sound films.
Born Clara Strouse in Baltimore, Maryland on January 14, 1886, to a department store dynasty, she graduated in 1907 as a Phi Beta Kappa at Goucher College. She gained her professional surname when she married Albert Berwanger and kept it (except for the ‘w’) after their divorce. They had one child, a daughter named Frances, in 1909.
What wonderful work journalist Hope Lasater did for BuzzFeed in ranking 50 famous TV shows, from fewest to most episodes written by women. Episodes co-written by a woman and episodes with a woman on a “story by” credit were counted. I Love Lucy ranks 1st with 95% written by a woman – most all the work of the marvelous Madeline Pugh. Other shows that are fun to see on the list are The Mary Tyler Moore Show (since I was able to interview Treva Silverman for my book on The Monkees so we also talked about the 2 Emmy Awards she won while writing on the MTM show). See how your favorite TV shows past and present ranked (or if they made the list at all). – Rosanne
Here are 50 famous TV shows, ranked from fewest to most episodes written by women. Episodes co-written by a woman and episodes with a woman on a “story by” credit are being counted.
Sian Heder reminded us how hard it is to be both a writer/artist AND a Mom – but we do it anyway — So do it anyway.
AND she won 2 major awards for a film about a young woman chasing a dream. That has happened only 3 other times in Oscar history (for Gigi, West Side Story, My Fair Lady – all musicals). Don’t let them tell you female stories aren’t powerful enough to earn awards – or audiences.
Hope Loring co-wrote Wings (1927), the first film ever to win the Academy Award for Best Film at the inaugural ceremonies in 1927. The story of World War I fighter pilots involved in a love triangle starred Clara Bow and is the first on-screen appearance of a young Gary Cooper.
Born in Barcelona, Spain (or maybe Madrid) in 1894 Loring had moved to England at the age of 2 to live with an aunt after her parents died in a car accident. At the age of five, the aunt moved her to the United States where she studied dance and literature at various boarding schools. At 14 Loring sold her first short story to a magazine. She reported that she had come to Los Angeles by 1916 after stints as an extra in New York and drama critic in Florida.
As a warm-up to the upcoming Oscar ceremony, the Women in Film DC podcast invited me in my position as Executive Director of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting to a panel discussion about the women who have won Oscars from the beginning of the famed award ceremony. Having watched most of the ceremonies from the time I sat in front of the TV in my grandparents’ house cross-legged and begged to stay up past 11pm on a Sunday/school night, I had plenty of information. Then, as editor of When Women Wrote Hollywood I had the chance to talk about the many female screenwriters whose names aren’t well known, but who wrote or otherwise contributed to films from Queen Christina (Salka Viertel) to It’s a Wonderful Life (Frances Hackett) to The Piano (Jane Campion).
Topics that come up include women’s writers penchant for using their art for social justice, how the rise of the studio-as-factory system affected female employment, and how will streaming services change what films can be made – and can be nominated. I hope you enjoy the listen:
Ahead of the 94th Academy Awards on March 27, 2022, board member Sandra Abrams sits down with two amazing women to discuss Oscar’s history on nominations of women in non-actor categories. Our guests are Dr. Rosanne Welch, Executive Director of the MFA in TV and Screenwriting Program at Stephens College, and Leslie Combemale, a syndicated film critic known as Cinema Siren, and the creator and host of WomenRockingHollywood – an annual panel at Comic Con in San Diego which highlights female filmmakers. The women reflect on female representation throughout Hollywood’s and the awards show’s history, how it has changed, and what they see for the future.
A funny thing happened to me on the way to making my own list of 25 Films Written By Women to counter the “52 Films by Women” put out by the WIF (Women In Film).
Their list only included films directed by women and didn’t even bother listing the names of the writers (some of whom were also women).
From Marilyn Monroe to Lady Gaga it seems one actress every generation is said to have “It” but few know that a female screenwriter of the silent era coined that still current phrase. Meet Elinor Glyn. Her life as a high society wife in England fed the novel-writing success that brought Glyn an invitation to Hollywood at the age of 56.
Through marriage, she had gained the glamour of being a member of the titled nobility. Yet she soon learned he had less funds than could support their lifestyle, so Glyn became a writer, publishing a book a year to keep her family’s finances afloat. Her ‘naughty’ novels – because they involved women involved in torrid affairs — became best sellers. That success caused the Hearst publishing company to sign Glyn to write articles and – recognizing the power of the film industry – Glyn included a clause for the motion picture rights.
I am quite a fan of TED Talks – for their content and the spiffy way they illustrate a talk should go in a quick 20 minutes or so. I often show students one of my favorites – Chimamanda Adiche’s “The Danger of a Single Story” and show my friend, Art Benjamin’s TED Talks in some of my humanities courses. I was deeply pleased to be asked to give my own TED Talk, “A Female Voice In The Room”, when CalPolyPomona hosted their own TED@CPP event a few years ago. So when I find a new one worth sharing – I share it.
The latest TED Talk to catch my attention was given by film producer Lindsay Doran in 2012. “Saving the World Vs Kissing the Girl” is a fascinating look at how ‘action’ movies end on the announcement of the success to someone the protagonist is in a relationship with, making the culmination of the relationship more important than the ‘saving the world’ part.
For instance, at the end of Rocky he doesn’t say “Yo, Adrian, I won” because he doesn’t win the fight. He only survived it. The movie ends with Rocky and Adrian struggling to get to each other in the crowd. When they reach each other, they clutch each other saying, “I love you” over and over again. THAT’s the win.
Using Dirty Dancing, Karate Kid, and The King’s Speech she explains how positive relationships are more important than positive accomplishments in films. They always end with the healing of a primary relationship. Heroes who don’t win their fight (Rocky in Rocky, George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life, Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird) are so inspirational because they win their relationships.
Then she says that women don’t need to learn that relationships are more important than accomplishments in life – men do. So perhaps these action films are women’s way of teaching that lesson that no man is a failure who has friends.
I enjoyed sharing the names and careers of women like Peg Lynch, Gertrude Berg, Selma Diamond, and D.C. Fontana to the members who gathered on Zoom last Wednesday morning. There are so many more I could have talked about whose names don’t appear in mainstream books about the history of television so we have to learn who they are and carry those names forward ourselves. It’s one of the missions of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – and has been one of my missions all my life.
Transcript:
Most importantly the first woman who began in Star Trek — Dorothy Catherine Fontana. Now, this is something very important to me for us to recognize. She was told that boys would not watch programs or read books — she wrote short stories — that were written by a girl if they had male protagonists. So she was encouraged by both her publisher and her television agent to go by her initials DC which meant that legions of girls did not know that DC Fontana, their favorite Star Trek writer, was a female right, and that’s been, I think, a problem for years. We continue to do that. When I was a kid in high school you read The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton — Susan Elizabeth Hinton — because no one thought anyone would write a book about gang kids written by a girl. likewise, I think — I’d like to think we grow out of these things but in fact, in my son’s childhood, the major giant best-selling book around the world was written by J. K. Rowling because no one thought boys would read a book by a girl named Joanne. So we really need to get rid of that idea. We also need to recognize the women who came before us who were following that. So Dorothy Fontana…
Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.
I enjoyed sharing the names and careers of women like Peg Lynch, Gertrude Berg, Selma Diamond, and D.C. Fontana to the members who gathered on Zoom last Wednesday morning. There are so many more I could have talked about whose names don’t appear in mainstream books about the history of television so we have to learn who they are and carry those names forward ourselves. It’s one of the missions of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – and has been one of my missions all my life.
Watch this entire presentation
Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.
It was great to be able to attend this year’s SD WhoCon in San Diego and present this lecture on “The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years” in which I discuss how successful I think showrunner Christopher Chibnall was in making that transition.
It gave me a chance to talk about the creative work of a showrunner/screenwriter while also reconnecting to some friends we had met at this same convention some 3 years ago – and to talk about one of my favorite subjects – Doctor Who!
Transcript:
All right, ladies and gentlemen, it’s lovely to have you here. On my campuses, I’m kind of the Doctor of Doctor Who which makes people laugh. They’re like can you look at this academically and you can. What I’m going to talk about today is based on a chapter that I’ve written in a new book. I always feel bad about academic books. This thing is like 120 bucks because it’s meant for college libraries or whatnot and there are academics all over the UK and the US who’ve written chapters in it and of course it’s about the era of the New Dawn, the era of the Jody Whitaker Doctor. So when I saw this go up I said well I have a lot to say about screenwriting because officially this is who I am. I love that picture because it was taken at my college for an article they did on me. I worked for schools called Stephens College and we teach an MFA in screenwriting and so I always look at everything from the point of view of the person who wrote this material. I really am very interested in screenwriters more than directors because people sometimes will credit a director and I’m like well they didn’t make up the story. If you liked the twist or the character or piece of dialogue, they didn’t make that up. They just put the cameras at a lovely place and accented it. So let’s think about the people who wrote these things and so that’s what I do.
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