All kudos to the library staff at Chapman University for posting this lovely article about the presentations my colleague and fellow writer Peg and I made on our individual books for the Mentoris Project. Publisher Robert Barbera sponsored the event – and donated the set of books to the university library – and we enjoyed speaking to the Italian Studies students who gathered that evening about Filippo Mazzei and Louis Palma de Cesnola. — Rosanne
When Robert J. Barbera founded The Mentoris Project as a part of The Barbera Foundation, his goal was to add to the canon of names most U.S. students learn over and over again from fifth grade through high school. He remembered hearing the names of people like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln repeated from year to year, but realized that two very important populations were missing from the standard U.S. history books and narratives: Italians and Italian-Americans. With that in mind, he started The Mentoris Project, which publishes biographies and novels based on the lives of prominent Italians and Italian-Americans, specifically those who can be considered as mentors. In the words of The Mentoris Project, these books are intended “to inspire the reader in a very tangible way: To finish the book saying, ‘I can do something great, too.’” The books published by The Mentoris Project are written by a variety of scholars and authors, and cover subjects from Christopher Columbus to Enrico Fermi.
…And I speak fast so I apologize but I want to get through it and I’m sort of Italian not really in this country but in America I qualify as Italian. We should teach during writing because writer precedes director when describing a filmmaker skills and we allow people to forget that in class and I don’t like that. When you remember a film to your friends you do not speak of camera angles. You speak of dialogue you speak of the lines that you repeat with your friends so the writer is the person that we should credit I believe with most of the work and if you’re studying to be a screenwriter how can you forget the names of the people who write your films? I want to say or even don’t you to the auteur theory because I think it’s nonsense because it is not the director it is the writer who comes up with it and I want to get rid of disrespect to writers which has existed forever
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Notes on the background of Justin Peter Plumard de Rieux and Maria Margherita Martini de Rieux
Philip Mazzei [A physician, born in 1730 near Florence practiced surgery briefly, then moved to Leghorn in 1752] “rented a large house in London [in 1764]. It was his plan to use the ground floor as a shop, to live on the second floor, to rent out the third floor furnished, and the fourth unfurnished . . . . He opened his shop selling champagne, burgundy, oil from Lucca, cheese, shoots of lemon trees, candied fruits, and silks from Florence . . . . He determined never to be seen in his shop, and adopted the name “Martini and Company,” under which he did business.
“Before he could rent out the upper floors of his four-story house, Mazzei had to have the rooms re-papered. A young man named Joseph Martin [or Martini; he was from Savoy] was sent by the wall paper manufacturer to take charge of the job. After he had finished, he asked if he might rent the top floor. It was agreed, and he, his wife [Maria Hautefeuille “Petronille” Martin(i) was born into an established family in Calais. Being very willful in her youth, she ran away from home and went to London where she adopted the name “Petronille” and married Joseph Martin] and small daughter [Maria Margherita Martin(i) was born in 1761] moved in.
“Soon after the Martin family moved in Mrs. Martin gave birth to a son . . . . At the age of about ten months this baby died, and poor Martin, overcome with grief, died shortly after, towards the end of the year 1764. During the year of their acquaintance Mazzei had become intensely fond of the Martin family, and Martin had begun to look upon Mazzei as his dearest friend. On his deathbed he besought Mazzei to look after and care for his widow and his little daughter. This, . . . Mazzei promised to do.” (Richard C. Garlick, Jr., Philip Mazzei, Friend of Jefferson: His Life and Letters, 1933, pp.23-24)
“When Gauntier’s name is mentioned, it is commonly associated with great directors, companies, actresses, actors, producers, screenplays, and films. Gauntier was truly a pioneer in the motion picture world at its outset.”
Gene Gauntier: Ascending by Drowning Yasser Shahin
* 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
Script Magazine publishes the “Understanding Screenwriting” column by historian Tom Stempel (author of Framework: A History of Screenwriting in the American Film). In this post Mr. Stempel reviews our book “When Women Wrote Hollywood.”
The review is the last thing in the column, so you will have to scroll down to it – but it’s well worth it – as it is well worth reading his reviews of the several films he writes about in the front matter of the article. — Rosanne
Rosanne Welch is a television writer who also teaches screenwriting at a variety of places. One of her gigs is handling the Los Angeles residency for screenwriting courses offered at Stephens College in Missouri. The students come out to L.A. a couple of times a year, where they get lectures from people connected to the business. One assignment that Welch has her students do is research papers on screenwriters of the past. This book is a collection of those papers, 23 by her students and one by Welch.
Stephens used to be an all-women’s college, but it now takes male students. The preponderance of its students are female, so all of the essays, including two by male students, are about women screenwriters in the early days of Hollywood. Some writers, like Anita Loos, you have probably heard of. Many of them you probably have not.
I was particularly taken by Amelia Phillips’s piece on Jeanie Macpherson. I wrote briefly about Macpherson in my book FrameWork: A History of Screenwriting in the American Film(1988), but one reviewer gave me a hard time for not mentioning that she was Cecil B. De Mille’s mistress. He seemed to think that disqualified her as a writer. Phillips starts out in the first paragraph by noting that Macpherson was only one of De Mille’s three long-time mistresses and has credits on a lot more than just De Mille’s films.
Several of the pieces, such as the ones on Zoe Atkins and Bella Spewack, note that they worked in both the theatre and film, which was a lot more common than is generally assumed about the early days of movies.
Welch takes her students to the Margaret Herrick Library of the Motion Picture Academy and some get into the archives in depth. Others, such as the people writing on Anita Loos and Dorothy Parker, depend mostly on memoirs and biographies. Then there is Pamela Scott, who found very little material on Sarah Y. Mason, the wife and co-writer of Victor Heerman, but was able to follow her connections with other people to give a nice little view of Mason’s career.
Like virtually every other book that is a collection of essays by different writers, the quality varies a lot, but there is enough good stuff to make it worth your while.
On Saturday, November 3rd, 2018 several of the contributors to When Women Wrote Hollywood gathered at the Skylark Bookshop in Columbia, Missouri for a signing and launch party that functioned like a mini-reunion of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Class of 2017.
Many thanks to all who came to hear them each speak with passion about the research subjects who became whole chapters in this book of essays on female screenwriters from the Silent Era into the 1940s.
* 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
Thanks to all who wished me a Happy Birthday yesterday. It was a fun day that started with Stephens MFA alumni Julie Berkobienn, who brought me a celebratory cupcake while picking up books for a book signing event.
Then Doug and I had dinner with my Mom and my friend Peg Ann Lamphier before she and I spent the evening at the Chapman University Library making presentations on our historical novels.
Learn more about the American Revolution through the eyes of an important, Italian Immigrant, Filippo Mazzei. Read his story today!
“To bolster the King’s subjects back in England their newspapers reported large numbers of Englishmen flooding into the Royal army to help put down the insurrection. Rather than instill terror into the Americans, the news drew hundreds more volunteers from all over the colonies, determined to help stand against the flood of what to them were foreign invaders.”
Watching several current and alumni students of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting who shared their research on female screenwriters with professional presentations at the Citizen Jane Film Festival in a panel titled: Frank and Funny Female Screenwriters Who Should Be More Famous”. @citizenjanefilmfestival
![The Mentoris Project Presentation and Book Reading at Leatherby Library, Chapman University [Video] (1:14:00).](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/mentoris-chapman-2018-1080.jpeg)
![02 Say “Arrivaderci” to the Auteur Theory from Why I Created a History of Screenwriting Course [Video] (0:47)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/srn-rmw-2018-02.jpeg)
![Frank and Funny: Female Screenwriters Who Should Be More Famous from Citizen Jane Film Festival 2018 [Video] (1:15:00)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/cjff-2018-mfa-presentations.png)
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