Learn more about the American Revolution through the eyes of an important, Italian Immigrant, Filippo Mazzei. Read his story today!
“To refute a book that encompassed seven volumes, Filippo required a four-volume set, so many were the misrepresentations he found. When the book Historical and Political Research on the United States of North America went to the press for the long process of being typeset and printed, he had time to entertain friends in either his residence or at the ambassador’s residence if Jefferson wanted to make their deeper acquaintance as well.”
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement in Comedy.
Capitalizing on the show’s success, the actual band formed by the actors, at their peak, sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined, and set the stage for other musical TV characters from The Partridge Family to Hannah Montana. In the late 1980s, the Monkees began a series of reunion tours that continued into their 50th anniversary.
This book tells the story of The Monkees and how the show changed television, introducing a new generation to the fourth-wall-breaking slapstick created by Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers.
Its creators contributed to the innovative film and television of 1970s with projects like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laugh-In and Welcome Back, Kotter. Immense profits from the show, its music and its merchandising funded the producers’ move into films such as Head, Easy Riderand Five Easy Pieces.
In fact, John Steinbeck who was writing about how his movie was adapted, wrote that not only Johnson the man who did it did better than his own novel. So the man who wrote Grapes of Wrath was crediting the man who adapted it and yet our own way of doing news and writing about films always privileges the director. Which makes me crazy I don’t believe in that. It’s also sad and easy for men to dismiss women in their memoirs. We all know the picture of this guy. He is very famous for being a director. People think about his films. He admits in his memoirs that he learned everything he knows from some middle-aged American woman whose name was Eve Unsell she was a producer for Universal Studios the first woman to have her own production company they sent her to England to fix their production company in England and she trained him. Could he at least mention her name in the memoir? Right? And people researching her might find her mentioned and be able to do more work on her. So it’s very easy to dismiss people.
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.
* 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
This is an excellent example of one television show promoting another… and note that Dick Clark has no attitude in his voice when he lists The Monkees among that pretty hallowed hall of 60s hit makers. — Rosanne
Michael Lynch shared a link to the group: Zilch! A Monkees Podcast!May 25 at 8:06 AM
Monkee business on ‘American Bandstand.’ Dubbed audio, but still, a nice peek of people digging the Monkees when they were still a relatively new “thing.”
Airdate: October 8, 1966
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote “Last Train..” as a subtle protest of Vietnam as the man catching the train is going off to an army base in the fictitious town of Clarksville and he doesn’t know if he’s ”ever coming home”. This, the very first song by The Monkees (Mickey Dolenz with Boyce & Hart’s band The Candy Store Prophets), is at #6 today and will peak at #1 next month. “The Monkees” TV series premiered last month on Sept. 12 on NBC.
Depending on when this episode was actually taped, it’s just possible that this is the first time some of these kids had ever heard a Monkees song. Dancers today include Toni Kashinoff (1:15), Theodosia Dayton (wearing glasses at 1:20), Laura Bravo (1:30), Lauren Montgomery (2:00) Marcia Silverman (3:03), and Martha Sedaris (3:14).
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement in Comedy.
Capitalizing on the show’s success, the actual band formed by the actors, at their peak, sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined, and set the stage for other musical TV characters from The Partridge Family to Hannah Montana. In the late 1980s, the Monkees began a series of reunion tours that continued into their 50th anniversary.
This book tells the story of The Monkees and how the show changed television, introducing a new generation to the fourth-wall-breaking slapstick created by Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers.
Its creators contributed to the innovative film and television of 1970s with projects like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laugh-In and Welcome Back, Kotter. Immense profits from the show, its music and its merchandising funded the producers’ move into films such as Head, Easy Riderand Five Easy Pieces.
On Saturday June 1, 2019 from 12:30 pm to 1:20 pm I had the great joy of hosting a panel at the Denver Popular Culture Con celebrating the work of 4 of the alumni of our Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – Sydney Haven, Amy Banks, Mikayla Daniels, Kelley Zinge – who themselves were celebrating the female screenwriters they each researched and wrote about in our book “When Women Wrote Hollywood”.
The audience enjoyed the comfortable style of our panel along with the stories they had to tell of women who ran their own studios, wrote/produced/directed and often starred in their own films which all came under the banner of the Con’s “Reel Heroes” track. Women such as Bess Meredyth, Fredericka Sagor Mass, Jane Murfin, and Lillian Hellman are heroes to the many female artists doing that same work today against the ridiculous comments about whether or not studios can risk loaning so much production monies to ‘untried’ talents. We need to tell these stories over and over so that those comments can be relegated to the historical trash heap on which they belong.
So enjoy listening to these newly-minted scholars and remember their names – along with the names of the women they honored with their writing. And many thanks to Sydney Haven for suggesting we submit a panel proposal! It was a great weekend!
* 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
I met up for dinner with several @mfascreenwriter alums and authors from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” before our presentation at @denverpopculturecon last week.
Always great seeing familiar faces and catching up their lives and careers.
A Denver local recommend @osteriamarcodenver and it was tasty!
In the memoir, Love, Laughter, and Tears: My Hollywood Story, Adela Rogers St. Johns writes, “Once, when Joan Crawford and I were doing a tea-talk television show, our hostess, I think it was Virginia Graham, was stressing our enduring success in our chosen fields and Joan leaned over and put her hand on my arm and said, “You know what’s remarkable about Adela and me? We survived.” We did indeed.”
Adela Rogers St. Johns: Survival of the Feisty by Sarah Whorton
* 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
One of the fun-nest things about many fun things at the Denver PopCon was the chance to see Stephens College film professor (and MFA alum) Chase Thompson debut his film Tampsen Air. He shared fascinating stories about the concept and the production work in the film with the audience- and the various other Screenwriting MFA alums who came out to show their support.
It’s important to recognize what Lin-Manuel Miranda did so well in his show — who tells your story, tells people whether or not you will be remembered and we’re gonna find that sadly in a lot of film history, the women are who got left behind by the men writing the history right? I don’t want to rag on men. I like men. I’m married to one. I have a son. They’re very cool people but sometimes they forget to mention the ladies right? So we’re gonna think about that. Some examples, quickly, on how easily writers and this isn’t a female writer it’s a male writer. This is the obituary for Doris Bowden. She was an actress who was in The Grapes of Wrath. It says in her obituary “she married the film’s screenwriter”. We name the movie John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath. The man who she married isn’t mentioned in her own obituary because he’s just the writer. How ridiculous is that? I don’t care about John Ford. He never knew her after she’s finished the film, but he gets a name out – a name call on that right?
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.
* 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
This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne
Transcript:
First off I’m gonna start with the officially the grandmother of science fiction. Somebody knows who she is. Shelley. Thank You. Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft Shelley. The lady had a lot of names right? Yes, Mary Shelley is most famous. She literally invented the genre and its funny because when we think of science fiction we often do think of the names of famous male writers. They kind of took it over when, you know, men you got to do more of the cool stuff, but Mary invented it and she invented it with what character? Frankenstein! Exactly. She’s the lady — then I mean she was having a party. We’re not sure how drunk everybody was and exactly what substances they might have been imbibing at that time but her and Lord Byron, her boy or her boyfriend slash soon-to-be husband Percy Bysse Shelley. They all were hanging out with this really cool sort of villa in Italy and they were having a contest — which is also very fun. Instead of watching other people’s art, they were making their own and the contest was can you write a ghost story over the weekend and we’ll see who writes the best one.
* 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!
![06 Forgotten Women from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/csuf-rmw-w3h-06.jpeg)
![“When Women Wrote Hollywood” Panel at Denver Pop Culture Con [Video] (40 minutes 48 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/W3H-Denver-Intro-Slide.png)
![05 Who Tells Your Story? from “When Women Wrote Hollywood”, Dr. Rosanne Welch, Cal State Fullerton [Video] (1 minute)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/csuf-rmw-w3h-05.jpeg)
![03 Mary (Godwin) Wollstonecraft Shelley from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/scifi-rmw-cpp-03.jpeg)