More on Mazzei: Filippo Mazzei; Passionate grape grower, liberal thinker, and “citizen of the world”. Best represents the innovative, visionary, and entrepreneurial spirit that has always…

Mazzei cover small 2This series will focus on material I found while researching my book, America’s Forgotten Founding Father: A Novel Based on the Life of Filippo Mazzei.

While I only used a portion of my total research, there are a host of little tidbits of information on this amazing man which I wanted to share here. — Rosanne.



Passionate grape grower, liberal thinker, and “citizen of the world”. Best represents the innovative, visionary, and entrepreneurial spirit that has always — A Presentation on Fillipo Mazzei and introducing a new wine in his name

2 Passionate grape grower, liberal thinker, and “citizen of the world”. Best represents the innovative, visionary, and entrepreneurial spirit that has always characterized the Mazzei family. (1730-1816) 

3 Through Philip Mazzei, the family claims a very strong and special link to the history of the United States 

4 Borne and brought up in the liberal Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Philip moved to Virginia in 1773, spurred by his curiosity to explore the New World There he strengthened his friendship with Jefferson, Washington, Franklin and Adams, with whom he shared his modern, progressive ideals He was the first to introduce in the colony vines from Tuscany and other regions of Europe The vines were planted on Thomas Jefferson’s property at Monticello 

Passionate grape grower, liberal thinker, and “citizen of the world”. Best represents the innovative, visionary, and entrepreneurial spirit that has always.

See the entire slide show presentation


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Won’t You Be My Neighbor? – Fred Rogers Documentary

Won't You Be My Neighbor? - Fred Rogers Documentary

I can’t recommend the new Mr. Rogers documentary strongly enough. 

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” is about so much more than the man behind one children’s program.  It’s about the way you can dedicate your life to a cause. It’s about the obvious point that if we teach children they are loved and give them security in their early years, we can avoid so much of the issues in their later lives. It’s about standing up for what you believe in.  It’s about how hard it is to fight our society’s glorification of toxic masculinity.  And, to me, most importantly, it’s about the power of television – a topic we all need to consider.

The two quotes I can’t forget – from a set of interviews with Fred Rogers that contained many worthwhile quotes (which is why you need to see the film so I don’t have to replicate them all here) — are:

“What we see and hear on television molds our lives”

and

“Television has the capability of being a neighborhood for the whole country.”

People far too often ignore television but because it comes into our homes effortlessly and is ever present, it does have the ability to shape ideas and opinions and it has always had the ability to educate. I don’t mean it only has to teach us multiplication and fractions, but like any good genre of storytelling, it teaches us empathy and understanding of others. Mr. Rogers did that gently and quietly because he was addressing children as they formed their identities, and for that we ought to be grateful.

On top of all that, when he says “The greatest thing you can teach someone is that they are loved, and are capable of loving, he validates a frequent comment I make to writing students – that every story, in the end, is a love story.  And this one is one you should not miss.

It almost makes me sad that children today on their iPads are watching the animated adventures of Daniel Tiger. While I’m happy they are being exposed to Mr. Rogers’ stories and lessons, I hope they don’t forget to show this new generation the actual episodes starring Mr. Rogers because seeing a gentle man in real life is probably more instructive than all the messages an animated tiger can give.

Learn more about Fred Rogers

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More on the Monkees: Flip Magazine, December 1966 via Sunshine Factory

More on the Monkees: Flip Magazine, December 1966 via Sunshine Factory

More on the Monkees: Flip Magazine, December 1966 via Sunshine Factory



 Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

    

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

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From The Research Vault: The face on the lunch box: television’s construction of the teen idol by Gael Sweeney (1994)

From The Research Vault: The face on the lunch box: television’s construction of the teen idol by Gael Sweeney (1994)

From The Research Vault: The face on the lunch box: television's construction of the teen idol by Gael Sweeney (1994)

ALL MY MONKEES ALBUMS ARE STILL LINED up next to the old stereo in my room in my mother’s house; my friend Claire still has the ticket stubs and souvenir program from a Bobby Sherman concert; my sister keeps her David Cassidy memorabilia in an old “Partridge Family” lunch box at the back of her closet. We each quickly abandoned our idols after a short time. They hardly seem part of our past, but some fantasy we can barely remember makes us cling to those scraps.

I have turned to the study of teen idols because it combines two areas on which much recent feminist film theory has focused: the representation of masculinity and female spectatorship in popular culture. Idols are uniquely positioned at the intersection of these two fields of study. The idol is especially relevant to feminist theory because he represents a specific kind of masculine image that is often at odds with the dominant version of the masculine in society while allying itself with the feminine. I would argue that there is the male star, such as John Wayne, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, or Clint Eastwood, whose masculinity is secure and untroubled and whose image in culture is straightforward and sexually unambiguous. These stars generally play heroes, cowboys, soldiers, cops, and working men in mainstream, dramatic films. Their fans tend to be “average” moviegoers but skewed towards heterosexual white males, much like the characters they portray. The male viewers of these stars find their masculinity and power reflected back at them, confirming their status and superiority in patriarchal society. Stars depend on the gaze of other men for validation; although they accept the looks of others (such as women, gay men, or minorities), they need the authority of the dominant masculine paradigm to confirm their power as stars.

Read The face on the lunch box: television’s construction of the teen idol by Gael Sweeney (1994)


 

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

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Reading: Make Believe (Edna Ferber Mysteries) by Ed Ifkovic – Historic Hollywood Mysteries

Make Believe (Edna Ferber Mysteries) by Ed Ifkovic

I stumbled on this mystery series starring Edna Ferber (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Showboat, Giant, and Cimarron, to name a few) who I discuss in my screenwriting history lectures because of the way she dealt with the business of leasing (not selling) her work to Hollywood.

Written by Ed Ifkovic, a retired English professor from Connecticut, they are fun and reminded me of the popularity of mystey novels – and books that come in a series – these days. It made me think that many of my students, who research 4 separate screenwriters across their 2 year MFAS, now know several writers who would make very fine puzzle-solvers in a new series.

And so do I.  So why aren’t we writing those books now!

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When Women Wrote Hollywood – 9 in a series – A Woman of Affairs (1928), Wr: Michael Arlen and Bess Meredyth, Dir: Clarence Brown

To highlight the wonderful yet largely forgotten work of a collection of female screenwriters from the early years of Hollywood (and as a companion to the book, When Women Wrote Hollywood) we will be posting quick bits about the many films they wrote along with links to further information and clips from their works which are still accessible online. Take a few moments once or twice a week to become familiar with their names and their stories. I think you’ll be surprised at how much bold material these writers tackled at the birth of this new medium. — Rosanne Welch


When Women Wrote Hollywood – 9 in a series – A Woman of Affairs (1928), Wr: Michael Arlen and Bess Meredyth, Dir: Clarence Brown

When Women Wrote Hollywood - 9 in a series - A Woman of Affairs (1928), Wr: Michael Arlen and Bess Meredyth, Dir: Clarence Brown

A Woman of Affairs is a 1928 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer drama film directed by Clarence Brown and starring Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.and Lewis Stone. The film, released with a synchronized score and sound effects, was based on a 1924 best-selling novel by Michael Arlen, The Green Hat, which he adapted as a four-act stage play in 1925. The Green Hat was considered so daring in the United States that the movie did not allow any associations with it and was renamed A Woman of Affairs, with the characters also renamed to mollify the censors.[2] In particular the film script eliminated all references to heroin use, homosexuality and syphilis that were at the core of the tragedies involved.

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, for Michael Arlen and Bess Meredyth’s script. Wikipedia 

A Clip from A Woman of Affairs

800px Garbo Gilbert publicity

A Woman of Affairs 1928

More about Bess Meredyth and A Woman of Affairs


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07 Overview of The Monkees’ Affect from How The Monkees Changed Television [Video] (1:28)

What this entire presentation — How The Monkees Changed Television with Rosanne Welch, PhD (Complete Presentation and Q&A) [Video] (45:06)

07 Overview of The Monkees'  Affect from How The Monkees Changed Television

Rosanne Welch, PhD, Author of Why The Monkees Matter, presents “How The Monkees Changed Television” at a Cal State Fullerton Lunch Lecture on May 8, 2018.

In this talk, she shows how The Monkees, and specifically their presence on television, set the stage for large changes to come in the late 1960s.

 

Transcript

Then we come to what I’m going to talk about, which is the various major chapters in the book — how this show spread some social justice messages which was shocking and other shows will be canceled for having tried that — particularly The Smothers Brothers, Laugh-In got in trouble for it. This show, I didn’t realize as a kid until I looked at all 58 episodes over and over again to write the book actually said something about feminism because every single girl that dated one of these boys had a job. None of them was a bubble-headed cheerleader. None of them was just waiting around to marry someone to take care of her. They were all women with jobs. So, they might have been record stores and whatever, but they were jobs and I think that was an interesting message in 1966. I’ll also talk briefly about metatextuality, which is the big thing in critical studies. What — How were they speaking to the audience? Breaking the 4th wall. It’s a Shakespearian thing. For this show particularly, identity construction. These guys went through a lot because with how their names were actually used in the program. Just like Jerry Seinfeld, they went by their real names and this gets very confusing when fans want to understand “Are you really that goofy guy in the TV show?” “No I’m not.I’m actually a grown man and I have kids, but I can’t tell you that because then you won’t dream or fantasize about marrying me someday.” So that was the big deal on this show and it really harmed them in their later careers and then a little bit on the Cultural Caché — how much they’ve last over the years.


 Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

    

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?

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About Rosanne Welch, PhD

Rosanne Welch, PhD is a writer, producer and university professor with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, Touched by an Angel and ABC NEWS/Nightline. Other books include Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture (McFarland, 2017) and Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection (ABC-CLIO, 2017), named to the 2018 Outstanding References Sources List, by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association. Welch has also published chapters in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television (I.B.Tauris) and The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color (Lexington Books, 2018) and essays in Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology and Outside In Makes it So, and Outside in Boldly Goes (both edited by Robert Smith). By day she teaches courses on the history of screenwriting and on television writing for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting programs. Her talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP is available on YouTube.

When Women Wrote Hollywood – 8 in a series – Bess Meredyth

To highlight the wonderful yet largely forgotten work of a collection of female screenwriters from the early years of Hollywood (and as a companion to the book, When Women Wrote Hollywood) we will be posting quick bits about the many films they wrote along with links to further information and clips from their works which are still accessible online. Take a few moments once or twice a week to become familiar with their names and their stories. I think you’ll be surprised at how much bold material these writers tackled at the birth of this new medium. — Rosanne Welch


When Women Wrote Hollywood – 8 in a series – Bess Meredyth

When Women Wrote Hollywood - 8 in a series - Bess  Meredyth

Bess Meredyth (February 12, 1890 – July 13, 1969) was a screenwriter and silent film actress. The wife of film director Michael Curtiz, Meredyth wrote The Affairs of Cellini (1934) and adapted The Unsuspected (1947). She was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Meredyth and director Michael Curtiz met soon after his arrival in the United States, while both were working at Warner Brothers Studios.[5] They were married in 1929 and unsuccessfully attempted to start a production unit at MGM studios in 1946.[1]

Though often uncredited, Meredyth contributed to several of Curtiz’s projects. Most notably, Curtiz reportedly called Meredyth for input several times a day while working on his most successful film, Casablanca (1942). [6]

Meredyth and Curtiz separated twice; once in 1941, and again in 1960. However, they remained in contact after this separation,[1] and Curtiz included Meredyth in his will upon his death in 1962.[5] Wikipedia 

When Women Wrote Hollywood - 8 in a series - Bess  Meredyth

More about Bess Meredyth


Buy a signed copy of when Women Write Hollywood

Also available soon via Amazon.com in Print and eBook editions

* 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!
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Quote from “America’s Forgotten Founding Father” by Dr. Rosanne Welch – 18 in a series – Dr. Franklin

Quote from

A letter from a friend in Florence, museum director Abbot Fontana, brought Filippo in direct contact with the American colonies in the person of their most famous citizen, Dr. Benjamin Franklin. All because of a stove. Two stoves in fact.

 From America’s Forgotten Founding Father — Get Your Copy Today!


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18 Moffat, Vertue and a Lady Doctor from Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse [Video] (1:08)

Watch this entire presentation: Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse: Paving the Way for a Lady Doctor with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (36:58)

18 Moffat, Vertue and a Lady Doctor from Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse

For her 5th Doctor Who lecture to the CPP community, Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses how society – and the show’s writing staff – prepared the audience for a major change in this 50-year franchise – the creation of the first Lady Doctor!

Transcript:

Going back to the 80’s, Sydney Newman, who was still in the BBC also said at some point in the history of this show The Doctor should become a woman. So this idea has been around for a while. I don’t think of the 80’s as that far back — but you all weren’t born — so it’s a long time ago to you and these ideas were there but among artists not quite in the major society. This is why art is so important. That’s how we influence society. So Sydney Newman thought that. We don’t get the stepping stones of a lady Doctor until we get Steven Moffat as I have said and his wife Sue Vertue. So a woman helped influence the time for this to happen and as you can see here this is not the cast of Doctor Who. So who is this?

Audience: Sherlock!

The cast of Sherlock, which Steven put together with Mark Gatiss and Sue produces. So his wife is his producing partner. he comes from a marriage where they are equally important in their job if in fact, she is not more important because she produces his work. She sells what he writes. So in a way, obviously, she has the power.

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Rosanne Welch, PhD

Rosanne Welch PhD teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.

Writing/producing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. In 2016 she published the book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia; and placed “Transmitting Culture Transnationally Via the Characterization of Parents in Police Procedurals” in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Essays appear in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television and Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology. Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild.

Watch Dr. Welch’s talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP.