On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch – Page 191

When Women Wrote Hollywood – 7 in a series – La Fee aux Choux | The Cabbage Fairy – Alice Guy Blaché (1896)

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 – 7 in a series – La Fee aux Choux | The Cabbage Fairy – Alice Guy Blaché (1896)

La Fée aux Choux (The Fairy of the Cabbages) is one of the earliest narrative fiction films ever made. It was probably made before the first Méliès fiction film, but after the Lumière brothers’ L’Arroseur Arrosé. The confusion stems from the uncertainty in the dating of these three films. Many film historians have accepted that La Fée aux Choux was made in April 1896, just a month or two before Méliès made his first fiction film. L’Arroseur arrosé (generally considered the earliest fiction film) was screened in December 1895.

La Fée aux Choux is sixty seconds long, possibly making it the earliest known film with a running time of at least one minute.

The film is based on an old and popular French (and actually, European) fairy tale. According to it, baby boys are born in cabbages, and baby girls are born in roses.

Alice Guy-Blaché, the director of La Fée aux Choux, is one of the early cinema’s most important figures, and had an extensive career as a director, producer and studio owner, working in both France and the United States. In a remake called Sage-femme de première classe (Midwife to the Upper Classes) from 1902, Guy Blaché appears, dressed as a man. — Wikipedia

Watch La Fee aux Choux | The Cabbage Fairy

More about Alice Guy Blaché

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06 TV Before The Monkees from How The Monkees Changed Television [Video] (1:10)

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

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

Before the show went on the air, this is what you were watching on television. Notice most of them are black and white. Nothing wrong with black and white. Sometimes I have students who say “Oh, for a black and white movie that wasn’t so bad.” And I have to remind them that it’s not the writer’s fault that technology didn’t have color yet, but this is — you can see that these are more or less quieter, gentler, blander, family shows. Nothing wrong with them. Andy Griffith was quite fun. Dragnet, you know, was as serious as one could be in tv back in the day, but this is what you had going on. You notice in the far corner just for fun. See that face? Circus Boy? 1950’s. That’s Micky Dolenz as a ten-year-old. He was a child star. he already had a tv show before The Monkees ever happened. His father was a tv star. George Dolenz, he was The Count of Monte Cristo in 1958 and so gee one day his agent said, “They’re doing a show called Circus Boy. Do you think your kid could be the Circus Boy?” and the Dad said, “You know how much money they’ll pay. Yeah, my kid could do that.” but they blonded his hair out because they thought he looked too ethnic because he was Italian. Ethnic.Italian back in the day. That was as ethnic as we were going to go.

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

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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.

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The Package Arrives!

A box arrived today and it contained my first print copies of this collection of essays written by the original cohort of students in our first Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting which I edited and for which author Cari Beauchamp wrote a wonderful forward covering the life and influence of Frances Marion. — Rosanne

“These 23 essays cover a range of female screenwriters from the early years of film through the 1940s, women whose work helped create the unforgettable stories and characters beloved generations of audiences but whose names have been left out of most film histories. Not this one. This collection is dedicated to those women and written by a group of women grateful to stand on the shoulders of those who came before – as a beacon to those who will come after.”

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Cal State Fullerton expert finds the Monkees were a steppin’ stone to cultural change — Rosanne in The Orange County Register

When two Monkees fans get together, magic always happens, as you’ll see when you read what Wendy Fawthrop of the Orange County Register thought of my last Monkees lecture, which was open to the public. — Rosanne

Cal State Fullerton expert finds the Monkees were a steppin’ stone to cultural change — Rosanne in The Orange County Register

She’s a believer.

And after Rosanne Welch spoke recently to a gathering of Cal State Fullerton students and faculty, many of them were left also believing that the Monkees, the 1960s boy band, had a greater impact on television, music and pop culture than they had thought.

Illustrated with slides of the Monkees with Paul McCartney and Janis Joplin, on cereal boxes and in pop culture references long after their heyday, Welch’s talk laid out evidence that the group’s TV show made strong feminist statements and advanced such TV practices as characters addressing the audience, used today on such shows as “Modern Family” and “House of Cards.”

“They influenced so many of today’s modern-day performers and yet people keep forgetting about that,” said Welch.

Read this entire article — Cal State Fullerton expert finds the Monkees were a steppin’ stone to cultural change

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?

Order Examination Copies, Library and Campus Bookstore orders directly from McFarland

When Women Wrote Hollywood – 6 in a series – Alice Guy Blaché

When Women Wrote Hollywood – 6 in a series – Alice Guy Blaché

Alice Guy-Blaché (July 1, 1873 – March 24, 1968) was a pioneer filmmaker, active from the late 19th century, and one of the first to make a narrative fiction film.[2] From 1896 to 1906 she was probably the only female filmmaker in the world. [3] She experimented with Gaumont’s Chronophone sound syncing system, color tinting, interracial casting, and special effects. She was a founder and artistic director of the Solax Studios in Flushing, New York, in 1908. In 1912 Solax invested $100,000 for a new studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the center of American filmmaking prior to the establishment of Hollywood. That same year she made the film A Fool and his Money, with a cast comprised only African-American actors. The film is now at the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute.[4] — Wikipedia

A House Divided (Solax, 1913)

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† Available from the LA Public Library

Quote from “America’s Forgotten Founding Father” by Dr. Rosanne Welch – 17 in a series – Royals

Finding some royals deeply intelligent and others deeply ignorant fed Filippo’s distaste of the act of royal succession and fueled his later interest in supporting the colonists in their overthrow of King George III. In the meantime, Filippo decided to go to Rome to face the Tribunal of the Inquisition himself, letters in hand, though he would be without a passport so if they chose to incarcerate him, he would be trapped.

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

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17 Toxic Masculinity, Patriarchy and Doctor Who from Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse [Video] (1:20)

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

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:

You may never have seen a Tom Baker Doctor Who. You should check it out, but you have in fact seen Tom Baker as Doctor Who if you saw the 50th Anniversary special. That was his special guest starring moment. Right? And I think it’s quite adorable. It was quite fun. He was, as I said, replaced by Peter Davison who happens to be my favorite Doctor. Although there was some controversy with the announcement of the new lady Doctor. He actually said he was sorry that they had chosen to make her a female because boys would lose a role model that they needed. And there was a whole lot of … Oh, you’re old-fashioned. You’re all bad. We don’t like you. You have to listen to what he’s saying. He’s saying that what’s special about Doctor Who is he shows a different side of gender. He counters the toxic masculinity in our society. The kind of stuff that’s been discussed in the news right now over the Weinstein thing and Loius CK. The toxic masculinity. The Doctor has always been a man driven by his intellect, his brain. He’s not using violence to solve problems and so what Peter Davison was saying was he regretted little boys not having this kind of man to look up to. An argument on the other side could be why can’t little boys look up to women who are in power positions. So you could go and look at it that way. I think it goes either way.

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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.

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More on Mazzei: Jefferson Library Collections including The Filippo Mazzei Archive

This 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.

Jefferson Library Collections including The Filippo Mazzei Archive

The Jefferson Library is a gateway to information on Thomas Jefferson’s life, times, and legacy. To this end, the library collects comprehensively, including books, journal and newspaper articles, ephemera, unpublished research, websites, microforms, audio-visuals, photographs, and digital full-text files. In addition to all materials about Thomas Jefferson and Monticello, we acquire materials on colonial and early federal periods, revolutionary America and Atlantic history, worldwide religions and philosophy, and European arts and culture. Topics of particular interest include wine and cuisine, slavery and natural rights, science and exploration, the University of Virginia, Jefferson descendants, and the legacy of Jefferson’s actions and ideas.

The Filippo Mazzei Archive, courtesy of Sister Margherita Marchione, MPF. This collection includes comprehensive manuscript facsimiles of this Italian Founding Father; also included are the expansive research files of Sister Margherita. Hundreds of publications are included uncatalogued by other libraries.

Visit This Site: Jefferson Library Collections includingThe Filippo Mazzei Archive

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