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:
He gave us Bill Potts who is Pearl Mackie over there in the corner who was the last companion we’ve seen with The Doctor. Also, and out lesbian at that time when she was introduced as that character. So these are big steps in a show that was meant, originally, for children. These are big cultural influential steps. So, I tend to like — I tend to like Steven Moffat. Also in the layout before the announcement of a female Doctor Who, he gave us a female Master. And this was a huge surprise to people. So they were laying in the groundworks so you wouldn’t be so shocked when The Doctor turned into a woman this year. In this case, Missy is what they called her. These are all the men in the past who had played the regenerations of The Master and they’re all from previous — most from old Who and then right up front we get a couple of the newer Who guys. So he planted that in the storyline and so we would have that character to deal with and Iove Missy. I think she’s like — she’s like Mary Poppins and bad steroids, but she’s quite a fun character.
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.
When the power of television met the power of love, magic happened. We were so happy to find that through animation Daniel Tiger lives again so new generations of children can learn the lessons of Fred Rogers. This documentary needs to be seen by anyone working in 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
As a kid, all I wanted was to meet Micky Dolenz — who’s the guy on the far right in case you don’t know that because you’re too young to know who I’m talking about right now, but that was really funnny to me and the kids reacted well to the show and that taught me that it did have something to say to a newer generation so I thoguht, “Hmm”and then ended up writing an article — I’m on the editorial board of Written BY magazine which is the magazine of the Writers Guild of America and I wrote an article about the show, because we write about writers so I thought to myself, “Hmmm, how many of the writers are still alive?” and there were about 7 of the orignal 15 and they were welcome to chat about their time on the show. So, I met with them at their various homes in Beverly Hills, because they made a lot of money in television way back in the day and found that many of them grew up — “grew up” — they were young when they wrote on this show. They were all newcomers and many of them went on to win Emmy Awards including Treva Silverman who was the first female to be on a comedy show without a male partner. So she was solo writing on the show and we’re talking about 1966 so that was a big deal not to have a “boy” help you.
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.
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
“The Red Kimono” – Story by Adela Rogers St. Johns, Directed and Starring Dorothy Davenport
A clip from The Red Kimono
Original Poster Art
The Red Kimono is a 1925 American silent film drama about prostitution produced by Dorothy Davenport (billed as Mrs. Wallace Reid) and starring Priscilla Bonner.
The film is notable today for being one of the few independent productions produced and written by women. This is the third of Davenport’s “social conscience” releases, preceded by Human Wreckage (1923) on the topic of drug addiction (released five months after Wallace Reid‘s death from morphine), and Broken Laws (1924) about excessive mother-love.
The film is based on a real case of prostitution that took place in New Orleans in 1917. This film, billing itself as a true story, used the real name of the woman played by Priscilla Bonner who as a consequence sued producer Dorothy Davenport for a hefty sum in court and won.[1] The case, Melvin v Reid has been cited recently in the emerging “right to be forgotten” cases around the world as an early example of one’s right to leave a past one wishes to forget. In the ruling of the California Appellate Court (Melvin v. Reid, 112 Cal.App. 285, 297 P. 91 (1931)) the Court stated, “any person living a life of rectitude has that right to happiness which includes a freedom from unnecessary attacks on his character, social standing or reputation.”[citation needed]
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In order to conserve funds, Filippo decided to travel to England by serving as a ship’s doctor. He signed on with Captain Wilson for five guineas a month and a space in the hold for products from Livorno that Filippo could sell in London for profit. Unbeknownst to him, it was the beginning of his future business as a merchant.