Perry Bascom comes to the town of Rising Sun, Indiana, to take charge of the sawmills which have for years been managed by his father’s best friend, Col. Henry Clay Risener. His father’s half-brother, Jack, has brought the name into disrepute in the town, so he (Perry) decides to be known as Jim Nelson. Perry sees June, who has been sent away from the poorhouse. He shares his lunch with her and protects her from the attentions of Ben Boone, the political bully of the town. — IMDB
Blue Jeans is a 1917 American silent drama film, based on the 1890 play Blue Jeans by Joseph Arthur that opened in New York City to great popularity. The sensation of the play was a dramatic scene where the unconscious hero is placed on a board approaching a huge buzz saw in a sawmill, later imitated to the point of cliché.[1][2]
Prints survive at several archives including the George Eastman House Motion Picture Collection.[3][1] — Wikipedia
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* 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
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Transcript:
Because what the writers learned was that everyone took a pay cut except IATSE — is the union for the people who work on the set– and that had come from Broadway and they did not take a pay cut because they had a 3-year union contract and it couldn’t be taken away and that’s when the writers said Yeah, we need a union. That’s a great idea. Let’s start a union and they started a couple of versions and it wasn’t until the 1950’s when the current union — the one that does that magazine I mentioned — existed and it had existed since then and that’s protected writers by making sure that credits match on the screen. In the early days, a producer could put the credit for the film to his girlfriend simply because he wanted to make some money. You had no right to credit on your own film. So the Guild, that was one of the major things they did as well as pensions, benefits, and things like that.
A Note About This Presentation
A clip from my keynote speech at the 10th Screenwriters´(hi)Stories Seminar for the interdisciplinary Graduation Program in “Education, Art, and History of Culture”, in Mackenzie Presbyterian University, at São Paulo, SP, Brazil, focused on the topic “Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered.” I was especially pleased with the passion these young scholars have toward screenwriting and it’s importance in transmitting culture across the man-made borders of our world.
To understand the world we have to understand its stories and to understand the world’s stories we must understand the world’s storytellers. A century ago and longer those people would have been the novelists of any particular country but since the invention of film, the storytellers who reach the most people with their ideas and their lessons have been the screenwriters. My teaching philosophy is that: Words matter, Writers matter, and Women writers matte, r so women writers are my focus because they have been the far less researched and yet they are over half the population. We cannot tell the stories of the people until we know what stories the mothers have passed down to their children. Those are the stories that last. Now is the time to research screenwriters of all cultures and the stories they tell because people are finally recognizing the work of writers and appreciating how their favorite stories took shape on the page long before they were cast, or filmed, or edited. But also because streaming services make the stories of many cultures now available to a much wider world than ever before.
Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.
* 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
Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.
The advent of color, big musicals, the studio system, and the beginning of institutionalized censorship made the thirties the defining decade for Hollywood. The year 1939, celebrated as “Hollywood’s greatest year,” saw the release of such memorable films as Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Stagecoach. It was a time when the studios exercised nearly absolute control over their product as well as over such stars as Bette Davis, Clark Gable, and Humphrey Bogart. In this fifth volume of the award-winning series History of the American Cinema, Tino Balio examines every aspect of the filmmaking and film exhibition system as it matured during the Depression era.
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† Available from the LA Public Library
“It” is a 1927 American silent romantic comedy film that tells the story of a shop girl who sets her sights on the handsome, wealthy boss of the department store where she works. It is based on a novella by Elinor Glyn that was originally serialized in Cosmopolitan magazine.
This film turned actress Clara Bow into a major star, and led people to label her the It girl.
The film had its world premiere in Los Angeles on January 14, 1927, followed by a New York showing on February 5, 1927. “It” was released to the general public on February 19, 1927.
The picture was considered lost for many years, but a Nitrate-copy was found in Prague in the 1960s.[1] In 2001, “It” was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.[2][3] — Wikipedia
Elinor Glyn (née Sutherland; 17 October 1864 – 23 September 1943) was a British novelist and scriptwriter who specialised in romantic fiction, which was considered scandalous for its time, although her works are relatively tame by modern standards. She popularized the concept of the It-girl, and had tremendous influence on early 20th-century popular culture and, possibly, on the careers of notable Hollywood stars such as Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson and, especially, Clara Bow. — Wikipedia
* 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
* 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
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —
“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”
I presented this holiday lecture “When Women Write Horror” on Tuesday, October 29th, 2019. Researching the many, many women who have written horror stories – in novels, films and television – brought new names to my attention who I am excited to start reading. I hope you will be, too!
Transcript:
What’s interesting to me about The Exorcist — again, written by a guy, adapted by a guy — when we think Exorcist we think about Linda Blair and the girl who had the demon in her, but they didn’t sell the movie on that. They sold the movie on the man who saves her — the priest who comes to exorcise the demon. They sold it as a boy’s movie, but it’s a girl’s movie. Right? So I think that’s a problem.
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Transcript:
…and then what happened is we had a really famous stock market crash and The Depression began and these men, particularly Louis B. Mayer, went to all the employees at their studio and said “We can’ pay you the money paid you last year. We need everyone to take at 50% pay cut and we’re in charge. We’re your employers so you have to do it or you can’t work,” and many of the writers and actors figured out there’s a problem here. Lionel Barrymore was a famous actor and he said to Louis B. Mayer, “You’re acting like a man on his way to the guillotine wanting to stop for a manicure.” I clearly don’t believe what you are saying to me, but I don’t have any power not to take a pay cut because you’re my employer and likewise, my favorites, the Hacketts said, “That day he created more communists than Karl Marx.”
A Note About This Presentation
A clip from my keynote speech at the 10th Screenwriters´(hi)Stories Seminar for the interdisciplinary Graduation Program in “Education, Art, and History of Culture”, in Mackenzie Presbyterian University, at São Paulo, SP, Brazil, focused on the topic “Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered.” I was especially pleased with the passion these young scholars have toward screenwriting and it’s importance in transmitting culture across the man-made borders of our world.
To understand the world we have to understand its stories and to understand the world’s stories we must understand the world’s storytellers. A century ago and longer those people would have been the novelists of any particular country but since the invention of film, the storytellers who reach the most people with their ideas and their lessons have been the screenwriters. My teaching philosophy is that: Words matter, Writers matter, and Women writers matte, r so women writers are my focus because they have been the far less researched and yet they are over half the population. We cannot tell the stories of the people until we know what stories the mothers have passed down to their children. Those are the stories that last. Now is the time to research screenwriters of all cultures and the stories they tell because people are finally recognizing the work of writers and appreciating how their favorite stories took shape on the page long before they were cast, or filmed, or edited. But also because streaming services make the stories of many cultures now available to a much wider world than ever before.
Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.
* 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
Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.
Women Screenwriters is a study of more than 300 female writers from 60 nations, from the first film scenarios produced in 1986 to the present day. Divided into six sections by continent, the entries give an overview of the history of women screenwriters in each country, as well as individual biographies of its most influential.
* 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
An on-going series highlighting the women screenwriters of early Hollywood.
When I was first asked to create a history course for a new MFA focused on the mission of bringing more female voices and female-centric stories to Hollywood, I knew we had to start at the very beginning, when women ran Hollywood. No other course I had ever taken or been asked to teach focused on these women, some of whom I had been reading about since the summers of my childhood in Cleveland, Ohio. Back then, I went to the library once a week to collect a stack of memoirs by women I had seen interviewed on The Merv Griffin Show, women like Anita Loos and Adela Rogers St. Johns. Their stories introduced me to moguls like Louis B. Mayer or Jack Warner, who make up most of the history courses I later found in academia. Knowing better, I found most of those courses, and their accompanying textbooks, glossed over these women with a paragraph if they mentioned them at all. I conceived a course that would begin with these women who began Hollywood and culminate in research by each graduate student into the life and career of one particular early female screenwriter. That is what you find here. A collection of herstories about how these women lived, loved and created the stories that gave their audiences reasons to live and love in their own lives. — Dr. Rosanne Welch, Editor. When Women Wrote Hollywood
The 1896 version of La Fée aux Choux (The Fairy of the Cabbages) is a lost film that featured a honeymoon couple, a farmer, pictures of babies glued to cardboard, and one live baby. This is arguably the world’s first narrative film, and the first film directed by a woman.
Alice Guy-Blaché reported that she had to remake the film at least twice and this accounts for the two films dated 1900 and 1902 that are available to view online. Alice’s 1900 version employed one actress (the fairy), two live babies, and a number of dolls. Her 1902 version, later retitled Sage-femme de première classe, employed a honeymoon couple and a female baby merchant along with numerous babies and dolls. In a still photograph from the 1902 version called Sage-femme de première classe (Midwife First Class) Alice appears, dressed as a man. She does not play the husband in the film, but said that she “for fun pulled on the peasant clothes” for the photograph.
Alice’s 1896 film was the first to bring a story to an audience and the first to have a written scenario which Alice wrote.[1] The 1896 version was filmed on 60-millimeter film and was about 30 meters (about 90 feet) long. The 1900 version of La Fée aux Choux is on 35-millimeter film and is about sixty seconds long. The 1902 version is on 35-millimeter film and is about four minutes long.
All three versions refer to an old and popular French (and actually, European) fairy tale in which 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 a long career as a director, producer and studio owner, working in both France and the United States. — Wikipedia
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 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
* 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
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —
“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”
I presented this holiday lecture “When Women Write Horror” on Tuesday, October 29th, 2019. Researching the many, many women who have written horror stories – in novels, films and television – brought new names to my attention who I am excited to start reading. I hope you will be, too!
Transcript:
Another famous female in horror films is Jamie Lee Curtis. She also happens to be another Hollywood childhood because her parents are both actors right, but she starts an interesting trend because as a young person doing the first Halloween, which was based on the idea of babysitters being terrorized by a bad evil guy. She is actually — I forgot — as a child actor she could have been Linda Blair in The Exorcist, yeah. She was up for that part and their parents said “No that’s too horrifying. You shouldn’t do that. We don’t want you to go through that experience.” So it happened to Linda Blair whose career was over at the end of that movie. Nobody ever took her seriously after the spinning head and the puking. It was like too much right, whereas Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t do that job, grew up a little more, did Halloween and then has had a 40-year career. So it’s an interesting thought.
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Transcript:
In their mind, playwrights were to be respected because they sold a product — they sold their play — screenwriters sold a service like a maid or a car wash person. That isn’t something they should own and that legal difference made the difference in how writers could have control of their work for years and years and years. At a certain point Dorothy Parker, again a very famous writer from New York, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which we think of as the group that gives away the Oscars and has the big party once a year, in fact, started a union for writers but the producers were in charge of the rules of the union for the writers and Dorothy parker said “Looking to the academy for representation was like trying to get laid in your mother’s house. Someone was always watching in the parlor.” How could you trust the producers to give the writers a good deal if it meant less money for them but they were trying to appease the writers.
A Note About This Presentation
A clip from my keynote speech at the 10th Screenwriters´(hi)Stories Seminar for the interdisciplinary Graduation Program in “Education, Art, and History of Culture”, in Mackenzie Presbyterian University, at São Paulo, SP, Brazil, focused on the topic “Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered.” I was especially pleased with the passion these young scholars have toward screenwriting and it’s importance in transmitting culture across the man-made borders of our world.
To understand the world we have to understand its stories and to understand the world’s stories we must understand the world’s storytellers. A century ago and longer those people would have been the novelists of any particular country but since the invention of film, the storytellers who reach the most people with their ideas and their lessons have been the screenwriters. My teaching philosophy is that: Words matter, Writers matter, and Women writers matte, r so women writers are my focus because they have been the far less researched and yet they are over half the population. We cannot tell the stories of the people until we know what stories the mothers have passed down to their children. Those are the stories that last. Now is the time to research screenwriters of all cultures and the stories they tell because people are finally recognizing the work of writers and appreciating how their favorite stories took shape on the page long before they were cast, or filmed, or edited. But also because streaming services make the stories of many cultures now available to a much wider world than ever before.
Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.
* 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
†![27 The Writers Guild from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (51 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/rmw-sao-paolo-27.png)
![27 The Exorcist from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (25 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/rmw-cpp-horror-27.png)
![26 The Great Depression from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (45 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/rmw-sao-paolo-26.png)
![26 Jamie Lee Curtis from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (47 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/rmw-cpp-horror-26.png)
![25 Selling Services, not products from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (1 minute)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/rmw-sao-paolo-25.png)