Read Lois Weber: More than a Writer-Director She’s the Auteur Activist of Early Cinema
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Tag: film festival
Her Career Outlasted the Hays Code: Kathryn Scola – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, March 2025
Julia Crawford Ivers: From Rich Widow to Writer-Director – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, February 2025
Born just 4 years after the end of the Civil War in Boonville, Missouri, the scripts Julia Crawford Ivers wrote (and sometimes directed) often tackled issues of prejudice. After the war, her family emigrated to Los Angeles. As with many female creatives in this era, Ivers used her screenplays to highlight women’s issues from forced marriage to domestic abuse to prejudice.
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Meet Beulah Marie Dix: Award-Winning Scholar and Anti-War Novelist Turned Screenwriter – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, January 2025
Born on Christmas Day in 1876 in Massachusetts, Dix and her family lived in various cities around the historic state until she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to study English and History at Radcliffe College. There she became the first female to be granted the Sohier Literary Prize, for the best thesis of a Harvard or Radcliffe student. From there it seemed a quick move into the world of writing.
Dix began with books about her favorite subject – the history that surrounded her in Massachusetts. In 1899, at the age of 23, she published Soldier Rigdale: How He Sailed in the Mayflower and How He Served Miles Standish. Her first play, A Rose of Plymouth Town ran for a month in 1902, followed by The Road to Yesterday, which ran for 8 months in 1907. Altogether Dix wrote 18 books and 5 plays before moving into the new world of film.
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Writer, Producer, Agent and Mentor (And Mom to the DeMille Boys) – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, December 2024
The surname DeMille (or de Mille) brings up thoughts of the famous line from Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler’s Sunset Boulevard “Mr. de Mille, I’m ready for my close up” which references silent screen director Cecil. Perhaps people remember his brother, William, who started as a playwright and became a Hollywood director and joined 3rd wife Clara Beranger in founding the film school at the University of Southern California. And sometimes the surname conjures of memories of Tony Award-winning choreographer Agnes de Mille (daughter of William/granddaughter of Beatrice). From now on it should bring up the writer, producer and mentor who worked frequently in both Broadway and Hollywood – Beatrice DeMille. (From here on out we will call her Beatrice to avoid confusion).
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