Tag: history

Where’s Her Movie? Entertainer and Nurse, Martha Raye

“Where’s HER Movie” posts will highlight interesting and accomplished women from a variety of professional backgrounds who deserve to have movies written about them as much as all the male scientists, authors, performers, and geniuses have had written about them across the over 100 years of film.  This is our attempt to help write these women back into mainstream history.  — Rosanne

Where's Her Movie? Entertainer and Nurse, Martha Raye

Read more about Martha Raye

from Mike Zimmerle via Facebook…

“It was well recognized that Martha Raye endured less comfort and more danger than any other Vietnam entertainer. Don’t let the sun go down without reading this about Martha Raye.

The most unforgivable oversight of TV is that her shows were not taped. I was unaware of her credentials or where she is buried. Somehow I just can’t see Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton, or Jessica Simpson doing what this woman (and the other USO women, including Ann Margaret & Joey Heatherton) did for our troops in past wars. Most of the old time entertainers were made of a lot sterner stuff than today’s crop of activists bland whiners.

The following is from an Army Aviator who takes a trip down memory lane:

“It was just before Thanksgiving ’67 and we were ferrying dead and wounded from a large GRF west of Pleiku. We had run out of body bags by noon, so the Hook (CH-47 CHINOOK) was pretty rough in the back. All of a sudden, we heard a ‘take-charge’ woman’s voice in the rear. There was the singer and actress, Martha Raye, with a SF (Special Forces) beret and jungle fatigues, with subdued markings, helping the wounded into the Chinook, and carrying the dead aboard. ‘Maggie’ had been visiting her SF ‘heroes’ out ‘west’. We took off, short of fuel, and headed to the USAF hospital pad at Pleiku. As we all started unloading our sad pax’s, a ‘Smart Mouth’ USAF Captain said to Martha…. “Ms Ray, with all these dead and wounded to process, there would not be time for your show!” To all of our surprise, she pulled on her right collar and said ……”Captain, see this eagle? I am a full ‘Bird’ in the US Army Reserve, and on this is a ‘Caduceus’ which means I am a Nurse, with a surgical specialty….now, take me to your wounded!” He said, “Yes ma’am…. follow me.” Several times at the Army Field Hospital in Pleiku, she would ‘cover’ a surgical shift, giving a nurse a well-deserved break. Martha is the only woman buried in the SF (Special Forces) cemetery at Ft Bragg. Hand Salute! A great lady.. I did not know this about Martha Ray…. thought you might like it.”

Related posts:

  1. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives: ‘Movie Plots Pushed into Prose’: The Extra Girl, Will Hays, and the Novel of Silent Hollywood by Justin Gautreau
  2. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 25 : Garson Kanin, a Writer and Director of Classic Movies and Plays, Is Dead at 86
  3. 33 Mickey and Martha from Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse [Video] (1:01)
  4. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 26: Adela St. Johns, . The Honeycomb. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969.
  5. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 35: The Collected Lorna Moon

34 Coco and Exposure To Different Cultures from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (2 mins)

Watch this entire presentation

34 Coco and Exposure To Different Cultures from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (2 mins)

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Transcript:

One of my favorite examples of how important it is to see culture travel through these streaming services is the film — it’s called Coco in the United States. It’s called Vivo here. When my cousins — my cousins are from Sicily — my grandparents immigrated to the United States from Sicily and their relatives stayed behind. So I’m related and connected to third and fourth cousins who live there. They came to visit me at Christmas this year and we were discussing Halloween, which I laughed at because I noticed some Halloween decorations in places I traveled around town today, and my cousin said in Italy Halloween is not very important because of course being a Catholic country what is important is that this is the Day of All Souls and so it’s a religious holiday. Only in you know only in Italy is that important and I said oh haven’t you ever heard of the Day of the Dead in Mexico and she had not because in Italy they haven’t studied Mexican culture. So I mentioned this movie which she had never seen but her 10-year-old son had seen it. The problem was on Netflix it was only running in English or Spanish and they’re Italian but their 10-year-old is studying Spanish in school. So at my house, we turned on Netflix. We watched the movie in Spanish with English subtitles to remind me because I’d seen it but I wanted to remember the story and any time the Italians lost track of this Spanish language we would pause and the ten-year-old would translate the Spanish into Italian and we’d all catch up and continue and in that way, they learned the story of the Day of the Dead — Dia de Los Muertos through this movie and they were so moved by the theme of the movie which again is such a universal theme that we should honor our ancestors and that we owe it to them right to live up to their history. It was a beautiful example of what Netflix is capable of doing — what streaming services are capable of doing for us and how important story is.

Watch this entire presentation

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

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Related posts:

  1. 01 Introduction from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute)
  2. 02 About Dr. Rosanne Welch from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 12 seconds)
  3. 33 The First Six Years from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (49 seconds)
  4. 29 Screenwriters Are Important from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (52 seconds)
  5. 06 Stories Are Important! from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (51 seconds)

34 More on Get Out from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute)

Watch this entire presentation

34 More on Get Out from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch

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Transcript:

A perfect example of taking horror and blending in social commentary right and putting those together so the horror is that one extra level above what you thought it could be right and that’s what makes it stand out. That’s what makes it Oscar-worthy right? He’s doing exactly what Toni Morrison did but doing it in a film. He’s still talking about the horror of slavery and what it meant to this country in a whole different type of story which I think is really cool. I think it’s cool because all of this is coming full circle now as Netflix is about excuse me CW is about to open a new show called The Shelley Society about Mary Shelley and all her buddies who battled monsters back in their own day which sounds an awful lot like a redo of Buffy, just with a famous character in it right? I think that’s going to be really fascinating. I really want that to work. It’s being done by the gentleman who’s doing Riverdale, which is taking the Archie comics and readapting them. I think that’s pretty cool.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Related posts:

  1. 05 Amelia Edwards from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 7 seconds)
  2. 18 Jane Espenson & Marti Noxon from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 9 seconds)
  3. 08 Edith Wharton’s Ghost Stories from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 3 seconds)
  4. 01 Introduction from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 18 seconds)
  5. 33 Get Out and The Last Boy from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 28 seconds)

“A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 8 in a series

“The edict read: “The council of war, invoking divine aid, condemns by default Garibaldi to the penalty of ignominious death, and declares him to be exposed to public vengeance as an enemy of the country and the state, subject to all the pains and penalties imposed by the royal laws against bandits of the first catalogue in which the condemned is placed.””

Get your copy of A Man Of Action Saving Liberty Today!

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  1. “A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 4 in a series
  2. Quotes from “A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 3 in a series
  3. Quotes from “A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 1 in a series
  4. Quotes from “A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 2 in a series
  5. “A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 6 in a series

The Civil War On Film – 3 in a series – “…films doomed to be mediocre at best and ideologically horrifying at worst.”

The Civil War On Film - 3 in a series -

“Add together the tendency for American war movies to be stereotypical and to celebrate a white man’s vision of martial glory, sprinkle in the fraught nature of Civil War memory and you get a sub-genre of films doomed to be mediocre at best and ideologically horrifying at worst.”

Movies profiled in this book:

Related posts:

  1. The Civil War On Film – 1 in a series – Introduction
  2. Now Available: The Civil War on Film (Hollywood History) by Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier
  3. The Civil War On Film – 2 in a series – “…movies not only wear history at best as a loose garment…”
  4. Now Available: The Civil War on Film (Hollywood History) by Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier via Instagram
  5. New Book Arrives April 2020 – The Civil War on Film by Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier (ABC-CLIO) – Pre-Order Now

33 The First Six Years from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (49 seconds)

Watch this entire presentation

33 The First Six Years from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (49 seconds)

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

 

Transcript:

I read once that Tennessee Williams, who’s a famous playwright in the United States, had said that most writers work from the emotions of the first six years of their life and some people laughed at that and I laughed at that and then I realized that in many episodes that I had written, a recurring theme that I tend to go to is that — to be a father is the most important job in your life and you should take it seriously. My father left when I was six years old. Until looking backward at things that I had written I did not notice the repetition of that theme. Clearly, it means something to me. Everybody doesn’t have that experience but everybody has been abandoned in some way or another. We recognize that emotion of loss and that’s what we sell

Watch this entire presentation

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Related posts:

  1. 05 Do You Know Who Wrote Your Favorite Films? from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (51 seconds)
  2. 32 You Should Write What (Emotions) You Know from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (28 seconds)
  3. 28 Screenwriting Education Flaws from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (56 seconds)
  4. 29 Screenwriters Are Important from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (52 seconds)
  5. 06 Stories Are Important! from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (51 seconds)

Recent Excellent Review of “When Women Wrote Hollywood” in The Journal of American Culture

The Journal of American Culture

I’m happy to say our book just received a review in The Journal of American Culture.

The reviewer (from the University College of North Manitoba, Canada) singled out several chapters for being outstanding for various reasons.  They found Amelia Phillips’s chapter on Jeanne Macpherson to demonstrate “exacting research”, Julie Berkobien’s chapter on Francis and Albert Hackett to be “beautifully crafted” and Chase Thompson’s chapter on Lois Weber to be “trailblazing”.  They found that Pamela Scott gives “thorough and measured” coverage to the scripts of Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman; Laura Kirk “comprehensively” examines Sam and Bella Spewak’s signature style;  Kelly Zinge authored “carefully detailed discussion” of Lillian Hellman’s confrontation with the Blacklist, and that Elizabeth Dwyer’s work on Dorothy Parker is “riveting.”

Congratulations to all the contributors to our book!

Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!

† When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry†

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org

* 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

Related posts:

  1. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 32: The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild by Miranda J Banks
  2. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 22: Latitude in Mass-Produced Culture’s Capital: New Women and Other Players in Hollywood, 1920-1941
  3. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 34: Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood by Karen Ward Mahar
  4. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 18: “Lillian Hellman: A ‘Difficult’, Villified Woman.”, NPR, Maureen Corrigan
  5. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 37: Universal Women: Filmmaking and Institutional Change in Early Hollywood

When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – 12 in a series – Alas and Alack (partial) (1915), Wr: Ida May Park

Alas and alack

Ida May Park 1916

A fishwife tells her young daughter a fairy story about a princess imprisoned by a hunchback in a seashell, a story that parallels her own life. – IMDB

More about Ida May Park

Buy “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!

† When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry†

Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition

Help Support Local Bookstores — Buy at Bookshop.org

* 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

Related posts:

  1. When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – 11 in a series – The Beloved Blackmailer (1918), Wr: Clara Beranger
  2. When Women Wrote Hollywood – 28 in a series – Ida May Park
  3. When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – 3 in a series – The Captive (1915) Wr: Jeannie MacPherson
  4. From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Archives 16: “Ida May Park.” Women Film Pioneers Project. Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, 27 Sept. 2013
  5. When Women Wrote Hollywood: The Movies – 9 in a series – Suspense (1913) Wr: Lois Weber

33 Get Out and The Last Boy from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 28 seconds)

Watch this entire presentation

33 Get Out and The Last Boy from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 28 seconds)

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

 

Transcript:

Now, I think it’s really important to think about also another thing that we use in our class. Jordan Peele, right? He wrote which horror film? Get Out. Thank you very much. He got an Oscar for writing that. That’s how different, unique, and creative that film is. He gave us not a final girl because if you haven’t seen the movie she’s a bad guy. Spoiler alert. He gave us the final guy. This is a movie about the final guy — the guy who survives where no one else survived before right? He sees the horror that’s happening and he uses his brain to get out of it. So I had to think about that. So does he qualify for these definitions? He is the last one left standing. All the other people who came before him have been incorporated you know white people have been put into their brains and it’s weird. Ehhh, I don’t know if he’s definitely young he’s not necessarily innocent because he and his girlfriend have definitely had sex right but he’s a really good nice guy so maybe he qualifies as innocent. I don’t know and then we think about in the end — spoiler alert — he kills the bad girl by strangling her right. Is that a feminine way to kill people? Poisoning is more a feminine thing. I don’t know but it’s not a masculine way either. So it’s a little bit right a little bit. Maybe it’s not the perfect definition but he’s definitely the last guy standing when we get to the end of this movie. Which is quite brilliant.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Related posts:

  1. 18 Jane Espenson & Marti Noxon from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 9 seconds)
  2. 05 Amelia Edwards from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 7 seconds)
  3. 03 Elizabeth Gaskell from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 3 seconds)
  4. 32 Women As Survivors from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (40 seconds)
  5. 01 Introduction from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 18 seconds)

“A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 7 in a series

“At five feet five with blond hair and blue eyes, Garibaldi was visually more Greek than Italian, but Italian women were drawn to him all the same, especially when those who supported a united Italy understood he was on their side. Teresita Cassamiglia and her mother, Caterina Boscovich, who owned the Osteria del Colombo in Genoa, were among the many women who helped Giuseppe. Ignoring the danger that could come from aiding and abetting revolutionaries, they housed Giuseppe at their Inn between naval journeys, slyly seeking out other potential converts to Mazzini’s Young Italy to send his way.”

Get your copy of A Man Of Action Saving Liberty Today!

Related posts:

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