On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
Most famous for being the author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Anita Loos was also a prolific screenwriter, playwright, and memoirist, chronicling the early days of Hollywood.
Learn about more Women In History with these encyclopedia from Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier
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† Available from the LA Public Library
Part of the California State University, Fullerton Faculty Noon Time Talks at the Pollak Library.
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Transcript:
Pretty brilliant and then everyone loves Breaking Bad right, but among the Emmys the show got one was by a woman Moira Walley-Beckett got an Emmy for writing the Ozymandias episode of Breaking Bad. So as much as we love Vince Gilligan and he’s quite marvelous and the show is truly his piece of art, Moira got the Emmy for it, right? So we need to think about that and that I think is where I will stop because there’s a lot of women writing today , thank goodness and I’m happy to see that but we must remember to look for who the writers are and then extra specially, if they happen to be women, tell people about them. Tell them about their work. Have them watch it. That would be a lovely thing. Thank you for coming.
Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.
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Bradwell v. Illinois (1873) was a landmark Supreme Court case that declared women could not be lawyers. Myra Colby Bradwell, represented in court by Matthew Hale Carpenter, sued the state of Illinois for her right to practice law after she graduated from law school in St. Louis. Despite the Supreme Court ruling, Bradwell continued to advocate women’s rights through litigation including lobbying for the right to pursue professional occupations and in support of the suffragist movement.
Learn more about Myra Bradwell
Learn about more Women In History with these encyclopedia from Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier
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The first woman to break the sound barrier and the director of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS), Cochran was born near Muscogee, Florida, and orphaned as an infant. Raised in northern Florida by a poverty-stricken foster family of migrant sawmill workers, she went to work in the mills early in life.
Learn more about Jacqueline Cochran
Learn about more Women In History with these encyclopedia from Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier
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† Available from the LA Public Library
A freeborn African-American educator and anti-slavery activist, Charlotte Bridges Forten Grimke, was one of the most influential of abolitionists and civil rights activists of the mid-nineteenth century. In 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, Forten went to Port Royal, South Carolina, where slaves abandoned by their masters after they fled Union forces, were preparing for life after slavery. Forten established a school for former slaves. Her ultimate goal was to provide her students with the skills to live as free persons. After the war Forten worked for issues such as women’s rights and black civil rights.
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Learn about more Women In History with these encyclopedia from Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier
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Mathematician and U.S. Navy rear admiral Grace Murray Hopper was a pioneer in computer science. Hopper was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer and developed the first compiler for computer programming language. She helped to create UNIVAC I, the first commercial electronic computer, and the naval applications for COBOL, or com- mon business-oriented language. She is credited with popularizing the term “debugging.” Her nickname “Amazing Grace” came from the scope of her accomplishments and her naval rank.
Learn more about Rear Admiral Grace Hopper
Learn about more Women In History with these encyclopedia from Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier
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Raised as a girl in the early 1600s, Thomasine/Thomas Hall spent much of her adult life living as a man. Hall came to Virginia in 1607 and lived as a man until 1629, when she was discovered and ordered to assume female dress. Hall may have been a cross dresser, but she also many have been inter-sex, as there seems to be some confusion about her sex. In the 1630s a court ordered Hall to wear man’s dress, but a woman’s apron, suggesting the importance of clothing to colonial gender ideologies.
Learn more about Thomasine/Thomas Hall
Learn about more Women In History with these encyclopedia from Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier
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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 1916 Motion Picture News Studio Directory credits Los Angeles native Ida May Park with twelve years of stage experience as a “leading woman in support of well-known stars” and with screen experience at Pathé and the Universal Film Manufacturing Company, where she was then employed as a scenario writer (134). Park flourished at Universal, where she wrote forty-four films, half of them feature length, between 1914 and 1919. Before 1917, Park’s husband, Joseph De Grasse, directed almost all of the films she wrote. In 1917, Park began directing her own scenarios and, according to a 1918 story in the Universal Weekly, a newspaper for exhibitors, editing them as well (29). She crafted a total of eleven features by this method in a scant two years. Park is important to understand as part of a strong creative presence that we now refer to as “Universal Women,” those who between 1912 and 1919 were promoted from acting or writing to directing and were credited on at least one hundred and seventy titles, a cohort that included Ruth Ann Baldwin, Cleo Madison, Ruth Stonehouse, Lois Weber, and Elsie Jane Wilson (Cooper 17, Denton 50). Park and De Grasse left Universal in the spring or summer of 1919 for reasons as yet unknown. On September 12, the Los Angeles Times reported that Lew Cody and manager-producer Louis J. Gasnier had signed her to direct motion pictures in which Cody would star (16). She made one such title, and, with De Grasse, directed two features for Andrew J. Callaghan Productions in 1920.
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Civil rights and labor activist Dolores Clara Fernandez Huerta has made a life’s work of advocacy for farmworkers, immigrants, women, and the American Hispanic (Latino/a) community. Huerta is the co-founder of three major civil rights organizations, including the Stockton, California, chapter of the Community Service Organization (1955); the Agricultural Workers Association (1960); and the National Farm Workers Association (1962) with Cesar Chavez (1927–1993), which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW).
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Learn about more Women In History with these encyclopedia from Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier
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Female pirate Anne Bonny operated in the Caribbean in the early 1700s. Though she never commanded a ship she was known for her ferocious fighting skills. She and Mary Read, another female pirate, were eventually captured by authorities. Read died in prison, but Bonny may have escaped or been ransomed. Both women were legendary free spirits who rejected ideas about women’s place and lived lives of relative freedom.
Learn about more Women In History with these encyclopedia from Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier
* 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
