screenwriter – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Running Down the Rabbit Hole of Research, Dr. Rosanne Welch

Running Down the Rabbit Hole of Research

It’s always fun to fall into the rabbit hole of research. It always teaches me new things about other eras, along with reminding me that one of the ways women disappear in history. They change their names, making it harder and harder to find them. I was reminded of this as I was writing a column on novelist turned silent screenwriter Beaulah Marie Dix. In one of many short bits about her online, I found mention of daughter Evelyn Flebbe Scott on the very helpful Women Film Pioneers Project. There, I also found that Evelyn had herself become “an industry writer” and had written a Hollywood memoir, Hollywood When Silents Were Golden (Internet Archive) that can also be ordered from the Los Angeles Public Library.

An online search for Evelyn Scott led to a southern novelist – Evelyn Scott (born Elsie Dunn) – so not the Evelyn Scott I was researching. Luckily, I had my Evelyn Scott’s father’s name, so I added the Flebbe to the search, and that’s when Evelyn Flebbe Scott came up on Goodreads as the author of 2 children’s books + the aforementioned memoir. It also gave the next tidbit, giving me her father’s profession: “was the daughter of screenwriter/author Beulah Marie Dix and book importer Georg Heinrich Flebbe” along with the explanation of where ‘Scott’ came from: “She married film editor David Scott in 1935” AND, the confirmation that “Evelyn F. Scott worked for decades in Hollywood as a story editor at MGM.”

Then, in looking up a tiny smidgen of a clue on IMDB – that she had a play that “the Technicolor Corporation to be adapted as one of their Great Events short color film series” I searched the play’s title Allison’s Lad in IBDB, the Internet Broadway Database – it wasn’t listed. So I broadened to a larger search and found it listed on a new fun site: The Unknown Playwrights site “Where unknown playwrights become known”.

There I learned that “Dix had a thing for history and wars” and the one-act “is set during the bloodletting known as The English Civil War” and “appears in a volume of one-acts set entirely during wartime.” Their Link Heaven took me to the Internet Archive where a printed copy of the play had been scanned.

Now I need to read some books on the MGM scenario department to see if Evelyn worked with Kate Corbaley, the famous head of the story department at MGM in the 1930s, who you can read more about here – How Kate Corbaley, Powerful Reader at MGM in the 1930s, Paved the Way for Today’s Hollywood Literary Scouts.

That’s a tiny example of the rabbit hole of research one can hop into and like Alice in Wonderland, find oneself racing through all sorts of interesting eras and fascinating lives.

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Along with your other holiday shopping over this Thanksgiving weekend, I’m happy to pass along this lovely discount from McFarland Publishing, the fine folks who published two of my favorite books:

Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

AND

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

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See the entire McFarland Catalog

You can buy one of my books — or any other cool pop culture book you find — for yourself or anyone else on your gift list this year.

Happy Holidays!

Learning More from Derry Girls Than Merely More Irish Slang

If you haven’t yet watched Derry Girls you have to – This trailer to the first season shows the brilliance of creator Lisa McGee, who wrote ALL 3 seasons worth of episodes herself (much like Susan Harris wrote many of her early season shows herself to cement the tone and style).

I don’t always agree with the idea of no writers room – writers rooms have a deeply important purpose – but in this case, her story was SOOOO distinctly of Derry, not even merely of Ireland but completely from her own home town and her own time period as a teen in that town, that I understand. In essence, she wrote an 20 hour movie broken up into 3 seasons of 8 half hour episodes apiece.

So like a loooong film, what the trailer can’t yet show is the wonderful arcs of each of these young women who by the Season 3 series finale (not a spoiler alert since I’m not telling you what they decide) must decide how to vote on the Good Friday Agreement.

In 2022 the New Yorker had this great interview with McGee:

The house where Lisa McGee grew up, in Derry, in Northern Ireland, sits on the bank of the River Foyle, near a largely Catholic neighborhood known as the Bogside. In 1969, the Bogside was the site of a three-day conflict. Residents hurled projectiles and petrol bombs; they were met with tear gas and batons. The violence spread to other cities and towns, and ultimately resulted in hundreds of injuries and a number of deaths. British troops were called in to Derry—the beginning of a long-term military operation. The conflict, known as the Battle of the Bogside, marked what many would call the start of the Troubles, which dominated Northern Irish politics for roughly three decades. In 1972, violence flared in the Bogside again. More than a dozen civilians were killed by soldiers in a massacre known as Bloody Sunday.

Read More

Tidbits with great points for writers (aspiring and published/produced because writers are always learning) include:

Write what you’re afraid of writing: “ “I had said my whole life, ‘I’ll never write about the Troubles,’ ” she told me. “Everything I saw about the Troubles was either the news, or something quite shit that was going on in my actual life.” In films about the period, she didn’t recognize the people. “There were never any jokes. I don’t know any Northern Irish person that isn’t funny,” she said. Lewin, who had been listening to McGee tell stories about her childhood for years, persuaded her to try. “They’re so joyful,” she said.”

AND

Create writerly habits: “She often carries a notebook. “If somebody says something funny, she’ll write it down,” Mallon said. “She might even ask you again, ‘What was that? What did you say?’ She wants to get it right, word for word.” Mallon told me that McGee once heard his father say something about his car—“It stinks of fish in here!”—and borrowed the line years later in “Derry Girls.”

While the show is comical to anyone who has any experience in a Catholic school –that background isn’t required. We all understand coming-of-age and coming-to-love-our-heritage and teenagers and parents dealing with each other.

But on top of all that viewers outside of Ireland learn about the history of another country and its political turmoil and hear some great discussions about peace and how we’re all a lot more similar than we are different. And that’s what art can do.

Anita Loos: An Introduction with Dr. Rosanne Welch, Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting and the Retroformat Silent Film Society [Video]

During each of our Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting we take our MFA candidates on field trips around Los Angeles and this January that included the screening of a silent movie – “The Social Secretary” – hosted at the Historic Women’s Club of Hollywood with a full audience. Many attendees had never watched a film shown from a projector, much less a silent film on such a large screen with live piano accompaniment. The MFA co-sponsored the event with the , a group dedicated to promoting education and enthusiasm about the art of silent film.

I was happy to be asked to deliver this introduction to the work of screenwriter and novelist Anita Loos whose work bridged the worlds of silents – where she was instrumental in creating the swashbuckling character for Douglas Fairbanks – to talkies and screenplays to novels to Broadway plays. Her Gentlemen Prefer Blondes remains a classic, never having gone out of print, and it led to several film versions including the famous one starring Marilyn Monroe. Her book for Gigi helped give the play a successful transition to the well-known film that showcased Leslie Caron.

If you don’t know much about this prolific woman writer, check out my introduction and then go watch some of her films, many of which are on YouTube. Yet the experience of seeing it on the big screen became one of this Workshop’s most appreciated events.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

Transcript:

…Rosanne Welch. [Applause]

Hello everybody. I am Dr. Rosanne Welch. I run the Stevens College MFA and TV and Screenwriting where we study film with a female gaze.

So we study Anita Loos and so I’m gonna –– we’re here for an hour and a half lecture right?

Very quickly, I just want to make sure people who are here know what we’re talking about. First of all, what we do in our program is we teach the history of screenwriting because in most places they teach you the history of film and that tends to be the history of directors which becomes the history of Great Men. While we love men, women founded Hollywood and need to be remembered.

So I was really pleased when Tom said I have the Anita Loos print and I was like, oh yeah Anita Loos. We study her. We love her and it would be lovely to see it with real live accompaniment.

[Applause]

I’m gonna say a very quick things about Anita. I want people who don’t know her to know these things. First of all, we have to remember her as the first person to put wit in her title cards and today when someone writes a television or film script, in their action lines they use that technique. They use their own voice. They say funny things. They don’t just say the door opens right? They are still doing something essentially we learn from Anita. So I think that is a reason that she should stay with us. I think it’s also important to remember her as a star maker. She’s the reason you know who Douglas Fairbanks is. He was just the stumblebum actor until she made him a swashbuckler and then he became the Douglas Fairbanks –– the founder of the Academy right? She also –– I’m sure many of you can think about Carol Channing and Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend. Talk about a character that lived forever in that actress. So I think that’s brilliant for Anita. She was also known for her diligent work ethic. The woman got up at five o’clock and wrote until two or three in the afternoon and then dealt with business –– that and she would tell people she didn’t work very hard. It wasn’t very hard at all. Think about that. So I think that’s really beautiful. I think it’s important to think about all the literary friends she had. She was friends with Theodore Dreiser , and H.L. Mencken – these are major names of their day. Interestingly enough her name is still a little more famous than theirs are. So there’s something about her work. Though people made fun of films and film writing clearly she survived where some of their stuff isn’t read that much anymore and also she was a brilliant friend to other women in the business and we know that that’s how everyone who moves up in the world by taking the next person below you and bringing them up right? So she was friends with the young Ruth Gordon. Y’all don’t remember when she was young but she was and Anita was someone who helped her move forward in the business. She was best friends with Helen Hayes who many people remember. So the idea that she understood that sisterhood was the way to help everybody. So those are the reasons that I still admire Anita. I always say that I met her when I was six years old – not the person but in her memoirs and so if you haven’t read A Memoir of hers you should because they’re funny and witty and teach us a lot about this time period and also we’ve written about her in this book which we will have for sale afterward. There you go. I’ll teach Tom how to sell. Which was written by the first inaugural students in our program about seven years ago and there’s a chapter on 25 different famous female screenwriters of that period. So if you’re interested we’ll have some more of those and we’ll talk afterward and we have three of the original authors of chapters right here with me tonight. So with that, I hope that everybody adores if you haven’t met Anita Loos before you will listen to her voice today and laugh. Have a great night.

[Applause]

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STOP FORGETTING TO NAME THE WRITERS! by Dr. Rosanne Welch

STOP FORGETTING TO NAME THE WRITERS!

Once again I’ve had to email a film screening program about the blurb they posted about an upcoming screening and Q&A with the creators of a new film. Here’s the post I read:

When single father Max (John Cho) discovers he has a terminal disease, he decides to try and cram all the years of love and support he will miss with his teenage daughter Wally (Mia Isaac) into the time he has left with her. With the promise of long-awaited driving lessons, he convinces Wally to accompany him on a road trip from California to New Orleans for his 20th college reunion, where he secretly hopes to reunite her with her mother who left them long ago. A wholly original, emotional and surprising journey, Don’t Make Me Go explores the unbreakable, eternal bond between a father and daughter from both sides of the generational divide with heart and humor along for the ride. From Amazon Studios, #DontMakeMeGo will begin streaming July 15 globally only on Prime Video.

Why We Love It: Don’t Make Me Go is an emotional and beautiful exploration of the struggle between chasing your dreams or settling on the safe choices. Mia Isaac and John Cho’s chemistry is captivating in this one of a kind father-daughter road trip film. Bring tissues.

Here’s the email I had to send to the programmer:

I saw your announcement and wondered if Don’t Make Me Go is “A wholly original, emotional and surprising journey, Don’t Make Me Go explores the unbreakable, eternal bond between a father and daughter from both sides of the generational divide with heart and humor along for the ride” then WHY wasn’t the writer, Vera Herbert, invited to this live discussion? Or even mentioned in your post, which makes the reader assume that the director is a writer-director, giving them all the credit for what sounds like a film based on characters, situation, theme, and dialogue – none of which are under the auspices of a director.

As the Executive Director of an MFA in TV and Screenwriting, I subscribe to all your posts to see what events I might want to bring my MFA candidates to – but I only attend events that include writers. It’s an insult to not even name the writer. The auteur theory was invented years ago by French film reviewers who found it simpler to list directors since many were writer-directors and sometimes a film is written by 2 people which was unwieldy in a review. That’s why it exists and it’s a shame for film experts/programmers/educators to continue that practice. More women have written films than directed them (the Joan Harrison/Hitchcock team is an example) so it was another way to erase the creative work of women when we only mention directors. I would say “Please stop” but I’m tired of saying “Please”.

Dr. Rosanne Welch

19 Conclusion From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

I enjoyed sharing the names and careers of women like Peg Lynch, Gertrude Berg, Selma Diamond, and D.C. Fontana to the members who gathered on Zoom last Wednesday morning. There are so many more I could have talked about whose names don’t appear in mainstream books about the history of television so we have to learn who they are and carry those names forward ourselves. It’s one of the missions of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – and has been one of my missions all my life.

Transcript:

…But we can say it took from Treva in the 60s and early 70s, it takes until 2017 for an African-American woman to win an Emmy for writing again a comedy and that’s Lena Waithe who was writing on Master of None. She won the Emmy in 2017. She was also a performer on the show so much like Molly Goldberg she was in the show. She wrote an episode for her character and that episode was so honest and so beautiful that she won the Emmy award for it. So this is where we have come to right? This is where we have come to in our world. I am happy again to say that I work for Stephens College and we are all about bringing out these stories of women. We want more people to read about women, read books like Phantom Lady, who read books like my book on the Women of Early Hollywood, and know more of the names of these important women. For my world that’s pretty much what I’m here to say this morning. So we have I see 10 minutes on the clock here, so that if we would like to have any questions or chatting that’s totally optional. I’ve unshared my screen and I’m going to remake Janice the host again so I am no longer in charge of the screen. So that Janice can go from there.

Janice: Thank you very much Dr. Welch. It was just lovely. A wonderful, wonderful, wonderful program. You do so much to illuminate women and to rescue them from oblivion. As many of our women speakers have said women in various fields, we’ll do our part.

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

I enjoyed sharing the names and careers of women like Peg Lynch, Gertrude Berg, Selma Diamond, and D.C. Fontana to the members who gathered on Zoom last Wednesday morning. There are so many more I could have talked about whose names don’t appear in mainstream books about the history of television so we have to learn who they are and carry those names forward ourselves. It’s one of the missions of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – and has been one of my missions all my life.

Watch this entire presentation

Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

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18 Joanna Lee & Madeline Anderson From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

Transcript:

Then we have to think about who’s getting recognized. In this case, Joanna Lee – in the early mid-1970s – is the first female to win her Emmy Award for a drama right? We have Treva winning for a comedy. Just about eight years later, Joanna Lee is going to win for the Thanksgiving episode of The Waltons. She had been an actress in the 40s and had sadly a car accident which made it difficult for her to perform and be on set for long hours. So she turned to writing. She became a television writer working on all of these many shows right? All the way through and it’s interesting to see how she went from comedies – we always think girls have to be funny first – and then she started to do dramas right? The Mod Squad and then moved into Dynasty but she got her Emmy award for The Waltons. So this is a huge moment – again a female winning this award on her own. That’s a big deal. Outside of that are there women of color in early television. Not as many as we would like as is always the case however Madeleine Anderson came up through the news business right? She started doing a black journal out of Chicago originally and then she got jobs on Sesame Street. So through the PBS network, she started working for them doing children’s programming and The Electric Company. Always things with an educational bent. She’s the first African-American woman who ever produced a nationally aired television series, also on PBS, and also an educational series. So Madeleine Anderson’s someone whose name does not appear in most of our history books. That’s always been a problem for me.

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

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Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

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17 Even More On Treva Silverman From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

Transcript:

That particular season The Emmys also gave an overall Emmy for best writer of the whole year and Treva won that. So she’s the only person to win two Emmys in one year. Happens to be a female who worked alone right which I love. Now before that she worked on – she did a couple episodes of That Girl and I simply want to mention that because we often say Mary Tyler Moore was the first single woman on television. She was not. Actually, That Girl was because she was an actress but we don’t take that job seriously but she was the first show. She came on two seasons before Mary Tyler Moore and even before that we should say that Julia was the first working woman on television right and that’s an early just before Mary Tyler Moore as well. So we have a few things to think about in terms of Treva Silverman. After she did television she did script doctoring. So we don’t see her name come up very often because she’s someone that would be hired — in this case for this movie Romancing The Stone — to fix it right? There’s something wrong. We want to make this movie but it’s not working. In this case, the adorable thing was the Kathleen Turner character everyone thought was too harsh and what can we do to soften her up without giving her, you know, a boyfriend or whatever because she’s going to end up you know with Michael Douglas and Treva’s idea was the idea that has spawned a series of books on how to write film and that’s called Save The Cat. She brought in a cat. She wrote an early scene where Kathleen Turner was feeding her cat and because she loved a pet the audience loved her and that salvaged the character. So that’s the kind of script doctoring that she would do pretty much for the rest of her career.

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

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Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

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16 More On Treva Silverman From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

Transcript:

She moved on from that show, as I said, to win two Emmys for writing this beloved show — The Mary Tyler Moore Show. When James Brooks put that show together and James again a very respectable Executive Producer in television. Love all of what he’s done. He was a very progressive thinking man and he knew that if the show was about a single woman they ought to have a female on staff and so he asked Treva if she would join the show. The Emmys she won twofold. She won this Emmy for writing an episode about Lou Grant. she had single female friends who thought Ed Asner was appealing but his character on the show, Lou, was married and they felt guilty for liking a man who had a wife because it meant that they might be you know stealing a man from another woman. So she came up with the idea that Lou’s wife and he should get a divorce but the progressive new thought was not because Lou did anything bad. He’s not a gambler. He’s not cheating on her. It was that Edie Grant had decided that she wasn’t fulfilled — that she hadn’t done in her life what she wanted to do. She had only ever served him and it was her turn before she got too old and that was such a wildly innovative idea and it was so poignant and so sad because the audience loved him but we liked her as well and we understood that this was such a problem and she had to take this chance. So it was a brilliant episode. It won her an Emmy.

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

Watch this entire presentation

Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

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15 Treva Silverman From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

Transcript:

Moving into the 1960s one of my favorite people is Treva Silverman. She is one of the first female writers to win an Emmy. In fact, she won two in the same year for writing without a male partner. All the previous women who had won had had a male partner. Treva was a solo writer. She originally wrote for The Monkees. One show that I have written an entire book about that I’m very interested in and I will credit her with the fact that in 58 episodes of a show about rock and roll singers, every girl they met had a job and a career. They did not ever date bimbos. They dated girls who were journalists and who were worked at record stores or there was one who was a princess and a princess is a job right? So I think Treva was the feminist voice on that show.

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

Watch this entire presentation

Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

Get your copy today!

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