speaking – Page 10 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

24 Italians In America from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

In researching and writing my book on Giuseppe and Anita Garibaldi and the unification of Italy (A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi) I re-discovered the first American female war correspondent – Margaret Fuller — who I had first met in a college course on the Transcendentalists. I was once again fascinated by a life lived purposefully.

Then I found Tammy Rose’s podcast on the Transcendentalists – Concord Days – and was delighted when she asked me to guest for a discussion of Fuller’s work in Italy as both a journalist – and a nurse. — Rosanne

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Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

I was just going to say, yes, I wouldn’t exactly use the word parallel because of course Italians were never slaves but actually, some who were shipped here were mistakenly sold into slavery because they could speak the language and nobody understood and they were dark. There are stories of that and of course, the biggest lynching — the most — the largest mass lynching in America happened to a group of Italian men in Louisiana. That’s post-slavery now. Yeah it was and they weren’t considered white because of that now and largely we’re talking about southern Italians, Sicilians, and southern Italians because northern Italians look more swiss. They look more german. They are blonder and blue-eyed. It’s Frank Sinatra versus Dean Martin. So any group that comes into this country, sadly, we sort of do the whole oh you’re at the bottom of the barrel. It would say you know no dogs or dagos allowed you know. No dagos should apply for this job. There was discrimination. I’m two generations away from that so it didn’t happen to me but I understood that it happened to my grandfather and I understood how that got in his way.

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20 A 3rd Remake?…from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video]

Transcript:

Here’s something that fascinates me. I remember reading this in the trades and how cool it would have been when they thought about the third remake. This is obviously some 15 years ago now. It was a natural for Whitney Houston. You want a famous female singer. You want this story and she had just done The Bodyguard with Kevin Costner which had her be a famous singer right and she has as you know — falls in love with her bodyguard, in this case, etc etc — which also became a Broadway musical believe it or not and I’m gonna do a little tangent because I love to talk about writing. Why in the heck is Dolly Parton in my picture? She wrote a song called I Will Always Love You in the 50s when she quit her partnership with a male country singer. When they did the bodyguard, they needed a song that would be the song where Whitney Houston’s character kind of declared that she loved Kevin Costner. He’s a country music fan. He said to her you know I know this song that Dolly Parton wrote like 20 years ago. Could you reuse it and she liked it. Whitney Houston said yeah and they went to Dolly Parton because they have to get rights to it because she wrote the song and they were like you know Dolly once Whitney sings this, this will be in history Whitney Houston’s song and Dolly, being a very smart businesswoman, said yes but the writer gets all royalties for the song and I am perfectly happy for Whitney to own the performance. So it was a pretty brilliant move on her part and I’m sure that you’ve all heard that song as a Whitney Houston song. So that came out of The Bodyguard. They were thinking about getting Denzel to be the actor slash rockstar slash whatever they would need him to be in this version or they were thinking about Eddie Murphy. Sadly Whitney Houston died so this version was never able to be made and I think that’s a big loss because if we’re gonna remake a movie you know let’s do new and different things and she would have been brilliant. It would have been great. It didn’t happen.

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Connections at conferences matter! Through the most recent SCMS, I met Vicki Callahan, whose film history focus right now is on Mabel Normand. When she learned I could put together a lecture on the importance of the female voice in the A Star is Born franchise she asked me to give that lecture to her master students.

It made for a great opportunity for me to hone the ideas I’m working on for a chapter on that franchise that I’m writing for a new book from Bloomsbury: The Bloomsbury Handbook Of International Screenplay Theory. It’s always nice when one piece of research can be purposed in other ways – and it’s always fun revisiting such a female-centric film franchise – one that drew the talents of such powerful performers as Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland, Barbara Streisand, and Lady Gaga.

Find out why in this lecture!

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05 The Missing Women Part 2 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.

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Transcript:

However, those two ladies were so important to the creation of Rose Marie — this character on the beloved Dick Van Dyke Show. This is one of the most important characters really in television history and many many female tv writers today will tell you that they knew this job was possible because they saw her do it on the fictional Dick Van Dyke Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show was a fictionalization of the staff writing for Sid Caesar right? Carl Reiner’s character is meant to be a personification of that. So these are the typical gentlemen who worked for him and she is a representation of Lucille and Selma Diamond sort of wrapped together. A woman who never got married right? Couldn’t find a guy. This is a very stereotypical vision of a career gal as they would say back in the day but she inspired many many women all the way up through Tina Fey and I think it’s always important to think about the power of television. One of my favorite stories has nothing to do with tv writers but to do with a Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who says she learned that she could be a lawyer someday by watching Perry Mason as a child. She learned that lawyers existed and that it was a job that required college and so she did well in school so that she could move forward and look she’s on the Supreme Court today. So television has a lot of power and the visuals women see on television are very very important to the ideas. You have to see it so that you can be it right? So Rose Marie stands for a lot of things — a representation of the women who truly did come before her and an inspiration to the women who came after.

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.

Get your copy today!

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23 Why Return to the US? from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

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Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Tammy: So here’s a question that I’m never really sure. Were they were coming for a visit or were they coming to move permanently or was it sort of…

Rosanne: I believe the idea was they were going to move permanently because she could do more work there and she wanted to publish the book and it had to be published in the United States. So even if — yeah maybe not permanent the wrong way to say it — it was going to be a period of time so that piece could be done and the kind of — she knew that the United States needed to come and support what was happening in Italy as well. So I think it’s twofold. Her career is gonna move forward with this and he’s thinking he’s gonna help get the kind of support because Garibaldi lived in the states for a little bit too after one of his failures. So he knew that if you got people there on your side you would have the support you needed. So they had business reasons, as well as I’m sure she kind of wanted to show off her kid to her friends, because as you said earlier, that wasn’t part of her planned life story and when I was a kid I was never going to have kids because I thought that’s not something I want to do and then Ii changed my mind at 32 because a writer friend of mine actually said if you want to be a writer and you want all the experiences that a writer can have, you’re turning down an experience that only half the planet can have and it was it a conversation which again makes me think about Margaret talking to these women. What are the possibilities in your life and what have you told yourself you should or shouldn’t do based on what society will say about you and I did think having a kid would get in the way of having a career and then I realized no because you could do it your way and Margaret did right I think in that moment, in those periods in her life, she was really happy and I think that was you know the other reason she wanted to come back and show everybody, look I did it all.

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19 Up Close and Personal from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video]

Transcript:

Just briefly I wanted to cover the fact that so 20 years later, Joan and John are going to write “Up Close and Personal.” It’s about an ambitious female news reporter, her seasoned older male news reporter, who’s at his peak but he’s Robert Redford so he’s not failing but he’s about to fail. He’s hit the best of his career. They fall in love. They fight. Spoiler — he dies not over trying to help her but like his world is over and it’s time for him to go and then she goes on with that. It’s the same freaking basis but I wouldn’t say that it’s a remake of A Star is Born right? There’s not enough in there that makes it the same.

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Find out why in this lecture!

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05 The Missing Women 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, Gerturde 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.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

Transcript:

…and here’s the problem. See all these men that we’re seeing in the pictures. All these men are who are remembered for writing for Sid Caesar. You’ve got Carl Reiner. You’ve got Woody Allen. You’ve got Larry Gelbart, who’s going to go on to do M*A*SH for us. These men are icons of comedy. When they came together to be recognized both Lucille and Selma had passed away. So when it was time to take this photograph, this is what people will remember about the writers of these classic iconic early comedies. They will not remember that women were on board for those things. The other sad thing to realize is this is still the visual of what a writing staff looks like on a late-night comedy show. When Stephen Colbert’s show won the Emmy a few years ago, there’s one female writer among the 13 male writers on that show. It is an issue that is still with us today in television. So we have to think about it, but sadly because this is such a great photograph, people will forget way down here it says not pictured the two ladies who didn’t happen to be able to be there that day.

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, Gerturde 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.

Get your copy today!

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18 What’s Different?…from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video

Transcript:

So what’s different in this one? In a nutshell right? We’re going to go back to — she’s ambitious but she’s a rock star. He’s a rock idol. We’re still he’s jealous. It’s hard not to be jealous. We’re going to add the component that they write a song together. That is one of the sexiest things you can watch human beings do. Come up with love words that you put to music and sing to each other and then kiss in the middle of singing. It’s friggin gorgeous. It’s a sex scene without everybody getting naked right and this is what we can do in 1976. It stimulates sex. We’re not going to the Academy Awards. We’re going to the Grammy Awards because that’s what we do in rock and roll. We’re still going to keep the line — so Dorothy Parker is still giving us …”one more look at you.” This is a huge deal. This time it was decided that it was — I don’t like the word cowardly — but it was weak to walk off into the ocean. It was far cooler and more dude-like, more testosterone-driven, to for him to get into this brilliantly beautiful expensive car and crash up and it’s just a deeply sad scene, and then, of course, she gets called and she comes to the site and she’s actually touching the dead body, right? She’s like don’t want to leave him and her manager has to pull her off of him and all that stuff. So we’ve changed a few things but we’ve not changed the trajectory of the story and again that’s what an arbitrator would look at right? An arbitrator would say, no the plot points are still. There the decoration is what has changed. So pretty big deal.

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Find out why in this lecture!

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04 Selma Diamond 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.

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Transcript:

Next, we want to see Selma Diamond. Selma Diamond was an early writer on Your Show of Shows. Look at these names that she is with — Mel Tolkin, Larry Gelbart, Mel Brooks, and Selma Diamond right? She was such a fascinating woman but many people only know her from her part on Night Court which was a show in the late 80s. She stepped into that character. She actually passed away in the course of the show and was replaced by Marsha Warfield. So most people only know her from her acting career but in fact, she was a writer many years earlier. She had some comedy albums that were very very well respected and I happen to know right now her great-nephew is working on a documentary to tell the story of her career because sadly what happens to her and this woman, Lucy Kallen — Lucille Kallen, excuse me. She was also a writer on these early Sid Caesar shows right? So you can see her in this picture. She’s right there doing the work with everybody. She’s part of it everywhere you go except when we start to think about memorializing the people who worked on these shows. Now you have to think about how brilliant Lucille Kallen was. When tv went away from her right when it started to be something that they weren’t really giving her jobs in she began to write murder mysteries. The Tanglewood Murder. That whole CB Greenfield line is her. So she was already in the world of let’s have a continuing series. If I can’t do it on tv, I’ll do it in book form. So this is a woman who wrote all her career and I also happen to love this quote by her — a man’s home is his castle and his wife is the janitor. This is the kind of wit. She’s very much a Dorothy Parker type of person.

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 More On Joan Didion…from “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video]

Transcript:

So she brings a journalistic background to this. She brings feminism to this in a way that maybe it didn’t appear as much in that this is Barbra Streisand not only is she acting in this piece, she’s producing it right? She’s the first woman producer on this movie. So she has final say and one of the things she makes sure happens is when they get married she does the proposing to her John Norman Maine. When they have their ceremony there’s a whole little piece of dialogue where she says oh skip that obey part. Obey doesn’t happen. She has a female minister marrying them and Kris is in a white tux. Men usually wear black to their weddings but if the girl has to wear white and pretend to be a virgin why shouldn’t a boy right? So there’s something visual here right that a woman has planned this scene and one of the changes will bring to this Esther is that she’s going to hyphenate her last name. She will be Esther Hoffman-Howard and that will be how she announces herself at the end. So we’re getting some movement of the feminist world coming into this through Joan and John himself also a feminist because he’s married to a woman who is equally comfortable. Now they’re bringing a marriage to it right but their marriage is happy all their life. They didn’t have issues over whose novel made more money last year.

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Find out why in this lecture!

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03 Gertrude Berg 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.

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Transcript:

Gertrude Berg is a woman we need to know about. We think about early television. We think about diversity. In this case, it was considered quite diverse that there would be a Jewish family on television and so she wrote The Goldbergs, one of the earliest, again, sitcoms and these are the pile of scripts behind her because this ran as well on radio and then moved into television where she portrayed herself in the show right? So that’s a beautiful other thing. Long before they were Seinfeld in any of those other comics, she became the star of the show she also wrote. This impresses me because the double work involved in that is almost hard to explain and what’s really amazing about Molly Goldberg is in the 1940s she was voted the second most admired woman in America, right after the first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Imagine that was showing us the early power of television and how those stories can move into our lives and really be part of something. So I found that absolutely fascinating.

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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