tv – Page 2 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Golden Girls Creator, Susan Harris, Always Worth Knowing

Susan Harris wrote her first freelance TV show in 1970, wrote for All in the Family and Maude from 1971-1973, premiered SOAP in 1977, followed it up with the spinoff of Benson in 1979, and The Golden Girls ran from 85-92. Though she retired in the early aughts her “Girls” have since been re-envisioned for audiences in Holland, Greece, and Chile.

How many years AFTER her last hit show went off the air and she – the writer – is known for those shows — not the many journeymen directors who came and went – so much so that in June 2024 June 8 to be exact) the Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword puzzle included this question: 1 Across, 4 letters: “Emmy-winning sitcome created by Susan Harris.” Answer: “SOAP.” The explanation: “Former TV writer and producer Susan Harris created quite a few hit TV shows, including “Soap”, “Benson”, “The Golden Girls” and “Empty Nest”.

LA Times Crossword 8 Jun 24, Saturday - LAXCrossw….

THAT is how writers should be written about (especially by other writers) and why I’m editing a book of essays/chapters on The Works of Susan Harris!

Where’s Her Museum? Betty Burbage – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, June 2024

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Recognizing Female Genius by Dr. Rosanne Welch

I was doing editor rewrites on a chapter titled “Dorothy Parker: The Creative Genius Behind Film Franchise A STAR IS BORN.” To the note asking me to consider a “less hagiographic title,” I said “No”.

A quick check showed me that many, many, many male writers are called geniuses – but few women.

For instance, this article, Genius – still a country for white, middle class, heterosexual men*, notes:

“Try a quick google search of the terms “literary genius”. The same names keep appearing: William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Henry James, William Chaucer, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, J.D. Salinger, and so on.”

But I would object to J.D. Salinger. Catcher in the Rye did not move me at all – but S. E. (Susan Elizabeth) Hinton’s The Outsiders moved me and all the generations from mine through my son’s Millennial group and into the folks watching the musical on Broadway right now – while teaching us all to love the poetry of another male genius – Robert Frost. See, I’m willing to use the adjective on men when they deserve it.

So the lesson of the day is that if any writer deserves to be called genius, it’s Dorothy Parker.

Own your genius. And use it to describe other female creatives. And maybe refrain from using it on less men for once.

* Genius – still a country for white, middle class, heterosexual men, Natalie Kon-yu, The Conversation

From High School Teaching to Writing the First Screenwriting Bible: Marguerite Bertsch – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, May 2024

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Hobnobbing with Her Fellow Writers (and Wizards) Across the Decades – The Screenwriting Career of Florence Ryerson – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, April 2024

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Writing Successful Films into her 60s? Zelda Sears Did It! – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, March 2024

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So Much More than Merely Her Chocolate Cake Recipe – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, February 2024

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Between Broadway and Hollywood: The Screenwriting Career of Ketty Frings – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, January 2024

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Before Peanuts, Alice Guy Blaché Presented the First True Meaning of Christmas Film – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, December 2023

Though she never wrote a horror film, to celebrate Halloween this month’s focus is screenwriter, poet, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Zoe Akins, born on October 30, 1886. In 1935 Akins would become the third woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the highest honor for a Broadway play in the United States, after Zona Gale (1921) and Susan Glaspell (1931). Akins’ win came from her dramatization of Edith Wharton’s The Old Maid. Four years later the play was adapted by Casey Robinson into a film starring Bette Davis, even though Akins had begun adapting plays and turning out her own screenplays in the early 1930s. Throughout her career, she collaborated with some of the most important women both behind and in front of the cameras which has kept her work in the public eye.

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