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

Due to a combination of financial pressures, distribution issues and a recession which led her to taking freelance work including on the smash hit Conan Doyle science fiction adaptation The Lost World (1925), her company had folded, in common with those set up by writer and editor Eve Unsell (1888-1...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Offscreen 2018-10, Vol.22 (10)
Main Author: Lennon, Elaine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actors
Arzner, Dorothy (1913-1979)
Biographies
Careers
Censorship
Essays
Motion picture directors & producers
Motion picture industry
Novels
Screenplays
Screenwriters
Women
Writers
Writing
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Summary:Due to a combination of financial pressures, distribution issues and a recession which led her to taking freelance work including on the smash hit Conan Doyle science fiction adaptation The Lost World (1925), her company had folded, in common with those set up by writer and editor Eve Unsell (1888-1937) whose most acclaimed work is probably The Ancient Mariner (1925) and writer/director Ida May Park (1879-1954) best known for The Flashlight (1917) and who later wrote a scriptwriting manual. The name Jane Murfin (1884-1955) might be more or less forgotten nowadays but her dog Strongheart was the first canine film star (pre-dating Rin Tin Tin) and he got a line of his own food and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which certainly confirms the insignificance of women writers in Hollywood ecology. “Let us strive to relieve her of her obscurity,” announces Amy L. Banks, who traces Murfin’s life as a Broadway playwright, her collaborations with actress Dorothy Cowl and her astounding Thirties films, including her contribution to What Price Hollywood? (1932), Roberta (1935), a series of screenplays for Katharine Hepburn (The Little Minister, Alice Adams and Dragon Seed) and, of course, The Women (1939) co-written with Anita Loos, as well as Pride and Prejudice (1940), with Aldous Huxley. Functioning as tribute, history and index to a generation of fierce and feisty women, this is an educational tool sure to inspire further vigorous debate and rigorous research, proving that a pioneering woman’s work is never done Elaine Lennon is a film historian and the author of ChinaTowne and Pathways of Desire: Emotional Architecture in the Films of Nancy Meyers.
ISSN:1712-9559