When Women Wrote Hollywood: A History of Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry
ROOM 504 - Reel Heroes
Saturday June 1, 2019 - 12:30 pm to 1:20 pm
All panelists have researched and written about early female screenwriters (we have a book on the subject that just came out this summer). We are a group of educators, writers and screenwriters working around the country that were members of the Stephens College MFA in Television and Screenwriting inaugural class. We have individually and as a group presented on the history of screenwriting and women screenwriters as part of the Citizen Jane Film Festival three years running and at book launches in Los Angeles and Columbia, MO. We will bring to life the pivotal women screenwriters in Golden Age Hollywood and discuss how many were subsequently forgotten by the history books, often with credit given to male counterparts of the time. The contributors trace the careers of such writers as Anita Loos, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Lillian Hellman, Gene Gauntier, Eve Unsell, Elinor Glyn, Jane Murfin and Ida May Park, and explore themes of their writing in classics like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Ben Hur, and It's a Wonderful Life.
