The Wrong Kind of Women by Naomi McDougall Jones

Author:Naomi McDougall Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2020-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER*

It may surprise you to learn that before 1925, during the silent film era, almost half of all films were written by women.1 In fact, a great many women were behind the camera in those days—producing and directing films and running studios. Proportionally, there were more women in positions of creative and structural power than at any other time in film history.

When writer and satirist Dorothy Parker and her writer husband, Alan Campbell, moved to Hollywood and signed contracts with Paramount, she was paid almost four times as much as he was.2

Frances Marion, who would go on to found the Writers Guild of America, was the highest-paid screenwriter in the 1920s and ’30s, with more than a hundred of her scripts being made into films.3 In 1930, she became the first woman to win an Oscar.

Lois Weber, a prolific screenwriter and director, was the first woman to establish and run her own film studio, and by 1916, her wage as a director was higher than any other at the time.4

Rosa Cianelli became the first female cinematographer in the world when she shot Uma Transformista Original in 1915.5

Predictably, most of these women were white, as people of color were largely kept out of even this nascent art form. There were fewer than ten black women known to be part of the film industry during this period, including producers Eloyce King Patrick Gist and Alice B. Russell and directors Tressie Souders and Maria P. Williams. Others earned power and influence managing their husband’s careers, like Eslanda Goode Robeson, the wife of actor Paul Robeson.6

The early period of cinema was rich with opportunity for what we would now call independent film. Opportunities at the grassroots level and on the fringes provided fertile ground for different types of voices to emerge. The Chinese American artist Marion Wong acted in, produced, and directed her own films during this era. Her first feature film, The Curse of Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles with the West, which she made when she was barely out of her teens, in 1916, is considered to be the first film to authentically document the Chinese American experience. As her grandson later marveled, “How did this twenty-year-old woman get this idea? She wrote the script, directed the film, played the villainess and she was the producer. She raised the money!”7

In fact, as the medium of film was first being imagined, developed, and explored, and before behind-the-camera roles were as firmly defined as they are today, there was a strong tradition of actor-producers.8 Many actresses who were dissatisfied with the roles being written for them by men became writers and directors themselves, and began production companies to make their own films.*

The greater abundance of female creators and power players during this time made sense since, in pre-1930s America, women made up 75–83 percent of the moviegoing audience, higher even than the 52 percent of moviegoers today.9 African American newspapers understood the power of film to change and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.