Losing the Invaluable Frances Doel

 It saddens me to report that Frances Doel is no longer withus. Frances, the right-hand woman of Roger Corman for many a decade, passedaway last week at age 83. Late in life she had moved from Hollywood to Lexington,Kentucky to be tended by family members who loved her dearly. Honestly, she wasdearly loved by everyone who knew her.

 

Roger Corman met Frances at Oxford, where she was completinga degree in literature. Always a shrewd judge of character, he concluded shewas smart enough and agreeable enough to make a good assistant. And so shewas—learning from scratch pretty much every job involving a movie set or aproduction office. Her obituary notes that she ghost-wrote the first draft ofmany a Corman classic, and named among her official writing credits 1974’s BigBad Mama, starring Angie Dickinson, William Shatner, and Tom Skerritt.  I was there, and I’m happy to share how thisfirst Frances Doel screen credit came to be.

 

Starting work as Roger’s new assistant in 1973, Iimmediately gravitated toward the New World Pictures story department, whichwas Frances. Roger wanted a seriocomic rural crime thriller à la Bonnie and Clyde.Back then, he was obligated to use WGA writers, and it was a lot cheaper tohire a union writer for a re-write than for an original script. That’s why hegave Frances an entire weekend to crank out a workable first draft. Of courseshe came through with flying colors, devising a story about a poor but feistymother and her two nubile daughters who take up robbery in Depression-eraTexas. She slapped a fake name on the draft, and we hired a veteranscreenwriter to take over.

 

William Norton, a very nice guy, seemed to enjoy storymeetings with Frances and me. As we worked our way through characterizationsand plot points, Bill started wondering aloud about the author of  the original draft. He went so far as to askif this “man” could come in and discuss some story questions he had. At whichpoint, Frances and I began to giggle. Eventually we couldn’t hide the fact thatFrances herself was the screenwriter in question. A true gentleman, Billinsisted that she share script credit with him. It was the start of her stringof Corman writing credits, which ultimately included such low-budget classicsas Crazy Mama and Sharktopus.

 

Did Frances get paid extra for her weekend labors? Shecouldn’t recall exactly, but suspected that BigBad Mama earned her about $100. Over the years, her earnings increased,netting her $5000 each for quickie creature-features like Dinocroc. But she never entirely earned Roger’s full respect. As shetold me in 2011, soon after her retirement, “Roger got very fed up with me,”because he didn’t feel she was writing fast enough. Ten script pages a dayseemed to him a reasonable amount, even though she was putting in this worksolely on evenings and weekends.

 

Frances stayed with Roger in various capacities for decades,earning the genuine praise of such celebrated Corman alumni as John Sayles andRon Howard. But the time came when she got a better offer, moving on to Disney,and then ultimately joining with Corman alum Jon Davison to produce hits like StarshipTroopers. Eventually she hit on hard times, and Roger—in a burst ofgenerosity—gave her my job as Concorde-New Horizons story editor. Ithurt, but I couldn’t blame Frances. She was too gracious and too special forthat.   

 And I could never have written my Roger Corman bio withouther.