Script Girls: Women Screenwriters in Hollywood

by Lizzie Francke

The stereotypical Hollywood screenwriter is a smugly macho male pounding away at his typewriter. Yet women have been writing screenplays since the beginning of the silent era. Francke shows how, as the industry grew, screenwriting became virtually the only area in which a woman could play a significant role. In documenting Hollywood's early female scenarists, she touches on such prominent figures as Anita Loos and Dorothy Parker but concentrates on dozens of hitherto unsung heroines. Her account of female writers' current status is more compelling than that of the earlier days, thanks to interviews with Nora Ephron and other contemporaries. Francke's survey also points out how badly women have fared in other areas of the industry, on screen as well as off. But if "Writers are the women of the film industry," as a Hollywood figure once observed to indicate the lowly status of screenwriters, then women writers would seem to be the lowest of the low. Still, Francke describes her book as celebratory rather than as a catalog of discrimination, and it does detail the extensive contributions female screenwriters, facing daunting obstacles, have made. Gordon Flagg

Genres: Nonfiction, Film

Paperback

First published December 1, 1994

Reviews

[Linda Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Print in this book is teeny but the information is large. Starting from the back, there is a Select Filmography, Sound Period 1928-1994. The book text begins around 1910. In the introduction, Francke pops in the Introduction with a short punch of just a few screenwriting credits: Gilda (Virginia Van Upp), The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo (Leigh Brackett), Mildred Pierce (Catherine Turney), Singin' in the Rain (Betty Comden), Bringing Up Baby (Hagar Wilde). I didn't know until I read this book that Jay Presson Allen was a woman. There was just a small tweetstorm about the lack of women in the Star Wars universe: I learned in this book that Leigh Brackett wrote the screenplay for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Francke includes pictures which is a bonus. Learned that Joan Harrison worked on the screenplays for Hitchcock films Jamaica Inn, Foreign Correspondent, Suspicion, Rebecca. Harrison was a producer for years as well. She said in interviews that she had no trouble with cast or crew, that the difficulty came from higher up. "They - those ultimate 'they' who have the say-so on such decisions - simply do not want to give a woman authority. They recognise our capabilities, but it goes against the grain of the male ego to place a woman in a position of authority." As long as screenwriters are hidden and kept out of the limelight, it's OK. The penultimate lesson from this book is that screenwriters have no control over the finished product. Of course. The jewel is to direct your own words. Clair Noto speaks about her script for The Tourist. "Dan O'Bannon who wrote Alien and Total Recall, is doing a rewrite of The Tourist - they are going to make it but it will not be my script. It will be a man's side of that female heroine. I can't fight that any more. I have white streaks in my hair." Callie Khouri wrote Thelma and Louise. With Ridley Scott at the helm, the powerpunch ending Khouri had written turned smooshy. As Francke writes, Scott added a comedy sketch of a Rasta cyclist and a cop car. "The scene is the only one in the film which has no bearing on Thelma & Louise's story." The end car launch is quickly morphed into a crass credit roll of snapshots from the film. I'd like an update on women screenwriters. There's a lot of time to cover from 1994 to the present. I wish I could find the person who recommended this book to me on this site - if you're out there THANK YOU!

[H.J. Hampson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lizzie Francke looks at the history of women screenwriters in Hollywood from the silent days to the blockbuster era. It's a fascinating and comprehensive book if you are interested in anything to do with Hollywood history, or you are in fact a female screenwriter! It can be fairly depressing as not a lot seems to have changed, but reading about the women who took on the guys and sometimes formed close alliances with the top actresses of the day to create more interesting female roles is very inspiring.

[Rick Burin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of insightful, largely representational case studies recounting the experiences of female screenwriters from 1910 to the time of publication, and analysing their output through a feminist lens.

I found the later chapters particularly interesting, both because more of the material was new to me, and because many of Francke's most distinctive and intriguing subjects were available for interview. The book isn't intended as a comprehensive history, and it also somewhat overlooks '30s writers who did extraordinary work within rigid parameters, but it's thoughtful, righteously angry and full of valuable detail. It gave me a long list of films and scripts to explore; I'm especially intrigued by Clair Noto's The Tourist, a near-mythic, unproduced sci-fi screenplay from 1980.

I'd be fascinated to know what Francke makes of the 30 years since she wrote the book.