She Was One Of The First Successful Female Screenwriters In The U.S., Creating Over 130 Movies During The Era Of Silent Films In Hollywood
Many terrific women in Hollywood are gifted screenwriters and write beloved movies and television shows, although they often don’t get the credit or praise they deserve.
Do you know who one of the first successful female screenwriters in America was?
It was Frances Marion, a legendary screenwriter who made over 130 films during Hollywood’s silent film era and paved the way for other women in the industry.
Frances was born Marion Benson Owens in 1888 in San Francisco, California. She had a creative passion and excelled in writing and sketching at a young age. She was sent to the Mark Hopkins Art Institute in San Francisco and began selling her work, consisting of art pieces, poems, and stories, to different magazines by the time she was a teenager.
Frances married her first husband, Wesley de Lappe, in 1906 and began working a series of different jobs, which included working as a telephone operator. Then, she began working as an illustrator and became a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner after getting a divorce from Wesey in 1911.
In 1912, Frances married businessman Robert Pike, and they moved to Los Angeles together, where she began falling in love with Hollywood and the film industry. Frances began to meet other people in the industry and make connections through actress Marie Dressler, whom she had interviewed during her days as a reporter.
She decided she wanted to work in Hollywood and began working under the director Lois Weber, which was when she decided to change her professional name to Frances Marion. She worked various off-camera jobs, including cutting film, writing press releases, moving things around sets, etc.
During her early days in Hollywood, Frances developed a love for making movies and eventually became passionate about writing them. Through her connections, she started writing for the famous Players-Lasky studio, which would later be known as Paramount Pictures. Then, she moved to New York to write for World Films and began earning $200 a week, making her the highest-paid writer in the industry.
Unfortunately, Frances went through another divorce around this time, but it did not stop her from succeeding.
Paolo Gallo – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
During the 1910s, Frances returned to Los Angeles to collaborate with silent film star Mary Pickford. Together, they made several films, including “The Little Princess” in 1917. Their movies were very successful, and Frances made around $50,000 a year, which was a big deal back then.
In 1918, she briefly left the film industry to become a war correspondent and wrote about women’s efforts during World War I. She then returned to Hollywood in 1919 and wrote a series of films for her third husband, Frederick Thomson, who became an actor after serving as an Army chaplain.
In 1920, Frances wrote a hit film, “Humoresque,” and eventually signed as a screenwriter for the legendary Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, otherwise known as MGM, in 1926. One of the most well-known films she wrote for MGM was an adaptation of the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel, “The Scarlet Letter.”
Around this time, Frances became well known for writing melodramas led by female characters, further highlighting women in the film industry, and adapting more novels for the big screen.
Frances had two sons with Frederick Thomson but sadly was left to raise her boys on her own when he died in 1928. She continued writing with MGM and made a film named “The Big House,” which won her an Academy Award in 1930, making her the first female writer to win an Oscar.
Frances won her second Academy Award two years later for her film, “The Champ” in 1932. One year later, the Screen Writer’s Guild was founded, and she was named its vice president. She was the only woman on the board.
Although she was at the top of her game for decades, screenwriting gradually became a more male-dominated part of the film industry, and Frances was slowly pushed out of the spotlight. She wrote for MGM less and less before she was let go from the studio in 1946, when films had transitioned from being silent to having sound.
However, she didn’t stop writing, filling her later years with writing plays and novels and continuing to make art through sculpting and painting. Frances eventually passed away in Los Angeles in 1973 at 84.
Today, Frances is recognized as one of the most renowned screenwriters of the 20th century, and her career showed other women in America that their voices belong in the film industry.
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