Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood

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Screenwriter Frances Marion (1888-1973) is the central subject of this excellent book, but mega-star Mary Pickford, journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns, bit-player-turned-gossip-columnist Hedda Hopper, and other high-powered female friends get nearly equal time. The author's skillful mix of biography with Hollywood history results in a densely textured portrait of an industry in formation and the intelligent, ambitious women who seized the opportunities it offered them for creative expression and financial independence. The text also instills new appreciation for the artistry of silent movies.


From Library Journal
Film journalist Beauchamp's book is aptly subtitled, for this is not only about the pioneering screenwriter Frances Marion, whose credits range from silent classics to Garbo's first "talkie" to sophisticated comedy. This is also the story of the women with whom Marion worked, who creatively and symbiotically sustained one another. Chronicled here are her intimate working relationships with Mary Pickford, Marie Dressler, and Irving Thalberg; her qualified disdain of Louis B. Mayer and Joseph P. Kennedy; and her marriages, especially to cowboy film star Fred Thomson. Occupying the margins?but rarely marginalized?Marion cultivated power that often translated into casting decisions and salary negotiations on her own terms. She made the transition from silents to sound motion pictures and likewise survived the industry's swing from early respect for the director's vision to a later reverence for bottomline returns. To dub Beauchamp's work "revisionist" is inadequate: this is a welcomed rediscovery. For all film collections and larger public libraries.?Jayne Kate Plymale-Jackson, Univ. of Georgia Lib., AthensCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Lynda Obst, New York Times Book Review
"I felt an almost subversive thrill reading about Frances Marion. . . Cari Beauchamp lovingly reveals the women who climbed to the very top of the Hollywood hierarchy in this richly researched excavation of complex lives. It is a revelation."


The New York Times Book Review, Lynda Obst
Archeologists in Kazakhstan recently dug up ancient females, buried with swords and shields, and speculated that perhaps these were the remains of the woman warriors of legend, the Amazons. The almost subversive thrill of this discovery is like what I felt after reading about Frances Marion and her female friends, an accomplished clique of powerful screenwriters, actresses, producers and directors who prospered within the inner sanctum of earliest Hollywood. Seventy years ago, these highly paid professionals were thriving in the movie business. That their professional descendants knew nothing of their struggles and triumphs is remarkable. Actually, remarkably sad ... This richly researched excavation of complex lives--an almost scholarly tome (as scholarly as good movie gossip gets)--reaches no overarching conclusions and has (thankfully) little dogma and no real axes to grind. But it is a revelation to those of us who came later.


Jeanine Basinger, Los Angeles Times
"[Marion's] story is an astonishing mini-history of the twentieth century. . . [She] knew everyone from Jack London to Irving Thalberg to William Randolph Hearst."


Wendy Smith, Washington Post Book World
"An impressively innovative work. . . . Solidly researched, thoughtfully argued, imbued with affection and respect for the women it profiles, this is a fine addition to the small shelf of movie books that actually have something to say."


From Booklist
From 1916 to 1946, Frances Marion was the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood. She wrote hundreds of scripts, including Stella Dallas (1925), Min and Bill (1930), The Champ (1931), Dinner at Eight (1933), and Camille (1937). She won two Academy Awards; for her work on The Big House (1930), she became the first woman writer to take home an Oscar. When she moved to Los Angeles, the movie industry was still in its infancy and considered disreputable; so before her writing career took off, she played a few bit parts in "flickers." In 1915 she received $200 a week as a scenario writer. Only four years later William Randolph Hearst hired her at $2,000 a week to write and direct at his Cosmopolitan Studio; her duties included developing scripts for his mistress, Marion Davies. When she signed with MGM, her contract was even more lucrative. Beauchamp pored over unpublished manuscripts, diaries, appointment books, letters, and studio contracts for this extremely well documented biography, which will delight movie fans with its insider's view of early Hollywood. Jennifer Henderson


From Kirkus Reviews
A biography of the highest-paid female scriptwriter in Hollywood becomes an exploration of the work and sustaining friendships of the leading women of early cinema. Until now Frances Marion has been largely absent from the screenwriters' pantheon, despite a five-decade career that yielded 325 scripts, many for top films (The Champ, Son of the Sheik, Dinner at Eight). Seasoned film reporter Beauchamp (coauthor, Hollywood on the Riviera, 1992) spends no time taking umbrage. Instead she jumps into Marion Benson Owens's two early marriages, a fateful encounter with Marie Dressler as a reporter for Hearst's San Francisco Examiner, and early days in Los Angeles, where she met lifetime friends Adela Rogers and Mary Pickford, and director Lois Weber, who renamed her Frances Marion. After her first scenario in 1915, an already crowded life became dizzying: It included stints with Famous Players, First National, and MGM, new friendships with Hedda Hopper and Anita Loos, and a happy and creatively fruitful marriage to 1920s western star Fred Thomson until his death in 1928. Beauchamp admirably marshals her research and writes with tempered prose. Still, when her subject is so well placed that she witnesses young George Gershwin playing a new piece called Rhapsody in Blue and introduces directors to a tall guy named Frank (later Gary) Cooper, it's hard not to become a little breathless. There's also a gossipy, epic quality that inspires page-turning: Will entertainment mogul Joseph Kennedy hurt Thomson's career? What will Marion do at MGM after her beloved friend Irving Thalberg dies? At the book's conclusion, what stands out are the friendships. As Marion says, `` `Contrary to the assertion that women do all in their power to hinder one another's progress, I have found that it has always been one of my own sex who had given me a helping hand when I needed it.' '' A triumph of discovery in the often strip-mined quarry of film history. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Cari Beauchamp masterfully combines biography with social and cultural history to examine the lives of Frances Marion and her many female colleagues who shaped filmmaking from 1912 through the 1940s. Frances Marion was Hollywood's highest paid screenwritermale or femalefor almost three decades, wrote almost 200 produced films and won Academy Awards for writing "The Big House" and "The Champ."


About the Author
Cari Beauchamp is the coauthor of Hollywood on the Riviera(1992).


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Film journalist Beauchamp's book is aptly subtitled, for this is not only about the pioneering screenwriter Frances Marion, whose credits range from silent classics to Garbo's first "talkie" to sophisticated comedy. This is also the story of the women with whom Marion worked, who creatively and symbiotically sustained one another. Chronicled here are her intimate working relationships with Mary Pickford, Marie Dressler, and Irving Thalberg; her qualified disdain of Louis B. Mayer and Joseph P. Kennedy; and her marriages, especially to cowboy film star Fred Thomson. Occupying the margins-but rarely marginalized-Marion cultivated power that often translated into casting decisions and salary negotiations on her own terms. She made the transition from silents to sound motion pictures and likewise survived the industry's swing from early respect for the director's vision to a later reverence for bottomline returns. To dub Beauchamp's work "revisionist" is inadequate: this is a welcomed rediscovery. For all film collections and larger public libraries.-Jayne Kate Plymale-Jackson, Univ. of Georgia Lib., Athens Read all 6 "From The Critics" >


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