Note: If you’ve followed this blog much you know that I’ve been writing a book based on this blog. It’s been a long in winding road to condense a greatest hits so to speak out of more than 2,600 post, but I’m hoping to actually see the release of it by the end of the month. Until then, here’s an excerpt from the book that is actually not from a previous post.
“One could write a history of Hollywood around Frances Marion.”
—John Beltone
Writer/director Frances Marion was not only the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (The Big House in 1930), but she was the first screenwriter to win two Oscars after The Champ won in 1932.
It’s hard not to watch the opening shot of The Big House and think it didn’t influence Frank Darabont’s opening in The Shawshank Redemption. (I’m not sure there were any big prison movies before The Big House, but her movie was informed by working as a journalist and visiting prisons.)
Marion’s first IMDB credit is on the movie The New York Hat in 1912 which was directed by D.W. Griffith and which began a long career working with Mark Pickford.
She also wrote films starring the biggest stars of early cinema including Douglas Fairbanks, Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish, and Jean Harlow. The early films being short, silent films where the writers were credited as scenarist. Which explains why it’s estimated while she amassed over 300 writing credits in her 30+ year career.
But she also made the transition to talking feature films, and was a highly paid screenwriter working for legendary producers Sam Goldwyn and Irving Thalberg.
She was under contract with MGM and married to actor Fred Thomson died in 1928, but at one time was billed as “The World’s Greatest Western Star.” Think of them as an early Hollywood power couple.
They built a glamorous home built in 1925 known as The Enchanted Hill overlooking Beverly Hills. It included a large Spanish Hacienda-style home on four acres overlooking Beverly Hills and was complete with an organ, a barn for horse and living quarters for staff, a guesthouse, tennis courts and a hundred foot swimming pool.
Frances did not attended college, but after her mother died when she was young she did attend a boarding prep school that prepared girls to attend colleges on the east coast. She could speak several languages, played the piano, and was a gifted artist.
Plans to attend college were dashed when the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 wiped out her family’s fortunes. Six years later she arrived in Los Angeles at age 24 with the hopes of being an artist.
Instead she was able to find work writing movies and at one point was “the highest paid writer in Hollywood.”
In a non-Hollywood ending, the home that Frances built was eventually bought by Microsoft co-found Paul Allen, and demolished. When Allen died in 2018 the land was still a vacant lot.
That demolition of that home was another chapter on Hollywood history that bit the dust. Perhaps a fitting metaphor as tech groups from Silicon Valley (and beyond) change the direction of how the Hollywood film industry operates.
She wrote that screenwriting was “like writing on the sand with the wind blowing.” Frances Marion is greatly forgotten today, but wouldn’t it be great to have a conversation with her today? To hear her give some screenwriting insights from golden era of Hollywood?
Well . . . she did leave behind a couple of books, including How to Write and Sell Film Stories. The book was published in 1937 and not easy to get ahold of, but I have a copy. So until I announce when my book is available, I’ll be pulling excerpts from her book.