She learned the film game at the knee of Lois Weber, and quickly made a name for herself helping to craft vehicles for a succession of top female stars, especially Mary Pickford (who became her best friend), Lillian Gish, Marion Davies, and Marie Dressler (whose career she is credited with helping to revive in the early days of talkies). While it’s true that she had been a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, and therefore was no stranger to crafting language, her work as a commercial artist, poster designer, model, and photographer’s assistant no doubt habituated her to thinking in pictures. A San Francisco native she attended the Mark Hopkins Art Institute as a teenager, until the place was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. I find it significant that Marion’s training was in the visual arts. At one point she was Hollywood’s highest paid screenwriter she was the first writer to win two Oscars. She just wanted to tell a damn good story and folks, that is what she did.Along with her mentor Lois Weber and her colleague Anita Loos, Frances Marion (Marion Owens, 1888-1973) is widely revered for being not just one of the first successful and powerful women in Hollywood, but one of the most influential og whatever gender. She didn’t really care about anything else. Throughout her life, Marion did what she wanted to do. She passed away in 1972, a year after publishing her tell-all book about her time in Hollywood. Marion went on to work on stage plays and books. That’s a lot of cabbage to walk away from. Sounds good, right? Well, if you adjust for inflation, that total skyrockets to $40,648.08 in 2014. At the height of her career, Marion was pulling in $3,000 a week. Also, she had made a ton of money and no longer needed the city. Marion ended up winning two Oscars in her career, another first in Hollywood.īy the 1940s, Marion grew bored with Hollywood and decided to leave. In 1930, Marion was the first woman to win Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards for her script for “The Big House.” We all assume that Marion, with her distain for Hollywood, simply looked at the Oscar and then tossed it in the trash with a weak shrug of the shoulders.
Frances marion screenwriter movie#
Nearly every movie Marion wrote became a blockbuster hit. The film also introduced Greta Garbo's voice to the world, so there’s that.
“Anna Christie” was one of her most well-known works and was the highest grossing feature of 1930. Every producer, actor, and director wanted to get her to pen a movie for them. Marion became the most in-demand screenwriter in Hollywood during the 1920s and 1930s. For her, the city was just a place to earn a paycheck. She could really care less about the glitz and glamour of the city. If I were told I was good looking by someone in the field I wanted to pursue, my response wouldn’t be, “Eh, thanks, but I’ll just chill back here.” Just saying.Īnyway, Hollywood never won Marion over. However, she felt more at easy behind the camera. Marion was a looker, so she became a hot-item actress for the booming film industry.
As bombs fell from the sky and machine gun fire sliced through the air, Marion was reporting about the war.Īfter the war, Marion found herself in Los Angeles and was approached by a director to be an actress. She charged into battle armed with a notepad. Marion became a combat reporter after the outbreak of World War I. At 16 years old, she went to art school and did, well, art school stuff. At 10 years old, she was kicked out of school for drawing a “mean” cartoon strip about her teacher. Marion, born as Marion Benson Owners in California to a divorced couple, was known as a kid who did her own thing. It takes a village to produce the Badass Writer of the Week post. She is credited with more than 130 scripts during the 1920s and 1930s.
Marion was also a combat journalist, author, and playwright. Have you ever encountered someone who has done so much in such a short time that you feel lazy and useless? That’s how I felt once I found about Frances Marion, one of the most successful screenwriters of all time.
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