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Credit at last for female screenwriter airbrushed from Hollywood history
https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jul/14/mary-c-mccall-jr-credit-at-last-for-female-screenwriter-airbrushed-from-hollywood-historyCredit at last for female screenwriter airbrushed from Hollywood history
Despite her activism during the golden age of cinema, Mary C McCall Jr was all but forgotten. Now a new book is about to set the record straight
Dalya Alberge
Sun 14 Jul 2024 06.00 EDT
To screenwriters in the 1950s, she was a major power player, fighting for pay rises and striking rights. To the Hollywood studio heads, she was “the meanest bitch in town”.
Now, a new book aims to restore Mary C McCall Jr’s reputation as one of the film industry’s most important figures, a trailblazer who was airbrushed from history after getting on the wrong side of movie moguls.
Prof J E Smyth, whose book, Mary C McCall Jr: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Most Powerful Screenwriter, will be published in September, said: “[McCall] was targeted by right-wing men who didn’t like the amount of power she had had during the 1930s and 1940s and they were going after her …
“The Hollywood blacklist cleaned a lot of women out of the industry, and she was one. Then historians and film critics erased her, because all they’ve ever cared about is great male directors … At McCall’s death in 1986, aged 81, archives did not even want her papers, and she has simply been forgotten. Material relating to women was just deemed not worthwhile.”
[...]
Despite her activism during the golden age of cinema, Mary C McCall Jr was all but forgotten. Now a new book is about to set the record straight
Dalya Alberge
Sun 14 Jul 2024 06.00 EDT
To screenwriters in the 1950s, she was a major power player, fighting for pay rises and striking rights. To the Hollywood studio heads, she was “the meanest bitch in town”.
Now, a new book aims to restore Mary C McCall Jr’s reputation as one of the film industry’s most important figures, a trailblazer who was airbrushed from history after getting on the wrong side of movie moguls.
Prof J E Smyth, whose book, Mary C McCall Jr: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Most Powerful Screenwriter, will be published in September, said: “[McCall] was targeted by right-wing men who didn’t like the amount of power she had had during the 1930s and 1940s and they were going after her …
“The Hollywood blacklist cleaned a lot of women out of the industry, and she was one. Then historians and film critics erased her, because all they’ve ever cared about is great male directors … At McCall’s death in 1986, aged 81, archives did not even want her papers, and she has simply been forgotten. Material relating to women was just deemed not worthwhile.”
[...]
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