Nobody's Girl Friday : The Women Who Ran Hollywood

Looking back on her career in 1977, Bette Davis remembered with pride, "Women owned Hollywood for twenty years." She had a point. Between 1930 and 1950, over 40% of film industry employees were women, 25% of all screenwriters were female, one woman ran MGM behind the scenes, over a dozen women worked as producers, a woman headed the Screen Writers Guild three times, and press claimed Hollywood was a generation or two ahead of the rest of the country in terms of gender equality and employment. The first comprehensive history of Hollywood's high-flying career women during the studio era, Nobody's Girl Friday covers the impact of the executives, producers, editors, writers, agents, designers, directors, and actresses who shaped Hollywood film production and style, led their unions, climbed to the top during the war, and fought the blacklist. Based on a decade of archival research, author J.E. Smyth uncovers a formidable generation working within the American film industry and brings their voices back into the history of Hollywood. Their achievements, struggles, and perspectives fundamentally challenge popular ideas about director-based auteurism, male dominance, and female disempowerment in the years between First and Second Wave Feminism. Nobody's Girl Friday is a revisionist history, but it's also a deeply personal, collective account of hundreds of working women, the studios they worked for, and the films they helped to make. For many years, historians and critics have insisted that both American feminism and the power of women in Hollywood declined and virtually disappeared from the 1920s through the 1960s. But Smyth vindicates Bette Davis's claim. The story of the women who called the shots in studio-era Hollywood has never fully been told-until now. "Looking back on her career in 1977, Bette Davis remembered with pride, "Women owned Hollywood for twenty years." She had a point. Between 1930 and 1950, journalists claimed that over 40% of film industry employees were women--and they weren't merely passive, pretty faces on the screen or anonymous secretaries. A quarter of all screenwriters were female. The era's most influential and publicly recognized film editors were women and two of them were responsible for supervising their studio's feature film output. One woman ran MGM behind the scenes. Over a dozen women worked as studio producers, while others set up their own production companies. A woman headed the Screen Writers Guild three times. The press claimed Hollywood was a generation or two ahead of the rest of the country in terms of gender equality and employment. But historians, critics, and the public have largely forgotten this era and persist in seeing the studio system as a man's world. J.E. Smyth tells another story of a golden age for women's employment in the film industry and of Hollywood's ranks of powerful organization women. The first comprehensive history of the Hollywood studio system's high-flying career women, Nobody's Girl Friday covers the impact of the executives, producers, editors, writers, agents, designers, directors, and actresses who shaped Hollywood film production and style, led their unions, climbed to the top during the war, and fought the blacklist. The story of the women who called the shots in studio-era Hollywood has never fully been told--until now."--Jacket Looking back on her career in 1977, Bette Davis remembered with pride, “Women owned Hollywood for twenty years.” She had a point. During the 1930s and 1940s, the press claimed Hollywood was a generation or two ahead of the rest of the United States in terms of gender equality and employment, with women constituting 40% of film industry employees. Mary C. McCall Jr. was elected president of the Screen Writers Guild three times, and a quarter of all screenwriters were women. Barbara McLean was known as “Hollywood’s Editor-in-Chief.” She and her colleague Margaret Booth supervised their studios’ feature outputs and could order retakes on any director’s work. One woman ran MGM behind the scenes. Over a dozen women worked as producers of major feature films. Edith Head told American women what to wear for decades. Executive Anita Colby, “ ‘the Face with a brain to match,” told them how to do everything else. But historians, critics, and the public have largely forgotten this period and persist in seeing studio-era Hollywood as a place where the only careers open to women were passive, pretty directors’ dummies on-screen or underpaid, anonymous secretaries off-screen. This book tells another story of a “golden age” for women’s employment in the film industry and of Hollywood’s ranks of powerful organization women. "Disillusioned with what the American film industry had become by the 1970s, Bette Davis remembered a time when "women owned Hollywood." This book is their story. Historian J.E. Smyth challenges the belief, reinforced in too many histories and public comments, that feminism died between 1930 and 1950, that women were not important within the Hollywood studio system, that male directors called all the shots, and that the most important Hollywood writer you should know about is Dalton Trumbo"-- Provided by publisher. List of illustrations Preface Introduction: the equal right to be the best The fourth Warner brother Organization women Jills-of-all-trades Madam president Controlling the cut Designing women Last woman standing Epilogue: the cellophane wall.