February 16, 2015 • 43 mins
In 1896, Alice Guy Blache became the world's first female director who also went on to trailblaze a host of innovative film techniques. Just in time for Oscar season, Cristen and Caroline highlight a trio of women pioneers behind the camera whose incredible legacies were all but erased from silver screen history.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline. And since the Oscars are right around
the corner at the time of this recording, we wanted
to look at women directors because there has been a
(00:23):
lot of conversation this OSCAR season and in just recent
OSCAR seasons in general about women directors, and we've talked
about them before on the podcast, but we haven't looked
at the pioneering female directors of Hollywood. Yeah, this was
a great chance to look at where we are today
(00:45):
but also where we've come from. And we have uncovered something.
I say we have uncovered like we're some film historians,
but we have enjoyed reading others discoveries of the fascinating
women who contributed so much to the development of the
film industry and their subsequent erasure from film history up
(01:05):
until recent decades also says a lot about where we
are today in terms of women behind the camera. And
first off, we're going to give you a quick snapshot
of exactly where we are. And spoiler alert, it's not
it's not great, it's not fantastic. There's a reason why
(01:26):
there's so much conversation about where are the women directors?
Where are the Oscar nods for female directors? And the
first source we're going to cite is from the two
thousand fourteen Annual Celluloid Ceiling Report released by Dr Martha Lawson,
who's the executive director of the Center for the Study
of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. Yeah, so, basically,
(01:49):
the overall amount of women working in the film industry
today is slightly lower than the level, which is a
little disheart thing. And when you look at the women
who are actually directors, out of that group, women made
up just six percent of all directors working on the
(02:10):
top grossing films, and that's actually a three percent drop
from just And we have some more stats to throw
at you, because there has been a lot of attention
on this on women in the film industry in general,
but also women making films, not just women who are
starring in films, although that's obviously important as well. And
there was some study data that came out of the
(02:32):
University of Southern California looking at Sundance films in particular,
and the Sundance Festival is known for providing a launching
pad not only for female filmmakers but also filmmakers of color.
So it's it's a really important platform. Um. But even
there you see pretty wide gender gaps. Yeah. So they
(02:53):
looked at sundance films that were released between the year
the year two thousand the two. Thus, exactly, I had
to stop myself from singing, and uh, and not that
there's anything wrong with singing. I narrate everything I do
at home in a sing song, which is I'm sure
obnoxious for my boyfriends. Kind of you kind of like
snow white, except no birds come and make dresses for me. Um.
(03:17):
But okay, So they found that films directed by women
feature more women in all roles. There was a twenty
increase in women working on a narrative film during that
time two thousand twelve, and in that same time block
increase of women working on documentaries. But nonetheless, just twenty
(03:40):
three point nine percent of the films looked at in
that sun danced study or directed by women. And this
is also notable too that from two thousand two to
two thousand twelve, women made up only four point four
percent of directors in the top one box office films
each year and looking at who making those top grossing
(04:01):
films is also relevant because when it comes to making
a film in Hollywood, the people who will finance that
film want to know, is this going to make money? Yeah?
Money is the is the main driver. If it's going
to make money, we don't care what you look like.
We want to make a lot of money. And so
if we look at narrative films, that's the storytelling films.
(04:23):
It's basically anything that's not a documentary. It's Titanic, it's Twilight,
it's It's my best friend's Wedding. All the films we
love there we go perfect. So if we look at
those narrative films of the past decade, we find that
forty one women have made films in the top one
hundred released films every year, versus six hundred and twenty
(04:44):
five men. They also found that there are fifteen point
two four male directors for each one female director, So
there's a there's a quarter of a guy hanging out. Yeah,
he's like, hey, I'm point two four over here, I'm shins,
that's all I am. And disapparachion sitting in one of
those folding chairs that directors get are the feet attached
(05:05):
quiet on the set? That's the shians talking. So the question,
obviously then is why is that? Why are there fifteen
men and a pair of shins for every entire female
body making films? Are directing films, we should say, And
there's been a lot of investigation into this in mainstream
(05:27):
media outlets such as The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Variety,
pretty much any media outlet that has the interest in
the entertainment industry has asked this question, and the resounding
theme is, well, old boys club style networking, which helps,
but also it is that money factor. Yeah, there is
(05:49):
this interesting quote from producer Cassie and Elvis to the
New York Times, who brought up something that I honestly
hadn't thought of. I understood the whole money thing that
films and producers foll owe the money what will be profitable,
but always said that the tricky part is that foreign
sales company provide the pre sale estimates for the value
of a movie in territories outside of the United States,
(06:13):
and so it's not necessarily financewers here in the US
who are struggling with the idea of a female director
or a producer for that matter. It's people who are
just not used to considering women as action film directors,
for example, in such a male dominated world at large.
So if you wonder, for instance, why there have been
(06:36):
so many Transformers and movies made, it's because those big
Michael Bay action films translate easily to foreign screens. It's
it's almost like a knee jerk reaction like, oh, well
is there violence? Is there? Are there explosions? Is there?
You know, a token attractive woman? Then perfect, really really
(06:56):
simple dialogue? Yeah, well by that. But the question and
then you have to ask, and this is a question
for another podcast, is well our women just not being
offered those kinds of directorial roles? Do women not want
to make action movies? Where do we make different kinds
of movies that just are aren't as appealing to global audiences? Uh?
(07:17):
Who knows who's to say? But side note. Fortunately, we
do have a group like Game Changer Films, which exclusively finances,
according to their website, narrative features directed by women, and
a lot of this have gone onto places like sun
Dance to Rave reviews. And it's interesting too to see
how a list actresses are also getting in on that,
(07:39):
creating their own production companies specifically to finance films by women.
Reese Witherspoon has done this, Selma hiak Uh, Angelina Jolie
has gotten into directorial roles. I think Sandra Bullock has
also created her own production company. So clearly action is
being taken in Hollywood to address this issue. But Bill,
(08:00):
I mean, one for every fifteen point two four is
a pretty staggering statistic. Yeah, And when you look back
at the history of film where it originated, I mean,
we have some pretty fascinating, pretty fascinating characters behind the
camera that have essentially been lost to history, which is
so unfortunate. And so I'm really glad, I'm super glad
that we're doing this this podcast, because not only do
(08:24):
we want our listeners to be aware of these women,
but it's totally self serving altruism, because I'm just fascinated
to read this stuff. Yeah, to go back to that
narrative film statistic we cited really quickly, in terms of
forty one women making films out of the top one
released every year over the past decade versus six five men.
(08:46):
Think of that gender gap and the fact that the
person who invented narrative film was a woman. Yeah, oh,
such a great character. This is Alice Blische. She's history's
first female director, and she has an incredible resume. She
(09:07):
was pretty much, we assume, the only female director at
all period from eighteen ninety six to nineteen o six,
and this woman wrote, directed, or produced more than a
thousand films, mostly short, single real films, including the wonderfully
titled in the year two thousand when women are in charge. Alice, Well, sorry, Alice, Uh,
(09:33):
it didn't happen. Yeah, that's like back to the future too,
when they just assume that everybody in is going to
have hoverboards. It's not a thing. It didn't happen. Here
we are I'm so disappointed for so many reasons. Where
the hoverboards. And on top of that, she made the
first film with an all African American cast, called A
Fool and His Money, which we'll talk about in a minute.
And she also innovated a number of techniques. Not only
(09:57):
did she think, you know what, this new f gold
film thing could be a great way to tell stories,
hence the invention of narrative film. She also used synchronized
sound way before the invention of talkies. She also used
deep focused photography, double exposure, split screen, the mirror gag
color film, and also emphasized natural acting style because when
(10:22):
you think back to silent films, it was usually, you know,
all these big, exaggerated gestures. But she always told her
actors be natural. And that's actually the title of a
forthcoming documentary about her, right, I think that's fascinating because yeah,
even I feel like, even if you watch movies from
the thirties and forties, they're still not wooden, but just
(10:45):
as if they're projecting because they're on stage, they're still
like that unnatural quality to some films from back then.
But yeah, she really emphasized that, no, we're depicting real
life in this story, and so I want you to
be natural. And you can see that difference on screen.
And because you can watch clips from her films, you know,
I mean a lot of them are single real so
(11:05):
you can see the whole thing on YouTube, and it's
a stark difference between these more natural looking characters and
someone who's almost vaudevillian on camera. But her film studio,
the Solax Company, was the largest pre Hollywood production house
of its kind, and that's quoting the Being Natural documentary trailer,
(11:25):
and they were churning out two to three films per week.
Granted these were not feature length films, they were shorter,
single real films. But still that's a lot of a
lot of films. Yeah. Well, so let's look back at
her career where it started. Back after she graduated high school,
she became a secretary for Leon Gumin of Gumal Studios
(11:47):
in Paris thanks to a tip from her stenography professor,
and very significantly, it was through that job that she
was present for a demonstration of the Lumiere Brothers motion
picture actor. They basically were the first cinematographers. They filmed
uh factory workers leaving a factory for the day. Um
So they weren't doing the narrative style film. They basically
(12:11):
helped create the first documentary and so Gi, though being
quite the smarty pants at this point, immediately saw the
narrative potential for this medium. She wrote in her memoirs,
quote gathering my courage, I timidly proposed to Guman that
I write one or two little scenes and have a
few friends perform in them. And listen up here, she said,
(12:34):
if the future development of motion pictures had been foreseen
at this time. I should never have obtained his consent.
My youth, my inexperience, my sex all conspired against me.
And Guman responded, Oh, what a silly, girlish thing that
you would want to do. Fine, take take this equipment,
make your little film. How interesting now that this echoes
(12:58):
like a major theme in our podcast where we've talked
about various industries, various professions where women maybe they're not
encouraged to participate, but they're certainly not discouraged from participating
when it is still considered a practice of passion or
art or just various, you know, being being interested in something.
(13:18):
Once it becomes professionalized or unionized or whatever and there
is actual money to be made in their higher stakes,
that's all of a sudden, when you're biological sex becomes
a problem. Yeah. And she was only twenty three when
this light bulb went off in her head. And so
she made this short film called The Cabbage Ferry, which
(13:41):
is arguably the first narrative film, and it was opposed
to films at the time that were more intent on
capturing real life documentary style. Um, there was a lot
of almost a scientific focus on the use of film
at the time to study motion, uh, to see how
all the human body move. There's some interesting intersection at
(14:03):
this time actually between the development of film and it's
intended use and the developing sciences as well. And so
he had such a revolutionary vision for this. And I
watched The Cabbage Ferry because it's it's really short, and
it's essentially it's like cabbage patch dolls. Like it's a
(14:25):
well dressed woman picking up these babies from cabbages and
they're they're live babies. It's not prop babies. And the
only thing I was just a little bit in horror
while I was watching Becaussie's babies are just screaming their
heads off. I mean you can't hear it, luckily, luckily
silence silent film. But I just wonder where she got
(14:46):
all those volunteer babies. That's funny. Yeah, how do you
put an ad for that in the paper? Now? Probably
we're just putting them in cabbage. It's fine, it's fine.
But speaking to The Daily Beast, Alison McMahon really hammered
home the significance. She said that gie Blache understood that
telling a narrative story in film was going to require
following the perspective of a singular character, and it took
(15:10):
a good ten years for other filmmakers to figure out
exactly what she did. Yeah, and speaking of McMahon, she
is also working on the b Natural documentary. But if
you want to learn more about Gie Blache before that
comes out, she wrote a book all about her that
you can check out, Alice gi Blache Lost Visionary of
the Cinema. Um so she's figured out, she's twenty three,
(15:34):
She's made this film and inadvertently made history. Then let's
fast forward a little bit to nineteen o six when
she marries an English cameraman, Herbert Blushe, which is where
the comes from Blache. Yeah. So, then they moved to
the US to run Gumant's American office, but due to
a bunch of different factors that were going on at
(15:54):
the time, Gumant's whole business state side wasn't doing so well.
So in Ghi Blache starts up the Solas Company and
she becomes, therefore the first woman to ever run her
own studio. Yeah. So, she writes, directs, and otherwise contributes
to the production of over seven hundred films, including the
(16:17):
nineteen film House Divided, which is possibly the first American
film with the detailed plots and both House Divided, and
another one of her films, Matrimonies, Speed Limit, Highlight Equal
Partnership within Marriage. And she actually also made a couple
of action films, not anything like Transformers, but action films
(16:41):
of the time with women positioned as the heroes. And
so she wasn't afraid to put women front and center
in her own films. So even back then, in the
early days of cinema, there's still that existing pattern we
see today in terms of women behind the camera, tending
to put more dynamic women in front of a camera. Right.
(17:03):
But it's interesting because a lot of sources point out
that around this time she does start putting out a
lot of movies that have a general theme about marriage.
And then in she and Herbert divorced Herbert Herbert he
ends up remarrying, moves back out West or something he's lost,
we don't we don't know what Herbert's doing, but uh
(17:27):
moves back to France with her daughter Simone, and she
really struggled to maintain her livelihood against the rise of
this corporate film industry. And I mean, here we see
again that whole pattern of when it's just for art,
when it's art for art's sake, or when it's not professionalized. Hey, women,
sure do whatever you want. Who cares the minute that
it's professionalized and it's corporate and there's money to be made. Oh,
(17:49):
you're a woman. We don't want you to get out
of here, even when you've already made a thousand films,
which is kind of wild. And it makes me wonder though,
whether the divorce from Herbert and not having a guy
by her side perhaps made it more difficult for her
to make that transition back to France because when she
was running the stul X company, yes she was the
(18:11):
head honcho and everything went through her, But at the
same time, I have a feeling that they were probably
some businessmen in the industry who liked to see a
dude next to her rather than just taking orders from
a woman. Yeah, it could be, but I mean, regardless,
after this point, she essentially gets a raised from history.
I mean, she did go back to France, like we said,
(18:33):
she wrote articles about films, she taught about films, so
it's not like she completely sank into the ground. She
was still around. It's just that she couldn't maintain that
position as a director anymore. Yeah, and not only was
she erased from film history almost symbolically, like she's it's
only been in recent decades that we even know who
(18:54):
she is, but her films too were destroyed just because
of uh, the elements of them not being cared for properly. Um,
there was a guy who just randomly found one of
her films at an estate sale. I mean, it's uh.
And with the being natural documentary, the filmmakers are having
to raise money in order to access and track down
(19:18):
the film that's even still available, which is part of
what I really want it to be made. And I
want to see it so badly, to see all of her,
or at least her work that's still in existence. Let
that be a lesson to us all to take care
when we go to a state sales, it's through you
never know what you'll find. So we've introduced you to
the amazing Alice gi Blache, but we have to talk
(19:39):
about this fascinating character that she mentored, so you know,
just never hurts to hammer hound the importance of having
a mentor in your shows in field. But this brings
us to Lois Webber who also she herself made a
bunch of film history. Webber was the first American woman
to direct a feature length film, and she at the
(20:02):
time was the leading female director screenwriter in early Hollywood.
She was also the first and only woman at the
time elected to the Motion Pictures Directors Association and the
first mayor of Universal City in California. Uh And in
Motion Picture Magazine, in an article about her, said quote,
(20:24):
when the history of the dramatic early development of motion
pictures is written, Lois Webber will occupy a unique position. Yeah,
you would think, wouldn't you, well, Unique in the sense
that we are only just now learning about her, right,
and film historian Anthony Slide wrote that few men before
(20:46):
or since have retained such absolute control over the films
they've directed, and certainly no women directors have achieved the
all embracing, powerful status once held by Lois Webber. So
what is the d ol Well's do with Lois Webber?
Well In she left home to become an opera singer,
(21:07):
and while touring with the Scene group, she met her
future husband, who was an actor and stage manager, Wendell
Phillips Smalley, who was also a bit of a feminist
because he was all like, listen, Lois Webber, I love
you keep your maiden name. I'm down with that. Let's
form a partnership and take over the world. That's right.
And it's worth noting that his feminism didn't come out
(21:28):
of just nowhere. He's a descendant of the human rights
pioneer Wendell Phillips, who was a contemporary of Lucy Stone.
Uh Lucy Stone, famous for keeping her last name indeedly do.
And so he was very well influenced in his life.
And so in nineteen o four she married Smalley, and
it's something that actually really worked in their favor creatively,
(21:50):
rather than like we see a lot of times when
a husband and wife come together, the wife is often
forced to leave the professional world. That only really made
them stronger. Yeah, I mean, it does seem to echo
a pattern that we saw with Alice Gee and Herbert Blache.
And Webber began working at Guman's studios as an actress
(22:10):
and that's where she met gie Blache. I said before
the Break mistakenly that it was while Giblache was running
Solox Company. Was actually earlier than that, during the Guman
Studios days and under gie Blache's mentorship, Webber expanded her
skill set to include movie making behind the camera, learning, writing, directing,
(22:31):
and producing. Yeah, and so she takes these new skills,
these new interests, and she and her husband start making
shorts and features together under the production billing the Smalley's
for a whole bunch of production companies, and together in
they moved to Los Angeles to get in on all
of that fancy Hollywood action. And in nineteen fourteen she
(22:53):
makes history she becomes the first American woman to direct
a full length feature, The Merchant of Venice. And then
in nineteen seventeen she strikes out on her own with
Lowest Weber Productions, a move that would make her the
highest paid Hollywood director at the time because she was
working for herself. That's right, And that's another theme that
we see with all three of the women that we're
(23:15):
going to talk about in this episode, where at some
point they make the turn and say, you know what,
I'm going independent, I'm doing. This is no different from
the women you sided at the top of the podcast
who have to car still have to carve out their
own path, their own niche. If they're going to pursue
this particular path, and her films weren't just easy, breezy
fluff either. No, they definitely tackled a lot of social issues,
(23:37):
and despite the threat of censorship for some of them,
they helped film become recognized as a true art form
and not just frivolous entertainment. Yeah. So, one of her
most famous films from nineteen fifteen is Hypocrites, and it
tackles religion and sexuality in features full nudity. Um. Essentially,
(23:58):
it's a naked woman on screen, although she's transparent so
you can't really see all of her nudity in detail. Um,
but she plays the she sort of symbolizes truth and
she frolics about. And some people were horrified by Hypocrites
because of the nudity and also attacking religion in such
(24:19):
a direct way, but other people praised it. They thought
that it was, you know, quite an ambitious artistic endeavor
that paid off. Yeah, And this led to her challenging
a lot of the censorship efforts that she faced as
a result, and her very modern response to it was
that Hypocrites is not a slap at any church or creed.
It's a slap at hypocrites. And its effectiveness is shown
(24:40):
by the outcry amongst those it hits hardest to have
the film stopped. And it's notable too that this ties
directly into her upbringing because her family was very religious
and very active in evangelizing, and so she saw film
as a way to impart moral truths and deal with
(25:01):
social issues in a novel way, in the same way
that Alice ski Blache thought of, Hey, let's use film
a little bit differently than just reflecting day to day
life or science or motion studies. Interesting, what happens when
you get people with different perspectives into fields, the fields
and industries? Yeah, yeah, Well so she also dealt with
(25:21):
the issue of capital punishment and the people versus John
Doe from nineteen sixteen, and drug abuse and hop The
Devil's Brew also from nineteen sixteen. She was not a
slacker of any kind, and in nineteen sixteen and seventeen
she tackles contraception with not one but two films, Where
Are My Children and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle?
(25:43):
And The Hand that Rocks the Cradle was notable because
this was happening right after Margaret Sanger was put on
trial for obscenity, so she was not shy in talking
about things that were quite hot button issues, I mean
back then but even today right. Well, and she also
was and afraid to sort of risk her position because
you have to keep in mind at the time that
(26:03):
she's producing he's very controversial film. She's also the highest
paid director period, not highest paid female director, so she's
riding pretty high right now. Yeah, and she put herself
out there, especially in the Hand that Rocks the Cradle,
because she not only wrote and directed it, she also
starred in it. Um. We also need to mention Shoes,
which came out in nineteen sixteen as well, which some
(26:25):
people think is her best film. It tackled poverty and
also looking at something that I had never thought of before,
which was the contemporary plight of shop girls who were
usually underpaid but also immersed in this new and growing
consumer culture. Um. Which is something that made me want
(26:46):
to possibly do a podcast on women in retail in
the future. Um. And in nineteen sixteen, this very prolific year, apparently,
Motion Picture Stories magazine named her the greatest woman director. Yeah.
And beyond just being a woman, she was routinely cited
as being one of the best directors period around at
(27:06):
the time. Unfortunately, she also hit problems like Gee Blache.
Post divorce, her film career kind of hit the skids,
and she also was largely erased from popular film history.
And it wasn't really until the nineteen seventies with the
work of feminist film scholars who sort of rediscovered her,
that her legacy has been recognized again. And no surprise
(27:31):
that feminist film scholars would love her because hello, she
tackles so many issues. Yeah, but it was that pushed
to uncover um are amazing female predecessors in the film
industry in the nineteen seventies. That also led to a
lot of praise for the last woman that we're going
(27:52):
to talk about today. Yeah, Dorothy Arsner was the first
female director big wig. Essentially, she was a first member
of the director's guild. Um. She was the only female
director in Hollywood during the golden era of the studio system.
So she is a very big deal. So the Women
(28:13):
Film Pioneers Project at Columbia University talks about how Arsner's
career spanned from nineteen nineteen to nineteen forty three, fifteen
years of which were spent as a director, and she
remains the most prolific woman studio director in the history
of American cinema. So let's look at how she got
her start. It was definitely an interesting story because she
(28:35):
grew up in Hollywood. She wasn't an outsider, but she
was an outsider in the fact that she studied medicine
originally at usc and was an ambulance driver for a
little while in World War One. But then she visited
a film studio which turned her on to the idea
of talkies. Not to mention that her parents ran a
cafe in Hollywood that was frequented by people in the industry. Yeah,
(28:59):
so she ended up getting a studio job in Paramount
as a typist, which led to a job as a
screenwriter and then an editor, which was a common job
for women back then. And then her big break came
in with the film Blood and Sand, which he was
editing because they were worried about going over budget, and
she decided to use stock footage of a bullfighting scene,
(29:22):
which ended up saving the studio a ton of money.
There's that theme again, money And she was so successful
with us, I mean, she essentially saved this film that
the director James Cruise took note and brought her on
to write and edit other films of his. Yeah and
Ours is pretty savvy when it comes to money. Um,
I think she would do Chryl Sandberg proud, or Chryl
(29:44):
Sandberg would do her proud. Um In Arsner negotiated her
way into a directorial position because she was able to
leverage an offer from Columbia to direct into a promotion
and so her first film Fashions for Women, which is
funny because if you Google image her, which I highly
(30:05):
recommend you do, if you search for her, she dressed
exclusively in men's style clothing. Yeah. She wore ties and
suits and job pers and Oxfords, and her hair was
cut short, and she was a very handsomely dressed woman.
And she was always intent on proving her competence because
it was so widely publicized that she was the only
(30:28):
woman at that level in Hollywood at the time. And
it's important to you to remember that this Hollywood that
she's working in is leaps and bounds beyond the Hollywood
that say Lois Webber was working in. Yeah, and so
in ninety nine she directs Paramounts first talkie, which I
think is pretty interesting The Wild Party, although another source
(30:49):
does say that paramounts first talkie was Manhattan Cocktail, but
it almost doesn't matter because both were directed by Arsner
and that one was and so The Wild Party stars
film Siren Clara Bow And another significant aspect of this
is that Arsner essentially invents the boom mic along the way.
It was a mic on a fishing line. And it's
(31:10):
pretty cool because when you think about the dawn of
the talkie era, Mike's were stationary, meaning that you had
previously energetic stars like Douglas Fairbanks or whomever who had
been able to sort of bound around the screen with
these large pantomime movements because it was silent, who cares,
nobody needs to worry about microphones. But these stars then
(31:30):
had to remain pretty still to kind of hang out
near the stationary microphones. So Arsner's you know, blowing up
stuff all over the place, making all sorts of innovations
boom Mike's boom indeed, and after eleven films with Paramounts,
she goes independent and in the nineteen thirties she became
the first female member of the Director's Guild, a labor
(31:52):
group that today represents more than fifteen thousand directors in
directorial support staff and counts women directors as their teen
point seven percent of its membership. And when she went independent,
she was able to get really lucrative distribution deals because
of the strong relationship and reputation that she had built
(32:13):
for herself with Paramount not only as a savvy filmmaker,
but she also developed a reputation as a star maker. Yeah.
She made stars out of Katherine Hepburn with the film,
Christopher Strong, Rosalind Russell with Craig's Wife, and Lucille Ball
with Dance Girl Dance. And I was telling Kristen that
I was Google image searching Dance Girl Dance because I
(32:34):
love seeing these old pictures of Lucille Ball before she
was I love Lucy. Yeah, and she also had a
close film relationship with Joan Crawford as well. She directed
her in a film called The Bride war Red And
the original trailer for it is fantastic because you know,
it introduces the film which is about this nightclub singer
(32:55):
and she wears red and she seduces wealthy men and
but then of course she falls in love with a
not so wealthy guy. Whatever. But at the end of
the trailer, it says a woman's love story directed by
Hollywood's only woman director, and it cuts to Arsner in
one of her suits, hanging out on set, which is
(33:17):
I mean, I thought it was so interesting that that,
even back then was a selling point for the films.
But you do have to wonder from Arsner's perspective if
she was like, enough, already enough, I'm just a director.
I don't know. She looked pretty chill hanging out on
her and her stup being like, yeah, what I am
the only one? Pay me make it rain. I'm sure
she was saying that, yes, definitely make it rain. Definitely. Well.
(33:41):
So in she directs her last feature, first comes courage
and retires from Hollywood for health reasons and also partly
because after World War Two, directorial jobs were super hard
for women to get and things have essentially stayed almost
the same. It really does seem that way, um But notably,
(34:03):
she transitioned from making film to teaching film, similar to
Alice ki Blache, and she inspired filmmakers, including a gentleman
named Francis Ford Coppola, who would then inspire Sofia Coppola.
So you can then trace Sofia Coppola all the way
back to Alice ki Blache because she mentored Lois Webber,
(34:24):
which then leads to Arsner Coppola, Coppola loss and translation done,
I love it, I love it. Yeah. And scholars have
looked back at Arsner's career and her path and the
way that she did things and have talked a lot
about the way that she was able to do things
in interpret stories so differently. This is coming from Teresa
(34:46):
Geller in on the website Senses of Cinema, and Geller
has done a lot of research into Arsner, and she
talks about how she often revised original source material to
really emphasize the complexity of women's lives, to make them
not only more sympathetic characters, but all such just more
real human people. And so not only were ours and
her scriptwriters mostly women, but she also took characters that
(35:09):
maybe weren't supposed to be so positive and turn them
into someone who was real. So, so if you take
the play Craig's Wife, for instance, it's about a domineering
wife and her put upon husband, and you're totally supposed
to sympathize with this husband, she reworked it. She made
the lead character complex, and she made the story basically
(35:30):
into a critique of the institution of marriage, of the
limits placed on women, and she focuses on the wife's
acknowledgement that she went into the marriage to attain security.
And she even plays the bitter old widow widow next
door who's played by Billy Burke, who played Glenda the
good Witch. She plays her as just like a happy
(35:52):
solo gardener, elderly lady who's just getting along alone, just fine.
And that was a general theme of her films, is
that only did she portray women who were outside the
balance of heterosexual relationships with men as happy but almost
as like the better, healthier choice in life. Yeah, there's
been a lot of investigation into her exploration of the
(36:15):
male gays and also flipping that to the female gays
lesbian undertones in some of her films as well, because
Arsner had a long term relationship with I believe it
was one of her choreographers that she worked with um
And for all of these reasons, feminist film scholars in
the nineteen seventies in particular, really, I mean just we're
(36:39):
almost magnetically drawn to her body of work because she's
such a complex person to begin with, especially considering the
context of the time in Hollywood at the time. Um,
but also how perhaps her queer identity influences how she
makes films. So I know that I am now loading
up my books cue with oars films because I want
(37:02):
to see this stuff. Yeah, personally, I really want to
see Craig's wife, in particular because I love Rosalind Russell
would be so curious to see her in this role. Um.
And just to quote Geller once more, she said, for
much of Arsner's work, sexuality stands as a threat to
women's community. Arsner's film exposes that strain of the heterosexual
(37:24):
bargain that shackles women. Yeah, she often portrays if there
are any relationships on screen that are between women, those
are the safe, healthy, strong relationships that free women up
to do what they truly want to do. Any time,
it's almost like any time she depicts marriage or relationships
or anything between men and women, that that is almost
(37:46):
cited as the downfall of the female character. But interestingly, though,
in talking about her experience at the time in Hollywood,
she said, once no one gave me trouble because I
was a woman, men were more help fall than women.
And and it seems like, just based on how she
talks about getting into film and how she develops her career,
(38:07):
that she possessed so much confidence. I mean, and I
guess that she had to because she was an outsider
in multiple ways. Yeah, and she does. She did have
the quote that women's dramatic sense is invaluable to the
motion picture industry. So she obviously obviously felt that women
like her or just women in general belonged there and
(38:28):
should be in those roles. And it's unfortunate that we
sort of couldn't keep our promise to her to keep
more women in those roles. Well, and we're still calling
for the same thing today. You could. I've seen that
quote paraphrase from female studio executives, female filmmakers, women directors
today saying the same thing, urging people to recognize the
(38:51):
value of women filmmakers. So I really hope that there
are some filmmakers perhaps listening. Um, what do you think
about these pioneers? Are there other female director pioneers that
we didn't talk about that we should acknowledge. Um, if
you are in the film industry, what kind of barriers
have you face and have they been related to your gender,
(39:15):
or ethnicity or orientation. Let us know mom Stuff at
how stuffworks dot com is our email addressed. And also
if you have recommendations of films directed by women, let
us know. You can tweet us a mom Stuff podcast
or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of
messages to share with you right now. So I have
(39:36):
a letter here from Katrina about our Gay best Friends episode.
She said that we basically left bisexuals out of the equation,
even though we talked about the lesbian aspect of this
whole gay best Friend thing. She says, this is what
people mean when they talk about bisexual erasure. A perfect
example to me is in the show Buffy, when Willow
(39:56):
meets Tara. She isn't considered bisexual. No, she's a lesbian.
Her valid and loving relationship with Oz is tossed out
the window. Her long crush on Xander is tossed out
the window. She is with a woman now, and she
is a lesbian. You were both so great at being
super inclusive in all your podcasts. You recognize your privilege
and work to check it before you do it. But
(40:16):
this bothered me. I am bisexual. Some bisexuals have a
preference for men or women. I've always considered myself pretty
fifty fifty before my most recent relationship. My most serious
relationship was with a woman. We were together almost four
years and we were engaged. I was not a lesbian
in my time with her. I am not straight now
because I'm with a man, just like I'm not a
sexual when I'm single. I just wanted to give you
(40:39):
my insight on this so you can think about it
in the future. Visibility is key to making the outliers
feel normal and normalizing them to the world at large. Again,
I really love the podcast and the YouTube channel. Maybe
this could be a future topic. So thank you, Katrina
appreciate the letter. Well, I've got a letter here from
l about our Gay Best Friend episode as well, and
L right, I'm a lesbian. I hate that word, and
(41:02):
I've been out since i was fourteen. I'm now twenty
eight and I've been with my wife for three years.
Most lesbians irritate me. I get along with gay men
and straight men way more than I do gay women.
I find them generally more fun to be around, and
everything isn't our strab all the time, but lesbians I
do know and hang out with our friends that I've
had for over eight years, and we've just remained close.
(41:24):
My best friend from high school is a straight woman.
She and I are just like sisters, and there's never
been a moment when we needed to set ground rules.
I'm closer to her husband now than I am to her,
and she and my wife are very close. I work
in web design and I'm around straight people most of
the time, and I've never had any weird experiences. I
guess this is just a sign that the world is
coming along and I'm lucky to be where I am.
(41:45):
My closest friends are guys. I get along with them
on a different level. The professor you brought up in
the podcast seems to have her information all wrong. I guess,
not all over the board, but it seems like she's
had a bad experience and is lumping all of her
bad memories onto everyone and if she happens to be
a lesbian, and that's exactly where we get our bad
(42:06):
name from. I'm not exactly sure why I wrote in
with my life story. I just felt like I didn't
fit anywhere in this podcast, So thanks l and thanks
Katrina for letting us know that you felt left out,
because we want to share your stories as well, and
that goes for the Gave Us Friend podcast or any
podcast where you think, huh, where am I in this story?
(42:29):
Because we want to hear your stories and you can
send them to us at mom stuff at house stetworks
dot com. And for links to all of our social
media as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts,
including this one with links so that you can learn
more about Alice ki Blash, Lois Webber, and Dorothy Arsner.
Head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(42:54):
Does it have stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline. And since the Oscars are right around
the corner at the time of this recording, we wanted
to look at women directors because there has been a
(00:23):
lot of conversation this OSCAR season and in just recent
OSCAR seasons in general about women directors, and we've talked
about them before on the podcast, but we haven't looked
at the pioneering female directors of Hollywood. Yeah, this was
a great chance to look at where we are today
(00:45):
but also where we've come from. And we have uncovered something.
I say we have uncovered like we're some film historians,
but we have enjoyed reading others discoveries of the fascinating
women who contributed so much to the development of the
film industry and their subsequent erasure from film history up
(01:05):
until recent decades also says a lot about where we
are today in terms of women behind the camera. And
first off, we're going to give you a quick snapshot
of exactly where we are. And spoiler alert, it's not
it's not great, it's not fantastic. There's a reason why
(01:26):
there's so much conversation about where are the women directors?
Where are the Oscar nods for female directors? And the
first source we're going to cite is from the two
thousand fourteen Annual Celluloid Ceiling Report released by Dr Martha Lawson,
who's the executive director of the Center for the Study
of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. Yeah, so, basically,
(01:49):
the overall amount of women working in the film industry
today is slightly lower than the level, which is a
little disheart thing. And when you look at the women
who are actually directors, out of that group, women made
up just six percent of all directors working on the
(02:10):
top grossing films, and that's actually a three percent drop
from just And we have some more stats to throw
at you, because there has been a lot of attention
on this on women in the film industry in general,
but also women making films, not just women who are
starring in films, although that's obviously important as well. And
there was some study data that came out of the
(02:32):
University of Southern California looking at Sundance films in particular,
and the Sundance Festival is known for providing a launching
pad not only for female filmmakers but also filmmakers of color.
So it's it's a really important platform. Um. But even
there you see pretty wide gender gaps. Yeah. So they
(02:53):
looked at sundance films that were released between the year
the year two thousand the two. Thus, exactly, I had
to stop myself from singing, and uh, and not that
there's anything wrong with singing. I narrate everything I do
at home in a sing song, which is I'm sure
obnoxious for my boyfriends. Kind of you kind of like
snow white, except no birds come and make dresses for me. Um.
(03:17):
But okay, So they found that films directed by women
feature more women in all roles. There was a twenty
increase in women working on a narrative film during that
time two thousand twelve, and in that same time block
increase of women working on documentaries. But nonetheless, just twenty
(03:40):
three point nine percent of the films looked at in
that sun danced study or directed by women. And this
is also notable too that from two thousand two to
two thousand twelve, women made up only four point four
percent of directors in the top one box office films
each year and looking at who making those top grossing
(04:01):
films is also relevant because when it comes to making
a film in Hollywood, the people who will finance that
film want to know, is this going to make money? Yeah?
Money is the is the main driver. If it's going
to make money, we don't care what you look like.
We want to make a lot of money. And so
if we look at narrative films, that's the storytelling films.
(04:23):
It's basically anything that's not a documentary. It's Titanic, it's Twilight,
it's It's my best friend's Wedding. All the films we
love there we go perfect. So if we look at
those narrative films of the past decade, we find that
forty one women have made films in the top one
hundred released films every year, versus six hundred and twenty
(04:44):
five men. They also found that there are fifteen point
two four male directors for each one female director, So
there's a there's a quarter of a guy hanging out. Yeah,
he's like, hey, I'm point two four over here, I'm shins,
that's all I am. And disapparachion sitting in one of
those folding chairs that directors get are the feet attached
(05:05):
quiet on the set? That's the shians talking. So the question,
obviously then is why is that? Why are there fifteen
men and a pair of shins for every entire female
body making films? Are directing films, we should say, And
there's been a lot of investigation into this in mainstream
(05:27):
media outlets such as The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Variety,
pretty much any media outlet that has the interest in
the entertainment industry has asked this question, and the resounding
theme is, well, old boys club style networking, which helps,
but also it is that money factor. Yeah, there is
(05:49):
this interesting quote from producer Cassie and Elvis to the
New York Times, who brought up something that I honestly
hadn't thought of. I understood the whole money thing that
films and producers foll owe the money what will be profitable,
but always said that the tricky part is that foreign
sales company provide the pre sale estimates for the value
of a movie in territories outside of the United States,
(06:13):
and so it's not necessarily financewers here in the US
who are struggling with the idea of a female director
or a producer for that matter. It's people who are
just not used to considering women as action film directors,
for example, in such a male dominated world at large.
So if you wonder, for instance, why there have been
(06:36):
so many Transformers and movies made, it's because those big
Michael Bay action films translate easily to foreign screens. It's
it's almost like a knee jerk reaction like, oh, well
is there violence? Is there? Are there explosions? Is there?
You know, a token attractive woman? Then perfect, really really
(06:56):
simple dialogue? Yeah, well by that. But the question and
then you have to ask, and this is a question
for another podcast, is well our women just not being
offered those kinds of directorial roles? Do women not want
to make action movies? Where do we make different kinds
of movies that just are aren't as appealing to global audiences? Uh?
(07:17):
Who knows who's to say? But side note. Fortunately, we
do have a group like Game Changer Films, which exclusively finances,
according to their website, narrative features directed by women, and
a lot of this have gone onto places like sun
Dance to Rave reviews. And it's interesting too to see
how a list actresses are also getting in on that,
(07:39):
creating their own production companies specifically to finance films by women.
Reese Witherspoon has done this, Selma hiak Uh, Angelina Jolie
has gotten into directorial roles. I think Sandra Bullock has
also created her own production company. So clearly action is
being taken in Hollywood to address this issue. But Bill,
(08:00):
I mean, one for every fifteen point two four is
a pretty staggering statistic. Yeah, And when you look back
at the history of film where it originated, I mean,
we have some pretty fascinating, pretty fascinating characters behind the
camera that have essentially been lost to history, which is
so unfortunate. And so I'm really glad, I'm super glad
that we're doing this this podcast, because not only do
(08:24):
we want our listeners to be aware of these women,
but it's totally self serving altruism, because I'm just fascinated
to read this stuff. Yeah, to go back to that
narrative film statistic we cited really quickly, in terms of
forty one women making films out of the top one
released every year over the past decade versus six five men.
(08:46):
Think of that gender gap and the fact that the
person who invented narrative film was a woman. Yeah, oh,
such a great character. This is Alice Blische. She's history's
first female director, and she has an incredible resume. She
(09:07):
was pretty much, we assume, the only female director at
all period from eighteen ninety six to nineteen o six,
and this woman wrote, directed, or produced more than a
thousand films, mostly short, single real films, including the wonderfully
titled in the year two thousand when women are in charge. Alice, Well, sorry, Alice, Uh,
(09:33):
it didn't happen. Yeah, that's like back to the future too,
when they just assume that everybody in is going to
have hoverboards. It's not a thing. It didn't happen. Here
we are I'm so disappointed for so many reasons. Where
the hoverboards. And on top of that, she made the
first film with an all African American cast, called A
Fool and His Money, which we'll talk about in a minute.
And she also innovated a number of techniques. Not only
(09:57):
did she think, you know what, this new f gold
film thing could be a great way to tell stories,
hence the invention of narrative film. She also used synchronized
sound way before the invention of talkies. She also used
deep focused photography, double exposure, split screen, the mirror gag
color film, and also emphasized natural acting style because when
(10:22):
you think back to silent films, it was usually, you know,
all these big, exaggerated gestures. But she always told her
actors be natural. And that's actually the title of a
forthcoming documentary about her, right, I think that's fascinating because yeah,
even I feel like, even if you watch movies from
the thirties and forties, they're still not wooden, but just
(10:45):
as if they're projecting because they're on stage, they're still
like that unnatural quality to some films from back then.
But yeah, she really emphasized that, no, we're depicting real
life in this story, and so I want you to
be natural. And you can see that difference on screen.
And because you can watch clips from her films, you know,
I mean a lot of them are single real so
(11:05):
you can see the whole thing on YouTube, and it's
a stark difference between these more natural looking characters and
someone who's almost vaudevillian on camera. But her film studio,
the Solax Company, was the largest pre Hollywood production house
of its kind, and that's quoting the Being Natural documentary trailer,
(11:25):
and they were churning out two to three films per week.
Granted these were not feature length films, they were shorter,
single real films. But still that's a lot of a
lot of films. Yeah. Well, so let's look back at
her career where it started. Back after she graduated high school,
she became a secretary for Leon Gumin of Gumal Studios
(11:47):
in Paris thanks to a tip from her stenography professor,
and very significantly, it was through that job that she
was present for a demonstration of the Lumiere Brothers motion
picture actor. They basically were the first cinematographers. They filmed
uh factory workers leaving a factory for the day. Um
So they weren't doing the narrative style film. They basically
(12:11):
helped create the first documentary and so Gi, though being
quite the smarty pants at this point, immediately saw the
narrative potential for this medium. She wrote in her memoirs,
quote gathering my courage, I timidly proposed to Guman that
I write one or two little scenes and have a
few friends perform in them. And listen up here, she said,
(12:34):
if the future development of motion pictures had been foreseen
at this time. I should never have obtained his consent.
My youth, my inexperience, my sex all conspired against me.
And Guman responded, Oh, what a silly, girlish thing that
you would want to do. Fine, take take this equipment,
make your little film. How interesting now that this echoes
(12:58):
like a major theme in our podcast where we've talked
about various industries, various professions where women maybe they're not
encouraged to participate, but they're certainly not discouraged from participating
when it is still considered a practice of passion or
art or just various, you know, being being interested in something.
(13:18):
Once it becomes professionalized or unionized or whatever and there
is actual money to be made in their higher stakes,
that's all of a sudden, when you're biological sex becomes
a problem. Yeah. And she was only twenty three when
this light bulb went off in her head. And so
she made this short film called The Cabbage Ferry, which
(13:41):
is arguably the first narrative film, and it was opposed
to films at the time that were more intent on
capturing real life documentary style. Um, there was a lot
of almost a scientific focus on the use of film
at the time to study motion, uh, to see how
all the human body move. There's some interesting intersection at
(14:03):
this time actually between the development of film and it's
intended use and the developing sciences as well. And so
he had such a revolutionary vision for this. And I
watched The Cabbage Ferry because it's it's really short, and
it's essentially it's like cabbage patch dolls. Like it's a
(14:25):
well dressed woman picking up these babies from cabbages and
they're they're live babies. It's not prop babies. And the
only thing I was just a little bit in horror
while I was watching Becaussie's babies are just screaming their
heads off. I mean you can't hear it, luckily, luckily
silence silent film. But I just wonder where she got
(14:46):
all those volunteer babies. That's funny. Yeah, how do you
put an ad for that in the paper? Now? Probably
we're just putting them in cabbage. It's fine, it's fine.
But speaking to The Daily Beast, Alison McMahon really hammered
home the significance. She said that gie Blache understood that
telling a narrative story in film was going to require
following the perspective of a singular character, and it took
(15:10):
a good ten years for other filmmakers to figure out
exactly what she did. Yeah, and speaking of McMahon, she
is also working on the b Natural documentary. But if
you want to learn more about Gie Blache before that
comes out, she wrote a book all about her that
you can check out, Alice gi Blache Lost Visionary of
the Cinema. Um so she's figured out, she's twenty three,
(15:34):
She's made this film and inadvertently made history. Then let's
fast forward a little bit to nineteen o six when
she marries an English cameraman, Herbert Blushe, which is where
the comes from Blache. Yeah. So, then they moved to
the US to run Gumant's American office, but due to
a bunch of different factors that were going on at
(15:54):
the time, Gumant's whole business state side wasn't doing so well.
So in Ghi Blache starts up the Solas Company and
she becomes, therefore the first woman to ever run her
own studio. Yeah. So, she writes, directs, and otherwise contributes
to the production of over seven hundred films, including the
(16:17):
nineteen film House Divided, which is possibly the first American
film with the detailed plots and both House Divided, and
another one of her films, Matrimonies, Speed Limit, Highlight Equal
Partnership within Marriage. And she actually also made a couple
of action films, not anything like Transformers, but action films
(16:41):
of the time with women positioned as the heroes. And
so she wasn't afraid to put women front and center
in her own films. So even back then, in the
early days of cinema, there's still that existing pattern we
see today in terms of women behind the camera, tending
to put more dynamic women in front of a camera. Right.
(17:03):
But it's interesting because a lot of sources point out
that around this time she does start putting out a
lot of movies that have a general theme about marriage.
And then in she and Herbert divorced Herbert Herbert he
ends up remarrying, moves back out West or something he's lost,
we don't we don't know what Herbert's doing, but uh
(17:27):
moves back to France with her daughter Simone, and she
really struggled to maintain her livelihood against the rise of
this corporate film industry. And I mean, here we see
again that whole pattern of when it's just for art,
when it's art for art's sake, or when it's not professionalized. Hey, women,
sure do whatever you want. Who cares the minute that
it's professionalized and it's corporate and there's money to be made. Oh,
(17:49):
you're a woman. We don't want you to get out
of here, even when you've already made a thousand films,
which is kind of wild. And it makes me wonder though,
whether the divorce from Herbert and not having a guy
by her side perhaps made it more difficult for her
to make that transition back to France because when she
was running the stul X company, yes she was the
(18:11):
head honcho and everything went through her, But at the
same time, I have a feeling that they were probably
some businessmen in the industry who liked to see a
dude next to her rather than just taking orders from
a woman. Yeah, it could be, but I mean, regardless,
after this point, she essentially gets a raised from history.
I mean, she did go back to France, like we said,
(18:33):
she wrote articles about films, she taught about films, so
it's not like she completely sank into the ground. She
was still around. It's just that she couldn't maintain that
position as a director anymore. Yeah, and not only was
she erased from film history almost symbolically, like she's it's
only been in recent decades that we even know who
(18:54):
she is, but her films too were destroyed just because
of uh, the elements of them not being cared for properly. Um,
there was a guy who just randomly found one of
her films at an estate sale. I mean, it's uh.
And with the being natural documentary, the filmmakers are having
to raise money in order to access and track down
(19:18):
the film that's even still available, which is part of
what I really want it to be made. And I
want to see it so badly, to see all of her,
or at least her work that's still in existence. Let
that be a lesson to us all to take care
when we go to a state sales, it's through you
never know what you'll find. So we've introduced you to
the amazing Alice gi Blache, but we have to talk
(19:39):
about this fascinating character that she mentored, so you know,
just never hurts to hammer hound the importance of having
a mentor in your shows in field. But this brings
us to Lois Webber who also she herself made a
bunch of film history. Webber was the first American woman
to direct a feature length film, and she at the
(20:02):
time was the leading female director screenwriter in early Hollywood.
She was also the first and only woman at the
time elected to the Motion Pictures Directors Association and the
first mayor of Universal City in California. Uh And in
Motion Picture Magazine, in an article about her, said quote,
(20:24):
when the history of the dramatic early development of motion
pictures is written, Lois Webber will occupy a unique position. Yeah,
you would think, wouldn't you, well, Unique in the sense
that we are only just now learning about her, right,
and film historian Anthony Slide wrote that few men before
(20:46):
or since have retained such absolute control over the films
they've directed, and certainly no women directors have achieved the
all embracing, powerful status once held by Lois Webber. So
what is the d ol Well's do with Lois Webber?
Well In she left home to become an opera singer,
(21:07):
and while touring with the Scene group, she met her
future husband, who was an actor and stage manager, Wendell
Phillips Smalley, who was also a bit of a feminist
because he was all like, listen, Lois Webber, I love
you keep your maiden name. I'm down with that. Let's
form a partnership and take over the world. That's right.
And it's worth noting that his feminism didn't come out
(21:28):
of just nowhere. He's a descendant of the human rights
pioneer Wendell Phillips, who was a contemporary of Lucy Stone.
Uh Lucy Stone, famous for keeping her last name indeedly do.
And so he was very well influenced in his life.
And so in nineteen o four she married Smalley, and
it's something that actually really worked in their favor creatively,
(21:50):
rather than like we see a lot of times when
a husband and wife come together, the wife is often
forced to leave the professional world. That only really made
them stronger. Yeah, I mean, it does seem to echo
a pattern that we saw with Alice Gee and Herbert Blache.
And Webber began working at Guman's studios as an actress
(22:10):
and that's where she met gie Blache. I said before
the Break mistakenly that it was while Giblache was running
Solox Company. Was actually earlier than that, during the Guman
Studios days and under gie Blache's mentorship, Webber expanded her
skill set to include movie making behind the camera, learning, writing, directing,
(22:31):
and producing. Yeah, and so she takes these new skills,
these new interests, and she and her husband start making
shorts and features together under the production billing the Smalley's
for a whole bunch of production companies, and together in
they moved to Los Angeles to get in on all
of that fancy Hollywood action. And in nineteen fourteen she
(22:53):
makes history she becomes the first American woman to direct
a full length feature, The Merchant of Venice. And then
in nineteen seventeen she strikes out on her own with
Lowest Weber Productions, a move that would make her the
highest paid Hollywood director at the time because she was
working for herself. That's right, And that's another theme that
we see with all three of the women that we're
(23:15):
going to talk about in this episode, where at some
point they make the turn and say, you know what,
I'm going independent, I'm doing. This is no different from
the women you sided at the top of the podcast
who have to car still have to carve out their
own path, their own niche. If they're going to pursue
this particular path, and her films weren't just easy, breezy
fluff either. No, they definitely tackled a lot of social issues,
(23:37):
and despite the threat of censorship for some of them,
they helped film become recognized as a true art form
and not just frivolous entertainment. Yeah. So, one of her
most famous films from nineteen fifteen is Hypocrites, and it
tackles religion and sexuality in features full nudity. Um. Essentially,
(23:58):
it's a naked woman on screen, although she's transparent so
you can't really see all of her nudity in detail. Um,
but she plays the she sort of symbolizes truth and
she frolics about. And some people were horrified by Hypocrites
because of the nudity and also attacking religion in such
(24:19):
a direct way, but other people praised it. They thought
that it was, you know, quite an ambitious artistic endeavor
that paid off. Yeah, And this led to her challenging
a lot of the censorship efforts that she faced as
a result, and her very modern response to it was
that Hypocrites is not a slap at any church or creed.
It's a slap at hypocrites. And its effectiveness is shown
(24:40):
by the outcry amongst those it hits hardest to have
the film stopped. And it's notable too that this ties
directly into her upbringing because her family was very religious
and very active in evangelizing, and so she saw film
as a way to impart moral truths and deal with
(25:01):
social issues in a novel way, in the same way
that Alice ski Blache thought of, Hey, let's use film
a little bit differently than just reflecting day to day
life or science or motion studies. Interesting, what happens when
you get people with different perspectives into fields, the fields
and industries? Yeah, yeah, Well so she also dealt with
(25:21):
the issue of capital punishment and the people versus John
Doe from nineteen sixteen, and drug abuse and hop The
Devil's Brew also from nineteen sixteen. She was not a
slacker of any kind, and in nineteen sixteen and seventeen
she tackles contraception with not one but two films, Where
Are My Children and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle?
(25:43):
And The Hand that Rocks the Cradle was notable because
this was happening right after Margaret Sanger was put on
trial for obscenity, so she was not shy in talking
about things that were quite hot button issues, I mean
back then but even today right. Well, and she also
was and afraid to sort of risk her position because
you have to keep in mind at the time that
(26:03):
she's producing he's very controversial film. She's also the highest
paid director period, not highest paid female director, so she's
riding pretty high right now. Yeah, and she put herself
out there, especially in the Hand that Rocks the Cradle,
because she not only wrote and directed it, she also
starred in it. Um. We also need to mention Shoes,
which came out in nineteen sixteen as well, which some
(26:25):
people think is her best film. It tackled poverty and
also looking at something that I had never thought of before,
which was the contemporary plight of shop girls who were
usually underpaid but also immersed in this new and growing
consumer culture. Um. Which is something that made me want
(26:46):
to possibly do a podcast on women in retail in
the future. Um. And in nineteen sixteen, this very prolific year, apparently,
Motion Picture Stories magazine named her the greatest woman director. Yeah.
And beyond just being a woman, she was routinely cited
as being one of the best directors period around at
(27:06):
the time. Unfortunately, she also hit problems like Gee Blache.
Post divorce, her film career kind of hit the skids,
and she also was largely erased from popular film history.
And it wasn't really until the nineteen seventies with the
work of feminist film scholars who sort of rediscovered her,
that her legacy has been recognized again. And no surprise
(27:31):
that feminist film scholars would love her because hello, she
tackles so many issues. Yeah, but it was that pushed
to uncover um are amazing female predecessors in the film
industry in the nineteen seventies. That also led to a
lot of praise for the last woman that we're going
(27:52):
to talk about today. Yeah, Dorothy Arsner was the first
female director big wig. Essentially, she was a first member
of the director's guild. Um. She was the only female
director in Hollywood during the golden era of the studio system.
So she is a very big deal. So the Women
(28:13):
Film Pioneers Project at Columbia University talks about how Arsner's
career spanned from nineteen nineteen to nineteen forty three, fifteen
years of which were spent as a director, and she
remains the most prolific woman studio director in the history
of American cinema. So let's look at how she got
her start. It was definitely an interesting story because she
(28:35):
grew up in Hollywood. She wasn't an outsider, but she
was an outsider in the fact that she studied medicine
originally at usc and was an ambulance driver for a
little while in World War One. But then she visited
a film studio which turned her on to the idea
of talkies. Not to mention that her parents ran a
cafe in Hollywood that was frequented by people in the industry. Yeah,
(28:59):
so she ended up getting a studio job in Paramount
as a typist, which led to a job as a
screenwriter and then an editor, which was a common job
for women back then. And then her big break came
in with the film Blood and Sand, which he was
editing because they were worried about going over budget, and
she decided to use stock footage of a bullfighting scene,
(29:22):
which ended up saving the studio a ton of money.
There's that theme again, money And she was so successful
with us, I mean, she essentially saved this film that
the director James Cruise took note and brought her on
to write and edit other films of his. Yeah and
Ours is pretty savvy when it comes to money. Um,
I think she would do Chryl Sandberg proud, or Chryl
(29:44):
Sandberg would do her proud. Um In Arsner negotiated her
way into a directorial position because she was able to
leverage an offer from Columbia to direct into a promotion
and so her first film Fashions for Women, which is
funny because if you Google image her, which I highly
(30:05):
recommend you do, if you search for her, she dressed
exclusively in men's style clothing. Yeah. She wore ties and
suits and job pers and Oxfords, and her hair was
cut short, and she was a very handsomely dressed woman.
And she was always intent on proving her competence because
it was so widely publicized that she was the only
(30:28):
woman at that level in Hollywood at the time. And
it's important to you to remember that this Hollywood that
she's working in is leaps and bounds beyond the Hollywood
that say Lois Webber was working in. Yeah, and so
in ninety nine she directs Paramounts first talkie, which I
think is pretty interesting The Wild Party, although another source
(30:49):
does say that paramounts first talkie was Manhattan Cocktail, but
it almost doesn't matter because both were directed by Arsner
and that one was and so The Wild Party stars
film Siren Clara Bow And another significant aspect of this
is that Arsner essentially invents the boom mic along the way.
It was a mic on a fishing line. And it's
(31:10):
pretty cool because when you think about the dawn of
the talkie era, Mike's were stationary, meaning that you had
previously energetic stars like Douglas Fairbanks or whomever who had
been able to sort of bound around the screen with
these large pantomime movements because it was silent, who cares,
nobody needs to worry about microphones. But these stars then
(31:30):
had to remain pretty still to kind of hang out
near the stationary microphones. So Arsner's you know, blowing up
stuff all over the place, making all sorts of innovations
boom Mike's boom indeed, and after eleven films with Paramounts,
she goes independent and in the nineteen thirties she became
the first female member of the Director's Guild, a labor
(31:52):
group that today represents more than fifteen thousand directors in
directorial support staff and counts women directors as their teen
point seven percent of its membership. And when she went independent,
she was able to get really lucrative distribution deals because
of the strong relationship and reputation that she had built
(32:13):
for herself with Paramount not only as a savvy filmmaker,
but she also developed a reputation as a star maker. Yeah.
She made stars out of Katherine Hepburn with the film,
Christopher Strong, Rosalind Russell with Craig's Wife, and Lucille Ball
with Dance Girl Dance. And I was telling Kristen that
I was Google image searching Dance Girl Dance because I
(32:34):
love seeing these old pictures of Lucille Ball before she
was I love Lucy. Yeah, and she also had a
close film relationship with Joan Crawford as well. She directed
her in a film called The Bride war Red And
the original trailer for it is fantastic because you know,
it introduces the film which is about this nightclub singer
(32:55):
and she wears red and she seduces wealthy men and
but then of course she falls in love with a
not so wealthy guy. Whatever. But at the end of
the trailer, it says a woman's love story directed by
Hollywood's only woman director, and it cuts to Arsner in
one of her suits, hanging out on set, which is
(33:17):
I mean, I thought it was so interesting that that,
even back then was a selling point for the films.
But you do have to wonder from Arsner's perspective if
she was like, enough, already enough, I'm just a director.
I don't know. She looked pretty chill hanging out on
her and her stup being like, yeah, what I am
the only one? Pay me make it rain. I'm sure
she was saying that, yes, definitely make it rain. Definitely. Well.
(33:41):
So in she directs her last feature, first comes courage
and retires from Hollywood for health reasons and also partly
because after World War Two, directorial jobs were super hard
for women to get and things have essentially stayed almost
the same. It really does seem that way, um But notably,
(34:03):
she transitioned from making film to teaching film, similar to
Alice ki Blache, and she inspired filmmakers, including a gentleman
named Francis Ford Coppola, who would then inspire Sofia Coppola.
So you can then trace Sofia Coppola all the way
back to Alice ki Blache because she mentored Lois Webber,
(34:24):
which then leads to Arsner Coppola, Coppola loss and translation done,
I love it, I love it. Yeah. And scholars have
looked back at Arsner's career and her path and the
way that she did things and have talked a lot
about the way that she was able to do things
in interpret stories so differently. This is coming from Teresa
(34:46):
Geller in on the website Senses of Cinema, and Geller
has done a lot of research into Arsner, and she
talks about how she often revised original source material to
really emphasize the complexity of women's lives, to make them
not only more sympathetic characters, but all such just more
real human people. And so not only were ours and
her scriptwriters mostly women, but she also took characters that
(35:09):
maybe weren't supposed to be so positive and turn them
into someone who was real. So, so if you take
the play Craig's Wife, for instance, it's about a domineering
wife and her put upon husband, and you're totally supposed
to sympathize with this husband, she reworked it. She made
the lead character complex, and she made the story basically
(35:30):
into a critique of the institution of marriage, of the
limits placed on women, and she focuses on the wife's
acknowledgement that she went into the marriage to attain security.
And she even plays the bitter old widow widow next
door who's played by Billy Burke, who played Glenda the
good Witch. She plays her as just like a happy
(35:52):
solo gardener, elderly lady who's just getting along alone, just fine.
And that was a general theme of her films, is
that only did she portray women who were outside the
balance of heterosexual relationships with men as happy but almost
as like the better, healthier choice in life. Yeah, there's
been a lot of investigation into her exploration of the
(36:15):
male gays and also flipping that to the female gays
lesbian undertones in some of her films as well, because
Arsner had a long term relationship with I believe it
was one of her choreographers that she worked with um
And for all of these reasons, feminist film scholars in
the nineteen seventies in particular, really, I mean just we're
(36:39):
almost magnetically drawn to her body of work because she's
such a complex person to begin with, especially considering the
context of the time in Hollywood at the time. Um,
but also how perhaps her queer identity influences how she
makes films. So I know that I am now loading
up my books cue with oars films because I want
(37:02):
to see this stuff. Yeah, personally, I really want to
see Craig's wife, in particular because I love Rosalind Russell
would be so curious to see her in this role. Um.
And just to quote Geller once more, she said, for
much of Arsner's work, sexuality stands as a threat to
women's community. Arsner's film exposes that strain of the heterosexual
(37:24):
bargain that shackles women. Yeah, she often portrays if there
are any relationships on screen that are between women, those
are the safe, healthy, strong relationships that free women up
to do what they truly want to do. Any time,
it's almost like any time she depicts marriage or relationships
or anything between men and women, that that is almost
(37:46):
cited as the downfall of the female character. But interestingly, though,
in talking about her experience at the time in Hollywood,
she said, once no one gave me trouble because I
was a woman, men were more help fall than women.
And and it seems like, just based on how she
talks about getting into film and how she develops her career,
(38:07):
that she possessed so much confidence. I mean, and I
guess that she had to because she was an outsider
in multiple ways. Yeah, and she does. She did have
the quote that women's dramatic sense is invaluable to the
motion picture industry. So she obviously obviously felt that women
like her or just women in general belonged there and
(38:28):
should be in those roles. And it's unfortunate that we
sort of couldn't keep our promise to her to keep
more women in those roles. Well, and we're still calling
for the same thing today. You could. I've seen that
quote paraphrase from female studio executives, female filmmakers, women directors
today saying the same thing, urging people to recognize the
(38:51):
value of women filmmakers. So I really hope that there
are some filmmakers perhaps listening. Um, what do you think
about these pioneers? Are there other female director pioneers that
we didn't talk about that we should acknowledge. Um, if
you are in the film industry, what kind of barriers
have you face and have they been related to your gender,
(39:15):
or ethnicity or orientation. Let us know mom Stuff at
how stuffworks dot com is our email addressed. And also
if you have recommendations of films directed by women, let
us know. You can tweet us a mom Stuff podcast
or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of
messages to share with you right now. So I have
(39:36):
a letter here from Katrina about our Gay best Friends episode.
She said that we basically left bisexuals out of the equation,
even though we talked about the lesbian aspect of this
whole gay best Friend thing. She says, this is what
people mean when they talk about bisexual erasure. A perfect
example to me is in the show Buffy, when Willow
(39:56):
meets Tara. She isn't considered bisexual. No, she's a lesbian.
Her valid and loving relationship with Oz is tossed out
the window. Her long crush on Xander is tossed out
the window. She is with a woman now, and she
is a lesbian. You were both so great at being
super inclusive in all your podcasts. You recognize your privilege
and work to check it before you do it. But
(40:16):
this bothered me. I am bisexual. Some bisexuals have a
preference for men or women. I've always considered myself pretty
fifty fifty before my most recent relationship. My most serious
relationship was with a woman. We were together almost four
years and we were engaged. I was not a lesbian
in my time with her. I am not straight now
because I'm with a man, just like I'm not a
sexual when I'm single. I just wanted to give you
(40:39):
my insight on this so you can think about it
in the future. Visibility is key to making the outliers
feel normal and normalizing them to the world at large. Again,
I really love the podcast and the YouTube channel. Maybe
this could be a future topic. So thank you, Katrina
appreciate the letter. Well, I've got a letter here from
l about our Gay Best Friend episode as well, and
L right, I'm a lesbian. I hate that word, and
(41:02):
I've been out since i was fourteen. I'm now twenty
eight and I've been with my wife for three years.
Most lesbians irritate me. I get along with gay men
and straight men way more than I do gay women.
I find them generally more fun to be around, and
everything isn't our strab all the time, but lesbians I
do know and hang out with our friends that I've
had for over eight years, and we've just remained close.
(41:24):
My best friend from high school is a straight woman.
She and I are just like sisters, and there's never
been a moment when we needed to set ground rules.
I'm closer to her husband now than I am to her,
and she and my wife are very close. I work
in web design and I'm around straight people most of
the time, and I've never had any weird experiences. I
guess this is just a sign that the world is
coming along and I'm lucky to be where I am.
(41:45):
My closest friends are guys. I get along with them
on a different level. The professor you brought up in
the podcast seems to have her information all wrong. I guess,
not all over the board, but it seems like she's
had a bad experience and is lumping all of her
bad memories onto everyone and if she happens to be
a lesbian, and that's exactly where we get our bad
(42:06):
name from. I'm not exactly sure why I wrote in
with my life story. I just felt like I didn't
fit anywhere in this podcast, So thanks l and thanks
Katrina for letting us know that you felt left out,
because we want to share your stories as well, and
that goes for the Gave Us Friend podcast or any
podcast where you think, huh, where am I in this story?
(42:29):
Because we want to hear your stories and you can
send them to us at mom stuff at house stetworks
dot com. And for links to all of our social
media as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts,
including this one with links so that you can learn
more about Alice ki Blash, Lois Webber, and Dorothy Arsner.
Head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(42:54):
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