“By the time I was ten years old I had been thoroughly schooled in all the social hypocrisies.”
1173: Frances Marion
The First Hollywood Writer to Win Two Academy Awards
Born: 18 November 1888, San Francisco, California, United States of America
Died: 12 May 1973, Los Angeles, California, United States of America
Original Name: Marion Benson Owens
Frances was a journalist, author, film director, and screenwriter, who was evidently named after the famous Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion (at least, according to Time Magazine).
As a child, Frances’s parents split and divorced. Her father remarried a few years later. When she was around the age of ten, Frances was sent to a Christian boarding school. To say she did not enjoy this time would be an understatement, and the strict rigidness of the school helped nourish Frances’s rebellious side, as well as her aversion to organized religion.
As a teenager, Frances’s mother sent her to an art school in San Francisco, which was much better suited to the young girl’s artistic passions. While there, Frances fell in love with her art teacher, and they married soon after. In her early days of writing, Frances also took jobs as a telephone operator and at a fruit cannery, to help bring in income as well as give her ideas to write short stories with. Because of how many hours she devoted to her work, Frances and her first husband would divorce after four years of marriage, in 1910.
In 1912, Frances moved to Los Angeles with her second husband, who had promised to take her to Paris for her career. That clearly didn’t happen, but Los Angeles was a better fit anyway because it allowed Frances to begin working in the budding film industry. By 1919, however, Frances had divorced husband number two and married her third, the future actor Fred Thomson. Sadly, Fred would die on Christmas Day 1928—according to Frances, her third husband was the love of her life. She briefly married for a fourth time in the 1930s, but the marriage ended in another divorce.
Frances worked in the film industry from 1915 to 1946 and has been credited with formulating the careers of various stars such as Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, her husband Fred Thomson, and several others. In fact, Mary Pickford and Frances were so close, Mary hired Frances to be her exclusive screenwriter for Mary’s earlier films.
Frances worked primarily as a screenwriter at Metro Goldwyn Mayer, but also did some freelance work as well. At MGM, Frances is said to have been paid $3,000 a week, more than $40,000 a week today! In total, she is credited with writing around 300 screenplays for various films over her thirty-year career.
Frances went beyond the typical scope of screenwriting, however. She also wrote a textbook on the subject, How to Write and Sell Film Stories.
During World War I, Frances directed a film showcasing women’s contributions to the war effort from the front lines. Because of this, Frances became the first woman to cross the Rhine after the armistice was declared.
Some of Frances’s best-known films that she wrote the screenplay for included The Scarlet Letter (1926), Stella Dallas (1925), The Wind (1928), The Big House (1930), and The Champ (1931). Frances won the Oscar for The Big House and The Champ. She also directed Just Around the Corner (1921) and The Love Light (1921).
After she was let go from MGM in 1946, Marion continued to write—but not for Hollywood or the film industry. She wrote several novels and plays over the ensuing decades, with her last writing project being her memoir, published a year before her death. According to Marion’s Find a Grave profile, she had two sons.
Badges Earned:
Find a Grave Marked
Located In My Personal Library:
Backwards and in Heels: The Past, Present, and Future of Women Working in Film by Alicia Malone
Sources:
https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-frances-marion/
https://time.com/4186886/frances-marion/
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6948-the-woman-who-invented-the-hollywood-screenwriter
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/157241913/frances-marion