Fifteen Pioneering Women in Cinema

 

Lois Weber (1879-1939)

Film director, actress, screenwriter and producer, Weber pioneered the use of split-screen and full-frontal female nudity. By 1914, she claimed an audience of 5-6 million people a week. Weber was the first female director to make a full-length film and one of the first directors anywhere to use sound. She also directed the first adaptation of Tarzan and launched many stars of the silent era. Like many female contemporaries her films dealt with issues – abortion, birth control – subsequently banned under the 1930 Hays Production Code.

 

Anita Loos (1889-1981)

Anita Loos was the most prominently recognized female screenwriter in Hollywood during the 1920s and 1930s.  She was as famous at the time as the stars and had her hand in some of the best projects, one of the most renowned being Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She was not huge on the women’s lib movement, but practiced her feminist efforts through hard work and silent ambition. She is quoted as having said “They keep getting up on soapboxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men- That’s true, but it should be kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket.” Loos was gifted in her abilities with screen adaptations and radiated brightly through the studio system with her unique wit and natural talent for storytelling.

 

Marion Gleason (1890-1991)

A close compatriot of George Eastman, Marion Norris Gleason was the pioneer of amateur film.  She was hired by Kodak to be the sort of human incarnation of the “Kodak girl”, a woman who was adventurous and still a doting parent.  Kodak also wanted someone who knew very little about the camera so that the company could be sure that anyone could operate the camera.  This seemingly small job opportunity turned out to be a huge door opening for Gleason, who became the mother of the home movie through use of Kodak’s film.

 

Mary Pickford (1892-1979)

Mary Pickford was a woman of all trades, having been director, writer, actor, and producer of her own films.  She spent her early years impoverished, working  through the theater circuit with her siblings, until she caught the eye of famed director D.W. Griffith.  He immediately took her on at the Biograph Film Company for twice the rate of the average actress.  From this small beginning, Pickford worked her way up through the Hollywood system, tying only with Charlie Chaplin in popularity polls.  The two of them, along with her husband Douglas Fairbanks and a few others, would go on to create United Artists, their very own production company.  Pickford is definitely a woman to admire, for her spirit, her talent, and primarily her inexhaustible will.

 

Helen Holmes (1892-1950)

One of America’s first stunt women, Helen Holmes wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, leading to a sparkling career in films that still shines today. An accomplished stunt performer, screenwriter, actress, director and producer,  Holmes created her own adventure serial in the early 1900s and made herself a name in the industry.  In the serial she was almost never the damsel in distress, preferring to “single-handedly collar the bad guys, bringing them to justice.” In the mid 1910s, she and her husband started their own production company, creating over a dozen films together. She was also one of the first women to work and train animals for film. Two paws up for Helen Holmes!

 

Fatma Begum (1892-1983)

Fatma Begum brought magic to the screen as one of the first female directors to incorporate special effects and fantasy into her films and was the first ever woman in India to create her own film company. She was one of the most famous silent female film stars in India at the time, when many women in films were played by men, and soon found her way into production. Using trick photography for special effects, she was an early pioneer of fantasy films- because paving the way for Indian women in cinema wasn’t enough.

 

 

 

Marion E. Wong (1895-1969)

Marion E. Wong brought her intense ambition and her Chinese roots into her film endeavors. Wong was a Chinese American company director, costume designer, set designer, director, actress, producer, music performer and screenwriter.  She was known for trying to bring her culture to an American audience at a time when there was little to no diversity in the industry. At the fledgling age of 21, she created the Mandarin Film Company and directed her film ‘The Curse of Quon Guan: When the Far East Mingles with the West.’  Having brought a new landscape into American cinema, she is the perfect example of a person who seized upon cultural enlightenment and autonomy through creativity in film.

 

Lotte Eisner (1896-1983)

The survival of many classic films can be attributed to the efforts of war survivor and revolutionary archivist Lotte Eisner, Chief Archivist of the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris from 1945 until 1975.  Her career began as a film critic in Germany for newspapers including Film Kurier, but Eisner had to flee to Paris due to the rising persecution of Jews by the Nazis.  She was found in France and managed to survive a concentration camp until the liberation.  Her dedication to film spanned her entire life, and she is famous for having written many revealing and intensely analytical pieces on Weimar Cinema, including her book The Haunted Screen. Eisner was known for going to festivals to collect film for the Cinematheque, sometimes returning with train cars full of prints to be preserved.  In a time when film was a very volatile topic, due to Nazi efforts to destroy anti-political pieces, Lotte Eisner held strong and reemerged to preserve the pieces that her counterparts had so carefully hidden to prevent them from being destroyed.

 

Tressie Souders (1897-1995)

Another pioneering woman in cinema, Tressie Souders, went by many names but is best known for her title of first African-American female filmmaker in the 1920s. Although there has been much confusion over her exact name (Tressa Sauders, Saunders, Souders, etc.) Tressie Souders was the first African American woman to write, produce and direct a film. Billboard magazine stated that her first film, ‘A Woman’s Error’, “was the first of its kind to be produced by a young woman of our race, and has been passed on by the critics as a picture true to Negro life.”

 

Edith Head (1897-1981)

Edith Head, the famed female costume designer, won several Academy Awards, creating designs that easily stood out in a very male dominated Paramount studio in the 1940s and 1950s. Twenty-six year old Edith Head was hired with little to no costume design experience into the department at Paramount. She was first overshadowed by fellow costume designers Howard Greer and Travis Banton, geniuses of fashion in their own right, but rose to the top on her talent and originality.  She was the golden child of costume design during her era, working with major stars such as Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Elizabeth Taylor and Bette Davis.  She has remained extremely relevant today, as her signature look and personality have been recreated in many a character, most notably Edna Mode from The Incredibles. Her mark has been indelibly made on cinema.

 

Dorothy Arzner (1897-1979)

Dorothy Arzner was the only female film director working in the United States during the 1930s and was a talent highly valued by Paramount, who wouldn’t let her leave.  Arzner had originally intended on being a doctor and had even begun her studies, but after a trip overseas to work in the ambulance corps during WWI she decided otherwise.  Her first Hollywood job was at Paramount, working as a stenographer for William C. DeMille. Her next was editing Blood and Sand (starring Rudolph Valentino), after which James Cruz was so impressed with her efforts that he took her on as a writer and editor for his films, including big names such as Old Ironsides.  She then threatened to leave and work for Columbia if not endowed with a directorial position, and Paramount obliged, too pleased with her work to let her go.  She directed films such as The Wild Party, starring Clara Bow, during the production of which she invented the boom microphone (but never patented it). She is also known for launching the careers of women such as Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Lucille Ball and Sylvia Sydney.

 

Margaret Booth (1898-2002)

Margaret Booth was a very important film editor in early Hollywood, beginning her career editing films for D.W. Griffith.  She went on to work as a director’s assistant and editor for MGM, putting together renowned films, including the classic Camille starring Greta Garbo.  She was nominated for an academy award for her work on Mutiny on the Bounty, and in 1990 she was awarded the American Cinema Editors Career Achievement Award for her consistent and outstanding input into the field.

 

Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003)

American queen of the silver screen who worked her way to the top after being blacklisted by Hollywood, Katharine Hepburn ranks as top star on the American Film Institute list of Top 25 female stars.  Hepburn began acting in college at Bryn Mawr and worked her way through stock company theaters before moving over to Hollywood.  It wasn’t soon after her cinematic emergence in the early 1930s that she was promptly blacklisted for poor performance and perpetually unemployed.  However, as we now know of Hepburn, she was not one to go quietly and when she wanted something she got it.  This attitude led her to acquire the rights to The Philadelphia Story, which she produced and starred in on Broadway.  It was a smash hit and when MGM optioned the script, she said she would only sell it to them under the condition that she be allowed the lead part and have veto power over producer, cast, director and screenwriter.  From then on, her career was prosperous and fruitful, and if that isn’t proof of a powerful women we don’t know what is.

 

Ida Lupino (1918-1995)

When it comes to film pioneers in the 1950s, Ida Lupino is the reigning queen.  She was an English singer and actor who became the only woman in the 1950s to direct and produce her own films. A “bulldozer” when it came to finance and a “mother” to her crew, Lupino proved to be the perfect combination of strong and compassionate in her productions. She was also known for covering every facet of production in her films, sometimes writing, acting, producing and directing all at the same time.  A powerhouse of energy and determination, Lupino is not to be forgotten.

 

Pauline Kael (1919-2001)

Pauline Kael was never known for mincing words in her critiques of films.  The revolutionary critic for the New Yorker who pulled no punches and spared no detail was possibly the most important female film critic of the 1970s.  Roger Ebert is quoted as saying that Kael “had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades.” Not only did she have a long tenure at the New Yorker, Kael also published in several magazines, as well as writing  her own novel. She would not allow others’ reactions of her work deter her from voicing her opinion. She wrote what other critics would not, often going against public opinion. She influenced critics and filmmakers alike, branding her as one of the most significant critics of the twentieth century.

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