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Frances Marion (born Marion Benson Owens, November 18, 1888[1] – May 12, 1973) was an American screenwriter, director, journalist and author often cited as one of the most renowned female screenwriters of the 20th century alongside June Mathis and Anita Loos. During the course of her career, she wrote over 325 scripts.[2] She was the first writer to win two Academy Awards. Marion began her film career working for filmmaker Lois Weber. She wrote numerous silent film scenarios for actress Mary Pickford, before transitioning to writing sound films.

Frances Marion
Marion directing The Love Light, which she also wrote, 1920
Born	Marion Benson Owens (1888-11-18)November 18, 1888 San Francisco, California, U.S.
Died	May 12, 1973(1973-05-12) (aged 84) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Screenwriter director journalist author
Years active	1912–1972
Spouses	Wesley de Lappe ​ ​ (m. 1906; div. 1910)​ Robert Pike ​ ​ (m. 1911; div. 1917)​ Fred Thomson ​ ​ (m. 1919; died 1928)​ George Hill ​ ​ (m. 1930; div. 1933)​

Early life

Marion was born Marion Benson Owens in San Francisco, California, to Len D. Owens and Minnie Benson.[3] She had an older sister, Maude, and a younger brother, Len.[3] Her parents divorced when she was 10, and she lived with her mother. She dropped out of school at age 12, after having been caught drawing a cartoon strip of her teacher. She then transferred to a school in San Mateo and then to the Mark Hopkins Art Institute in San Francisco when she was 16 years old. Marion attended this school from 1904 until the school was destroyed by the fire that followed in the wake of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.[4]

Career

While in San Francisco, Marion worked as a photographer's assistant to Arnold Genthe and experimented with photographic layouts and color film. Later she worked for Western Pacific Railroads as a commercial artist, then as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. After moving to Los Angeles, Marion worked as a poster artist for the Morosco Theater as well as an advertising firm doing commercial layouts.[1]

In the summer of 1914 she was hired as a writing assistant, an actress and general assistant by Lois Weber Productions, a film company owned and operated by pioneer female film director Lois Weber. She could have been an actor, but preferred work behind the camera.She learned screenwriting from Weber.^{[citation needed]}

When Lois Weber went to work for Universal, she offered to bring Marion with her. Marion decided not to take Weber up on the offer. Soon after, close friend Mary Pickford offered Marion a job at Famous Players-Lasky. Marion accepted, and began working on scenarios for films like Fanchon the Cricket, Little Pal, and Rags. Marion was then cast alongside Pickford in A Girl of Yesterday. At the same time, she worked on an original scenario for Pickford to star in, The Foundling. Marion sold the script to Adolph Zukor for $125. The film was shot in New York, and Moving Picture World gave it a positive pre-release review. But the film negative was destroyed in a laboratory fire before prints could be made.[5]

Marion, having traveled from Los Angeles to New York for The Foundling's premiere, applied for work as a writer at World Films and was hired for an unpaid two-week trial. For her first project, she decided to try recutting existing films that had been shelved as unreleasable. Marion wrote a new prologue and epilogue for a film starring Alice Brady, daughter of World Films boss William Brady. The new portions turned the film from a laughable melodrama into a comedy. The revised film sold for distribution for $9,000, and Brady gave Marion a $200/week contract for her writing services.[6]

Soon Marion became head of the writing department at World Films, where she was credited with writing 50 films. She left in 1917 when, following the success of The Poor Little Rich Girl, Famous Players-Lasky signed her to a $50,000 a year contract as Mary Pickford's official scenarioist.[7] Marion was reported at this time to be "one of the highest paid script writers in the business."[8] Her first project under the contract was an adaptation of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

Marion worked as a journalist and served overseas as a combat correspondent during World War I.[9][10] She documented women's contribution to the war effort on the front lines, and was the first woman to cross the Rhine after the armistice.[11]

Upon Marion's return from Europe in 1919, William Randolph Hearst offered her $2,000 a week to write scenarios for his Cosmopolitan Productions. Marion shared a house with fellow screenwriter Anita Loos on Long Island.[12]

While at Cosmopolitan, Marion wrote an adaptation of Fannie Hurst's Humoresque which was Cosmopolitan's first successful film, and also was the first film to win the Photoplay Medal of Honor, a precursor of the Academy Award for Best Picture.[13] Marion told her best friend Mary Pickford the story she heard during her recent honeymoon in Italy for which Pickford said it was the next movie she wanted to do. Pickford insisted that Marion not only be the writer but also the director of the film, and the result was Marion's directional debut The Love Light.[14] Her earlier success in adapting the Fannie Hurst novel and her friendship with Hurst contributed to her decision to adapt another Hurst story, "Superman," as her next movie to direct. The resulting film, Just Around the Corner, was a best-seller for the studio.[15] Marion directed only one more movie The Song of Love, co-directing it with Chester Franklin.

She won the Academy Award for Writing in 1931 for the film The Big House, she received the Academy Award for Best Story for The Champ in 1932, both featuring Wallace Beery, and co-wrote Min and Bill starring her friend Marie Dressler and Beery in 1930. She was credited with writing 300 scripts and over 130 produced films.

Personal life

On October 23, 1915, Marion participated in a parade of more than thirty thousand supporters of women's suffrage in New York City.

After her success in Hollywood, Marion often visited Aetna Springs Resort in Aetna Springs, California, using it as a personal retreat and often bringing several film-industry colleagues with her on vacations. The resort, in fact, was directly connected to her own family's history, for Marion's father had built the resort in the 1870s.[16]

Marion was married four times, first to Wesley de Lappe and then to Robert Pike, both prior to changing her name. In 1919, she wed Fred Thomson, who co-starred with Mary Pickford in The Love Light in 1921.[9] She was such close friends with Mary Pickford that they honeymooned together when Mary married Douglas Fairbanks and Frances married Fred.[17] After Thomson's unexpected death from a leg wound in 1928, she married director George Hill in 1930, but that marriage ended in divorce in 1933. She had two sons—Frederick C. Thomson and Richard Thomson (adopted). Frederick earned a PhD in English at Yale, taught there and later joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina. He became an editor of the writings of George Eliot, publishing editions of Felix Holt, the Radical in 1980 and later.

Later years and death

For many years she was under contract to MGM Studios. Independently wealthy, she left Hollywood in 1946 to devote more time to writing stage plays and novels.

Frances Marion published a memoir Off With Their Heads: A Serio-Comic Tale of Hollywood in 1972. Marion died the following year of a ruptured aneurysm in Los Angeles.[18]

Selected filmography

Year	Title	Featured Stars	Notes
1912	The New York Hat	Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish	Contributing writer
1915	Camille	Clara Kimball Young, Paul Capellani, Robert Cummings	Scenario
	A Girl of Yesterday	Mary Pickford, Frances Marion, Glenn L. Martin	Actress
1916	The Foundling	Mary Pickford, Mildred Morris, Gertrude Norman	Writer
	The Gilded Cage	Alice Brady, Montagu Love, Alec B. Francis	Scenarist/writer
1917	A Little Princess	Katherine Griffith, Mary Pickford, Norman Kerry, ZaSu Pitts, Theodore Roberts	Writer
	Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm	Mary Pickford, Eugene O'Brien	Writer
	The Poor Little Rich Girl	Mary Pickford, Madlaine Traverse, Charles Wellesley, Gladys Fairbanks	Writer
1918	Stella Maris	Mary Pickford	Photoplay
	How Could You, Jean?	Mary Pickford	Scenario
	M'Liss	Mary Pickford	Writer
	Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley	Mary Pickford, William Scott, Kate Price	Writer
	The Temple of Dusk	Sessue Hayakawa, Jane Novak, Louis Willoughby, Mary Jane Irving	Writer
1919	The Cinema Murder	Marion Davies, Eulalie Jensen, Anders Randolf, Reginald Barlow	Scenario
	Anne of Green Gables	Mary Miles Minter	Writer
1920	Pollyanna	Mary Pickford	Adaptation
	The Flapper	Olive Thomas, Warren Cook	Screenplay, story
	Humoresque	Gaston Glass, Vera Gordon, Alma Rubens	Scenario
	The Restless Sex	Marion Davies, Ralph Kellard	Writer
1921	The Love Light	Mary Pickford, Evelyn Dumo	Director, story (uncredited)
	Just Around the Corner	Margaret Seddon, Lewis Sargent, Sigrid Holmquist	Director, scenario
1922	The Primitive Lover	Constance Talmadge, Harrison Ford	Scenario
	The Toll of the Sea	Anna May Wong, Kenneth Harlan, Beatrice Bentley	Scenario (uncredited), story
1923	The Famous Mrs. Fair	Myrtle Stedman, Huntley Gordon	Adaptation, screenplay
	The Song of Love	Norma Talmadge, Joseph Schildkraut, Arthur Edmund Carewe	Director, screenplay
1924	Secrets	Norma Talmadge	Adaptation
	Cytherea	Alma Rubens, Constance Bennett, Norman Kerry, Lewis Stone, Irene Rich	Adaptation
	The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln	George A. Billing, Ruth Clifford, George K. Arthur, Louise Fazenda	Story, screenplay
1925	Stella Dallas	Ronald Colman, Belle Bennett, Lois Moran	Adaptation
	A Thief in Paradise	Doris Kenyon, Ronald Colman, Aileen Pringle	Adaptation
	Thank You	Alec B. Francis, Jacqueline Logan	Writer
	Lightnin'	Jay Hunt, Wallace MacDonald	Writer
1926	The Scarlet Letter	Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson	Adaptation, scenario, titles
	The Winning of Barbara Worth	Ronald Colman, Vilma Bánky	Adaptation
	Son of the Sheik	Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Bánky, Montagu Love, Karl Dane, George Fawcett	Adaptation
1927	The Red Mill	Marion Davies	Adaptation, screenplay
	Love	John Gilbert, Greta Garbo	Continuity
	Madame Pompadour	Dorothy Gish	Writer
1928	The Wind	Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, Montagu Love, Dorothy Cumming	Scenario
	The Awakening	Vilma Bánky, Walter Byron	Story
	Bringing Up Father	J. Farrell MacDonald, Polly Moran, Marie Dressler	Writer
1929	Their Own Desire	Norma Shearer, Belle Bennett, Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery, Helene Millard	Screenplay
1930	Min and Bill	Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery	Dialogue, scenario
	The Big House	Robert Montgomery, Wallace Beery, Chester Morris, Lewis Stone	Dialogue, story Won the Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
	Good News	Mary Lawlor, Stanley Smith	Scenario
	The Rogue Song	Lawrence Tibbett, Catherine Dale Owen	Writer
	Anna Christie	Greta Garbo, Charles Bickford, George F. Marion, Marie Dressler	Writer
1931	The Secret Six	Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, John Mack Brown, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Ralph Bellamy, Marjorie Rambeau	Dialogue, screenplay
	The Champ	Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Irene Rich, Roscoe Ates	Story Won the Academy Award for Best Story
1932	Blondie of the Follies	Marion Davies, Robert Montgomery, Billie Dove	Screenplay, story
	Emma	Marie Dressler, Richard Cromwell, Jean Hersholt, Myrna Loy	Story
1933	Peg o' My Heart	Marion Davies, Onslow Stevens, J. Farrell MacDonald	Adaptation
	Dinner at Eight	Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Billie Burke	Screenplay
	The Prizefighter and the Lady	Myrna Loy, Max Baer, Walter Huston, Primo Carnera, Jack Dempsey	Story Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Story
	Going Hollywood	Marion Davies, Bing Crosby, Fifi D'Orsay, Stuart Erwin	Story (uncredited)
	Secrets	Mary Pickford, Leslie Howard	Writer
1936	Camille	Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore	Screenplay
	Riffraff	Jean Harlow, Spencer Tracy	Screenplay, story
	Poor Little Rich Girl	Shirley Temple, Alice Faye, Jack Haley, Gloria Stuart, Michael Whalen, Claude Gillingwater	Writer
1937	Knight Without Armour	Marlene Dietrich, Robert Donat	Adaptation
	Love from a Stranger	Ann Harding, Basil Rathbone	Adaptation
1940	Green Hell	Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Vincent Price, Joan Bennett, Alan Hale, Sr., George Sanders, John Howard	Original story, screenplay

Published works

• Minnie Flynn. NY: Boni and Liveright, 1925
• The Secret Six. NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1931 [novelization of her own screenplay]
• Valley People. NY: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1935
• How to Write and Sell Film Stories. NY: Covici-Friede, 1937
• Molly, Bless Her. NY: Harper & Brothers, 1937
• Westward The Dream. Garden City NY: Doubleday and Company, 1948
• The Passions of Linda Lane. NY: Diversey Publications, 1949 [paperback; revised edition of Minnie Flynn]
• The Powder Keg. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1953
• Off With Their Heads!: A Serio-Comic Tale of Hollywood. NY: The Macmillan Company, 1972 [memoir]

Bibliography

References

External links

• Frances Marion at IMDb
• Frances Marion at the TCM Movie Database
• Works by Frances Marion at Open Library
• Frances Marion at the Women Film Pioneers Project
• Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Power of Women in Hollywood at IMDb
• Frances Marion article in Photoplay 1917

На других языках

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- [en] Frances Marion

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[es] Frances Marion

Frances Marion (18 de noviembre de 1888[1] – 12 de mayo de 1973) fue una periodista, escritora y guionista estadounidense, a menudo citada como una de las más renombradas mujeres guionistas del siglo XX, junto a June Mathis y Anita Loos. Fue la primera mujer en ganar dos Óscar como guionista: Óscar al mejor guion adaptado, en 1930 por la película The Big House, y en 1932 Óscar al mejor argumento por The Champ.

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