Programmed May 2020

Written by Frances Marion

Featuring Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Power of Women in Hollywood , a feature-length documentary directed by Bridget Terry For almost three decades, Frances Marion was Hollywood’s highest-paid screenwriter (male or female), a pioneer who shaped the nascent art of script writing and whose seemingly boundless imagination yielded some of the most unforgettable words and stories ever put on screen. Like fellow trailblazers Lois Weber, Dorothy Arzner, and Anita Loos, Marion was drawn to Hollywood at a time when women could still carve out a place for themselves in the burgeoning film industry, establishing herself as a hugely successful writer (and occasional director) for her best friend Mary Pickford. The top screenwriter at MGM during the late 1920s and…