Interesting statistic

Last night on TCM during the ’roundup’ discussion after Moguls and Movie Stars part 2 documentary filmmaker Cari Beauchamp said that “half of all films before 1925 were written by women“. (watch video here) Women had only gotten the right to vote five years before but in Hollywood they were the equal to men (at least for a while). I wonder what the percentage of modern movies are written by women?

The movie that aired right before the round table discussion was The Poor Little Rich Girl starring Mary Pickford. The screenplay was written by Frances Marion. Youtube has a terrible copy divided into seven parts, if you enjoy the first part catch the movie the next time it airs on TCM.

TCM’s A History of Hollywood: Moguls and Movie Stars

TCM has a great multi-part series airing this month called A History of Hollywood: Moguls and Movie Stars (pretty self-explanatory what it’s about). One of the silent movies aired last night was The Great Train Robbery. If you’ve never seen it take a few minutes (nine minutes and forty-three seconds to be precise) and enjoy this groundbreaking piece of cinema.