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TCM Website
July 3, 2000
TCM Honors Women Film Pioneers in August
With Documentary, Restorations, Film Festival, Local Screenings and Panel Discussions
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Turner Classic Movies (turnerclassicmovies.com) will honor the women who shaped the early years of American cinema with an extensive month-long tribute throughout August. TCM's unprecedented programming line-up will feature the world premiere of an original documentary on Frances Marion, a documentary about Alice Guy and 36 films written, directed or produced by women from 1911 to 1953. The festival will be highlighted by the U.S. television premieres of 14 films. Also included will be 10 newly restored films, including the TCM funded restorations of Marion's THE SCARLET LETTER (1926) and Helen Gardner's CLEOPATRA (1912) as well as Lois Weber's WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN? (1916). Local screenings of the documentary and panel discussions about women's influence in the film industry will be held in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Houston, Orlando and Phoenix.
Women Film Pioneers begins August 3 at 8 p.m. (ET) with the world premiere of Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Power of Women in Hollywood, a TCM original documentary that explores the life and career of Frances Marion, the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood - male or female - for more than two decades and the first female writer ever to win an Oscar®. Narrated by Uma Thurman and featuring Kathy Bates as the voice of Marion, the documentary includes interviews with prominent women in film today, including Oscar®-winning screenwriter Callie Khouri, award-winning director Martha Coolidge, producer Polly Platt and screenwriter and former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fay Kanin. Film historians, friends and colleagues of Marion are also featured, including her biographer, Cari Beauchamp; pre-eminent silent film historian Kevin Brownlow; film critic Leonard Maltin; Museum of Modern Art film department chief curator Mary Lea Bandy; and Oscar®-nominated former child star Jackie Cooper. Without Lying Down is written and produced by Bridget Terry and Beauchamp, is directed by Terry and is based on Beauchamp's award-winning book. Hugh M. Hefner and Turner Classic Movies are executive producers.
TCM's tribute will also feature the world premieres of two TCM-funded restorations, complete with new musical scores. The TCM restoration of Marion's THE SCARLET LETTER (1926) will feature 20 minutes of newly discovered footage and new music composed by film and television scoring team Lisa Anne Miller and Mark Northam. One of the first feature films ever produced, the restoration of Helen Gardner's CLEOPATRA (1912), which was funded by TCM and restored by George Eastman House, will be scored by critically-acclaimed and double platinum record seller, Canadian composer and performer Chantal Kreviazuk and her husband, Our Lady Peace lead vocalist Raine Maida. Senior music lecturer at MIT and silent film scoring researcher, performer and author Martin Marks created and performed the score for Lois Weber's controversial WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN? (1916) which was recently restored by the Library of Congress.
Author and feminist film theorist Jane Gaines, who is a professor and director of the Program in Film and Video at Duke University and founder of the Women Film Pioneers project, will introduce the films with TCM host Robert Osborne. During the introductions, they will give historical details about the comprehensive collection of rarely or never-before broadcast films that will recognize the more than 100 women who wrote or directed films during the silent era, and countless others who contributed as actors, producers and technicians. Films written, directed or produced by Marion, Guy, Weber, Lupino, Mary Pickford, Nell Shipman, Dorothy Arzner, and others will be showcased. Highlights include the U.S. television premiere of THE LOVE LIGHT (1921), Frances Marion's last film as sole director and the only restored one of the three she directed; the U.S. television premiere of THE RED KIMONA (1925), a film about prostitution, produced and co-directed by Dorothy Davenport and written by Dorothy Arzner; and THE WOMEN (1939), adapted by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin from the play by Claire Booth Luce. Interstitials will air throughout the month featuring colleagues and family of many of these pioneering women, including segments with Irene Diamond on working in the industry, Anne V. Coates on being an editor and Mary Anita Loos von Saltza on women in the industry.
"Women film pioneers are an integral part of our American cinema heritage, yet they have never been given proper recognition," said Tom Karsch, executive vice president and general manager of TCM. "TCM's initiative reaches beyond showcasing the films of these women to include educational outreach and contributions to the restoration efforts of works that shaped the development of cinema."
TCM and Vanity Fair will sponsor screenings of Without Lying Down and panel discussions that will benefit Women in Film & Television (WIFTI) in New York and Los Angeles. Local Women in Film chapters will hold screenings and panel discussions in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Houston, Orlando and Phoenix. The New York screening will be held on July 19 at the Museum of Modern Art with a panel discussion focusing on the importance of preserving the work of early women film pioneers. Cari Beauchamp, Jane Gaines, Mary Lee Bandy and author, film critic and NY Daily News Showtime editor, Graham Fuller will participate in the discussion, with Polly Platt serving as moderator. The Writers Guild will co-host the Los Angeles event on August 2, which will be held in the WGA's theater and focus on the impact of women's roles in the history of the industry, and the future of women in film. Fay Kanin and Without Lying Down director and co-writer Bridget Terry will join the panel discussion in Los Angeles.
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