Mary C. McCall Jr.: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Most Powerful Screenwriter J. E. Smyth 9780231215282

A screenwriter, novelist, labor leader, Hollywood insider, and feminist, Mary C. McCall Jr. was one of the film industry's most powerful figures in the 1940s and early 1950s. She was elected the first woman president of the Screen Writers Guild after leading the fight to unionize the industry's writers and secured the first contract guaranteeing a minimum wage, credit protection, and pay raises. Her advocacy was not welcomed by all: To screenwriters McCall was an "avenging goddess," but to studio heads she was, in the words of one Hollywood executive, "the meanest bitch in town." And after a clash with the mogul Howard Hughes in the blacklist-era 1950s, she disappeared from the pages of Hollywood history.

J. E. Smyth tells McCall's remarkable story for the first time, putting the spotlight on her trailblazing career and crucial influence. She explores McCall's life and work, from her friendships with stars such as Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and James Cagney to her authorship of the hit Maisie series about a working-class showgirl's adventures. Analyzing McCall's deft political maneuvering, Smyth offers new insight on screenwriters' struggle for equality and recognition. She also examines why McCall's legacy is unrecognized, showing how the Hollywood blacklist and entrenched sexism obscured her accomplishments. Colorful and compelling, this biography provides a powerful account of how one extraordinary woman shaped golden age Hollywood.

About the Author
J. E. Smyth is a professor of history at the University of Warwick. She is the author or editor of several books, including Nobody's Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood (2018) and a new edition of Jane Allen's novel I Lost My Girlish Laughter (2019). In 2021, she was named an Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Reviews
In this brilliantly written book, Smyth restores Mary C. McCall Jr. to a male-dominated history of film from which she is glaringly absent. With encyclopedic knowledge and lively and engaging prose, Smyth crafts a thoroughgoing portrait of McCall's life and oeuvre, documenting the challenges that women screenwriters and union leaders faced before the backlash of the 1950s ended so many of their careers. -- Carol Stabile, author of The Broadcast 41: Women and the Anti-Communist Blacklist
In this engaging and meticulously researched biography, J. E. Smyth recognizes Mary McCall as a key figure during Hollywood's classical era, rising through the ranks to become one of the most successful-and highest paid-writers in the business. She was also a pioneering labor leader and a headstrong, fiercely independent woman in a male-dominated industry. Mary C. McCall Jr. provides an compelling inside look at the filmmaking machinery during Hollywood's heyday, and at the political forces that exerted continual pressure to regulate (both literally and figuratively) Hollywood's depiction of American life. -- Thomas Schatz, author of The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era
Nearly legendary in her own time and largely forgotten in ours, Hollywood screenwriter/power player Mary C. McCall Jr. is long overdue for the significant biography J.E. Smyth has impressively provided. Impeccably researched and vividly written, this is a necessary and essential book. -- Kenneth Turan, author of Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation



Book Information
ISBN 9780231215282
Author J. E. Smyth
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press