of young artists, and herself the most brilliant, versatile and accomplished person in Hollywood.”
Few knew or loved the industry as Frances did, yet after she said her demure “Thank you very much” and returned to her seat, she studied the statuette and decided, “I saw it as a perfect symbol of the picture business: a powerful athletic body clutching a gleaming sword, but with half of his head, the part which held his brains, completely sliced off.”
Privately, she was proud of her Oscar for The Big House because she had conquered a variety of obstacles to create a realistic film where for the first time audiences heard prison doors slam shut, inmates’ steps shuffle down the corridors, and metal cups bang on the mess tables.
Writing of that night, several historians called Frances Marion “the author of The Big House and just about everything else at MGM” but she called herself “a mouse at the feast” that was Hollywood. She habitually used self-deprecating humor as her armor against the professional and personal challenges and tragedies she faced.
Eventually Frances was credited with writing 325 scripts covering every conceivable genre. She also directed and produced half a dozen films, was the first Allied woman to cross the Rhine in World War I, and served as the vice president and only woman on the first board of directors of the Screen Writers Guild. She painted, sculpted, spoke several languages fluently, and played “concert caliber” piano. Yet she claimed writing was “the refuge of the shy” and she shunned publicity; she was uncomfortable as a heroine, but she refused to be a victim.
She would have four husbands and dozens of lovers and tell her best friends she spent her life “searching for a man to look up to without lying down.” She claimed the two sons she raised on her own were “my proudest accomplishment”—they came first and then “it’s a photofinish between your work and your friends.”
Her friendships were as legendary as her stories and some of the best were with her fellow writers for during the teens, 1920s, and early 1930s, almost one quarter of the screenwriters in Hollywood were women. Half of all the films copyrighted between 1911 and 1925 were written by women.
While Photoplay mused that “Strangely enough, women outrank men as continuity writers,” it wasn’t strange to them. Women had always found sanctuary in writing; it was accomplished in private and provided a creative vent when little was expected or accepted of a woman other than to be a good wife and mother. For Frances and her friends, a virtue was derived from oppression; with so little expected of them, they were free to accomplish much.
They were drawn to a business that, for a time, not only allowed, but welcomed women. And Cleo Madison, Gene Gauntier, Lois Weber, Ruth Ann Baldwin, Dorothy Arzner, Margaret Booth, Blanche Sewall, Anne Bauchens, and hundreds of other women flocked to Hollywood, where they could flourish, not just as actresses or writers, but also as directors, producers, and editors. With few taking moviemaking seriously as a business, the doors were wide open to women.
Frances maintained they took care of each other and claimed “I owe my greatest success to women. Contrary to the assertion that women do all in their power to hinder one another’s progress, I have found that it has always been one of my own sex who has given me a helping hand when I needed it.”
Today, names of screenwriters like Zoe Akins, Jeanie Macpherson, Beulah Marie Dix, Lenore Coffee, Anita Loos, June Mathis, Bess Meredyth, Jane Murfin, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Sonya Levien, and Salka Viertel are too often found only in the footnotes of Hollywood histories. But seventy years ago, they were highly paid, powerful players at the studios that churned out films at the rate of one a week. And for over twenty-five years, no writer was more sought after than Frances Marion; with her versatile pen and a caustic wit, she was a leading participant and witness to one of the most creative eras for women in American history.
This is her story.
Chapter 1
Marion Benson Owens first publicly documented her creative talents at San Francisco’s Hamilton Grammar School “when I was caught drawing cartoons of my teachers on the blackboard and was expelled from all public schools.” As a rule, she was very well behaved, having been taught early “the hypocrisies of social graces.” Yet while others might see her dismissal as something to be ashamed of, Marion was always to view it with a sense of accomplishment. Just twelve years old, she had been set apart from those she considered “fastidious and dull” and that was definitely a step in the right direction.1
San Francisco in 1900 prided itself on being a cosmopolitan city, but the well-off and socially active Owens family at times stretched the limits of social acceptance.
Her father was born in 1857 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where his parents had immigrated from Missouri when the Iowa Territory opened. Len Douglas Owens arrived in a prospering San Francisco at the age of twenty-four and quickly established himself in the advertising business. He was anxious to channel his ambitions and install himself in society, and Minnie Benson Hall, almost ten years his junior, had the bearing and the background to help him achieve his goals.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Minnie was the daughter of Charles and Aimee Grizwald Hall, who had “come around the Horn” to California from New York following the Gold Rush of 1848. Music was the foundation of the household. Charles owned a piano factory and played concert violin and Aimee was an accomplished soprano and pianist.
Minnie was not yet eighteen when she married the twenty-seven-year-old Len Owens in 1884. Over six feet tall with carved Welsh features, Len was the extrovert, serving on the board of the Olympic Club and becoming a champion pistol shooter and all-around outdoorsman. Minnie prided herself on creating a household that was a center for artists and visiting musicians like Italian soprano Luisa Tetrazzini, the Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba, and Enrico Caruso.2
Their large house on O’Farrell Street also became home for Minnie’s aunt and uncle, George and Jane Benson, when they moved from New York shortly after the Owenses were married. George worked at a local lumberyard and Aunt Jane was a help as the children arrived; Maude in February of 1886, Marion on November 18, 1888, and Len junior in May of 1890.
Len senior organized a bicycle club for men and they rode all over northern California on the weekends. He became an investor in Aetna Springs, a six-hundred-acre ranch in the Pope Valley, and by 1896 he was the sole owner of the property. He created the Aetna Springs Mineral Water Company to bottle the water from its natural springs, promoted it as a drink of great “medicinal value” to those suffering from “neuralgia, indigestion, rheumatism, dyspepsia and many other ills,” and distributed it through his new drug and supply company south of Market Street.3
Len’s advertising business was also flourishing. He brought in Tom Varney and Charles Green as partners and their firm specialized in creating and posting signs on fences and in trolleys and streetcars. While Minnie was most comfortable in her roles as hostess and mother, Len’s life now took him everywhere but home. In the fall of 1898, he assured his wife he would always support her and the children, but he wanted a divorce.
Minnie and the Bensons stayed in the house on O’Farrell and the children continued to go to Hamilton Grammar School, less than two blocks from their home. Just before her twelfth birthday, Marion’s father told her he was marrying again. His fiancée, Isabel, was the eldest daughter of the celebrated and wealthy lawyer Edgar F. Preston. Eighteen years younger than Len, Isabel had never been married before and, unlike Minnie, was an outdoorswoman who shared his love of horseback riding and bicycling.4
Len and Isabel were married in June of 1901 to what the newspapers
