Margaret Booth got a job with another Hollywood legend, Louis B. Mayer. Also working at his studio was director John M. Stahl, whom Margaret would observe as he edited. He would shoot much more than he needed, and then leave the extra footage (quite literally) on the cutting room floor. At the end of each day, Margaret would gather up the excess film and stay overnight practicing cutting techniques. One day, John was frustrated that he couldn’t make a scene work. When he left, Margaret gave it a try, cutting it how she thought it should go.
When he saw her work, he hired her on the spot to be his personal cutting assistant.
When Louis B. Mayer’s studios merged with Samuel Goldwyn’s company and Metro Pictures, they became known as MGM. Louis hired the young executive Irving Thalberg to head production. Irving noticed Margaret’s talent and assigned her to cut MGM’s biggest movies. Irving also kept encouraging her to direct, but she wasn’t interested.
By the late 1920s and early 1930s, cutting was no longer an entry-level job. These workers were highly skilled, and integral to the success of a story. Margaret continued to hone her skills and learned new techniques with the arrival of sound. She never made a cut just for the sake of it, and she had the innate ability to know exactly where one should go, and how much should be trimmed. “Rhythm counts so much,” Margaret once said; “the pauses count so much.”
Irving Thalberg realized the title of Cutter didn’t live up to how important Margaret Booth was, so he changed her title in the credits to Film Editor. Previously, the term of Editor was only used for a position like Script Supervisor, but after this, it was adopted by the entire film industry. It was also used for the Academy Awards, who added a Best Film Editing category in 1935. Margaret Booth was nominated in 1936 for her work on Mutiny on the Bounty. A year later, Irving Thalberg passed away. Margaret stayed at MGM, and Louis B. Mayer promoted her to the highly respected role of Supervising Editor, responsible for the post-production of films. Margaret stayed in this position for thirty years, overseeing classic films like The Wizard of Oz and Ben-Hur.
Director Sidney Lumet wrote about Margaret Booth’s unique talent in his book Making Movies. He recalled a moment in the 1960s when Margaret had flown to England to watch rough cuts of three MGM films in production. She screened the movies back to back; when she met with the directors, she told Sidney, “You’re running two hours and two minutes, I want the picture under two hours.” He and his editor got to work, but found it difficult to cut down. The next morning, Margaret came in, and when he told her of his frustration, she instructed him on the exact shots to cut and by how much. “Her film memory was phenomenal,” wrote Sidney Lumet, “she named seven or eight moments, always perfect on where the shot occurred,
what took place in the shot, how its beginning or end might be trimmed—and she’d seen the picture only once.”
Margaret Booth received an Honorary Oscar in 1978 for her contribution to film, and died in 2002 at the age of 104.
Frances Marion: The Award-Winning Writer
The highest paid screenwriter in the 1920s and 1930s was Frances Marion. She was also the first person to ever win two Academy Awards in the same field, worked as a battlefront correspondent during World War I and was called “the all-time best script and storywriter the motion picture world has ever produced.”
With all of these accomplishments, it seems only appropriate that her name should be similar to that of a famous American Revolutionary war hero, although Frances Marion was not actually her original name.
Marion Benson Owens was born in 1887 in San Francisco. As a child she constantly wrote in her diary, and she had a gift for art. Both of these skills came in handy when she was employed as a young adult at the San Francisco Examiner. Her job was to report on theater productions, write stories and draw sketches to accompany them.
One day, Marion was given the assignment of interviewing and sketching Marie Dressler, an actress of the stage and screen. As she left, one of the head reporters called out to her that if she failed, she would be fired.
Marion didn’t know if this was a joke; she raced over to the theater and went to see Marie backstage. Unbeknownst to Marion, Marie was in the middle of a huge fight with William Randolph Hearst, who owned The Examiner. So when Marion announced the paper she was from, she found the door shut in her face pretty quickly.
Desperate not to lose her job, she stayed backstage, and when Marie came out, Marion told her she’d be fired if there was no interview. Marie paused and asked, “Is that what those bastards told you?” and then agreed to give Marion “the golldarndest interview I ever gave to any reporter!” They spoke for over an hour, and Marie left Marion with the words, “I’ll see you again.”
This came true many years later, when Marion was living in Los Angeles with her second husband. It was 1914, and she was in a park sketching. A woman sat down next to her, feeding popcorn to the birds, and Marion realized this was Marie Dressler. She didn’t say anything for fear Marie wouldn’t remember her, but as soon as Marie saw her, she asked, “Are you the girl who interviewed me in San Francisco?” And then, “I’ve often wondered what became of you. Hate to lose track of anybody I’m fond of.”
They caught up over lunch, and Marie told Marion that with her good looks, she should get into acting. Marion insisted she only wanted to work behind the scenes, but promised she would visit the studio. But by the time she was able to get there, Marie Dressler had left for New York. So this wasn’t to be Marion’s break into Hollywood, but the two had cemented a real friendship. In the future Marion would play an important part in Marie’s career.
Another chance encounter led to her meeting Mary Pickford. This came through a friend, who introduced her to actor Owen Moore at a party. Owen was married to Mary at the time, and Marion couldn’t help but tell him how much she admired his wife’s talent. He replied gruffly, “Mary has an expressive little talent, but hardly what one would call cerebral.” Marion was shocked he would talk about his wife in this way and walked off. Later, he approached her and offered the chance to meet Mary and sketch her portrait. It was an invitation she couldn’t decline.
When the two met, they hit it off, chatting easily for an hour and sharing personal stories about their unhappy marriages. This was the start of a very close friendship and eventually a working relationship, but again, this was not how Marion got her first break.
Marion’s chance to work in Hollywood actually came through a different friend, journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns, who was lunching with director Lois Weber when Marion happened to walk by. Lois saw something in the young, pretty brunette, and asked Adela to arrange a meeting. This was common for Lois, who was known for hiring and mentoring young women.
Marion met Lois at Bosworth Studios with her portfolio of sketches in hand, and said she’d like to design costumes and movie sets. Impressed, Lois offered her a studio job as “one of my little starlets.” Confused, Marion insisted she only wanted to be on the “dark side” of the camera, but Lois explained that at her studios, everyone did a bit of everything. She also wanted Marion to change her name. When she signed her contract, Marion Owens became Frances Marion.
Lois Weber became a huge inspiration for Frances, who watched her in admiration as she filled every role from writer to actor to director with ease. She spent a few years working for her and learned as much as she could, but when Lois got a job at Universal Pictures, Frances decided not to join her.
By 1917, her friend Mary Pickford had become the most powerful woman in Hollywood. Although Mary wasn’t technically
