Frances Marion (1888-1973) Film Screenwriter

Frances Marion (1888-1973), renowned screenwriter, wrote and/or contributed on more than 130 scripts. One of her first jobs was as a contributing writer to The New York Hat (1912), which starred Mary Pickford and Lionel Barrymore and was directed by D. W. Griffith. Throughout her long career, Marion carefully tailored scripts for the screen personalities of many major actresses, including Pickford, Norma Talmadge, and Marie Dressler. Her scripts for The Big House a(1930) and The Champ (1932) won her Best Writing Academy Awards.

Silent Films

During the silent era, Marion wrote an average of nine scripts a year. In the teens she wrote scripts for Alice Brady, Clara Kimball Young, Norma Talmadge, and Mary Pickford.

Marion worked closely with Mary Pickford to establish Pickford's screen image as a luminous innocent with a strong will and a fiery temper but a heart of gold. Her first film for Pickford, Fanchon the Cricket (1915), features Mary as a self-reliant youngster, good hearted, but rather wild and unkempt. It was quickly followed by two other films similar in plot, Rags (1915) and The Foundling (1915). In the late teens, Pickford, Marion, and director Marshall Neilan collaborated on a series of highly successful films, including The Little Princess (1917), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley (1917), Stella Maris (1918), and M'liss (1918) all of which highlighted Mary's well established screen image.

Marion wrote and directed three films, The Love Light (1921), Just Around the Corner (1921) and Song of Love (1923). Just Around the Corner was a Fannie Hurst story of a mother's struggles with her teenaged children; Hurst co-wrote the screenplay. Song of Love is a romantic melodrama written for Norma Talmadge and co-directed with Chester Franklin. The Love Light was written and directed for Mary Pickford.

The Love Light is a departure from Pickford's usual screen stories and sunshiny, girlish persona. Set during World War I, The Love Light stars Mary as an Italian peasant whose brothers and childhood sweetheart are soldiers fighting for Italy. Mary rescues a seemingly shipwrecked sailor. They fall in love and marry. Mary is tending the local lighthouse. Her husband gives her nightly instructions for flashes of the light, supposedly as a means of expressing her love. In actuality, her husband is a enemy agent, and the light flashes are signals to enemy ships. When Mary discovers his treachery, she denounces him. He is killed while trying to escape. Mary is pregnant and much of the remaining plot involves her psychological difficulties accepting the fate of her husband and the task of caring for her baby. At the conclusion, Mary's original sweetheart returns blinded. They marry and find happiness. The picture's melodramatic plot seems intended to produce a portrayal of greater dramatic intensity and range of emotion than was usual for Pickford. However, neither Marion's direction nor Pickford's acting produce much of the desired intensity.The anonymous critic in Variety did not accept this new version of Pickford, who he stated does not fit well into a garb of mature morbidity. Mary in motherhood is not Mary as known and wanted by her fans.

After these three early twenties films, Marion focused on screenwriting and did not attempt to direct again.

During the twenties, Marion's collaborations with Pickford declined. She wrote screenplays for many other major stars, including Norma Talmadge, Marion Davies, Lilian Gish, and Ronald Colman.

In 1921, Marion cowrote, with Fannie Hurst, the scenario for the screen adaptation of Hurst's novel, Humoresque. Frank Borsage directed the highly acclaimed production which featured an outstanding performance by veteran actor Vera Gordon.

Sisters Norma and Constance Talmadge began their screen careers during the teens. Norma Talmadge specialized in emotional roles. Marion wrote dramatic scenarios for Norma. Constance was a comedienne, Marion's scripts for constance were light and amusing.

Marion wrote six scripts for Norma and wrote and directed a seventh, Song of Love (1923). This film is a romantic melodrama starring Norma as an Arabian dancing girl who loves an undercover French agent. Marion co-directed the picture with Chester Franklin.

Frank Borzage, director, and Frances Marion, writer, teamed with Norma on two of her finest films, Secrets (1924) and The Lady (1925). Norma convincingly ages in each film as it recounts the life story of a woman from youth to old age.

Marion wrote Primitive Lover (1922 ) and Dulcy (1923) for Norma's sister, Constance. Marion adapted Dulcy from a 1921 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly. The Primitive Lover is an amusing comedy about a foolish wife who longs for romance and adventure in her life.

Starting in 1920, through the twenties and on into the early thirties, Marion wrote screenplays for Marion Davies and her producer William Randolph Hearst.

Marion's first film for the recently formed MGM was the Victor Sjostrom production of The Scarlet Letter (1926) starring Lilian Gish. She also wrote The Wind (1928), another impressive Sjostrom and Gish film.

Marion was married to western star Fred Thompson. Under the male pseudonym Frank M. Clifton, she wrote the screenplays for many of his films which had typical western titles such as Galloping Gallagher (1924), Thundering Hoofs (1924), and Silver Comes Through (1927).

Talking Films

Marion signed with MGM in the late twenties and remained with the studio for the remainder of her career. In the early thirties Marion wrote scripts and offered editorial advice. In the later thirties, she wrote fewer scripts and more often was an uncredited source of advice.

She won two Best Writing Oscars for the talking films The Big House (1930) and The Champ(1932). Both movies starred rough-edged, gravel-voiced Wallace Beery. Berry won the Best Actor Award for The Champ. Both films were nominated for Best Picture.

Marie Dressler, a large woman in size and weight, was a long time friend of Marion. Dressler specialized in physical comedy featuring her turbulent and knock-about character, Tillie Blobbs. In the teens, Dressler starred in several Tillie films. Marion wrote the scenario for Tillie Wakes Up (1919). By the late twenties, Dressler was attempting to reverse her waning popularity. Marion contributed to her comeback by writing scripts tailored to Dressler's comic persona, The Callahans and the Murphys (1927) and Bringing Up Father (1928), both for MGM. In the early thirties, Marion was crafting roles for Dressler as she rose in popularity to become a major star at MGM. Marion wrote the scenario and dialogue of Min and Bill (1930) for which Dressler won a Best Acting Oscar. Other films for Dressler include Anna Christie (1930),Emma (1932), and Dinner at Eight (1933).

In Min and Bill, Dressler's Min has a turbulent, but loving, relationship with boyfriend Bill, played by Wallace Beery. Marion's screenplay fits Beery as well as it fits Dressler. Other screenplays for Beery include The Big House (1930), The Champ (1932), The Secret Six (1932), and Dinner at Eight (1933).

During the 1920's, Marion had written four scripts for Marion Davies, including Zander the Great (1925) and The Red Mill (1927). During the early thirties, Marion collaborated on four talkie scripts for Davies. Unusual for Davies, Going Hollywood (1933), co-starring Bing Crosby, is a musical comedy. Davies pairs charmingly with Crosby. The film has some fine songs, sung by Crosby. Davies does some modest singing and dancing.

Marion wrote for MGM's major stars, including Greta Garbo (Anna Christie (1930) and Camille (1936)), Norma Shearer (Their Own Desire (1929) and Smilin' Through (1932)), Jean Harlow and Spencer Tracy (Riffraff, 1935), and Ronald Colman (Cynara (1932)).

In 1933, Marion wrote the screenplay for Secrets, Mary Pickford's final film. It was nearly ten years after Marion had written the silent version of the story for Norma Talmadge.

In 1934, Marion was Oscar nominated for Best Writing, Original Story for a romantic drama, the offbeat boxing film The Prizefighter and the Lady. The film starred champion heavyweight boxer Max Baer in a love triangle with Myrna Loy, the mistress of crime boss Otto Kruger.

In the later thirties and through the forties, Marion wrote few credited scripts. She was uncredited on a variety of scripts for which she presumably offered advice. These later scripts included The Good Earth (1937), a melodramatic story adapted from a Pearl Buck novel of peasant life in China; the musicals Maytime (1936), starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, Rosalie (1937), starring Eddy and Eleanor Powell, Presenting Lily Mars (1943), starring Judy Garland, The Pirate (1948) Garland and Gene Kelly, the romantic drama Without Love (1945), starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Hoodlum Saint (1946), starring William Powell and Esther Williams, and the historical adventure Northwest Passage (1940), starring Tracy.

She wrote the story and screenplay for Molly and Me (1945) which stared Gracie Fields and Monty Woolley. The screenplay was based on Marion's novel Molly, Bless Her, (1937). The novel was Marion's idea of what might have happened if Marie Dressler had accepted a position as a housemaid.

Marion's final scripted film was The Clown (1952) a melodramatic story of a clown who is attempting to gain the love of his son. Directed by. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard and starring Red Skelton, with a script by Marion based on her own Oscar-winning The Champ, The Clown is a turgid melodrama about a former Ziegfeld top comic who has been reduced to a comic in burlesque.

Personal Life

Born in San Francisco, at age 19 Frances Marion began her writing career as a cub reporter for the San Francisco Examiner.

During World War I, she was sent to France by the Committee of Public Information, a wartime government agency, to write about women's war activities. Commissioned by General John J. Pershing to cover battles, she became the first woman war correspondent. At the Armistice, a Red Cross truck took her to Coblenz on the Rhine, opposite where the US Army of Occupation had established its headquarters. She was the first woman to cross the Rhine into occupied Germany.

During her forty years as a film writer, begun in 1912, she wrote over 300 stories and scenarios. At the height of her career she was earning $17.000/week. She won consecutive Oscars for The Big House and The Champ and was nominated for The Prizefighter and the Lady. Wallace Berry (The Champ) and Marie Dressler (Min and Bill) won Best Actor Oscars from her scripts.

Marion wrote a book for prospective screenwriters, How to Write and Sell film Stories (1937). In 1972, she wrote her memoirs, Off with Their Heads, a Sub-comic Tale of Hollywood. She also wrote several novels, Valley People (1935), a story about an isolated California community, Molly, Bless Her (1937), a tale of what might have happened if Marie Dressler had become a housekeeper, Powder Keg (1953), an action story of women in prison. Molly, Bless Her was the basis of an amusing film, Molly and Me (1945).

Marion married four times, the first in 1906 at age 18. Marion married her third husband, western actor Fred Thompson, in 1919. Under the name Frank M.Clifton, she wrote scripts for his films. They had two sons, Richard G Thompson and Frederick C Thompson. Thompson died of pneumonia in 1928. She married George W. Hill, a prominent director, in 1929 and divorced in 1931.

Career Consideration

Frances Marion was a distinguished screenwriter during the silent film and early sound film eras. She collaborated with several major actresses, especially Mary Pickford and Marie Dressler, in writing scripts which reinforced their screen images. She won two Best Writing Oscars in the early thirties for scripts about strong men attempting to straighten out their misdirected lives.