On Camera and Behind It – The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin

With its historical perspective, this novel, a fictionalized version of the friendship between silent film star Mary Pickford and the screenwriter/director Frances Marion, offers unique insights into the lives of two women of influence in the early years of the movie business, and presents portraits of some of the other screen personalities, writers, directors and studio owners, some flattering, some far less so.  

Even though the chapters alternate between Pickford and Marion, Marion is really the heart of the story, and to me, as a fellow writer, the more interesting personality. The chapters about her work in Hollywood, her experiences in World War I as a journalist who planning (and later producing) a film about the women who served in the war, and her relationship and marriage to her husband, Fred Thomson, a minister turned screen cowboy, were very compelling. Marion, who wrote over 300 screenplays and won two Oscars, is one of the subjects of the Women Film Pioneers Project at Columbia University, https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-frances-marion/. She also published a number of books, including a memoir, Off With Their Heads!: A Serio-Comic Tale of Hollywood, which was later made into a documentary film. 

Pickford was depicted as very guarded, since her success and reputation was dependent on her screen and public image. I found her difficult to like, and although she supported her mother, sister, brother, and niece financially, she appeared overly attached and childlike in her relationship to her mother. It seemed that she was never really able to leave her past behind and move forward, and was also exceptionally emotionally dependent upon her second husband, Douglas Fairbanks, who eventually divorced her. The other, and very informative, side of Pickford depicted in the book was her business and professional acumen. She was one of the founders of United Artists studios, and of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. 

I originally read this book in hardcover format, but enjoyed it even more as an audio book, read by Broadway actress Kimberley Farr, who has been the reader of many other audio book productions.

An Italian Wife by Ann Hood

From my Goodreads review:

Started strong, with an introduction to the central character and matriarch of the family, Josephine. We meet her as a young girl in Italy who is unhappily wed in an arranged marriage, left behind, and then sent-for several years later by her husband, who has gone to America to improve his chances, and settled in Providence, RI.

The structure of the book is very interesting... as the all the characters are linked by their family connections, yet each one is distinct. This is not a family saga that starts out with poverty and ends as an American success story. There are a lot of dark tales here, and this is not the comforting read about the Italian-American experience that you might find from other authors. Still, it is compelling and explores themes of loyalty, sexuality, grief and anger through original characters. I'll be looking at some other works by Ann Hood – I'd like to get to know her better.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/12270027-joan">View all my reviews</a>

New York, I Love You – Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney

This absolutely wonderful novel chronicles the lifetime of Lillian Boxfish, a woman in her 80s, as she looks back over her life and career as a pioneering woman in advertising...long before Mad Men came along.

Lillian, talking with her overbearing son by phone from her Manhattan apartment, proceeds from her dinner plans to a walk that will take her past haunts old and new. The time is December 31, 1984 – and New York has not yet entered the glossy, cleaned-up state it is in now. There is still a great deal of street crime, AIDS is rampant, and less than two weeks before, Bernhard Goetz had shot four Black teenagers in the subway, provoking outrage, fear, and anger, along with a city-wide debate on his actions, gun ownership (legal and otherwise) and causing great turmoil in general.

Through the night, Lillian traverses the city, interacts with the people she meets, and observes the sights and sounds around her. In between the chapters that describe her walk, she reminisces about her experiences as a young woman, who first came to New York in 1926, and never left.

I knew and well remember the New York of the 80s, having arrived in 1979. It was a little dangerous, you had to watch your back (literally) as you traversed the streets, but it was vibrant, alive, and quirky. This book brings that all back to me in the best of ways.

Lillian Boxfish recalls the life of Margaret Fishback, who began her career in advertising at Macy's, and ultimately went on to become the highest-paid woman in her field. She later became a published poet whose poetry appeared in the most prestigious magazines of the mid twentieth century, and later in anthologized volumes of her work.

Aspiring Young Women Writers

Revisiting the 1979 film My Brilliant Career, based on the 1901 book by Australian writer Miles Franklin, about the author's path to publishing her first novel, got me to thinking about other aspiring young women writers of the 19th and early 20th century. I have fond memories and a strong identification with some of those authors, the characters that populate their novels and stories, and appear, perhaps, in subsequent film adaptations.

The first author that comes to mind in this category is Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women and other classics. Just in case you have forgotten (or somehow never read it), the leading character in Little Women is Jo March (based on Alcott herself), and the setting is Massachusetts, during the period of the Civil War. The feisty Jo longs to publish a novel, reads everything she can get her hands on, and behaves somewhat unconventionally for a young woman of her time. How many girls and young women have aspired to a literary life because of Alcott's Jo, even though she ultimately chooses a happy family life over a writing career? I kept rooting for Jo to also get that book written and published, even though she married the delightful Professor Bhaer, had a family and ran a school. But that was the nineteenth century, after all, and we have seen some changes since then!