Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Power of Women in Hollywood

If you want to see a film that is a thorough biography of the great Hollywood writer, Frances Marion, then this TCM produced film might leave you a tad disappointed. After all, it's focused mostly on her film career and never mentions things like her first, second or even third marriages. However, as an overview of her work, it's quite good and well worth seeing.

The film focuses on the writing career of Marion. It begins with her as an actress who forged a lifelong friendship with Mary Pickford. Using this contact, Frances was able to being submitting scripts and soon was the highest paid writer in Hollywood. The film discusses a few of her great films, such as "The Big House", "Dinner at Eight" and "The Champ"--two of which garnered her Oscars. Then, the film follows her to the premature end of her career and her death several decades later.

The film is lovingly narrated by Uma Thurman and Kathy Bates provides the voice of Marion. Additionally, lots of wonderful interviews with the likes of Kevin Brownlow, Leonard Maltin and Jackie Cooper help to tell this intriguing story. A must-see for film students and folks like me who are nuts about classic Hollywood and its filmmakers.

Despite some excellent inroads, Hollywood today remains male-dominated, not only behind the scenes but in the scripts and the casting, right down to the extras. Geena Davis is conducting a study that will be released in February 2014, but having heard some of the statistics already, it's pretty shocking stuff. Here are a few: women buy 55% of film tickets; however, women directed 7% of the top 250 grossing films, wrote 8% of the top 250 grossing films, comprised 17% of all executive producers, 23% of all producers, 18% of editors, and 2% of cinematographers

So it's interesting to realize that early in film history, women actually dominated as writers, directors, and producers. Even Leonard Maltin doesn't know why it changed, but in the late '30s, it ended with a big thump.

This documentary tells the story of one of the greatest screenwriters of all time, Francis Marion, responsible for some great films, including "Anna Christie," "Dinner at Eight," "The Champ," "The Scarlet Letter" and many Mary Pickford films.

This is such a fascinating documentary about not only Marion, but the early power of women in film, their contributions, and their ultimate fall for power. For Marion, this happened due to the death of one of her great champions, Irving Thalberg, and it was about the same time that it happened to all of them.

Marion was not only talented, but generous, writing roles for friends who were out of work, such as Marie Dressler and Hedda Hopper.

The focus of the documentary is on her great friendship with Mary Pickford and her very happy marriage to Fred Thomson, who became an early western star and died tragically in 1928, leaving Marion with three young boys. However, the documentary does not talk about Marion's other marriages, a subsequent one to director George Roy Hill in 1930, which ended in 1933, and two marriages before she met Rex. It sort of makes it sound as if Mary and Marion were both single when they became friends; in reality, that isn't the case. I suspect, though I can't prove it, that although she was married to someone from 1911 to 1917, she was probably not living with her husband during all of those years.

The documentary contains some neat film footage and comments by Fay Kanin, Leonard Maltin, one of Marion's sons, and others.

Highly recommended, and a real eye-opener.

Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Power of Women in Hollywood (2000)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Turner Classic Movies documentary about screenwriter Frances Marion who was the highest paid writer in Hollywood for nearly three-decades. She got her big break by being the exclusive writer for Mary Pickford and after that she's go onto win two Oscars as well as write for nearly every major star working during that time. Her credits include THE BIG HOUSE, THE CHAMP, DINNER AT EIGHT, ANNA Christie and the silent masterpiece THE WIND. This documentary, narrated by Uma Thurman and Kathy Bates, does a great job at painting Hollywood during the silent era and into the early talkies. It was interesting learning how mostly women were working as writers and how much freedom they had as workers compared to how women were being treated throughout the rest of the country. I wasn't too familiar with Marion's personal life but hearing about the death of her actor husband was an interesting listen as were stories of her friendship with Pickford. The most fascinating part was how she would write screenplays for people she knew who needed the work. Fans of silent films will certainly want to watch this documentary, which gets shown on TCM once or twice a year.

Frances Marion is the centerpiece of this documentary, but it is in many ways the story of so many female pioneers in early Hollywood. Frances' career as a screenwriter spanned roughly two decades - 1915 to 1936. She did some work after that, but was basically forced into retirement after Irving Thalberg's death, when Louis B. Mayer, who then had all the power at MGM but really wasn't an innovator like Thalberg, failed to see the value of Frances Marion's work.

Frances Marion was born into a prominent family in San Francisco, but you might say she got her lucky break at age 17 with the great earthquake of 1906. Her family lost everything and she was free to go earn a living, no longer having to live up to society's expectations of immediately settling down to a marriage within her class. She traveled to Los Angeles to paint, but soon became fascinated with the movies. She arrived there about the time so many filmmakers were traveling west, trying to escape Edison and his hardball tactics and monopoly on the east coast. So Frances would paint by day for money to live on, and write scenarios by night to break into the business.

The documentary goes into great detail about her friendship with Mary Pickford and their collaboration, her marriage in 1919 to a Presbyterian minister who later became one of the biggest Western stars of the 1920's, and later his tragic early demise in 1928 at only age 38. Frances wrote the screenplays for many of the films that we remember from the 1910's through the early 1930's - "Stella Maris", "The Flapper", "Son of the Shiek" and "The Wind" in the silent era. She wrote the screenplays of some of the best of the early talkies - almost exclusively at MGM - "Anna Christie", "The Big House", "Min and Bill", and "The Champ" are among her credits. Ironically, the dawn of sound was a boon to writers such as Frances since it was much easier to convey ideas via words rather than gestures alone when writing a script. We all know the stories of what happened to many of the silent stars.

During the early 1920's she would have large meetings and social functions at what amounted to an Algonquin Round Table of Hollywood Women including directors, screenwriters, and actresses including the now almost forgotten Talmadge sisters.

The documentary talks about how all of this golden age of creativity in the film industry for women came to an end once the men realized that the film business was here to stay - about 1935, after the moguls had managed to make it through the transition to sound and the worst years of the Great Depression. Frances could have stayed on and done the clerical work MGM offered her after Irving Thalberg's death, but again, she worked on her own terms and decided to turn to sculpting and painting as an occupation rather than just correct the work of male screenwriters. She was already immensely wealthy and did not need the money.

I guess if I have one criticism of this documentary it would be how it gives a somewhat false impression of the friendship between Mary Pickford and Frances Marion. It says that the friendship changed and the collaboration ended after they both got married because before they were young single women and now they were married women - I'm almost quoting the narration. In fact, both Frances Marion and Mary Pickford were married women when they met. Frances was married twice before she met Fred Thompson, who most certainly was the love of her life. The first time was from 1906-1911, the second time from 1911-1917, so she was still married to husband number two when she met third husband Fred. Frances married a fourth time from 1930-1933, to George Hill, who directed several of her early sound films. All of her marriages but the one to Fred ended in divorce. This paragraph is not to criticize Ms. Marion at all. Her personal life is no reflection on her talent one way or the other, but this IS a documentary and it should stick to the truth. If the whole story is too complex to fit into the time allowed, then don't modify it for the purpose of romanticizing it.

Frances Marion shows us all what is necessary for success in any field in any age besides great talent - confidence, a willingness to make a gutsy move to prove yourself, loyalty to friends, and maybe, above all, likability, which Frances Marion surely had based on the memoirs of those who knew her. This documentary is definitely worth your time.