A screenwriter, novelist, labor leader, Hollywood insider, and feminist, Mary C. McCall Jr. was one of the film industry’s most powerful figures in the 1940s and early 1950s. She was elected the first woman president of the Screen Writers Guild after leading the unionization drive and secured the first contract guaranteeing a minimum wage and screen credit protection.
To screenwriters McCall was an “avenging goddess,” but to studio heads she was, in the words of one Hollywood executive, “the meanest bitch in town.” And after a clash with mogul Howard Hughes in the blacklist-era 1950s, she disappeared from the pages of Hollywood history. J. E. Smyth tells McCall’s remarkable story for the first time, spotlighting her trailblazing career, from her friendships with stars Bette Davis and James Cagney to her authorship of the hit Maisie series about a working-class showgirl to her deft political maneuvering and fight against entrenched sexism. Colorful and compelling, this biography provides a powerful account of how one extraordinary woman shaped golden age Hollywood.
Published by Columbia University Press September 3, 2024.
REVIEWS:
“Nearly legendary in her own time and largely forgotten in ours, Hollywood screenwriter/power player Mary C. McCall Jr. is long overdue for the significant biography J. E. Smyth has impressively provided. Impeccably researched and vividly written, this is a necessary and essential book.”
—Kenneth Turan, author of Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation
“In this brilliantly written book, Smyth restores Mary C. McCall Jr. to a male-dominated history of film from which she is glaringly absent. With encyclopedic knowledge and lively prose, Smyth crafts a thoroughgoing portrait of McCall’s life and oeuvre, documenting the challenges that women screenwriters and union leaders faced before the backlash of the 1950s ended so many of their careers.”
—Carol Stabile, author of The Broadcast 41: Women and the Anti-Communist Blacklist
“In this engaging biography, Smyth recognizes McCall as a key figure during Hollywood’s classical era. She provides a compelling inside look at the filmmaking machinery during Hollywood’s heyday and at the political forces that exerted continual pressure to regulate (both literally and figuratively) Hollywood’s depiction of American life.”
—Thomas Schatz, author of The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era
“Smyth’s fiery, page-turning biography tells the story of a true original.” — Pamela Hutchinson, Sight & Sound
“The book is a love letter from one writer to another, and a rallying cry to Hollywood to return to the principles of its true first lady.” — Times Literary Supplement
“McCall proves every bit as captivating and indomitable on the page as she was in life.” — Scott Eyman, The Wall Street Journal
“Though McCall is likely unfamiliar to most readers, her wit and swagger will grab their attention (during a labor relations meeting with Paramount executive Y. Frank Freeman, she blew cigarette smoke in his face and asked if his name was a rhetorical question), and Smyth makes a strong case that McCall’s contributions to the film industry have been unjustly overlooked. It’s a commanding reconsideration of a largely forgotten Hollywood power player.” — Publishers Weekly
“Smyth deftly spotlights a sardonically witty woman and film pioneer whose contributions are little known. Film students and biography readers will be delighted.” — Library Journal
“Smyth’s essential biography restores McCall to her rightful place as a trailblazer in the annals of Hollywood history.” — Booklist
“Historian J. E. Smyth’s new biography of McCall is a deeply researched account of not only the remarkable life of an early Hollywood screenwriter and organizer, but of Hollywood itself before and after unionization, a story of particular interest today amid the film industry’s current upheavals over technological change and declining working conditions.” — Jacobin
“Smyth’s point that McCall’s reputational oblivion is thoroughly undeserved is unassailable, and she is to be highly commended for writing an excellent biography.” — Film & History
In 2021, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named Smyth an Academy Film Scholar and awarded her a grant to complete McCall’s biography. See here for more information.
J. E. Smyth 