Women Film Pioneers Project

[greta de groat]

I was just checking in on the Women Film Pioneers Project, and observed that they now have a page of "Unhistoricized women film pioneers," which i take to mean that they are soliciting research on those ladies on the assumption that they worked in some capacity behind the camera as well as in front of it. They are divided by country, and i looked over the list for the US. It includes many names i've never heard of, but also some well known names such as Betty Compson, Barbara La Marr and Pola Negri.

It occurred to me that since a lot of folks in this group are researchers or in contact with other researchers, that someone might be interested in getting involved with this project--it is very academic and bureaucratic, but it's got a lot of great information and is a great opportunity to put your researching skills to good use and provide some documentation for a lot of well known and little known women.

The URL for the "unhistoricized" page with the unclaimed names is https://wfpp.columbia.edu/resources/unh ... -pioneers/

greta

[Hamilton's Grandson]

You probably never heard of Gertrude Brooke Hamilton but she wrote about 100+ fictional short stories and poems from @1905 to early to mid 30's. Her short story was adapted into the screenplay for the Hushed Hour 1918 which starred Blanche Sweet . My feeling is many of the names are not actresses directly and did have an important supportive capacity in the film industry. My mom mentioned to me that my grandfather was visiting his older sister Gertrude to say goodbye in 1918 just before he shipped out to join US forces in WW1 in France and his mother said she was in her writing studio trying to finish an important work and could not be disturbed. Who knows which important short story it was. Maybe she didn't realize that he may not have come back . I'm glad he did or I wouldn't be her. I have a bunch of information on her of late and will try to see if anyone is interested.