Cari Beauchamp masterfully combines biography with social and cultural history to examine the lives of Frances Marion and her many female colleagues who shaped filmmaking from 1912 through the 1940s. Frances Marion was Hollywood's highest paid screenwriter—male or female—or almost three decades, wrote almost 200 produced films and won Academy Awards for writing "The Big House" and "The Champ."

Cari Beauchamp is the coauthor of Hollywood on the Riviera(1992).

"I felt an almost subversive thrill reading about Frances Marion. . . Cari Beauchamp lovingly reveals the women who climbed to the very top of the Hollywood hierarchy in this richly researched excavation of complex lives. It is a revelation."—Lynda Obst, New York Times Book Review

"An impressively innovative work. . . . Solidly researched, thoughtfully argued, imbued with affection and respect for the women it profiles, this is a fine addition to the small shelf of movie books that actually have something to say."—Wendy Smith, Washington Post Book World

"[Marion's] story is an astonishing mini-history of the twentieth century. . . [She] knew everyone from Jack London to Irving Thalberg to William Randolph Hearst."—Jeanine Basinger, Los Angeles Times

Theatre Library Association Award, The Theatre Library Association

The basis for a major documentary on Turner Classic Movies, August 2000