Women in Hollywood

The history of Hollywood is also a history of women working in the industry -- writing, directing, producing, and making highly successful films. Yet the role of women in movies, aside from their more visible on-screen presence, has largely been ignored. Indeed, female film pioneers co-founded studios, directed and wrote many early screen plays, and edited numerous box office blockbusters. Dawn B. Sova now tells the story of the women who shaped the Hollywood we know today -- from director Lois Weber, who in 1918 commanded the queenly sum of $5,000 a week, to the breakthroughs of the 1990's, when Sherry Lansing was named to head 20th Century-Fox, Dawn Steel ran Columbia Pictures, and actresses such as Jessica Lange, Goldie Hawn, and Sally Field formed their own production companies. In between, the battle was uphill most of the way. After the creative chaos of film's early days, conglomerates and industry rules limited whatever power women had created for themselves. It took eight decades for women to once again meet their male counterparts on equal ground. Women in Hollywood tells an indispensable and largely neglected chapter in the one-hundred-year history of Hollywood.