Guest: Jill Tietjen, Historian and Author; Barbara Bridges, Founder of Women+Film Festival; Co-Authors of “Hollywood: Her Story, an Illustrated History of Women and the Movies”
Here’s something we know for sure: The Oscar winner for Best Director will not be a woman. None of the women who directed successful and critically acclaimed films in 2019 – like Greta Gerwig for “Little Women” or Lulu Wang for “The Farewell” – were nominated. That’s not a big surprise since the Academy has only ever nominated five women for “best director” and only one has actually won it. But here’s something I bet will surprise you – back in the earliest days of Hollywood, the highest-paid director in the industry was a woman. In fact, women pretty much ran showbiz in the silent film era. What changed?