As we approach the holiday season, we are reminded of the Christmas movies that warm our hearts and have become movie classics.  Two specific examples are It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.  In this month’s newsletter, we focus on the actresses in the leading roles in those movies: Donna Reed and Natalie Wood.

The first time that a woman was nominated for Best Cinematographer in the nine decades of Oscar history was in 2018.  In that year, Rachel Morrison finally broke the gender barrier and received, but did not win, the nomination for the movie Mudbound.  In 1980, Brianne Murphy became the first female cinematographer to be invited to join the American Society … Read More

The Best Director Oscar was awarded for the first time at the inaugural Oscars in 1929. Since that time, only five women have been nominated for Best Director, with just one win. The first woman wasn’t nominated for Best Director until almost fifty years after the Academy Awards began – in 1977. That was Lina Wertmuller. The first woman to … Read More

Women film editors have excelled since the silent film era. One of the very first cutters (as editors were known in the early days), Oscar contender Viola Lawrence started her editing work in 1912 and later became supervising editor at Columbia Pictures. Oscar winner Anne Bauchens edited Cecil B. DeMille’s films from 1915 until 1956. Many women followed in the … Read More

Early women directors Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Weber and Dorothy Arzner developed significant techniques that are used in filmmaking today.  Let’s learn about these remarkable women in this month’s ENewsletter and their contributions to the movies.

Directors whose movies are nominated for Best Motion Picture Oscars or Golden Globes usually receive a similar nod for Best Director.  Surprisingly, Barbra Streisand was not nominated for a Best Director Oscar for Yentl and, similarly, Ava DuVernay did not receive a Best Director Oscar nomination for Selma.  In this month’s ENewsletter, we profile these two exceptional movie directors.

Welcome to the Hollywood:  Her Story ENewsletter.  When we started writing our beautiful book, Hollywood:  Her Story, An Illustrated History of Women and the Movies, we didn’t realize that we would find so many creative women as well as the important Hollywood back story.