Credit at last for female screenwriter airbrushed from Hollywood history | The Guardian - 14 July 2024 |

To screenwriters in the 1950s, she was a major power player, fighting for pay rises and striking rights. To the Hollywood studio heads, she was "the meanest bitch in town".

Now, a new book aims to restore Mary C McCall Jr's reputation as one of the film industry's most important figures, a trailblazer who was airbrushed from history after getting on the wrong side of movie moguls.

McCall was targeted by right-wing men who didn't like the amount of power she had had during the 1930s and 1940s and they were going after her ...

"The Hollywood blacklist cleaned a lot of women out of the industry, and she was one. Then historians and film critics erased her, because all they've ever cared about is great male directors ...

At McCall's death in 1986, aged 81, archives did not even want her papers, and she has simply been forgotten. Material relating to women was just deemed not worthwhile."