Cinema Retro has received the following press release from the University Press of Kentucky:
Lexington,
KY— She showed
Joan Crawford how to dress. She wrote the MGM Norma Shearer movies
and the
script for the film that made Clara Bow Hollywood’s “It Girl.†She
wiled
away the hours talking with a young John Huston, then working at
Warner
Brothers. For her 99th birthday in 1999, she published
her
memoir, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early
Hollywood. Eleven years later, Frederica Sagor Mass can now add
supercentenarian
to her long list of accomplishments.
On July 6,
2010, Maas celebrated her
110th birthday at the Country Villa health care center in
La
Mesa, California. Not having children of her own, she was joined by
her
grandnephew Tony Tovar and his family, as well as a chocolate cake,
per her
request. Maas’ monumental birthday makes her the second oldest
recorded
person in California, just behind 110 year-old Soledad Mexia, who is
11
months older.
Maas was a
journalism student at
Columbia University in 1920, when an ad for assistant to the story
editor
at Universal Studios caught her eye. She eventually became the story
editor
for the New York office, selecting plays, novels, and stories that
would
translate well to the screen. When the studio reneged on the promise
to
make her studio writer, she left New York and moved to Hollywood,
which was
still a relatively underdeveloped town. She sold her first script
almost
immediately and soon landed a coveted writing job at MGM. There at
the
commissary she would spend time with studio figures such as director
Erich
Von Stroheim and actresses Norma Shearer and Marion Davies.
The
Plastic Age (1925), starring
Clara Bow, was Mass’ first big success. After that, Maas worked on
several
other films with the starlet, including Dance Madness (1926),
Hula
(1927), and Red Hair (1928). For His Secretary (1925)
and The
Waning Sex (1926), Maas worked alongside her good friend and
actress
Norma Shearer. She also contributed to the films Flesh and the
Devil
(1926), Rolled Stockings (1927), and The Way of All Flesh
(1927).
Maas
remained down-to-earth amid the
outward glamour of Hollywood, knowing only too well how studio
politics
worked. After several years at MGM, Maas requested to be transferred
to
another production unit and was labeled a “troublemaker†as a
result. Maas
remembers, “What I did was a very big no-no. Producers might steal
from one
another and stab each other in the back, but when it came to dealing
with
dissatisfied, unhappy writers, producers were fraternal brothers who
stuck
together—especially when some lowly writer challenged their
sovereignty.†Studio
troubles, combined with an FBI investigation during the red scare of
the
1950s, force Maas to work on more freelance projects and eventually
led her
to start a new career in insurance.
During her
film career, she survived
the transition from silent film to sound and then from
black-and-white to
color. She lived through two world wars, the Depression, the
McCarthy era,
and eighteen different presidencies. Maas has witnessed over a
century of
history, and this birthday another milestone to add to a long list
of life
experiences.
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