Dr. Rosanne Welch

Rosanne Has A Chapter In A New Screenwriting Collection About Dorothy Parker And A Star Is Born

It was lovely to fly home from a week of visiting cousins in Cleveland to find our mail deliverer had dropped off a copy of the latest book containing a chapter I wrote.  Once again, it’s the Screenwriting Research Network for the win, since it was a meeting with the 2 editors - Andrew Kenneth Gay and Ann Igelstrom - at one of our wonderful conferences several years ago that made it possible.  We ended up talking over the tea break or lunch, who remembers, about our research, and I ended up talking about one of my favorite early female screenwriters - Dorothy Parker - and Voila!  They invited me to turn that conversation into a chapter. And if you look at the other chapters and the international array of authors writing them, you’ll see how honored I am to be among them.

My chapter is called “Dorothy Parker: The Creative Genius Behind the Film Franchise “A Star is Born”.  I’ve been researching, reading and writing about Parker’s foray into Hollywood since writing my dissertation on “Married with Screenplay:  A Study Of Married Screenwriting Teams And The Films They Wrote” which covered the careers and filmography of Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, and Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.  

I hope you enjoy reading about the genius of Dorothy Parker - sometimes students don’t know that the most recent version of Star is Born, starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, is the 3rd remake of the 1937 original - and that the original did not include music at all.

As always, such academic texts are pricey - meant for libraries mostly - so if you’d like to read it, ask your college or local library to buy a copy, and then you’ll be providing it to all the other patrons of those libraries.

Empowered Women Ran in Her Family and Her Heroines: The Screenwriting Career of Tess Slesinger – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, May 2026

Though Tess Slesinger wrote only 12 films her contribution to classic Hollywood screenwriting and adaptation deserves focus.  Born on July 16, 1905 to Jewish parents of Hungarian-Russian heritage, Slesinger grew up with three older brothers on New York’s Upper West Side.  Her father worked in the garment world and her mother, Augusta Slesinger went from being a welfare worker to becoming a psychoanalyst and helping found the New School for Social Research. Slesinger learned talents from both of her parents’ professions to fuel her career writing short stories and eventually screenplays.

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Rosanne and Rose’s New Book on the Kraszna-Krausz Photography and Moving Image Book Awards List

This award “recognises individuals or groups of individuals who, in the opinion of the Judges, have made an outstanding original or lasting contribution to the art and practice of photography or the moving image through the medium of the book.“

From the Pasadena Playhouse to Warner Brothers, Paramount, and Disney: The Screenwriting Journey of Catherine Turney – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, April 2026

Though writer Catherine Turney was born (in 1906) and raised in Chicago, she and her parents moved to Pasadena in her later teens and that made all the difference.  At the age of 20, Turney began working for the School of Theatre at the Pasadena Playhouse where she eventually attended.  Turney graduated in 1931 and immediately began working on a play.  Bitter Harvest, the story of the controversial relationship between Lord Byron and his sister Augusta Leigh. It marked Turney as a writer of substance with an ability to adapt classics.

Various sources claim that director Dorothy Arzner at MGM then hired Turney to adapt an unpublished novel by Ferenc Molnár' into a vehicle for Joan Crawford. In the end the The Bride Wore Red credits went to Tess Slesinger and Bradbury Foote.  It was typical in the studio system – and before the existence of the Writers Guild - for several writers to be assigned the same project and the producer would decide who received credit in the end.

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Dr. Welch Interviewed for New Documentary on Gene Stratton Porter

On Tuesday, April 14th, our backyard became a studio with lights, a camera, and the action being me being interviewed about what work was like for women in early Hollywood.

Gould and his local crew set up in our plant-filled backyard as he wanted a natural setting for as many of his interviews as possible. Then we chatted about the many ways women helped found Hollywood, how tough that work was, and how the studio system mitigated women’s progress in the industry, which is one explanation for why so many people don’t know women like Gene Stratton Porter. Thanks to Todd’s documentary, soon they will, and I’m very proud to play a small part in bringing her work - and the work of many other early female screenwriters to greater audiences.

How Screenwriter Dudley Nichols Adapted Stagecoach 

I was pleased to be invited to make the Introductory Remarks before a screening of 1939’s Stagecoach, written by Dudley Nichols precisely for the opportunity to highlight the importance of screenwriting.  

While director John Ford is often the focus of discussions about the film, it is the work Nichols did in adapting a terse short story by Ernest Haycox that makes the film stand out.  Nichols expanded the backgrounds of and connections between all of the characters, thus creating a strong ensemble structure that many films have followed ever since. 

Learn more in my short lecture.

Great Review of Rosanne’s Chapter in “Stories of the Holocaust: Art for Healing and Renewal, Volume II: On Screen and in the Gallery”

This week, this review of the books came out last week.  I felt quite honored that out of over 20+ chapters, the Kirkus Reviewer chose to mention mine: 

“Dr. Rosanne Welch, executive director of the MFA program at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, offers a scholarly exploration of cinematic and theatrical representations of Anne Frank.”

A Master of Musical Romances: The Screenwriting Career of Dorothy Kingsley – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, February 2026

In honor of Valentine’s Day it’s time to celebrate a female screenwriter who managed to take bubble-gum parts for actresses and give them more gumption, gravitas, and giggles inside the light musical genre films she was assigned.

Born in New York City in 1909, Dorothy Kingsley could be called a nepo-baby as her mother Alma Hanlon became a silent film star a few years later. Hanlon acted for 4 years from 19150-1919. By then she had left her husband Walter J. Kingsley (press agent to Florenz Ziegfeld), married again and moved young Dorothy to Michigan.

Eventually, Kingsley found her way back into the industry but this time by moving herself and her 3 children to Los Angeles where radio was king. There she met Constance Bennett who like her mother had been a big silent film star in the 1920s but now hosted a radio show.  Bennett began buying Kingsley’s jokes for her monologues which lead to a place on the writing staff of the The Edgar Bergen Show.

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Trusted to Write for the Greatest Stars of the Silent Screen: The Screenwriting Career of Ruth Cummings – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, January 2026

Though born in 1894 in Washington, D.C., the family business was theatre, not the politics of President Grover Cleveland’s administration.  With an actor for a father - Henry Dupree Sinclair – the future Ruth Sinclair would also begin her career on the stage before turning to film, where she wrote for silent stars such as Lillian Gish, Greta Garbo, and Joan Crawford.

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Rosanne Presents “Creative Play #8: Emotional Monologues Written By A Few Accomplished Female Television Writers” – Screenwriting Research Network

I was pleased to be asked to host a session of the Creative Play Working Group of the Screenwriting Research Network (SRN), chaired by Professor Chris Neilan of Edinburgh Napier University.

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Dr. Rosanne Welch Presents on “Shaping Global Cultures Through Screenwriting” – Stephens College [Video]\

Recently, I was asked to make a short presentation to the faculty of Stephens College about the newest book I edited alongside my dear friend and Screenwriting Research colleague Rose Ferrell.  Shaping Global Cultures Through Screenwriting: Women Who Write Our Worlds.I was happy to discuss the inspiration for the book, which came from a conversation Rose and I had during a conference. That’s one of the best things about gathering for conferences - the casual conversations that create new collaborations.

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Sexual Liberation 1920s Style: The Screenwriting Career of Josephine Lovett – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, December 2025

In the Silent Era, before the existence of the Hays Code (and largely a cause for it), many female screenwriters wrote heroines who flouted the brazen sexual freedom of the new century, a specialty of Josephine “Jo” Lovett. Born in October 1877 in San Francisco Lovett would spend some time as a lead actress on the Broadway stage before moving to Los Angeles to both act and write what were called scenarios for the bulk of her career.

From Missouri to Musicals: The Screenwriting Career of Dorothy Yost – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, November 2025

Born on April 25, 1899 in St. Louis, Missouri to Alice Kern and Robert M. Yost, Dorothy moved to Los Angeles to work in the burgeoning film industry and clearly succeeded in that goal.  By the time she died in 1967 Yost had written over 80 films and achieved what many other writers did not – thriving in both Silent Films and into the Sound Era. Interestingly, it was her foray into film that brought her journalist brother Robert Yost into the film industry after she found her footing there. Her first screenwriting credit came in 1920, his in 1935 after some years on the staff of local newspapers, as publicity director for Fox West Coast Studios and finally head of the scenario department for Fox.

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Rosanne Interviewed on "TV We Love" on the CW

This season the CW has been airing a new documentary style series called TV We Love which has covers a popular TV show from each decade from I Love Lucy for the 1960s to Happy Days for the 1970s and Dynasty for the 1980s. The last of 8 episodes covered Touched by an Angel (where I served as a Writer-Producer for 6 years). I show up a few times in the hour, discussing writing for the show and why we think it still resonates.

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Book Recommendation: "The Last Secret Agent: My Life as a Spy Behind Nazi Lines” by Pippa Latour with Jude Dobson

It’s the story of Pippa Latour, the last surviving female radio operator who was parachuted into occupied France to travel from hidden radio to hidden radio, sending back information to help the Allies land in Normandy on D-Day. She wasn’t going to tell her story until her sons convinced her it would help people understand those times and the ultimate sacrifice many other radio operators made.

When Women Write What They Say, They Say So Much More: Powerful Actress-writer-producers Past, Present & Future with Dr. Rosanne Welch, SRN 2025, Adelaide, Australia [Video]

In another example of my love for a good, long, alliterative title, I name this year’s Screenwriting Research Network (SRN) presentation:

“When Women Write What They Say, They Say So Much More: Powerful Actress-writer-producers Past, Present & Future”.

It covers writers like Emma Thompson, who adapted Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, in which she starred as Eleanor, and Gertrude Berg, creator, writer, and star of The Goldbergs, and then everyone from Tina Fey to Issa Rae, to Mindy Kaling to Lena Waithe. This presentation discusses the way women writing their own characters, dialogue, and worlds into existence impacts the audience, the industry, and the way women are seen in society.