Frances Harmer

Frances Harmer (1858 – January 1927) was an English-born writer of short stories and a screenwriter in Hollywood, known as the "Little Mother of the Movies".

Frances Harmer, from a 1922 publication.
Frances Harmer, from a 1921 publication.
One Wild Week lobby card, crediting Frances Harmer

Early life

Frances A. Harmer was born in England. She moved to the United States as a young woman,[1] and worked as a teacher.[2]

Writing

Harmer lived in New York City, and then in Los Angeles, California. She wrote under several pseudonyms.[2] Published short stories by Harmer included "The Cheat" (1907), "Losing to Win" (1908),[3] "Counting Love's Toll" (1908), "When Love is Lord", "A Newport Nobody",[1] "The Test", "The Wooing of Sheilah", "Hidden Gold" (1910), "The Helping Hand" (1913), "Both Fair and Good" (1913),[4] "The Lame Boy's Gift" (1914),[5] "The Transient" (1914),[6] "The Gift of Speech" (1914),[7] "The Painting of Perdita" (1915), "A Pair of Pink Shoes" (1915), "While His Mother Was Away" (1916),[8] "The Girl He Left Behind Him" (serialized, 1917),[9] "The Honorable Roy Carteret" (1917), "Managing Miriam" (1917), "The Portrait" (1917), "Peggy Steals a Week" (1917), "The Mentor and the Maid" (1918), and "The Backward Path" (1918).[10] A story by Harmer was the basis for the Bebe Daniels film One Wild Week (1921, now lost).[11]

Hollywood

Harmer was called "Little Mother of the Movies".[12] She worked at the Famous Players-Lasky studio as head of the reading department, evaluating scripts. Later she was "literary assistant" to William C. de Mille,[13] and adapted stories for the screen. She was described as "a little white-haired old lady, simply dressed in gray" in 1921.[14] She described the challenges of reading scripts in the silent era in a 1922 essay: "Too few writers, whose laurels are yet to be won, are able to visualize – to look at a blank wall and see thereon the figures of their characters in Moving Action."[15] Elsewhere, she also discussed the problem of hopeful screenwriters attaching their names to existing well-known theatrical scripts, saying "People seem to think we moving picture people have never read, seen, nor heard anything."[16]

In 1922 she wrote an open letter in the aftermath of William Desmond Taylor's murder, insisting that "Hollywood is not a hotbed of iniquity or a 'Sodom and Gomorrah,' nor at all worse than any other city."[17]

Personal life

Frances Harmer retired in 1924, and died in 1927, aged 68 years (though her age was frequently exaggerated in newspapers), in New York City.[2][12]

gollark: Apparently by texting numbers you can send payments, on mobile phones. What UTTER IDIOT thought that that was a good and secure idea?
gollark: The phone system is seemingly a weird horrible mess.
gollark: Apparently pirates had the eyepatches to be able to switch to a dark-adapted eye to see belowdecks.
gollark: They totally are. They randomly stop focusing right for some reason. They've apparently got the light sensitive bits and nerves the wrong way round.
gollark: > we probably got fukd because humans have probably been through several genetic bottleneck eventsThat's no excuse for some things like poorly designed eyes which are common to basically all hominids.

References
  1. "Writers of the Day" The Writer (November 1919): 170-171.
  2. Alma Whitaker, "Sugar and Spice" Los Angeles Times (November 8, 1925): 28. via Newspapers.com
  3. Frances Harmer, "Losing to Win" The New Broadway Magazine (June 1908): 383.
  4. Frances Harmer, "Both Fair and Good" Hearst's Magazine (September 1913): 337-343.
  5. Frances Harmer, "The Lame Boy's Gift" Christian Register (January 1, 1914): 16.
  6. Frances Harmer, "The Transient" Christian Register (April 2, 1914): 328.
  7. Frances Harmer, "The Gift of Speech" Christian Register (April 23, 1914): 400.
  8. Frances Harmer, "While His Mother was Away" Ottumwa Tri-Weekly Courier (April 22, 1916): 6. via Newspapers.com
  9. Frances Harmer, "The Girl He Left Behind Him" Farm Journal (October 1917): 539.
  10. Frances Harmer in The General Fiction Magazine Index.
  11. Kenneth White Munden, ed.,The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, Part 1 (University of California Press 1997): 572. ISBN 9780520209695
  12. "Frances Harmer, 'Little Mother of the Movies', Dies" Los Angeles Times (January 5, 1927): 16. via Newspapers.com
  13. "After the Show" Greensboro Daily News (November 11, 1921): 3. via Newspapers.com
  14. "A White-Haired 'Child of Promise'" Photoplay (October 1921): 25.
  15. Frances Harmer, "Common Faults in Continuity Writing" The Photodramatist (May 1922): 11-12.
  16. "H. H. Van Loan's Own Corner" The Photodramatist (December 1922): 31.
  17. "Defends Films and Hollywood" Hollywood Citizen (February 17, 1922).
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