Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood

This book reminds me of why I adore book research and nonfiction reading. Without Lying Down is fabulous and fascinating as it follows the life of Frances Marion, the most highly paid screenplay writers of early Hollywood. Back when she started in silent movies, women were everywhere in Hollywood, and for a big reason: movies were not regarded as a legitimate business enterprise. Women told the stories they wanted to tell, and to great success--for a while. As movies were increasingly censored, as the industry became bigger, women were shuttled off to one side.

Frances is an inspiration, truly. I first came to know her as one of the main characters in a novel called Girls in the Picture which focused on her close friendship with Mary show more Pickford. I loved getting to know her more in this book (one of the source books for the fiction piece). The title alone says so much about Frances as a person. The full quote is, "I spent my life searching for a man to look up to without lying down."

If you have any interest in early Hollywood, do yourself a favor and get this book. show less

It's hard for me to rate this book, because reading it was such a journey, and so different an experience from all the fiction I've been reading recently. Frances Marion lived a full, impressive, and inspiring life. She was linked with so many interesting people, many of whom I already knew a little about before reading this book, and some of whom were completely new to me. Her cohorts included Marie Dressler, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Irving Thalberg, Louis B. Mayer, Hedda Hopper, Greta Garbo, Joan Blondell, W.R. Hearst, Marion Davies, Clark Gable, Lillian Gish, Samuel Goldwyn, Jean Harlow, Joe Kennedy, Anita Loos, ZaSu Pitts, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Norma Shearer, Gloria Swanson, Norma Talmadge, and Lois Weber--and those are show more just the major players in the story! Needless to say, its riveting stuff, but it can also be tricky at times to keep track of everyone.

If you have any interest at all in early Hollywood and/or strong creative women, and you're in the mood for an expansive biography, this book, a breathtaking work of biographical scholarship, is a good choice. show less

Frances Marion was amazing. As with most biographies, though, I found myself getting depressed at the end as deaths became more frequent and the excitement, creativity, and freedom of being a pioneer in Hollywood died off as the studios grew in power.

frances marion is a model and a wonder .. of friendship, of partnership, of creative enterprise, of quietly and powerfully succeeding in what became the big monster production companies of hollywood. she was a founding mother. a creative genius. and this book has a genius title.

Interesting book

Cari Beauchamp masterfully combines biography with social and cultural history to examine the lives of Frances Marion and her many female colleagues who shaped filmmaking from 1912 through the 1940s. Frances Marion was Hollywood's highest paid screenwriter—male or female—or almost three decades, wrote almost 200 produced films and won Academy Awards for writing "The Big House" and "The Champ."