Frederica Sagor Maas--111 years old and a La Mesa, California resident--is considered a "supercentarian," the second oldest person in California, and the 18th oldest in the United States. She is also one of the last surviving personalities from the silent film era.
In 1999, Maas published a celebrated memoir, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (University Press of Kentucky). In it, she recalled her remarkable life both in and out of Hollywood, where she worked as a screenwriter during the silent and early sound era.
Born on July 6, 1900 in New York City, Maas grew up with the century.
"My mother was a graduate of Moscow State University in the early 1880's," wrote Maas, the daughter of Russian immigrants. "She had also been a piano student at the Moscow Conservatory of Music and aspired to be a concert pianist until Anton Rubenstein, who was head of the conservatory and one of her teachers, told her that her hands were too chubby, her fingers too short, for her to hope for a soloist career." In her memoir, she recalls that another of her mother's teachers was Tchaikovsky.
At age 19, Maas was an aspiring writer working as an errand girl when she spotted an ad for an assistant story editor at a movie studio. She applied, got the job, and her career in film was born.
Maas learned to be a scriptwriter by studying the movies, and also by observing the greats at work. It was while she was with Universal that she daily "encountered a gaunt figure, Eric von Stroheim, who was editing his film Foolish Wives. I would often sit in the cutting room and make suggestions to the half-crazed man, who felt that every foot of film he shot was sacred."
Four years later, the lovely young Maas (then known as Frederica Sagor) moved to Hollywood to work as a scriptwriter, first for Preferred Pictures (she had been hired by B.P. Schulberg, who wanted to turn her into an actress a la Theda Bara), then MGM, and later for the Fox and Paramount studios. Mass was considered an important screenwriter, her name was sometimes featured in movie advertisements, and her comings and goings between studios was reported in the newspapers of the time, including the Oakland Tribune.
Maas' first big success as a screenwriter was The Plastic Age (1925), a smash hit starring Clara Bow, the "It girl." Maas' screenwriting and story efforts - sometimes credited, sometimes not - include other Bow films, a couple of films featuring her once good friend Norma Shearer (they drifted apart after Shearer fell in love with Irving Thalberg), the sensational Garbo film Flesh and the Devil (1926), and the now lost Louise Brooks film Rolled Stockings (1927).
Maas' memoir makes a point of claiming credit for work on films from an era when credits were not always given - and sometimes stolen. In her book, Maas claims that the original story behind the Academy Award-winning film The Way of All Flesh (1927) belonged to her and her husband.
Because she was a woman, Maas was usually assigned comedies or light dramas. Her most serious-minded script, "Miss Pilgrim's Progress," concerns the invention of the typewriter and how it enabled women to enter the work force. It was transformed into a Betty Grable musical, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1938). It was Maas' last realized screenplay. Her book describes it as her greatest success and greatest failure.
Maas and her husband were ardent Democrats and supporters of Franklin Roosevelt. However, because of their left of center leanings and the fact that they had at one time subscribed to a couple of leftist periodicals, they were investigated by the FBI during the red scare of the 1950's. These later years proved to be hard times for the once celebrated couple.
In July of 1999, Maas visited San Francisco to promote her 316-page memoir, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim. It was a nostalgic visit, as she and her husband were married and had honeymooned in The City and had over the years spent time in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the time, Maas was nearly blind, and at her first ever bookstore author event agreed instead to be interviewed about her remarkable life.
At that memorable evening, Maas told many stories, including one about Joan Crawford, who was then known as Lucille LeSueur and was just starting in Hollywood.
As an experienced Hollywood insider, Maas was assigned by the studio to greet the young actress at the train station. She did so, but found the young actress rather uncouth. LeSueur, seeing Maas as a person of experience and sophistication, nevertheless asked the well-dressed scriptwriter to help build her wardrobe and shape a glamorous image. Maas agreed, but found the experience challenging. She thought Crawford a "tramp." The assembled crowd howled with laughter.
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