.png)
Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Mary Eunice McCarthy
Mary Eunice McCarthy (March 4, 1899 – August 7, 1969) was an American screenwriter, playwright, journalist and author, perhaps best known today as the screenwriter of, and driving force behind, the biopic Sister Kenny (1946).
One of 13 children born to John Henry McCarty and Catherine Elizabeth Theresa Lynch, Mary graduated from Star of the Sea Parish High School in 1917. She then attended College of the Holy Names before embarking on a career as a journalist in the Bay Area. One of her positions in the early 1920s was as a reporter at The San Francisco Bulletin.
Around 1921, McCarthy followed her brothers to Hollywood, where she worked at an advertising agency while trying to teach herself the fundamentals of screenwriting. Between 1925 and 1957, she wrote a number of films and at least two stage plays—the latter of which also featured the playwright, under her married name Mary Boyle, in the lead role. During this period, McCarthy lived in Los Angeles but frequently traveled to San Francisco for work. McCarthy also wrote two nonfiction books: Hands of Hollywood was published in 1929, while Meet Kitty (a memoir about her mother) was published in 1957. That same year, both Matinee Theater and O. Henry Playhouse featured new McCarthy teleplays.
In 1939, a syndicated profile/interview highlighted McCarthy's "pet dislike at present," paraphrased by UP's Alex Kahn as "the so-called Hollywood 'Intellectuals' who, she says, try so hard to be different and become so utterly confused." Quoted directly, McCarthy continues:
What they need to do is to look more closely at the fundamentals of American life, sympathetically, not with intent to "commit a message."
Aside from foreshadowing the anti-message 'message' of Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels, McCarthy's gripe also sheds light on a script she had recently completed and another she would soon begin, namely Irish Luck (1939) and Chasing Trouble (1940), vehicles designed for the newly minted, interracial comic team of Mantan Moreland and Frankie Darro (the latter having previously been singled out for praise in McCarthy's Hands of Hollywood). Despite playing the duo's nominal leader, Darro's leadership is typically so compromised by harebrained schemes and arcane, questionable methodology—in effect, "try[ing] so hard to be different"—that he can scarcely help but "become utterly confused." Moreover, while it is unclear to what extent, if any, she herself was responsible for the Moreland-Darro pairing, the following excerpts from McCarthy's 1957 biography of her mother provides a useful reference point, regarding "the fundamentals of American life" as practiced and preached in the McCarty/McCarthy household.
"I don't like the word tolerance. It sounds stuck up". It was a little old lady speaking, very little and quite old. Her name was Kitty, and she was my mother. "There ain't any respect in tolerating," she continued, the blue of her eyes grown darker with indignation. "That's just putting up with them, like with bad plumbing when you can't afford to move..." [...] She did not "tolerate" the Negro or the Asiatic, the Protestant or the Jew, despite their racial or religious difference. Instead, she respected every human being equally, because she thought Thomas Jefferson had meant every word of the Declaration.
Reviewing Meet Kitty for The New York Times, Ernestine Gilbreth Carey wrote:
Hub AI
Mary Eunice McCarthy AI simulator
(@Mary Eunice McCarthy_simulator)
Mary Eunice McCarthy
Mary Eunice McCarthy (March 4, 1899 – August 7, 1969) was an American screenwriter, playwright, journalist and author, perhaps best known today as the screenwriter of, and driving force behind, the biopic Sister Kenny (1946).
One of 13 children born to John Henry McCarty and Catherine Elizabeth Theresa Lynch, Mary graduated from Star of the Sea Parish High School in 1917. She then attended College of the Holy Names before embarking on a career as a journalist in the Bay Area. One of her positions in the early 1920s was as a reporter at The San Francisco Bulletin.
Around 1921, McCarthy followed her brothers to Hollywood, where she worked at an advertising agency while trying to teach herself the fundamentals of screenwriting. Between 1925 and 1957, she wrote a number of films and at least two stage plays—the latter of which also featured the playwright, under her married name Mary Boyle, in the lead role. During this period, McCarthy lived in Los Angeles but frequently traveled to San Francisco for work. McCarthy also wrote two nonfiction books: Hands of Hollywood was published in 1929, while Meet Kitty (a memoir about her mother) was published in 1957. That same year, both Matinee Theater and O. Henry Playhouse featured new McCarthy teleplays.
In 1939, a syndicated profile/interview highlighted McCarthy's "pet dislike at present," paraphrased by UP's Alex Kahn as "the so-called Hollywood 'Intellectuals' who, she says, try so hard to be different and become so utterly confused." Quoted directly, McCarthy continues:
What they need to do is to look more closely at the fundamentals of American life, sympathetically, not with intent to "commit a message."
Aside from foreshadowing the anti-message 'message' of Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels, McCarthy's gripe also sheds light on a script she had recently completed and another she would soon begin, namely Irish Luck (1939) and Chasing Trouble (1940), vehicles designed for the newly minted, interracial comic team of Mantan Moreland and Frankie Darro (the latter having previously been singled out for praise in McCarthy's Hands of Hollywood). Despite playing the duo's nominal leader, Darro's leadership is typically so compromised by harebrained schemes and arcane, questionable methodology—in effect, "try[ing] so hard to be different"—that he can scarcely help but "become utterly confused." Moreover, while it is unclear to what extent, if any, she herself was responsible for the Moreland-Darro pairing, the following excerpts from McCarthy's 1957 biography of her mother provides a useful reference point, regarding "the fundamentals of American life" as practiced and preached in the McCarty/McCarthy household.
"I don't like the word tolerance. It sounds stuck up". It was a little old lady speaking, very little and quite old. Her name was Kitty, and she was my mother. "There ain't any respect in tolerating," she continued, the blue of her eyes grown darker with indignation. "That's just putting up with them, like with bad plumbing when you can't afford to move..." [...] She did not "tolerate" the Negro or the Asiatic, the Protestant or the Jew, despite their racial or religious difference. Instead, she respected every human being equally, because she thought Thomas Jefferson had meant every word of the Declaration.
Reviewing Meet Kitty for The New York Times, Ernestine Gilbreth Carey wrote: