Dr. Rosanne Welch

Writer, Professor

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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.“

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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Various sources claim that director Dorothy Arzner at MGM then hired Turney to adapt an unpublished novel by Ferenc Molnár' into a vehicle for Joan Crawford.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.

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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.

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Knowing History and Writing for the “It Girl” Launched The Screenwriting Career of Ethel Doherty – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, March 2026Many of today’s screenwriters have come from the world of education so it could be said they are following the path laid out by Ethel Doherty in the 1920s and 30s. Born in Los Angeles in 1899 Doherty and the film industry grew up together. Her parents moved back and forth between Los Angeles and Arizona, so Doherty majored in history and graduated from Arizona State Normal School with plans to be a high school teacher.Back in Los Angeles she spent two summers at the University of Southern California (USC) and a third one at University of California. Her interest in the film industry meshed with Louise Long, a friend she met at USC, but like many aspiring screenwriters, even today, they needed to pay their bills so both women became high school teachers by day and collaborated on screenplays by night.Read Morehttps://rosannewelch.com/2026/03/19/scriptmag-doherty/

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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.”

https://rosannewelch.com/2026/03/02/holocaust-volume-2/

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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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#write #writing #writer #screenwriting #screenwriter #tv #television #film #women #video #speaking

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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.

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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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https://rosannewelch.com/2025/12/20/from-missouri-to-musicals-the-screenwriting-career-of-dorothy-yost-dr-rosanne-welch-script-magazine-november-2025/

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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.

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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.

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Eleanore Griffin’s Gentle Americana Style Earned the Oscar for ‘Boys Town’ – Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script Magazine, October 2025

Boys Town (1938) not only opened up a more dramatic career for child star Mickey Rooney, it made Spencer Tracey the first man to win 2 consecutive Best Actor Oscars and won Eleanore Griffin and her co-writer Dore Schary the Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story. The film also shared the story of Father Edward J. Flanagan, his mission to change the way America cares for children and families, and his philosophy that “there's no such thing as a bad boy” to the attention of millions around the world such that Boys Town is still in operation.

Born in 1904 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Oscar-winning screenwriter Eleanore Griffin began writing as a journalist in her twenties. The skill came in handy for the many historical stories she would later write.  In 1937 Griffin joined the writing pool at Universal Studios and turned out treatments with Time Out for Romance the first to become the basis for a completed film.  Similar to screenwriter Robert Riskin’s multiple-Oscar-winning It Happened One Night (1934) Griffin told the story of a runaway bride who falls in love with the man who helps her escape. She next earned Story By credit for having her short story Class Prophecy adapted into the film When Love is Young (1937) after being published by McCall’s magazine.

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