Grace Cunard: Difference between revisions

At the time Cunard started working in films, it was not uncommon for members on set and in post-production to assume a variety of additional duties beyond their primary assignments.<ref>Gaines, Jane; Vatsal, Radha. [http://wfpp.columbia.edu/essay/how-women-worked-in-the-us-silent-film-industry/#New_York_California_Before_Hollywood_and_Hollywood_19071923 "How Women Worked in the US Silent Film Industry"], ''WFPP''. Retrieved May 5, 2020.</ref> Cunard was no exception. While it is now well documented that a significant number of the "pioneers" in early American filmmaking were women, it was still not common by the 1910s for a young actress with an eighth-grade education to write, perform in, direct, and edit films to the extent Cunard did, often doing all those duties on a single project. Totals vary in film references regarding the number of silent productions in which she worked. Her entry in the 2005 edition of ''The Encyclopedia of Early Cinema'' credits her with starring in over 100 silent films, writing screenplays or treatments for 44 of those releases, and directing at least eight of them on her own and more in concert with Ford.<ref name="Abel"/> Some period newspapers and trade publications credit her with writing between 150 and 200 "photoplays", while one newspaper in 1915 reported that she had authored 400 scenarios, a highly implausible figure given the amount of time Cunard had worked in motion pictures by then.<ref>Hamilton, Creighton (1916). [http://archive.org/stream/pictureplaymagaz04unse#page/n503/mode/2up "Famous Teams—and Why"], ''Picture-Play Magazine'', June 1916, pp. 46-47. Retrieved May, 6, 2020.</ref> <ref>"Grace Cunard Author of 400 Scenarios", ''The Sun'' (Baltimore, Maryland), September 12, 1915, p. 11. ProQuest Historical Newspaper.</ref> Whatever the true totals, news items and reviews of her completed films testify that her output was prodigious, especially between 1913 and 1918.

In 1915, Richard Willis interviewed Cunard for the July issue of ''[[Motion Picture Magazine]]'' and questioned the 22-year-old actress about the different tasks she had performed on film projects and which of those tasks she enjoyed most:{{quote|Honestly, I hardly know how to answer you...I love acting and am awfully fond of writing, too. As to the directing, [although] I have done a good deal of it and often put on a photoplay while Mr. Ford is cutting and assembling a picture, I believe that I best like it in the way I do it—that is occasionally. I hardly believe I would take to it as a steady diet. Later on, when I feel I am too old to take leads...I guess, I will direct entirely, because I will never give up Motion Pictures—I am too wrapped up in them. At the same time I am glad I do direct now and again, for I can say that I have tried every angle of the manufacturing end of the business, and, what is more, that I am conversant with every branch and can even cut and assemble a film, with appealing [[Intertitles|subtitles]], and have done so many times.<ref>Drew, S. Rankin (1915). [http://archive.org/details/motionpicturemag09moti/page/98/mode/2up "Chats With The Players / Grace Cunard, of the Universal Company"], July 1915, ''Motion Picture Magazine'' (New York, N.Y.), p. 99. Internet Archive. Retrieved May 2, 2020.</ref>}}