Frances Kavanaugh and B Westerns’ Women Writers

Abstract

Frances Kavanaugh’s story paints a different picture of 1940s Hollywood screenwriting than most academic histories. Fondly remembered as the ‘Cowgirl of the Typewriter’ by fans and aficionados of the American West, Kavanaugh wrote around thirty B Westerns for companies like Monogram and Producers Releasing Corporation. While more traditional scholarly studies will glance over her contributions, evidence of Kavanaugh’s Hollywood career can be found in the Writers Guild of America (WGA)’s records, multiple museums’ collections, periodicals and trades, as well as the recollections of her family and those who knew her. Through these sources popular histories provide us with a version of the American film past that helps us more productively imagine women’s work therein.