She Was the First Person to Win Two Oscars, & Got Paid More Than the Boys

If the recent WGA strikes that became among the longest in film history taught us anything, it's that making real money as a writer in the entertainment business is hard. One of the more uncomfortable misconceptions of the strikes was that writers (and, by extension, actors) didn't need to picket because the only ones people could call by name were rich and established, like Aaron Sorkin or Quentin Tarantino. But the reality is that writers have been among the most undervalued positions in the creative field, often at the mercy of entitled studio executives or praying for the protection of a powerful director who trusts them. This is still true, even after the strikes, so imagine how much harder it would have been to be an affluent screenwriter in the wild west days of early Hollywood. Let's make it more challenging: you're also a woman in an industry already rampant with patriarchy. Congratulations, you're Frances Marion, who still managed to become arguably the best-paid writer in Hollywood for half of the 1930s.