Lenore J. Coffee
Lenore J. Coffee was a prominent American screenwriter born in 1896 in San Francisco, California. Initially aspiring to be an actress, she shifted her focus to writing after her parents' divorce and began her career in the film industry by winning a screenplay contest in 1919. Her first successful script, *The Better Wife*, led to a contract with Garson Studios, where she gained recognition for both creating original screenplays and rewriting existing films to enhance their commercial appeal. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Coffee became a sought-after writer, notably for her collaborations with renowned director Cecil B. DeMille and her work on films like *Chicago* and *The Bishop Murder Case*. She consistently provided strong, complex roles for women, contributing to the careers of actresses such as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in the 1940s. Coffee's later years saw her focusing on salvaging films rather than writing new scripts, with her last project being an adaptation in 1960. She also authored a memoir in 1973, sharing her experiences in Hollywood. Lenore J. Coffee's contributions significantly shaped early American cinema, particularly in crafting narratives that challenged gender norms.
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Lenore J. Coffee
Playwright
- Born: July 13, 1896
- Birthplace: San Francisco, California
- Died: July 2, 1984
- Place of death: Woodland Hills, California
Biography
Lenore Coffee was born in 1896 in San Francisco, California. She was the granddaughter of Andrew Jackson’s chief of staff at the battle of New Orleans. She and her parents were enamored with motion pictures and Coffee was determined to become an actress. Her father suggested she try to become a writer instead, and after an initial rejection of the idea, she turned to writing after her parents divorced.
She was working in advertising when she responded to a call for a script for Garson Studio’s actress Claire Kimball Young in the January, 1919, issue of the Motion Picture Exhibitor’s Herald. Such scenario contests, advertised in movie magazines, were common through the early decades of the 1900’s. Women were even targeted as “naturals” for screenwriting because of their letter-writing abilities. Coffee won the contest with The Better Wife, a story that was a perfect fit for the actress (a romance between an ingénue and an unmarried father) as well as the studio (the script could be filmed without additional reworking). On the strength of her entry, studio owner Harry Garson hired Coffee for fifty dollars per week for a year. In addition to writing new scripts, Coffee reworked already filmed movies to make them successful at the box office. She appeared in the film of her second original screenplay, The Forbidden Woman (1920).
In 1920, she worked with Bayard Veiller of Metro Studios for $250.00 per week. She churned out adventure movies such as Sherlock Brown (1922). However, it was her work “saving” films by writing or rewriting key scenes that made her sought-after by film moguls. In 1925, she saved the film Hell’s Highroad for Cecil B. DeMille, and he repaid her with a lucrative contract. Also, he produced her first feature screenplay, a melodrama titled The Volga Boatman, which was a box-office hit. One of her screenplays was for DeMille’s Chicago (1927). Coffee remains faithful to the original stage version by focusing on the moral corruption of the Jazz Age embodied in the murderess Roxie, but she added a prologue and epilogue. The latter strengthened the character of Roxie’s husband, Amos, who finally turns Roxie out in favor of a young housemaid. In 1926, she married William Cowan, DeMille’s assistant, and they had two children.
In 1930, Coffee wrote both the screenplay and the dialogue for MGM’s The Bishop Murder Case, as well as 1931’s Possessed, a film that boosted Joan Crawford’s career. In the 1930’s, she wrote many screenplays and saved films for Paramount. In the 1940’s she wrote three films for Bette Davis, The Great Lie (1941), Old Acquaintance (1943), and Beyond the Forest (1949), which helped to establish Davis’s career. She is best known for these films, as well as one for Barbara Stanwick, The Gay Sisters (1942). All of these films present powerful and unique roles for women that challenged the status quo of the time.
In the 1950’s Coffee saved more films than she wrote. Cash McCall, her 1960 adaptation of Cameron Hawley’s novel, was her final work. She wrote a memoir, Storylines: Recollections of a Hollywood Screenwriter (1973), and died eleven years later.