Josephine Lovett

Birth : 1877-10-21, San Francisco, California, USA

Death : 1958-09-17

History

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Josephine Lovett (21 October 1877 – 17 September 1958) was an American scenario writer, adapter, screenwriter and actress, active in films from 1916 to 1935. She was married to Canadian-born director, John Stewart Robertson. She is best known for her then-risqué film Our Dancing Daughters in 1928. Her screenplays typically included a heroine who was oftentimes economically and sexually independent. Josephine, also known as Mrs. John Stewart Robertson, was born October 21, 1877 in San Francisco, California. Although she later returned to California, she temporarily moved to New York, New York, where she started her career as a successful stage actress at Haverly’s 14th Street Theatre, on Sixth Avenue. Her husband also worked as a stage actor briefly at Haverly’s 14th Street in 1903. Lovett worked as a stage actress from 1899-1906 and made a motion picture appearance as an actress in 1916. She played the character of “Rachel Blake” in the 1916 drama entitled The Ninety and Nine, directed by Ralph Ince at the Vitagraph Company. Prior to her involvement in the film industry, Lovett was a Broadway actress appearing in various plays from 1899 to 1915. One popular play was 1901's Tom Moore starring Andrew Mack. Josephine was one of the most prominent female writers of her time. She was known for her ability to capture female audiences while simultaneously appeasing censors. By doing so, she along with the other female screenwriters of her generation, helped elaborate the modernization of American mentality from Victorianism to the flapper. Her screenplays and scenarios consisted of sexually suggestive material, just skirting censors. She is best known for her 1930 Academy Award-nominated film Our Dancing Daughters, produced by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Company and novelized by Winifred Van Duzer. The 1928 drama was famous actress Joan Crawford’s breakthrough role, where she played Diana Medford, also known as “Dangerous Diana”, a young rebellious woman representing Lovett’s typical risqué content and visuals. The film’s plot surrounds the flamboyant and wild lifestyle of best friends Diana and Ann, who are in love with the same man. Critics and reviews mentioned the viewing of exposed “undies and much stocking”, and complained that “cocktails, flasks and mad dancing appear in quite a number of episodes [and] it is quite unnecessary to depict an intoxicated girl, as is done for a considerable length of this film”. Lovett and her husband collaborated for her final film, Captain Hurricane, in 1935. The RKO Radio Pictures-produced film was based on the life of a fisherman living in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Robertson ended his directing career later that same year with the film Our Little Girl, starring the famous Shirley Temple. Lovett and her husband retired to Rancho Santa Fe, California, where she assisted Robertson with the establishment of the Rancho Riding Club in 1945. Thirteen years later, Lovett died at the age of eighty in Rancho Santa Fe, on September 17, 1958, six years before her beloved husband’s death in 1964. The couple are buried at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Ontario, Canada.

Movies

The Road to Reno
Screenplay
An opera singer travels to Reno to divorce her rancher husband.
Captain Hurricane
Screenplay
Zenas Brewster is a seafaring man with a bad reputation. Notorious for his tempestuous nature, Brewster has earned the nickname of "Captain Hurricane." Brewster is smitten with neighbor Abbie Howland, but she doesn't like his temperament. After a period of retirement, a bad investment puts Brewster back at work on the sea. And when fire overtakes his ship, Hurricane proves heroic, selflessly rescuing his crew from a grisly and deadly fate.
Two Alone
Screenplay
Mazie, a poor orphan girl, is mistreated by cruel farmer Slag and his wife for whom she works. Mazie, who is growing into a woman, does not like they way Slag has been looking at her lately.
Jennie Gerhardt
Writer
This turn-of-the-century tragedy chronicles the sorrowful travails of a woman who endures a series of devastating losses.
Madame Butterfly
Screenplay
Pinkerton marries Cho-Cho San in Japan, whilst on shore leave. When he leaves, she keeps his Japanese home as he left it. He returns three years later, having married again in America, and tells Cho-Cho that their affair is over. She has had a child in his absence, who is sent to her family, before she kills herself.
Hot Saturday
Adaptation
A pretty but virtuous small-town bank clerk is the victim of a vicious rumor from an unsuccessful suitor that she spent the night with a notorious womanizer.
Thunder Below
Writer
Tallulah Bankhead's first Hollywood movie was this romantic-drama, in which she plays Susan, the unhappy wife of oil rigger Walt (Charles Bickford), who labors in a Central American oil field. The bored Susan falls in love with Walt's good friend Ken (Paul Lukas) but keeps her husband in the dark about her feelings... until he's plunged into darkness for real when he loses his eyesight. Susan finds her attentions then wandering yet another man, Davis (Ralph Forbes), and Ken urges her to return to Walt.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Writer
A young wife wants to have children, but her husband neglects her. She confides her longings to a handsome brain surgeon. Complications ensue.
Corsair
Screenplay
A stock market broker plans to liven up his boring life by taking up piracy on the high seas.
What a Widow!
Story
A young woman's elderly husband dies and leaves her $5 million. She travels to Paris and becomes part of the "Continental" set and is pursued by a rich playboy and a lawyer who works for her.
Our Modern Maidens
Screenplay
Young vivacious Billie uses her charms on influential businessman Glenn Abbott in hopes of getting her secret fiancée Gil a diplomatic appointment. Meanwhile Gil's affections meander to beautiful ingenue Kentucky, Billie's best friend.
Our Modern Maidens
Story
Young vivacious Billie uses her charms on influential businessman Glenn Abbott in hopes of getting her secret fiancée Gil a diplomatic appointment. Meanwhile Gil's affections meander to beautiful ingenue Kentucky, Billie's best friend.
The Single Standard
Adaptation
A bored socialite finds fleeting romance with an artist.
The Single Standard
Writer
A bored socialite finds fleeting romance with an artist.
Our Dancing Daughters
Story
A flapper sets her hat for a man with a hard-drinking wife.
The Bugle Call
Writer
The Bugle Call (1927)
Annie Laurie
Screenplay
The story of the famous battle between the Scots clans of Macdonald and Campbell, and the young woman who comes between them, Annie Laurie.
Shore Leave
Writer
"Bilge" Smith (Richard Barthelmess), a tough sailor, meets Connie Martin (Dorothy Mackaill), a seamstress in a small harbor who has never had a boyfriend. Connie is instantly smitten. She invites Smith to dinner, where he dances with her and gives her a kiss. Connie has a hard time letting him go, and makes him promise that he will come back.
Soul-Fire
Writer
Eric Fane (Richard Barthelmess) is a composer unwilling to compromise his dream for a steady job back home in the United States. After his studies in Italy, he moves to Paris, where he is forced to write popular songs for money when he stops receiving support from his father. He tires of selling out and, after an encounter with the mob, starts to travel. He begins a madcap journey from Paris to Port Said, Egypt, and to the South Seas, where he believes he has found love with Teita (Bessie Love).
New Toys
Writer
A young husband is left at home looking after a new baby when his wife leaves him to return to her career as a dancer.
Classmates
Writer
Duncan, the son of a village postmaster, is in love with Sylvia, daughter of a rich and snobbish family. He enrolls at West Point but ends up having a fist fight with Sylvia’s other suitor, Bert, his classmate at the academy.
The Enchanted Cottage
Writer
The Enchanted Cottage stars Richard Barthelmess as Oliver, a physically and emotionally wounded World War I veteran who comes home to a fiancée who promptly leaves him. Licking his wounds in solitude, he meets a young woman named Laura (May McAvoy). They fall in love and agree to marry, but unexpected and magical events occur inside The Enchanted Cottage where they have agreed to spend their wedding night.
The Fighting Blade
Writer
In the war-like times of Oliver Cromwell, in and around 'olde Oxford towne', Dutchman Karl Van Kerstenbrook, Dutch soldier-of-fortune and sword-for-hire, stands ready to defend his lady-love, the fair Thomsine Musgrove, and prove his nettle, and that his blade is made of the finest metal.
Outcast
Screenplay
A down-on-her luck streetwalker is ultimately redeemed by the love of a decent man.
Tess of the Storm Country
Writer
Wealthy Elias Graves builds his home on the top of a hill, where a group of squatters have taken up residence at the bottom. Many of the men in the squatters' village have their eyes on young Tess, and one of them, Ben Letts, frames Tess's father for murder. While maintaining her father's innocence, Tess must keep her love for Graves' son a secret, while caring for Elias' daughter's illegitamate child.
Tess of the Storm Country
Scenario Writer
Wealthy Elias Graves builds his home on the top of a hill, where a group of squatters have taken up residence at the bottom. Many of the men in the squatters' village have their eyes on young Tess, and one of them, Ben Letts, frames Tess's father for murder. While maintaining her father's innocence, Tess must keep her love for Graves' son a secret, while caring for Elias' daughter's illegitamate child.
The Spanish Jade
Writer
When a girl's lover kills her husband she offers herself to her father-in-law in exchange for his freedom.
Footlights
Writer
Exotic Russian actress Lisa Parsinova tires of her glamorous life on the New York stage and returns, under her actual identity as Lizzie Parsons, to her small New England hometown. But she is pursued by a young man who is in love with the famed Russian alter ego.
Footlights
Scenario Writer
Exotic Russian actress Lisa Parsinova tires of her glamorous life on the New York stage and returns, under her actual identity as Lizzie Parsons, to her small New England hometown. But she is pursued by a young man who is in love with the famed Russian alter ego.
Sentimental Tommy
Writer
Grizel is the daughter of the Painted Lady, who believes that her lover will one day return. Grizel is ostracized by the other children of the town. Tommy and his sister come to the town. Tommy is friendly, but Elspeth keeps her distance. When the Painted Lady dies, Dr. Gemmell makes Grizel his housekeeper. Time passes and after the doctor dies, Grizel, who is now twenty-one years old, loves Tommy, who is an author in London. Tommy visits the town but cannot decide whether he loves Grizel. Grizel knows that Tommy does not love her, and after he returns to London her unhappiness leads to insanity. Tommy returns and marries Grizel, although he believes that she will hate him when she gets better. After two years under Tommy's care, she regains her sanity. After Tommy lets her know that he cared for her out of his love for her; not for pity, Grizel is happy.
Away Goes Prudence
Story
Prudence, a young society woman and aviatrix, is forbidden to continue flying by her fiancé Hewitt and her father. In defiance, she stages her own kidnapping, but Hewitt discovers the ruse and arranges a real abduction to teach her a lesson. His plan backfires, and the kidnappers rob him and capture Prudence. In order to save herself, Prudence pretends to join the gang.