Continuing to Support the Writers Strike with a Look at the First Female President of the Screen Writers Guild: Mary C. McCall Jr.

When Victoria Riskin became President of the Writers Guild of America, West in 2001 many people referred to her as the first female to be elected to that position. They were wrong, another example of how important it is to know our history - or her-story in this case. In 1942 a screenwriter named Mary C. McCall Jr. was the first woman ever elected president of the predecessor group which was called the Screen Writers Guild (SWG). McCall had been involved in the idea of a labor collective for writers since the 1930s when she joined a group of other writers to form the original guild – the Screen Writers Guild.

Born and raised in New York City, McCall attended Vassar College for undergrad and Trinity College (Dublin) for her post-grad work. She began writing a novel called The Goldfish Bowl while also working a day job in advertising. As was typical for novelists, Warner Bros bought the film rights, hired a different screenwriter to do the adaptation, yet hired McCall as a screenwriter to adapt other writers’ works.

McCall is most known for her work adapting the book, Dark Dame, into the “Maisie” film series which starred Ann Sothern. The series ran through 10 films and McCall Jr. wrote 8 of them between 1939 and 1947. In 1935 she adapted Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream that starred (among others) Olivia de Havilland, James Cagney, and Mickey Rooney as Puck. That same year, as a member of the Executive Board of the Guild, she helped negotiate a contract that included a wage increase from $40 to $125 per week for screenwriters.

In 1936, Dorothy Arzner, a prominent female director whose career had begun in the Silent Era, wanted a strong writer to adapt Craig’s Wife, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by George Kelly (fun fact – he was Grace Kelly’s uncle). Arzner hired McCall and their collaboration created a hit film and a lifelong friendship that included McCall being asked to write a speech for Arzner's retirement party in the mid-1940s. Craig’s Wife starred major players Rosalind Russell, Billie Burke and Thomas Mitchell and received solid reviews.

In 1942, on the strength of her contribution to the previous contract negotiations, the SWG membership elected McCall to the presidency in appreciation for her work, so strong she ran unopposed. Concurrent with those duties, she also served as the West Coast head of the war activities committee of the motion picture industry. That duty to country, however, seemed to be forgotten when in the post-war Red Scare in 1954 McCall Jr. found herself in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Someone had reported her as a communist sympathizer but in the end, she was exonerated.

After her first election, the SWG members voted her into two more terms after which she joined the WGA executive board for eight additional years. By the 1960s her job offers came mostly from the new medium of television and she collected credits on such fare as Sea Hunt, and I Dream of Jeannie. For Gilligan's Island, McCall penned the classic episode “Hi Fi Gilligan” which involved an accidental blow to the head that causes Gilligan's mouth to become a radio receiver. That was her last writing assignment before retiring due to ill health.

McCall died in 1986 while residing at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills.

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