From Silents to Talkies to TV Lenore J. Coffee Did It All

Born in San Francisco in 1896, Lenore Jackson Coffee had an opportunity not given to many women, the chance for achieving higher education. Coffee attended college at Dominican College in San Rafael, California. Then as now, successful actresses were always on the lookout for new screenwriters and better scripts. In 1918, Coffee saw an ad in the Motion Pictures Exchange Herald. Vitragraph’s top star Clara Kimball Young ran a contest which Coffee entered – and won. Her scenario The Better Wife (1919) concerned infidelity and marital affection. Thus began this future Oscar-nominee’s fifty-year writing career. The script won her $100 and a one-year contract in Hollywood.

According to her 1973 memoir Reflections of a Hollywood Screenwriter, at the beginning of her career Coffee wore many writing hats. At MGM, she pitched already purchased stories to actors. At Garson Studios she served on set as a continuity girl and assistant director, and in the office as a reader giving notes to other writers. Eventually, she began writing title cards for films, writing her own scripts, and adapting novels. Coffee wrote two films in 1920 and two in 1921. Then began averaging 4-6 a year. Among the 3 in 1926, she adapted Romanian novelist Konrad Bercovici’s The Volga Boatman for Cecil B. DeMille. She also met and married another novelist, William J. Cowen, and sometimes director with whom she had two children.

In her nearly fifty-year career which broached Silents, Talkies and Television, Coffee received two nominations for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. One for Street of Chance in 1929/30, which she shared with Howard Estabrook; and one for Four Daughters (1938/39) which she shared with Julius J. Epstein. Coffee parlayed the glitz of the nomination into attention in the legitimate theatre where Family Portrait: A Play in Three Acts (1939), co-written with Cowen, enjoyed a run on Broadway.

Focusing on Hollywood and a contract at Warner Bros., Coffee wrote strong female leads so it was no surprise that Bette Davis appeared in her box office success: The Great Lie (1941) and Old Acquaintance (1943). During the 1950's she wrote suspense thrillers Sudden Fear (1952) and musical romances Young at Heart (1954).

In 1959 as film work slowed down and their play had earned a second run, this time in the West End, Coffee, Cowen, and their family moved to England and the burgeoning television industry. In 1955 they adapted their play as an episode of BBC Sunday Night Theatre.

After Cowen died in 1964 Coffee stayed several more years before returning to California and retiring to the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills where she died on July 2, 1984.

Research for this column comes from the book When Women Wrote Hollywood, edited by Rosanne Welch.

If you’d like to learn more about the women highlighted in this column, and about the art of screenwriting while earning your MFA, our low residency Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting is currently accepting applications.