Writing Successful Films into her 60s? Zelda Sears Did It!

In the decade between 1924 and 1934 Zelda Sears earned credits on over 27 films for everything from having one of her plays adapted to adapting her own theatrical scripts to writing original scripts directly for the screen.

Born Zelda Paldi in 1873 in Brockway Township, Michigan she made her way to Broadway as an actress first, as many women did – and often still do. Since her father, Justin Lewis Paldi had immigrated from Italy the family spoke three languages in their home - Italian, English, and French. Her ability to write helped the family financially from the time as a 12-year-old when she won an essay contest for a local store. The prize - a job as a runner for the store, her first job. At night, Sears studied secretarial skills which earned her a promotion but when she told the boss she really wanted to be a writer, he shifted her to the other business he owned – a newspaper.

Newspaper work took her to Detroit and then Chicago where she interviewed the famed actress Sarah Bernhardt and ended up being cast into the company. The switch of careers brought her to New York and marriage with another actor, Herbert Sears, whose name she would keep beyond the three years their marriage lasted. By then she was acting by night and working as a script doctor to playwrights she had befriended by day. Naturally, that lead to writing her own plays, beginning with Lovers Lane in 1901. Sears spent the next 20 years working as both an actress and playwright in New York, often specializing in playing old maids even when she was only in her forties. Then Hollywood drew her attention.

In 1924 married screenwriters Hope Loring and Louis D. Leighton (who you’ve read about) adapted a play the 41-year-old, Sears had co-written with Dodson Mitchell into the film Cornered. Sears followed that up with writing lyrics for the musical The Clinging Vine (1926) and then co-created (with Marion Orth) an original story directly for film,  Corporal Kate (1926). Already, Sears was a jackie-of-all-genres with Cornered being a heist movie and Kate involving female entertainers and ambulance drivers in World War I. Sears also showcased women in the leads of these – and most of the rest of her films.

From then on, Sears largely adapted other writers’ short stories or novels, most also featuring fascinating women. For The Night Bride (1927) her lead character was a female roadster, for The Rush Hour (1927), a ticket taker who finally stows away on an ocean liner in order to live a life of adventure like her customers. 

After nine successes as a screenwriter her credits suddenly switched to “Additional Dialogue” and “Treatment” for a while until she earned co-screenplay credit again, this time with first-time writer Eve Greene on Prosperity (1932). Interestingly, Frances Goodrich is credited with “Additional Dialogue” on this one. Sears wrote or co-wrote nine more screenplays culminating in a study of a mother experiencing and overcoming domestic violence. Sears was 61 years old when she wrote A Wicked Woman in 1934. It would be her last film as she died at the age of 62 in Hollywood, California on February 19, putting an end to a career that was still in progress.

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

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