Sexual Liberation 1920s Style: The Screenwriting Career of Josephine Lovett

In the Silent Era, before the existence of the Hays Code (and largely a cause for it), many female screenwriters wrote heroines who flouted the brazen sexual freedom of the new century, a specialty of Josephine “Jo” Lovett. Born in October 1877 in San Francisco Lovett would spend some time as a lead actress on the Broadway stage before moving to Los Angeles to both act and write what were called scenarios for the bulk of her career.

After attendimg the Sargent’s Dramatic School in New York Lovett subsequently starred in the musicals The Ragged Earl (1899) and The Rebel (1900) on Broadway. She continued to appear on Broadway through the 1915 production of George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara. Then Vitagraph Studios enticed her to act on screen in The Ninety and Nine (1916). That same year at Vitagraph she wrote a scenario for Love and Trout, directed by Canadian director John Robertson. Somewhere in this era of her life Lovett married Robertson and they began working together writing and directing over 18 films together through 1935, becoming as famous a couple of married creatives as Pickford and Fairbanks.

Lovett and Robertson teamed up again with Away Goes Prudence (1920) about another new adventure women were pursuing in this decade – aviation. Here Prudence, a daring aviatrix, is banned from flying by both her father and fiancé. She plans a fake kidnapping to scare them/they counter with a real kidnapping, but Prudence beats them all by escaping on her own, making them realize she can take care of herself on the ground and in the sky.

Next Lovette adapted the J.M. Barrie short story Sentimental Tommy, about a teenage girl ostracized for her mother’s profession, into film in 1921. By now the couple had relocated to Los Angeles as they continued to collaborate on: Footlights (1921) for Paramount Pictures and The Spanish Jade (1922) filmed on location in Spain for Paramount British Pictures.  Lovett and Robertson returned to Los Angeles for Tess of the Storm Country (1922) for Mary Pickford by her own production company. Another highlight of their shared filmography, Annie Laurie (1927) was based on the Scottish song standard and starred Lillian Gish. 

A film Lovett wrote that Robertson did not direct was also the one that netted her an Academy Award nomination for writing achievement. Our Dancing Daughters (1928) starred Joan Crawford as another of Lovett’s modern, sexually liberated young women, then known as flappers. Lovett co-wrote the script along with Marian Ainslee and Ruth Cummings. Produced before the Talkie Era the film experimented with an accompanying music track and some sound effects showing the slow move toward new technology in the industry.

In 1929 Lovett adapted The Single Standard from a story by Adela Rogers St. Johns for Greta Garbo. The story walked a line with the censors being about a young woman who runs off to the South Seas with a man she has only just met.

Without Robertson as director Lovett adapted the story of the opera Madam Butterfly (1932) to star Sylvia Sydney and Cary Grant and Jennie Gerhardt (1933), based on the novel by Theodore Dreiser about a young woman courted by an aging senator.

1935 brought Lovett and Robertson’s last collaboration, Captain Hurricane, about a tough sea captain saving his crew from a storm. Robertson would direct one more film that year before the couple retired and started a riding club in Rancho Sante Fe, California.  Lovett died in in 1958, followed by Robertson in 1964 and together the couple are buried in Robertson’s home province of Ontario, Canada.

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