Elizabeth Pickett Chevalier
Born
Elizabeth Pickett

March 25, 1896
Chicago, Illinois, USA
DiedJanuary 3, 1984
Los Angeles, California, USA
OccupationScreenwriter

Elizabeth Pickett Chevalier (1896-1984), known earlier in her career as Elizabeth Pickett, was an American writer best known for her 1942 novel, the bestseller Drivin' Woman, which was promoted as a novel in the vein of Gone with the Wind.[1][2] In her earlier career, she was also a silent short-film director and a screenwriter who wrote scenarios and titles for Fox Film Corporation.

Early life and education

Chevalier was born in Chicago in 1896, and was a granddaughter of Confederate States Army General George Pickett.[3] Pickett took over her family's tobacco farm in Lexington, Kentucky, before graduating from Wellesley Women's College in 1918. At the end of the first World War, she went to work in Washington D.C., with the American Red Cross as a historian and publicist until eventually making propaganda shorts for the non-profit organization.[4]

Pickett also contributed about 1,100 pages to the 1923 History of the American Red Cross.[5] In her early work, she made a one-reel picture called In Florence Nightingale's Footsteps to try to persuade women to become war nurses. It was this event that swayed Pickett to pursue more work in film, so she began working for the Fox Film Corporation shortly afterwards.[6]

Film career

In her earlier career, Elizabeth Pickett was a silent short-film director and a screenwriter who wrote scenarios and titles for Fox Film Corporation. In 1923 she produced the very first "short series" films for Fox Film Corporation.[4] Pickett helped to write and direct nearly forty "short series" films for Fox until eventually becoming the West Coast supervisor.[7] Over the course of her career she edited and titled more than fifty Fox varieties. Pickett wrote several original stories such as Navajo and Wolf Fangs and adapted and titled works including Wings of the Storm, and The Monkey Talks. Other contributions she made in the film industry include titling and editing Kentucky Pride, Exploring the Amazon, Whispering Sage, The Shamrock Handicap, and Marriage License?[6]

Pickett recalled that many aspects of her work as a novelist were influenced by her early work in film. In 1929 Paramount gave Pickett the opportunity to write the screenplay for her very first feature film, Redskin.[8] Redskin was a fiction, high-quality technicolor film directed by Victor Schertzinger and produced and distributed by Paramount Famous Lasky. It was shot in authentic Pueblo and Navajo locations in both Western New Mexico and Arizona. The feature essentially represented the peak of Pickett's career in film even though it was criticized for all its habitual stereotyping of Native Americans.[5] Before beginning to write the screenplay for Redskin Pickett spent months with Native Americans gathering information about their characteristics and behavior in order to gain better insight on their culture for the movie.[9] Pickett said that her overall goal in the industry was to not only write and direct her own pictures but also to make an analogy between cinematography and film. Redskin was the first film that provided Pickett with the opportunity to achieve her goals and successfully write a feature film.[5] She was described as having some of the highest ambitions to direct/write in film according to the Moving Picture World.[5] With these goals in mind, many of Picket's films combined elements of both documentary and narrative fiction. Much of her work involved shooting Western American landscapes such as in Cliff-Dwellers of America (1925) and King of the Turf (1923). It was the short, King of the Turf that later inspired John Ford with his feature Kentucky Pride (1925), which Pickett also edited and titled.[4]

Novel

Pickett's novel Drivin' Woman (1942) was a bestseller that she dedicated to her husband Stuart Chevalier, a descendant of the family of J. E. B. Stuart. The story's setting is the South after the American Civil War[10] and appeared to be modeled after Gone with the Wind.[11] The plot focuses on the life of a girl who inherits a southern tobacco plantation.[12] The movie rights to Drivin' Woman were sold to MGM for $60,000 before she finished writing it – probably in part due to the success of the film adaptation of Gone with the Wind;[3] however, it was never made into a film.

Later life

According to her UPI obituary, she served on the Board of Governors of the American Red Cross in 1952, and President-elect John F. Kennedy considered her for the post of United States Secretary of the Treasury in 1960 or 1961.[13]

Her husband, attorney Stuart Chevalier, died in 1956.[14] She died on January 3, 1984, at the age of 87, and was buried in Altadena, California.[13][15]

Quotes

"In this business of ours the writer will have to be the director as well, in order to survive".[16] – Pickett

“I have written with the camera on some thirty or forty Varieties and I can see that the whole trend of production today, both from the standpoint of real economy and artistry, is with the person who writes with the camera”.[16] – Pickett

Filmography

Director

YearTitle
1918American Red Cross propaganda shorts
1923King of the Turf
1925Rocky Mountain Gold
1925Under Colorado Skies
1925Cliff Dwellers of America

Writer

YearTitleContribution
1925Kentucky Pridetitles
1926The Shamrock Handicaptitles
1926Marriage License?titles
1926The Silver Treasuretitles
1926Wings of the Stormtitles
1927Wolf Fangsscreenplay/story/titles
1928Fleetwingscreenplay/story
1929Redskinscreenplay/story
1952Navajoscreenplay/story

Editor

YearTitle
1925Kentucky Pride
1926The Shamrock Handicap
1927Marriage
1928Fleetwing

References

  1. ↑ (5 July 1942). "Drivin' Woman" and Other New Works of Fiction, The New York Times
  2. ↑ Driscoll, Charles (5 November 1941). New York Day by Day, Painesville Telegraph
  3. 1 2 Parsons, Louella O. (7 April 1941). 'Drivin' Woman', Novel of Reconstruction Period, Yet Unfinished, Bought for Movie, Milwaukee Sentinel
  4. 1 2 3 Acker, Ally (1991). Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema 1896 to the Present. Continuum New York. p. 19. ISBN 0-8264-0499-5.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Koerner, Michelle. "Elizabeth Chevalier Pickett". Women Film Pioneers Project. Columbia University Libraries. Retrieved 3 November 2014.
  6. 1 2 Thiede, Karl. "Motion Picture News Booking Guide and Studio Directory". New York, Motion Picture News, Inc. p. 122. Retrieved 3 November 2014.
  7. ↑ Acker, Ally (2011). Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema The First Hundred Years 1890s-1950s. Vol. 1. New York, NY: A Reel Women Media Publication. p. 23. ISBN 978-1440489617.
  8. ↑ Acker, Ally (1991). Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema 1896 to the Present. Continuum New York. p. 20. ISBN 0-8264-0499-5.
  9. ↑ Magazine Builders, Inc. (November 1928 – April 1929). "Screenland". Lantern. 18: 104. Retrieved 4 November 2014.
  10. ↑ Katharine Jocher, "Drivin' Woman. By Elizabeth Pickett Chevalier. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1942. 652 pp. $2.75", Social Forces, Volume 21, Issue 2, December 1942, p. 261. Retrieved 27 October 2019.
  11. ↑ "The Hollywood Scene". Motion Picture Herald. No. 151. Quigley Publishing Co. May–June 1943. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
  12. ↑ "The Hollywood Scene". Motion Picture Herald. No. 142 & 143. Quigley Publishing Co. March–April 1941. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
  13. 1 2 (13 January 1984). Best selling novelist, Reading Eagle (UPI story)
  14. ↑ (8 July 1956). Overflow Crowd Attends Stuart Chevalier Rites: Pastor Lauds Courage and Conviction of Attorney, Author and Philanthropist, Los Angeles Times
  15. ↑ (13 January 1984). Elizabeth Chevalier; Writer, Film Scenarist, Producer, Los Angeles Times
  16. 1 2 Waller, Tom (December 17, 1927). "Elizabeth Pickett". Moving Picture World (USA): 29.
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