Hollywood in the early 1900's was a magnet for creative and entrepreneurial misfits and with few taking filmmaking seriously as a business, the doors were wide open to women. Movies were an idea one week, before the cameras the next and in the theaters within a month. There were no paths to follow and no rules to break. Women wouldn't be "given" the right to vote until 1920, yet before then they were thriving at every level of movie making, as directors, producers, editors, and writers. While writers' names often did not appear in the credits of the early films, from the copyright records in the Library of Congress we know that almost half of all films written between 1912 and 1925 were written by women.
Alice Guy was not only the first woman director, she was one of the very first film directors period and is often credited with directing the first narrative film. She was a secretary to the Gaumonts in Paris in 1896 when they agreed to let her "play" with their cameras as long as her clerical duties didn't suffer. Her after hours creations were so successful she was made the head of their quickly formed film production company. She had literally given birth to the French film industry by the time she moved to America with her husband, the cameraman Herbert Blache.when Alice Guy Blache (1873-1968), directed La Fee aux Choux. She directed some 400 films in France and 354 films in the U.S. Most of the films were one-reel comedies. In 1912, she became the first woman to build her own studi.
