Frederica Sagor Maas: Biography, Hollywood Years, Later Years, Autobiography, Personal Life, Filmography, Bibliography, and a List of Books by Author Frederica Sagor Maas

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Frederica Sagor Maas (born July 6, 1900 as Frederica Sagor) is an American playwright, screenwriter, essayist and author, the youngest daughter of Russian immigrants. She is one of very few supercentenarians (persons of 110 years of age or older) known for reasons other than for longevity, and the first person from the film industry to attain supercentenarian status.

Biography more less

She was born in New York City. After studying journalism at Columbia University and doing odd jobs as a writer at the New York Globe, she saw an ad in the New York Times for an assistant story editor at Universal Pictures. She applied, got the job and a career was born. Four years later, she moved to Los Angeles to become a scriptwriter/story editor, first for Preferred Pictures, then MGM, and later, Fox and Paramount.

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Hollywood Years more less

In 1925, she adapted The Plastic Age by Percy Marks and sold it to Preferred Pictures for $40,000. Clara Bow starred in it. Afterwords she signed up with MGM and worked with stars like Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Emil Jannings and Barbara Kent. She was good friends with actress Norma Shearer although their relationship soured after Maas advised Shearer against marrying producer Irving Thalberg, whom Maas felt was a "mama's boy".

Between 1938 and 1950, Maas and her husband wrote screenplay after screenplay. Almost all were "swell fish", a term for scripts that never see the light of day. In 1947, Maas wrote her final screenplay, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, a story about feminism in the late 19th century.

I know I've been hard on the motion picture industry [in the book] ... [T]he facts and the stories I tell -- about the plagiarism and the way I was handled and the way other writers were handled -- are true. If anybody wants to take offense at the fact that I tell the truth and I'm writing this book ... [I] can get my payback now. I'm alive and thriving and, well, you SOBs are all below, because I've lived to 99. And I quit the business at 50.

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Later Years more less

She and her husband, Ernest Maas, struggled through the days of the Hollywood Ten, during which time they were interrogated by the FBI for having allegedly subscribed to two Communist publications.

“I'm something of a Bolshevik. I'm always for the underdog I remember when I was 17 or 18, marching in a New York parade, right before women got the vote. I marched in the schoolteacher segment, because my sister was a schoolteacher. I remember we held hands, and I remember how I felt. My God, I thought I was revolutionizing the world.”

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Autobiography more less

In 1999, at age 99, she published her autobiography, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood.

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Personal Life more less

In 1927, she married Ernest Maas. They were together until his death in 1986 at age 94. They had no children. Since October 1, 2009, aged 109, Maas is the second oldest living person in California.

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Filmography more less

The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947)
Piernas de Seda (1935)
The Farmer's Daughter (1928)
Silk Legs (1927)
The Way of All Flesh (1927)
Rolled Stockings (1927)
The First Night (1927)
Flesh and the Devil (1926)
That Model from Paris (1926)
The Waning Sex (1926)
Dance Madness (1926)
The Plastic Age (1925)
His Secretary (1925)
The Goose Woman (1925)

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Total Books: 1

1999 - The Shocking Miss Pilgrim a Writer in Early Hollywood (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9780813121222
ISBN-10: 0813121221
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, Business & Money, Humor & Entertainment