Cari Beauchamp

Background

Cari Beauchamp was born in 1951 in Berkeley, California, United States.

Education

Cari graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and American History from San Jose State University in 1972.

Career

Before becoming a full-time writer in 1990, Beauchamp worked as a private investigator, a campaign manager, and served as Press Secretary to California Governor Jerry Brown. After graduating, she intended to go to law school, but instead spent the next 6 years as a private investigator for defense attorneys, including Barney Drefus and Charles Garry, and the Legal Aid Society of Santa Clara County, serving as lead investigator on several major class action suits.

Simultaneously, she became involved in the Women's Rights Movement and was elected the first President of National Women's Political Caucus of California in 1973. She also managed a variety of election campaigns throughout the 1970s including for Janet Gray Hayes, who was elected mayor of San Jose in 1976, the first woman in the country to be mayor of a city of over 500,000. Beauchamp also spent several years working in Washington DC with Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and many others on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment before returning to California in 1979 to serve as press secretary to Governor Jerry Brown.

After a year working in Europe and several years in New York, she took time off to give birth to two sons. While pregnant with her second son, she signed her first book contract, which resulted in "Hollywood on the Riviera: The Inside Story of the Cannes Film Festival with Henri Behar", published by William Morrow & Co. In 1998, she wrote "Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and The Powerful Women of Early Hollywood", published by Scribner and the University of California Press. The book examines the lives of Frances Marion and many of her female colleagues who shaped filmmaking from the 1920s through the 1940s.

In 2003 came "Anita Loos Rediscovered", which was edited and annotated by Beauchamp and Mary Anita Loos. Published by University of California Press, the book compiles samples of Loos's previously unpublished work as well as the personal life and work of novelist, screenwriter, and playwright. In 2006, University of California Press released "Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s" by Valeria Belletti, edited and annotated by Beauchamp, with a foreword by Sam Goldwyn Jr., chronicling an insider's view of the film studios of the 1920s from a secretary's perspective. In 2009, Beauchamp wrote "Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years" published by Knopf and Vintage Books.

Beauchamp wrote and co produced the documentary film "Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and The Powerful Women of Early Hollywood" and for which she was nominated for a Writers’ Guild Award. She also wrote the documentary film "The Day My God Died" about young girls of Nepal sold into sexual slavery which played on PBS and was nominated for an Emmy in 2003. She has also appeared as expert on film history in other a half dozen documentaries including Mark Cousin's production of "The Story of Film: An Odyssey."

Beauchamp has written for various magazines and newspapers, including Vanity Fair, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. She is frequent featured speaker on the subject of Women and Hollywood History, appearing throughout the United States and Europe including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the British Film Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, the Edinburgh Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival, The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, The Women’s Museum of Art in Washington D.C. and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She has been named the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Scholar twice and is currently resident scholar of the Mary Pickford Foundation.

Achievements

• Cari's book "Without Lying Down" was named one of the 100 Most Notable Books of the Year by both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times and was awarded Book of the Year by the National Theater Arts Association. Cari wrote the Emmy nominated documentary film "The Day my God Died" which played on PBS and she was nominated for a Writers Guild Award for "Without Lying Down: The Power of Women in Early Hollywood" which she wrote and coproduced for Turner Classic Movies.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Anita Loos Rediscovered: Film Treatments and Fiction by Anita Loos, Creator of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” 2003
  • Back Street: Vintage Movie Classics 2014
  • Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s 2006
  • Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years 2010
  • My First Time in Hollywood 2015
  • Without Lying Down 1998

Connections

Cari Beauchamp gave birth to two sons.