Izola Forrester was an American author who was born Izola Louise Wallingford.
Background
She was also one of the early women screenwriters of silent films, drawing on her books and stories for their plots, as well as the dramas she was familiar with as a child performer in the 1880s, trouping with her mother Ogarita Booth Henderson (October 23, 1859 - April 12, 1892). Ogarita was a stage actress who believed herself to be the daughter of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of United States President Abraham Lincoln.
Career
Forrester was a pioneer journalist in the heyday of magazine and newspaper publishing in the early part of the 20th century. Forrester"s precocious career as a writer and editor began at the age of 15 in Chicago, where she met banner artist Ruben Robert Merrifield (September 21, 1860 - April 13, 1932). She was hired as a feature writer for the New York World, specializing in women"s interest stories about public figures, from the leaders of the suffrage movement to the stars of stage and film.
She was a regular contributor to many periodicals such as The Saturday Evening Post and McClure"s under Managing Editor Willa Cather, as well as the author of over twenty books including the popular Greenacre Girls and Polly Page fiction series.
During the period 1907-1914, she contributed numerous stories to the pulp magazines, including The Ocean, its successor The Live Wire, and The All-Story. Izola and Mann were married (a common law marriage) on November
18, 1913. Their 36 films ranged from the silent era"s The Quitter (1915) starring Lionel Barrymore, collaborations with Douglas Fairbanks and Sinclair Lewis, Rent Free (1922) with Wallace Reid to the talkies" She Had to Choose (1934) starring Buster Crabbe.
An embodiment of the post-Victorian independent woman, Forrester pursued her professional career both by choice and economic necessity, managing to balance it with motherhood and the raising of eight children born between 1901 and 1918.