Autobiography
In 1999, at age 99, and at the urging of film historian Kevin Brownlow, Maas published her autobiography, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood. The book was well received and is still a standard reference for early Hollywood history. From the Library Journal:
Maas's chronicle of her writing career, which spanned over a quarter of a century, is a valuable contribution to the literature on women in Hollywood ... Rejecting studio politics, Maas ultimately paid the price for playing maverick. Peppered with fascinating anecdotes from yesteryear, this account of the author's life bespeaks frustration with the vapidity of Hollywood: a fickle business world that relied on formula for its success.From Kevin Brownlow:
(she) proved so "ignorant of studio politics" that she was labeled a "troublemaker" by producer Harry Rapf. After her 1927 marriage to script writer and producer Ernest Maas, the couple survived the coming of sound films, the Depression and various earthquakes, but dry scripting spells and the constant theft of their ideas, stories and credits led them to quit the business. In 1950 she "bid farewell, without tears, to the Hollywood screen industry that had so entangled and entrapped me in its web of promises." Maas trashes Hollywood legends, recalling Louis B. Mayer as "a very fearful, insecure man"; Clara Bow dancing nude on a tabletop; Jeanne Eagels squatting to urinate in the midst of a film set ...There are also her detractors:
Her story has to he taken with a grain of salt. By the time she wrote her memoirs at 99 her bitterness with Hollywood was deep and she particularly relished describing the bosses with whom she so frequently battled as amoral debauchers.In her own defense:
I know I've been hard on the motion picture industry ... 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 ... 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.Read more about this topic: Frederica Sagor Maas