To my friend and writer Carrie Beauchamp, who understood Hollywood better than anyone
I lost a friend this week, Carrie Beauchamp, who left us prematurely at the age of 74. I valued her as someone who shared not only my passion for film and Hollywood history, but also strong values.
Carrie and I had a lot in common. Our roots go back to the 1960s and 1970s, when we protested the Vietnam War and wore our long brown hair and short skirts. We both started out in advertising, but I worked in studios and she was press secretary for California Governor Jerry Brown.
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She had more husbands than me, and had two sons for my only daughter, of whom we were also proud. We shared holiday meals, long phone calls, evening wine and cheese amid the crimson roses in her yard, and countless games of poker. She loved gardening, smoking cigarettes (which she eventually quit), and swimming. The last time I saw her was in a nice pool in Hancock Park. She was sick, but she was happy in the water.
Carrie and I wrote about cinema, but she also wrote books: well-researched, elegant, and knowledgeable. I loved her book about Cannes, co-written with Henri Béhar, Hollywood on the Riviera: The Inside Story of the Cannes Film Festival (1992). Carrie and I spent many happy hours together at that festival. (Were we drinking? Yes.) The book that made The Hollywood Reporter’s 100 Greatest Movie Books of All Time list was her seminal book about women in movies, “Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and Strong Women in Early Hollywood” (1997). That something was wrong when Carey didn’t attend Scott Feinberg’s book panel at the AFI Festival on October 28. If she could have, she would have.
Carey also wrote and produced a 2001 documentary about Marion for TCM based on the book, which received a WGA nomination.
A tireless workhorse, Carrie regularly submitted her own independent stories Vanity gallery And other outlets including IndieWire. She was able to do what many young writers couldn’t: put current Hollywood in context.
Her heart was in the classics. She worked for years as a resident scholar at the Mary Pickford Foundation. She was friends with many Hollywood veterans. She was writing a book about Gloria Swanson. Every spring she looked forward to moderating countless panels at the TCM Film Festival. These were her people.
She was close to many of the Academy’s executives and was a constant critic, annoyed with the organization she loved. She was generous with many of her media colleagues, sharing information, tips, information and contacts. (She can also criticize those who fail to do the job.)
I understood better than most how Hollywood worked, and the psychology of the people who ran the industry and made the films. She will be greatly missed
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