Historical People

This article can be found on the Linn County Leader site as well.

Marian Ainslee, Hollywood Royalty

There is Hollywood royalty from Marceline. No. I’m not talking about Walt Disney. This person was born in Marceline and had a career in movies long before Walt, but they may have known each other. Her name was Marion Ainslee, a prolific Hollywood feature film writer.

Not much is known about her personal life, but research on Ancestry and RootsWeb show that Marian was born to Edward J. Conklin and Agnes Ainslee in 1896. She had an elder brother, Henry Conklin, who was born in 1893 and is buried at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Marceline.

She left Marceline at some point to take a job in Jefferson City interviewing senators; she then tried her hand at reporting in Kansas City. She would have been under 20 years old at this time. She decided to move to Los Angeles and write for movies. She took a job as a continuity person in Los Angeles (The South Bend Tribune (South Bend, IN), 9 March 1930). In 1924, she married Albert Coonley, who was listed on the marriage certificate as a writer. They divorced in Reno, NV on 5 September 1931. She appears to have never remarried.

Ainslee had a long and storied Hollywood career. The Motion Picture Studio Directory & Trade Annal, 1921 lists Ainslee as a scenario writer, editor and title writer who started out as a newspaper reporter and special writer in Kansas City and St. Louis. She held two of the most important positions on a production set: Continuity and writing. It was her responsibility that every take was the same. If, for example, the actor had their coat over their right arm, it was her responsibility to ensure that’s where it was [in the same position and location] in the next take (The South Bend Tribune, 9 March 1930).

She later became a title writer, the person who wrote the dialogue of silent movies. The importance of this position cannot be overstated. As a 1927 Casper Star-Tribune article notes, a bad title writer could tank the movie. If jokes weren’t snappy or a title was too long, it detracted from the movie. As Ainslee stated in her 26 December 1925 interview with the Zanesville Times Signal (Zanesville, Ohio): “The screen subtitle to be perfect, must have three points: It must be short, it must be to the point, and it must not call attention to itself.”

She was quite well known as early as 1920 (when she would have been about 24). The 22 November 1920 Oklahoma City Times wrote, “Marian Ainslee, who is known for many sprightly titles, has joined the Bobbed Hair club at the company’s west coast studios.” (I’ve yet to find any information on the “Bobbed Hair club”.)

Ainslee was mentioned in several news articles across North America. She was, it seems, extremely well known and respected for her work.

In 1922, Ainslee was part of a “laboratory” on a train for the movie “Foolish Wives.” This lab was “the first time in history of moving pictures [that] a baggage car of the Union Pacific railways was fitted up as a film laboratory, so that the work of editing and cutting [“Foolish Wives”] would not be interrupted by the five-day journey from California to New York” (Calgary Herald, 11 September 1922).

Late 1925 was problematic for Ainslee. The Los Angeles Times repeated the same story on her two days in a row (13-14 September 1925). She ended up in St. Catherine’s “recuperating from a severe case of stomach trouble.” She was out of work for three weeks, returning to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on October 14 to resume her important work. Less than two months later, she was strutting on the Red Carpet getting mixed reviews for her outfit. She was “very startling in a white silk wig…some envious glances and some smart cracks…such is always the case” (Los Angeles Record, 6 November 1925). Her life was often put on display, as is the case with all those in Hollywood with some reputation.

She seemed to enjoy traveling the world, too. In 1926, the Los Angeles Record and the Los Angeles Times made note that she “was trying to arrange her work so that she can leave for Europe on a vacation soon” (Los Angeles Record, 9 January 1926). The Los Angeles Times reported a couple of weeks later that Ainslee had left for Europe for a vacation that “will extend for several months.” She was to spend much of her time in France, but also visit other countries.

Eventually, thanks to a new rule regarding movie credits, her name started to be seen on ads for movies. The Casper Star-Tribune (18 December 1927) noted that “Quite often one will see a picture that has excellent titles, and one wonders who wrote them… Only the stars and the directors and on rare occasions, the author get credit for a picture…. But the title writers can just about make or break a film. Snappy, wise-cracking lines have saved many a comedy and dull, lengthy subtitles have just as often ruined excellent drama.”

They go on to say that “There is a report now that title writers are to come in for a share of the glory. That’s fine. Here’s an example of how the title writer’s light is kept under a bushel. Who is Marion [sic] Ainslee? Only one chance in a million that you actually know. Miss Ainslee has just finished titling her 200^th picture. Two hundred!” At least one of those movies, “Wonder of Women”, was shown at the Cantwell Theatre (the predecessor to the Uptown Theatre) in 1929. Due to how ads were done back then and that sometimes there were not ads for months, it’s difficult to say how many of her movies were shown, but it’s more than likely that the people of Marceline enjoyed a few of her movies and may not have even realized her important hand in them.

Soon after this announcement, her name did start appearing on movie ads.

She retired briefly in 1936 after the death of producer Irving Thalberg, someone with whom she’d worked closely for 10 years. The 1 August 1937 Baltimore Sun reported that she’d been on a European vacation when he died, but she “was induced only recently to return to her typewriter” by RKO. She was signed to write the next Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers film.

She died in Los Angeles on 2 April 1966.

What makes Ainslee’s accomplishment even more astounding is that so few women are writers in Hollywood, even today, according to the Woman and Hollywood website, only about 33% of all Hollywood writers are women.

A NOTE OF THANKS: I’d like to thank Hank Miller, who I met through the Marceline Memories Facebook page, for his assistance with finding much of Ms. Ainslee’s genealogical history.

Ed is the Founder and President of the veteran-owned Midwest Preservation Group, LLC, a historical preservation company dedicated to assisting rural communities with preserving their history. For more details about the company and historic preservation, please visit the FAQ page of midwestpreservationgroup.com.

No part of this article can be reproduced without the expressed written permission of the author.