The Late Great Film Historian Cari Beauchamp

Respected film historian, author, editor, and filmmaker Cari Beauchamp died yesterday, December 14 2023, at the age of 74. She was well-loved by classic film fans, and she was friends with many of them. She was a close friend of many of my close friends, and she was even a mentor to some of them. In addition to being one of the foremost movie scholars, she was always supportive of classic film buffs. Like many, I was able to interact with Cari on social media from time to time, and she was always wonderful.

Cari Beauchamp was born on September 12 1949 in Berkeley, California. She attended Lincoln High School, Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California and then San Jose State University, from which she graduated with a degree in political science and American history. She worked as a private investigator for many years. In 1973 she served as president of the National Women's Caucus of California, and as a campaign manager for Janet Gray Hayes, who was elected the mayor of San Jose in 1976. From 1979 to 1982 she was the press secretary for California Governor Jerry Brown.

It was in 1990 that Cari Beauchamp began writing full-time. Her first book, Hollywood on the Riviera: The Inside Story of the Cannes Film Festival, was written with Henri Béhar, and published in 1992. Her book Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and The Powerful Women of Early Hollywood was a biography of Frances Marion, who had become the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood by 1917 and was also the fist writer to win two Academy Awards. Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and The Powerful Women of Early Hollywood would be included in The Hollywood Reporter's list of the "100 Greatest Film Books of All Time" published earlier this year. She would later write and produce a documentary for Turner Classic Movies based on the book and also titled Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and The Powerful Women of Early Hollywood. It was released in 2000.

Among the other books written by Cari were Joseph P. Kennedy's Hollywood Years, My First Time in Hollywood: Stories from the Pioneers, Dreamers and Misfits Who Made the Movies, and From Latin America to Hollywood: Latino Film Culture in Los Angeles 1967-2017. She edited Anita Loos Rediscovered and annotated the book with Miss Loos's niece Mary Anita Loos. She also edited Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s by Valeria Belletti. Cari was also a contributor to multiple publications, including Vanity Fair, The Hollywood Reporter, Indiewire, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and many others.

As mentioned above, Cari Beauchamp wrote and produced the documentary Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and The Powerful Women of Early Hollywood. She wrote the PBS documentary The Day My God Died (2003), which aired on Independent Lens. The documentary focused on girls in India and Nepal who were sold into sexual slavery.. It was nominated for an Emmy. She also appeared in multiple documentaries on classic movies and other subjects. She was a consultant on advisor on The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing and Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood, and yet other documentaries. She was also a familiar face on Turner Classic Movies. She was a special guest TCM Spotlight: Trailblazing Women in 2015 and 2016. 

>Cari Beauchamp served as a presenter at multiple TCM Classic Film Festivals. She was also a speaker at the British Film Institute, the Cannes Film Festival, the Edinburgh Film Festival the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. She was also a resident scholar at the Mary Pickford Foundation and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts.

Before anyone else did so, Cari Beauchamp wrote about the women in the early film industry. While the focus of Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and The Powerful Women of Early Hollywood is Frances Marion, in its pages one also learns about such other influential women in the early days of Hollywood as Marie Dressler, Hedda Hopper, Lillian Gish, Anita Loos, Mary Pickford, Zasu Pitts, and others. She paved the way for other authors to write about the women who helped shape the American film industry. Of course, Cari Beauchamp often examined topics that few others had before, whether it was Joseph Kennedy's days in Hollywood or Latino film culture.

Much of what made Cari Beauchamp such a great film historian and author is that she was very skilled at getting the facts. She had been a private investigator, and she put those skills to use in writing about classic movies. What is more, Cari Beauchamp's writing was never dry or boring. She wrote in an engaging style guaranteed to keep the reader hooked. Her knowledge of film history and an engaging personality also made her perfect as a speaker or presenter at film history panels. She was certainly enthusiastic about film. What is more, she was supportive of her fellow classic film buffs. With Cari Beauchamp's passing, the classic film community has lost one of its brightest lights.