Seaver College Professor Leslie Kreiner Wilson Earns Research Award

Leslie Kreiner Wilson, a professor of creative writing and film and director of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Screenwriting at Seaver College, recently earned the Screenwriting Research Network Best Article Award for her work "‘Strictly on the Level, Like a Flight of Stairs:’ Irving Thalberg and Anita Loos as Trickster-Heroes in the Case of Red-Headed Woman (1932).”

“I'm honored that my peers recognized the value of my research on screenwriter-novelist Anita Loos,” says Kreiner Wilson. “Her writing attacked societal hypocrisy while also advocating for women. Far from being a writer of bubble-gum pop, as she is often portrayed, Loos did important cultural work and truly embodied the concept of 'storyteller as cultural leader,’ which is the cornerstone of the Pepperdine MFA Program in Screenwriting."

Kreiner Wilson’s research tracks the development of the 1932 film Red-Headed Woman. Specifically, she details how Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer Irving Thalberg and screenwriter Anita Loos worked within the constraints of the production code to create a culturally impactful film that comments on sexuality, gender, and patriarchal privilege. 

Using archived correspondence, varying drafts of the screenplay, and excerpts from Loos’s own memoir, Kreiner Wilson proves that Red-Headed Woman was constructed to intentionally confound male film censors of the era. Loos and Thalberg’s collaboration yielded a movie rich with philosophical subtext that, while not in violation of the strict production code of the 1930s, promoted feminist messaging far ahead of its time. 

In developing this research, Kreiner Wilson recalibrates how Loos, a popular novelist and screenwriter of her time, should be viewed in contemporary culture. Through her commercially successful written works, Loos served as an effective champion and leader of women’s rights. 

"Strictly on the Level, Like a Flight of Stairs": Irving Thalberg and Anita Loos as Trickster-Heroes in the Case of Red-Headed Woman (1932)” was originally published in Film History: An International Journal.