Frederica Sagor Maas (1900-2012) was a writer, a silent films screenwriter, could it possibly be anything better than that?

She was also a playwright and also wrote her own memoirs, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood. In them she described how Hollywood actually worked something that almost led Frederica and her husband Ernest Maas, to commit suicide. She hated Hollywood “manners” and tycoons since they mistreated her as a person and artist: She was plagiarised and bullied for being a woman. But as she said in her memoirs “I’m alive and thriving and, well, you SOBs are all below, because I’ve lived to 99.”

I’ve met her today when I read her obituary and felt ashamed for not having the opportunity of knowing about her before. A person like her should be studied in schools for her importance, coherence and, I think, overwhelming personality.