1886-1956
Ground breaking screenwriter Clara Beranger (sometimes spelled Berenger) was born Clara Strouse on this date in Baltimore. She gained a degree from Groucher College, then known as The Baltimore Women's College, with a Bachelor of Arts; after which she made the move to New York City. Despite marrying and having a daughter, she managed to also start a career in writing. Her married name was "Berwanger"--this is where she got the surname that she went by in her professional life: Beranger/Berenger (her daughter, Frances, who would go on to become a stage actress, also adopted this surname). Formally using the professional name of Clara S. Beranger, she struck out on a freelance career in screen writing--selling scripts to the first studio system's largest companies, something that was almost completely unheard of at the time for a woman! Her first screenplay to actually see production was with Lubin Manufacturing: Memories of His Youth; it was an adaptation of a F. Hopkinson Smith story and directed by Barry O'Neil in 1913. Her work was so well regarded that she landed a permanent staff writer gig at Fox. Her first film there was another literary adaptation of a Grace Miller White novel From the Valley of the Missing in 1915. She next adapted Tolstoy's in Anna Karenina, directed by Fox's top man J. Gordon Edwards. She next returned to freelance work, having scripts produced by Diando, Peerless, and Selznick's World Film. Her most famous script came in 1920, when she penned the adaptation for the screen on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde while she was working for Paramount, the film is famous now--but at the time it was just an adaptation a literary work that had been adapted several times before. In 1921 she made the move, along with many others in the American film industry west to Hollywood to work as a writer at Famous Players-Lasky (she previously had a few scripts produced by Famous Players & Lasky separately, before the companies merged [see: The Master Mind (1914) and The Slave Market (1917)]). On the west coast, she went to work for Realart, a subsidiary of Universal later responsible for productions of the now famous Universal horror films of the 1930's. She started by adapting a George Bronson Howard story into the melodrama Sheltered Daughters (May 1921). A film that became perhaps the most important in her life, both professionally and personally, was Miss Lulu Bett (November 1921). It was important because she met William de Mille on the set, who fell hard for her despite already being married--whereas Beranger was already divorced. William de Mille was a notorious cheater and even had a child out of wedlock, his wife just assumed that Beranger was just another fling and she would soon be gone. Not be the case, as de Mille could not get over her--he eventually divorced his wife and married her in 1928. This was all the more "Hollywood" due to part of the story line of the film on which they met involving a married man pursuing an unmarried woman. Though it should be noted that she probably benefited from the meeting more professionally than even on the personal level; de Mille stated in his own memoir that Beranger thereafter wrote all the scripts that he directed until their marriage. Between 1922 and 1926 she was responsible for all of his films (around 15), including The World's Applause (January 1923) starring Bebe Daniels, with whom she shared a birthday. During that time, she worked exclusively for him. This came to an end in 1926, when she once again began adapting works for the screen for other directors again (while continuing to work with him on films as well). She provided him two screenplays directly after their marriage--the second of which was a full talkie. Craig's Wife starring Irene Rich and released in September of 1928; while The Idle Rich was released in June of 1929 featuring Bessie Love in the female lead. The Idle Rich was also her last screenplay produced and released in the 1920's. The first sign that she was was thinking of moving on from screenwriting after becoming a member of the powerful de Mille family was that her new husband directed a film between the two mentioned above (Tenth Avenue) not written by his new wife. She was the principle writer on de Mille's This Mad World (April 1930)--collectively their first film of the new decade. She adapted works for the screen just twice more--the last being an adaptation of an Emerson/Loos story for the Marshall Neilan comedy Social Register; but her attentions lay elsewhere. Once a part of the de Mille family she was folded into their project of the USC School of Cinematic Arts of which William was a founder and brother Cecil was a patron. Beranger became one of the original faculty of the school, which still operates as a private school within the confines of UCLA. Beranger also remained a published author in print. She and William de Mille remained married until his death in 1955; she followed him the next year on the 10th of September when she succumbed to a heart attack in Hollywood at the age of 70. She is buried in an elaborate family plot in the Hollywood Forever cemetery as Clara B. DeMille, "wife of William C. DeMille." Her daughter (from her first marriage) though an actress, never felt the need to grace the silver screen.
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| Source: AJM (Find a Grave) |
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| Source: AJM (Find a Grave) |
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