Abstract

Josephine Rector’s fleeting career in cinema is inseparable from the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, specifically its outfit in Northern California. This paper traces the contours of Rector’s involvement with Essanay, in particular her contribution as a scenario writer to the western genre. As head of the scenario department from 1912 to 1914, she was responsible for both writing and selecting suitable material for two-reel adventure stories, most notably the Broncho Billy series, which inaugurated the first cowboy star played by Gilbert M. Anderson. Due to the loss of the majority of Essanay films and the absent writing credits in the extant ones, a listing of Rector’s entire output is difficult if not impossible to compile. Building on the previous research about Western Essanay by the historian David Kiehn, this paper brings to light Rector’s career as that of a young woman who seized the opportunity offered to women by the burgeoning film industry in 1910s United States.