Frederica Sagor Maas was born in America, the youngest daughter of Russian immigrants. Feeling no great desire to complete her course in journalism at Columbia University, New York, she found film an exciting new artistic medium, and was hired by Universal Studios as a story editor, and later MGM as a fully fledged screenwriter. Thus began a bumpy...
Sex became as humdrum as washing your face or cleansing your teeth.
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[on the studio system] Unless you wanted to quit the business, you just kept your mouth shut.
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[on a failed suicide attempt with her husband] We had each other and we were alive.
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Fact
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At the time of her death, she was the 44th oldest person in the world according to the Gerontology Research Group.
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She left the movie industry and worked as a typist in an insurance agency (she lied about her age to get the job). She was eventually promoted to adjuster.
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The couple had no children and no immediate survivors. They were married for almost 60 years until her husband's death in 1986 at 94 years old.
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Broke and depressed, she and her husband had agreed to commit suicide by driving to an isolated hilltop, parking their car and leaving the engine running, and asphyxiating themselves. At the last minute they couldn't go through with it and turned off the engine.
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She married Ernest Maas in 1927, and they collaborated on screenplays (she also wrote screenplays by herself). They lost $10,000 in the infamous stock-market crash of 1929 which set off what has become known as The Great Depression. They survived by turning out movie reviews. They also wrote screenplays, but only one was accepted--"The Shocking Miss Pilgrim", which was eventually made into a film, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947). She also used it as the title for her autobiography.
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After moving to Hollywood in 1924, her first job as a screenwriter was for Preferred Pictures. She found success writing Clara Bow's hit The Plastic Age (1925), which got her a contract with MGM. She left MGM because, she claimed, others took credit for her work. She signed with Tiffany Productions, where she wrote--and received credit for--"flapper" comedies.
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She was one of four daughters born in a cold-water railroad flat at 101st Street near Madison Avenue on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia.
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After giving up on Hollywood, she would have preferred to be "wash lady.".
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She gave up plans to be a doctor and studied journalism at Columbia University in New York City. She worked a summer as a copy girl for the "New York Globe" newspaper. She started in the film industry when she answered a want-ad for an assistant to the story editor at the Universal Pictures branch in New York City. She soon dropped out of college and scouted Broadway for film ideas. She moved to Hollywood in 1924, and although she was encouraged to be an actress, she decided against it and became a screenwriter, working for such studios as Universal, MGM, Paramount and Fox.
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She published her memoirs, "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim," in 1999 at 99 years old.
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In addition to her writing and work in films, Sagor also gained fame for her longevity. She lived to be 111 years old.
$1.2 Million
