Hollywood Historian Cari Beauchamp Has Died

Cari Beauchamp, the author and film historian, has died aged 74. Born in Berkeley, California, she began her career as a private investigator. She was involved in the women’s rights movement, and managed the successful 1976 campaign of Janet Gray Hayes, mayor of San Jose, before joining Gloria Steinem and others in Washington DC to work on the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1979, Cari was appointed press secretary to the Governor of California, Jerry Brown.

She left politics behind in 1990 to raise her two sons and moved into journalism, with a special focus on cinema. Her first book, Hollywood on the Riviera – a history of the Cannes Film Festival – was published in 1992. Her follow-up, Without Lying Down (1998) was a biography of screenwriter Frances Marion, and a groundbreaking study of women in early Hollywood.

Her later books include Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary and My First Time in Hollywood. Of particular interest to Monroe fans will be Anita Loos Rediscovered, a collection of film treatments and fiction by the author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; and Joseph P. Kennedy Presents, chronicling the Kennedy patriarch’s time in the film industry.

In 2018, Alta Journal published ‘Atomic Blonde,’ an article in which Cari uncovered the full story of Marilyn’s PSA for the US military, filmed at Harold Lloyd’s Greenacres estate in 1953. (Although the article is currently limited to subscribers, you can read an extract here.)

And then in 2019, Cari wrote for Vanity Fair about the Hollywood Studio Club, a hostel for young women in the film industry, where Marilyn was once a resident. (You can read more about the club here.)