RIP: Screenwriter Frances Kavanaugh

The LA Times announced today that screenwriter Frances Kavanaugh has died at the age of 93:

Kavanaugh, who was called ‘the Cowgirl of the Typewriter,’ was one of the few women who wrote screenplays for B-westerns in the 1940s and early ‘50s.

Kavanaugh has over 30 writing credits. Great anecdote from the Times article about when she went to work for director-writer Robert Tansey:

Kavanaugh began by polishing dialogue on scripts in an office that adjoined Tansey’s office. But one day, she recalled in the 2002 interview, she found she couldn’t continue.

Tansey came out and said: “I don’t hear you typing, what happened?”

“I can’t work on this script,” Kavanaugh said.

“Why?”

“Because it’s too terrible. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever read; I cannot fix it.”

Saying that his criterion is “whoever criticizes has to do it better according to five people,” Tansey told her, “You write the script.”

I love stories like this — where an untested writer puts their talent on the line in a pressure situation and nails the script.

Per the article, Kavanaugh also was the writer who ‘created’ the character Lash LaRue. Here’s a clip from a Lash LaRue movie King of the Bullwhip (1950):

Godspeed, Frances Kavanaugh.