Word: fanchon
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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TIME [May 10] erred in dubbing smart, capable Fanchon Simon as "cinema's only woman producer." At least four other ladies have been or are producing pictures. Pioneer feminine filmaker was Lois Weber. Frances Marion, celebrated scenariowriter, is the latest recruit. Others include Dorothy Davenport (Mrs. Wallace Reid) and the youngest and most prolific, Fanchon Royer, who manages five growing children and her own independent production company, Fanchon Royer Features...
Turn Off The Moon (Paramount), first effort of cinema's only woman producer, Mrs. Fanchon Simon, was not planned in the grand manner. By all the gauges Hollywood uses to measure a picture's importance, such as cast names, expensive sets and the fame of writers and directors, it should have remained merely a modest little musical for double bills. By a rare cinematic accident, it successfully refutes its sales bracket. Its gags and tunes are good, its patter fast. Above all it has the unprefigured value which is generated in a musical when most of the participants...
...Producer Fanchon, 42, was Fanny Wolf, daughter of a Los Angeles clothing store proprietor. She studied piano; her brother Mike (Marco) fiddle. Together they entertained at lodge parties and picnics, graduated to a dinner show in Tait's famed San Francisco restaurant. Fanchon & Marco embellished their act with other specialties, began to play theatre dates in their spare time. When the demand grew they organized a second company, coalesced their troupe in a musical show Sunkist which they took to Broadway. Two weeks later the Southern Pacific Railroad accepted Marco's note for $2,800 to transport...
...Fanchon was the creative brains of the outfit. She built her whole show around some novel production number, blending costumes and tunes to whatever the girls were doing. They came out on bicycles, skates and skis. They wore bunny costumes, appeared disguised as flowers, birds or animals. Fanchon & Marco, Inc. snowballed until theatres which had bought franchises from them became bankrupt and in order to keep units out they had to become theatre operators. Fanchon & Marco shrank from 52 units a year to two units a month...
...Fanchon is married to William H. Simon, proprietor of a string of Los Angeles dairy lunches. They have adopted two children. She is a tall woman with aquiline features and wild hair who, like many over-energetic people, walks with a shuffle. She admires Strindberg's plays, feels that men make better actors than women and that her sex has little place in the production end of show business. "Once a woman stops being feminine, people don't like to have her around." Her present deal is the result of an interview with Adolph Zukor in which...