Golden Age screenwriter Maas dies at 111

SAN DIEGO, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- Frederica Sagor Maas, a feisty screenwriter from Hollywood's silent-movie era, died in California this week at the age of 111.

Maas, who lived in San Diego, wrote for bygone stars such as Clara Bow, Greta Garbo, Norma Schearer and Betty Grable.

Although Maas made the transition from silents to talkies, she and her husband and writing partner, Ernest Maas, walked away from Hollywood on bad terms. The Los Angeles Times said the couple had grown weary of seeing their work plagiarized and re-written into what they saw as shallow tripe.

The Times said Maas didn't exactly mellow with age.

"It's my only consolation to think, 'All you lousy so-and-sos are all 20 feet under, and I'm still here," she told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999.

She wrote a book called "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood" when she was 99, which blasted the cutthroat culture of Hollywood in the 1920s. The title referred to "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim," a 1947 film that started out as a serious look at the treatment of women but was released as a fluffy musical starring the bombshell Grable.

Maas was the third-oldest person in California when she died.