Silent era screenwriter Maas dies

The pioneering screenwriter passed away of natural causes on Thursday (05Jan12). She was the third oldest person in California.

She began her Hollywood career aged 23 and racked up credits for silent films including Flesh and the Devil with Greta Garbo, Dance Madness, His Secretary and The Waning Sex.

Maas also penned the screenplay for 1925’s The Plastic Age, acknowledged as the movie which launched Bow’s career.

She married Ernest Maas, her writing partner, in the late 1920s but they struggled to sell their scripts in Hollywood after they were wrongly branded communists and blacklisted by industry executives. Ernest died in 1986.