Thomas J. Slater

I was born in 1955 and grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the youngest of six children. Among other jobs, I had a paper route for six years and often worked as a janitor in the schools during my vacations since that was my dad's career. I entered Michigan State in 1974 hoping to be the next Woodward or Bernstein but graduated four years later with a double major in Urban Policy Problems and American Studies. I moved on to the University of Maryland where my greatest achievement was to meet Mary Ann Saur and marry her in 1981. Two years later, our oldest daughter, Gretchen, was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 1987, our second daughter, Allison, was born in St. Joseph, Missouri. In 1985, I received my Ph.D. in English from Oklahoma State University, where I wrote my dissertation on the films of director Milos Forman. At that time, I also learned about June Mathis, a silent film screenwriter who gained tremendous influence during the 1920s. I was curious about what she had accomplished, what she had wanted to achieve, and what obstacles she faced. Over the next several years, I learned where I could study many of her scripts, watch the films completed from her work, and find documents that revealed her struggles in Hollywood. I also met some of her descendants and got to know researchers and archivists who gave me copies of her personal letters, more knowledge of her life, knowledge of filmmaking in silent-era Hollywood, and access to crucial sources I would never have found on my own. With all these resources, I was also able to benefit from grants and sabbaticals from Indiana University of Pennsylvania for research trips to Los Angeles, New York City, Rochester, NY, and Washington, DC. Most importantly, I had the support of my wife and daughters to go off and do this work and tremendous editing assistance from Mary Ann to help my work make sense. The great help I've received from the University Press of Kentucky editors and staff along with their manuscript reviewers have made this work as entertaining as it could possibly be. In 2020, I retired from thirty years of teaching and Mary Ann from a distinguished career as a journalist and librarian. We now enjoy active retirement lives in Fuquay Varina, North Carolina.