Cari Beauchamp, Acclaimed Historian, Writer and Documentarian, Dies at 74

Cari Beauchamp, a writer, documentarian and celebrated historian of women in Hollywood known for her attention to detail and exhaustive research, died Thursday. She was 74.

Her cause of death has not been made public, but her son, Jake Flynn, told THR she died of natural causes while being treated at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles.

As a journalist and writer, Beauchamp celebrated the forgotten history of women in the entertainment industry and shined a light on forgotten pioneers who built Hollywood. Her work was published by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Vanity Fair among many others. But she was perhaps best known for her 1997 book “Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood,” which focused on Marion’s storied career in the film industry’s first few decades.

In 2001, Beauchamp wrote and produced a documentary based on her book for TCM, for which she nominated for a WGA award. She also wrote the Emmy-nominated 2003 documentary “The Day My God Died,” about sex slavery in Nepal, and appeared as an expert on numerous other documentaries.

Born in 1949 in Berkeley, California, Beauchamp attended San Jose State University, originally intended to pursue a career in law. She ended up working instead as a private investigator for defense attorneys in the 1970s, where she honed the research skill and attention to detail she would later known for.

At that time she was also involved in feminist activism, serving as the first president of the National Women’s Political Caucus of California in 1973 and working for various women political candidates. She later worked as Press Secretary for then-Governor Jerry Brown.

She became a writer full time in 1990 and her first book, “Hollywood on the Riviera: The Inside Story of the Cannes Film Festival,” written with Henri Béhar, was published in 1992.

Among her survivors are her two sons.

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