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Mary Claire Kendall is a Washington-based journalist and screenwriter. In addition to her feature and commentary writing, she has written three original feature film screenplays, three pilot sitcoms, and is collaborating on an action drama pilot. She was an un-credited writer, reviewing three versions of a script for a 2010 film production with a brief theatrical release. Finally, she has experience writing books and is currently collaborating on a work of historical fiction with cinematic values; writing a biographical work that builds on her feature writing about Hollywood icons, especially their stories of recovery; and laying the groundwork for another book about a Hollywood icon and his son, at the request of the family. To date she’s written about Gary Cooper, Jane Wyman, Betty Hutton, Judy Garland, and Dolores Hart, among others.
A graduate of Wellesley College, she is well-versed in politics. Among other colorful Washington experiences, she worked as one of Lee Atwater’s “30 nerds” on George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign (primary and general). She served as a Reagan appointee, writing speeches at the U.S. Department of Education the last year of his second term; and as an H.W. Bush appointee his entire term at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where she was Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Health, serving, after the LA riots, on the National Commission on America’s Urban Families staff (#2) at the Assistant Secretary’s behest. She arranged for the commission to visit LA and San Francisco, among other key cities, and wrote the framework for report to the President at the request of Deputy Chairman Annette Strauss, former Mayor of Dallas. Later, she wrote speeches for the U.S. Export-Import Bank directors during the Clinton re-elect, while also writing the RNC convention speech of Senator Bill Frist (R-TN), slipping out for lunchtime convention conference calls at nearby Hay Adams Hotel.
During her college years, she was a frequent contributor, news and commentary, to The Wellesley News. At the end of the Bush Administration, she began focusing intensively on her non-fiction writing and, since 1995, has been published with gradually increasing frequency. Her articles have appeared in Aceprensa (based in Madrid), Alexandria Times, Austin American-Statesman, Big Hollywood, Catholic New World, Human Events Online, National Catholic Register, NY Daily News, New York Post, Newport Life Magazine, On Patrol (USO Magazine), Our Sunday Visitor, Pajamas Media, Position Papers (based in Dublin), The San Francisco Examiner, The Wanderer, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, and VFW Magazine,among other venues.
As she worked to establish herself as a writer, she began seeking more creative avenues, rekindling her passion for fiction writing—first apparent as a child when her third grade class performed a play she wrote. In 1995, when she was working on placing her first article post-Wellesley, a media pro, transitioning into film development, asked her out of the blue, “Have you ever considered writing fiction?” Two years later, her foot surgeon asked if she would like to help him write a script. A few months later, in the fall of 1997, she wrote a spec script for an ABC TV show, after someone suggested it in passing, and was asked to sign a release. After the show was canceled, turning lemons into lemonade, she used the script as the basis for her first screenplay, which she began writing on weekends at the desk of her then boss Paul Lee, now ABC Entertainment head, who had just arrived in the states to helm BBC America.
Ms.
Kendall is a member of The Writer's
Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where she has studied screenwriting
since 2001.
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