Cathrine Curtis

While working on the film, she decided she wanted to become a producer, and she decided to stay in Los Angeles.[5] Her first credit as a producer was on King Vidor's 1921 silent film The Sky Pilot.[6] She planned an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (ultimately released in 1925), but legal wrangling ensued over rights.[7] She was noted as one of the only film producers of her day, and was notable for being the first woman in that position.[8] Curtis ran her own production company, The Cathrine Curtis Pictures Corporation. Created in 1919, the company had offices in New York City and Los Angeles.[9] She seems to have lost interest after marrying her husband Joseph O'Neill but continued making advertorial films through the end of the decade.

After moving back to New York City after the stock market crash, she continued investing and became a radio personality, producing a twice-weekly show, Women and Money, for WMCA, where she began espousing a brand of feminism centered around women's financial independence.[3] Her criticism of the New Deal eventually led to cancellation of the program.[1]

Curtis was also a far-right activist and organizer known for her anti-Communist stance, antisemitism, and isolationist views. She created a number of committees and organizations in her day, including the National Legion of Mothers of America and the Women's National Committee to Keep the U.S. Out of War. Her criticism of the New Deal and lobbying on behalf of women investors[10] led her to create the Women Investors Research Institute, a non-profit organization that grew to 300,000 members in 1939.[1]