Screenwriter Frederica Maas dies at 111

One of the last links to the silent film era, Frederica Sagor Maas wrote the script for 1925's "The Plastic Age," which launched actress Clara Bow. But she watched in horror as her serious treatment on women and work was turned into a frivolous 1947 musical, "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim," starring Betty Grable.

It was Maas' final Hollywood credit.

Disgusted by the "shallow" industry, she and her screenwriter husband contemplated suicide before leaving the movie business altogether, she later wrote.

For Maas, living an exceedingly long life was the best revenge.

"It's my only consolation to think, 'All you lousy so-and-sos are all 20 feet under, and I'm still here.' It's a satisfaction, but not a great satisfaction," she told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1999.

Maas, who had long called San Diego home, was the third-oldest Californian when she died Thursday at 111, said Dr. Stephen Coles of the Gerontology Research Group, which validates claims of extreme old age.

She took a decade to write her memoir, "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood," published in her 99th year. The book portrayed young Hollywood as heartless and unethical.

She and her husband, Ernest Maas, saw their ideas stolen and plagiarized, and they were blackballed by the industry after being wrongly accused of being communists, she wrote.

Frederica Sagor was born July 6, 1900, in New York City and studied journalism at Columbia University.

In the late 1920s, she married Ernest, who was her writing partner.

Her scripts for silent films include the 1926 movies "Flesh and the Devil" with Greta Garbo, and "Dance Madness."