Sada Louise Cowan was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1883. Probably of Jewish heritage, Cowan moved to Europe as a teenager and studied music in Germany, we are told in a 1919 collection of one-act plays (Gardner 77). She then went on to make her name as a playwright in “The State Forbids,” “In the Morgue,” “Pomp,” “Playing the Game,” “The Moonlit Way,” “The Honor of America,” and “The Wonder of the Age.” Thus, it was with a formidable reputation as a playwright that Cowan wrote her first credited silent film, The Woman Under Cover in 1919, at the age of thirty-six. Soon after she completed her first work with DeMille in 1920, she entered into contract with director-producer Harry Garson for several films starring his wife Clara Kimball Young, a deal that the Los Angeles Times announced with the headline “Signs Sada Cowan” (III13). The year 1922 saw the release of Fool’s Paradise, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, on which Cowan is credited with Famous Players-Lasky studio writer Beulah Marie Dix.

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