[1][2] After graduating with a BA in political science and American history from San Jose State University in 1972, she intended to go to law school, but instead spent the next 6 years as a private investigator for defense attorneys,[3] including Barney Drefus and Charles Garry, and the Legal Aid Society of Santa Clara County, serving as lead investigator on several major class action suits.

Beauchamp also spent several years working in Washington DC with Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and many others on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment before returning to California in 1979 to serve as press secretary to Governor Jerry Brown.

The book examines the lives of Frances Marion (Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Big House and The Champ) and many of her female colleagues who shaped filmmaking from the 1920s through the 1940s.

[11][12] Beauchamp wrote and co-produced the documentary film Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and The Powerful Women of Early Hollywood, which premiered in 2000 on Turner Classic Movies,[13] and for which she was nominated for a Writers' Guild Award.

[14] She also wrote the documentary film The Day My God Died about young girls of Nepal sold into sexual slavery which played on PBS and was nominated for an Emmy in 2003.