Frederica Alexandrina Sagor Maas (/ˌfrɛdəˈrikə səˈɡɔːr mæs/; July 6, 1900 – January 5, 2012) was an American dramatist, playwright, screenwriter, memoirist, and author,[1] the youngest daughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia.

[3] Maas's parents, Arnold and Agnessa (née Litvinova) Zagorsky,[4] Jewish immigrants from Moscow, Russian Empire, and anglicized their surname to Sagor.

[5] She studied journalism at Columbia University and held a summer job as a copy- or errand-girl at the New York Globe newspaper.

[5] Once in Hollywood, Maas negotiated a contract with Preferred Pictures to adapt Percy Marks's novel The Plastic Age for film.

During 1925–1926 she wrote treatments and screenplays for Tiffany Productions, including the well-received flapper comedies That Model from Paris and The First Night.

During 1927, Schulberg, this time with Paramount Pictures, contracted Sagor for a year and she says she worked uncredited on scripts such as Clara Bow's It, Red Hair and Hula; and credited for writing the story for Louise Brooks' lost film Rolled Stockings.

In these five years we only found work doing short studio assignments – cleaning up other people's scripts – and had failed to sell our own stories.

Bad representation caused the story to sell for a pittance, and it would not be produced until 1947 when it was rendered almost unrecognizable in an adaptation by Darryl F. Zanuck's 20th Century Fox for Betty Grable.

[5] In 1999, at age 99, and at the urging of film historian Kevin Brownlow, Maas published her autobiography, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood.

From the Library Journal:Maas's chronicle of her writing career, which spanned over a quarter of a century, is a valuable contribution to the literature on women in Hollywood ...

Peppered with fascinating anecdotes from yesteryear, this account of the author's life bespeaks frustration with the vapidity of Hollywood: a fickle business world that relied on formula for its success.

Maas trashes Hollywood legends, recalling Louis B. Mayer as "a very fearful, insecure man"; Clara Bow dancing nude on a tabletop; Jeanne Eagels squatting to urinate in the midst of a film set ...[9] There are also her detractors:Her story has to be taken with a grain of salt.

By the time she wrote her memoirs at 99 her bitterness with Hollywood was deep and she particularly relished describing the bosses with whom she so frequently battled as amoral debauchers.