Cari Beauchamp, a Hollywood historian whose books chronicled the powerful women who shaped the film industry’s early decades before being largely squeezed out by studio moguls in the 1940s, died Dec. 12 at a hospital in Los Angeles. She was 74.

Her son, Jake Flynn, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.

Beauchamp (pronounced Bee-cham) helped revive attention to an often-overlooked chapter in cinema when dozens of women climbed to top of the profession, winning awards and acclaim for films that sometimes offered biting commentary on the limits and expectations imposed on women.

Her work also explored the lost stories of how women in the film industry – writers, directors and others – forged bonds to boost their careers and build solidarity during the silent-movie era and prewar years. The arc ran from screenwriters such as Anita Loos (with dozens of silent-movie credits and author of the 1925 novel-turned-film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”) to director Dorothy Arzner, with women-empowering films including a groundbreaking female buddy movie, “Dance, Girl, Dance,” (1940) starring Lucille Ball and Maureen O’Hara.

Beauchamp became increasingly fascinated by film during years working as a private investigator for defense attorneys and stints in politics, including serving as California Gov. Jerry Brown’s press secretary from 1979 to 1982 and working on efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment alongside Gloria Steinhem and others.

Beauchamp told friends that those jobs – sleuthing as a private eye and dealing with the infighting and vanities of politics – were good primers for understanding the world of cinema. “The information is out there. You just gotta dig,” she told Vanity Fair.

Her first target was the annual extravaganza of filmdom, the festival at Cannes, the French Riviera resort where Beauchamp had spent some time in the 1970s. The 1992 book, written with journalist Henri Behár, “Hollywood on the Riviera: The Inside Story of the Cannes Film Festival,” was an ode to the excess and artistry on display each May.

“Cannes is our Christmas,” film producer Menachem Golan was quoted as saying. Reviewers embraced the book’s anecdote-driven pacing: Egyptian-French actress Simone Silva taking off her top; director François Truffaut bemoaning the quality of the films; the gleaming yachts and the humming Lamborghinis.

Beauchamp wanted her next project to peer back to the early years of American cinema. Months of research led her to Frances Marion, one of the doyennes of the age. Marion, a former reporter in San Francisco, became among the highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood and went on win Academy Awards for the prison drama “The Big House (1930) and the saga of an ex-boxer, “The Champ” (1931).

Marion often said she was always looking “for a man to look up to without lying down.” That became the title of Beauchamp’s 1997 book, “Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood.” For Beauchamp, Marion became her guide through a Hollywood sisterhood that had been mostly forgotten.

Each week, Marion joined weekly gatherings with her circle of female friends. They shared news on possible upcoming films and jobs – and tried to figure out how to outwit the men who sometimes stood in their way (with the exception of producer Irving Thalberg, who made a point of hiring female writers.) The women also always enjoyed retelling the stories about Marion and her best friend, Mary Pickford, a silent-movie star who was one of the country’s first film idols as “America’s sweetheart.”

In 1917, Pickford and Marion exerted almost full control over the making of “The Poor Little Rich Girl,” a tale of an heiress (Pickford) neglected by her parents. When it was screened for the male-only studio executives, they deemed it so bad that they wanted to spike it, Beauchamp recounted. It was eventually released and became a huge hit with critics and audiences. Pickford went onto stardom and Marion’s career was launched.

Beauchamp’s research found that about half the films copyrighted between 1911 and 1925 were written by women. “For Frances and her friends, a virtue was derived from oppression; with so little expected of them, they were free to accomplish much,” Beauchamp wrote. “They were drawn to a business that, for a time, not only allowed, but welcomed women.”

Some reviewers took issue with Beauchamp’s writing style as rough and repetitive. The depth of her research, however, was always lauded. “Beauchamp reminds us … women climbed high in the infant movie business because no one took it very seriously,” wrote Wendy Smith in The Washington Post, “as the studio system solidified, they found it increasingly difficult to maintain the independence and power they had gained as pioneers.”

As resident scholar of the Mary Pickford Foundation, Beauchamp believed there was still inspiration to draw from the actress’s life more than a century later. “She was a woman in a man’s world who learned to effectively use her power at a time when there were no paths to follow,” Beauchamp wrote.

In 2003, Beauchamp edited and annotated “Anita Loos Rediscovered,” a collection of film treatments, plays and other works by screenwriter Loos, whose films included the provocative “Red-Headed Woman” (1932) in which a woman (Jean Harlow) seeks to seduce a married man (Chester Morris.) Loos also collaborated with “Gigi” author Colette on a 1951 stage version of the novella on Broadway, starring Audrey Hepburn.

“Just the thought being a fly on the wall with Anita and Colette,” Beauchamp said in an interview. ” … Just imagine those two women sitting together in old age swapping tales.”

Carolann Beauchamp was born Sept. 12, 1949, in Berkeley, Calif. Her father worked in the Stockton, Calif., police department and later in the insurance industry; her mother was an administrator at the University of the Pacific in Stockton.

She studied at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, Calif., and began working in 1967 on the unsuccessful presidential campaign of Sen. Eugene McCarthy, D-Minn.

She then worked in various jobs – including modeling fur coats – before receiving a degree in political science and U.S. history in 1972 from San José State University. She planned on going to law school but opted to work for six years as a private investigator for defense attorneys and the Legal Aid Society of Santa Clara County.

She also returned to political campaigns, helping direct the successful mayoral run of Janet Hayes in 1976 in San Jose.

Beauchamp’s other books include “Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years” (2009) about the Kennedy patriarch’s vast influence on the film industry from 1926 to 1930 as head of three studios.

For the screen, she wrote and produced for a 2000 documentary for Turner Classic Movies based on “Without Lying Down,” and wrote a PBS documentary, “The Day My God Died,” (2004) about sex trafficking in Nepal and India. Both were nominated for Emmys.

Survivors include Beauchamp’s sons, Jake Flynn and Teo Beauchamp.

At the TCM Classic Film Festival earlier this year, Beauchamp introduced the 1932 film, “The Wiser Sex,” starring Claudette Colbert as a women who goes undercover after her boyfriend has been framed for murder. The film drew complaints from Joseph Breen, who was in charge of enforcing the newly enacted Hays Code, which sought to censor racy, politically sensitive or other perceived contentious content. One of the issues raised by Breen was that Colbert was showing too much leg.

“I think of (Breen’s) impact today,” Beauchamp told the audience, “when considering the damage done from book bannings and other challenges we are facing.”