Virginia Van Upp on AllMovie

Virginia Van Upp began her film career as a five-year-old child actress. Upon reaching adulthood, Van Upp determined to learn the production end of the business. Starting out as a script girl, she worked her way up to screenwriter and in this capacity kept busy at Paramount from 1930 to 1943. After her Paramount tenure, she was signed as a screenwriter and production executive at Columbia Pictures. The notoriously misogynistic Columbia chieftain Harry Cohn held Van Upp's opinions in the highest esteem, especially in matters relating to the screen career of the studio's top sex symbol, Rita Hayworth. Van Upp produced and/or scripted such Hayworth vehicles as Cover Girl (1944), Gilda (1946), and Affair in Trinidad(1952), spending her off-hours helping Hayworth cope with her professional and personal problems. Virgnia Van Upp died in 1970 of complications stemming from a broken hip.