Pencils – Caitlin Benson Hartford, daughter

I last saw you in October and you were still feathering your new nest. A single-story house that would be much easier on your knees and in a great neighborhood – if it weren’t for the knees – within walking distance to your favorite places in Fairhaven. Unpacked boxes still stuffed the garage and an outbuilding or two, but parts of the house were already taking on your flavor: the kitchen, dining and living rooms, and of course, your office. A corner nook off the main entry with a wrap-around desk and plenty of shelving, your snug mission control. A collection of yellow pads, post-its, printed emails, recipes, and personal cards tumbled in minor disarray across the desktop as if to say, “We’ve only just arrived, but already there are lovely and important things to remember and keep within eyeshot.”

The mail brought excitement one day in the form of a new electric pencil sharpener in a medium-sized box. After unpacking it, you wanted to try it out immediately. I thought it a bit silly, with so much need to reduce possessions, what would make you spend money on an electric pencil sharpener of all things?  But then I remembered the marmalade jars of fat, soft-lead pencils you strategically placed where one might need to write. Two jars sat on your desk to the left of the computer and another by the kitchen phone for transcribing messages and taking careful notes from phone conversations with your daughters so facts could later correctly be recounted to Herman or others. The special pencils, you explained, were too wide to fit into regular sharpeners and the electric sharpener you had for years had just quit working. With optimism for the unquestioned need to keep sharp pencils at hand, there was no doubting the equal need for another good sharpener. And so there it was, shiny, plugged in and ready to assist. 

When I returned the following March, a week after you were already gone, I noticed you had sharpened all the pencils to equal points and distributed them tip up among the marmalade jars. 

One must always be ready to write.

Fond Memories – Chris Connelly, colleague

I’ve got fond memories of your mother’s literate & spirited reviews, especially during a film decade when her critical discernment and truth-telling were so greatly needed. I was very sorry to read of her passing. It’s fitting that you’ve been hearing from grateful readers & colleagues who appreciated her work… I think she helped a lof of us to enjoy thinking and sharing about the movies that much more. Sending gratitude for your mother’s writing, & all the best to you and your family.

Mourning her loss – National Society of Film Critics, Twitter, 2/28/22

We mourn the loss of our dear friend and longtime member, Sheila Benson, who wrote beautifully, incisively and lovingly about movies for the Los Angeles Times, the Pacific Sun, Cinemania and other publications. She will be deeply missed.

Every Comma Mattered: Sheila Benson’s Life & Times, by Chuck Wilson, friend & colleague

Former Los Angeles Times film critic Sheila Benson died February 23, 2022 of natural causes. She was 91. Admired by colleagues for the eloquence of her prose and by filmmakers and actors alike for her generosity of spirit, Sheila came to criticism quite naturally. Her parents were artists and writers. She herself studied ballet under the great Balanchine. Observing the world, onscreen and off, with an artist’s eye, was an intrinsic gift Sheila spent her life cultivating.

Sheila was born December 4, 1930 in New York City to museum curator-dioramist turned costume designer Dwight Franklin and novelist-screenwriter Mary C. McCall, Jr. During the Depression, the Franklin-McCall’s moved to Los Angeles. Sheila was four-years-old. Her parents found great success in Hollywood, with Dwight designing costumes for Cecil B. DeMille while Mary became the first woman to be voted president of the Writer’s Guild of America (twice).

Sheila attended Beverly Hills High School and studied theater arts at UCLA alongside classmates James Dean and Carol Burnett. Sheila would eventually become a writer like her mother, but in her heart of hearts, she was a dancer, and as a teenager, studied at the School of American Ballet under choreographer George Balanchine. A harsh taskmaster whom Sheila adored, the Russian master taught her a respect for rigor and detail that she would carry forth into her own work. For Sheila, every comma mattered. Intensely.

She would marry three times, first to photographer Charles W. Ashley, with whom she had two daughters, Ann and Eden. Later, she married developer Walter Benson, with whom she had her daughter, Caitlin. Some years later, in 1982, she married businessman Herman Hong, who would prove to be the great love of her life. This August would have been their 40^th wedding anniversary.

By the end of her second marriage, Sheila was living in Mill Valley, California, and writing film criticism for the Pacific Sun. Sheila’s reviews were immensely popular and caught the attention of Los Angeles Times film critic Charles Champlin, who invited her to join the paper.

Soon, Sheila was back in the city of her upbringing, traveling to screenings at the movie studios at which her parents had once worked, often with their daughter at their side. Those years, along with her deep love of literature and art, infused every line of every review she wrote.

Sheila was the Chief Film Critic of the Los Angeles Times from 1981 to 1991 and Critic at Large from ’91 to ’92. She was invited to serve on the critic’s jury to many prestigious festivals, from her beloved Mill Valley Film Festival to Telluride, Toronto, Sundance, and Berlin. She often moderated onstage interviews with filmmakers and actors, including a grand one with Alfre Woodard as well as a nerve rattling but triumphant encounter with Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni.

In those years, Sheila won the adoration of L.A. Times readers, who were known to read her reviews aloud or cut them out and post them on the fridge. Her reviews turned many small, no-budget releases, such as Some Girls and One False Move, into local hits.

Carl Franklin and Jesse Beaton, the director and producer, respectively, of One False Move, credit Sheila’s early support with helping the film, now hailed as a masterpiece, gain a nationwide release. “She changed the course of both our lives,” Beaton said upon learning of Sheila’s passing.

As Hollywood turned to superheroes and L.A. traffic became a bit too awful to bear, Sheila stepped away from the Times and she and Herman moved to Seattle and a new life. There, they made many new friends, and as in Los Angeles and Mill Valley, the Benson-Hong house was always brimming with activity. Dinner, of course, was served after 9 p.m. when it could be savored and the day fully discussed and appreciated. If you called, and you were welcome to call late, Sheila might talk with you, but Herman would surely chime in, his commentary laced with laughter. There was much laughter in that house. Laughter and joy and enviably good food.

Sheila was with us for 91 years and each was full to bursting with life.

Sheila Benson is survived by her husband, Herman Hong, and daughters, Ann Brooke Ashley, Eden Ashley Umble, and Caitlin Benson Hartford, and sons-in-law Michael Umble and Tim Hartford. She doted on her four grandchildren, Chloe & Riley Umble, and Samantha & Michael Hartford. She is also survived by her sister, Mary David Sheiner, and niece, Laurel Phillips.

Plans for a Sheilabration (multi-city tour) will be announced later this year.

In lieu of flowers, her family invites you to consider a donation in her memory to support human rights (refugee aid for Ukraine), reproductive rights, literacy, or voters’ rights – all causes near and dear to her activist’s heart.