Cirrus@Austlit

New Zealand-born Alice Eyton was living in Australia by 1881. She wrote for various Sydney newspapers and magazines, including the Sunday Times and the Sydney Mail, both as a reporter and a fiction writer. She also wrote vaudeville sketches and plays. Eyton moved to England in 1902 where she became a staff writer for several newspapers. Her assignments included covering the coronation of Edward VII from a colonial perspective.

By 1908, Eyton was living and working in the US where she married the scriptwriter Robert Von Saxmar and established a career as a 'scenario writer' for motion pictures of the silent era. Eyton's brother, Charles F. Eyton (1871-1941), a former boxing promoter, was also involved in the motion picture industry.

Eyton died in 1929 from burns received after her costume caught fire at a Halloween party.

Sources include: New York Times 4 Nov 1929. p.24 and Donna R. Casella. 'Feminism and the Female Author: The Not So Silent Career of the Woman Scenarist in Hollywood, 1896-1930'. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 23 (2006): 217-35.