Since the February launch of A SEASON IN SAIGON I’ve focused on writing about the women, the music, and the events that shaped the story of the women who covered the war in Vietnam. This week’s mailbag contained a couple of letters asking when the next book comes out, and what it’s about.
I’m glad you asked! Because I love nothing more than talking about new stories, and the real life people and events that inspire them.
Right now I’m revising a mystery novel set in a small Texas town in the mid 1950’s and I’m sending out SCRIPT GIRL a novel about the golden age of Hollywood. Like all of my other novels, this one owes its existence to real people. In this case, two women who worked as Hollywood script girls in the 1940’s and who went on to distinguished careers in the film industry.
Born in Memphis in 1907, Meta Carpenter trained as a classical pianist but went to Hollywood in the mid 1930s where she took a secretarial job for the famous director Howard Hawks. In a letter to an admirer shortly before her death, Meta admitted she was never a skilled secretary, and that “maybe that is why Mr. Hawks promoted me to script girl. That early training made it possible for me to have a career win the motion picture industry and to finally have credits on the pictures on which I worked.”
In 1936, while working as Hawks’s script girl she met the writer William Faulkner, who was in town to write the screenplay for “The Road To Glory”. Meta was 29 years old, blonde and beautiful. Faulkner was a decade older, married to his second wife but the two fell in love and maintained an on and off relationship for nearly thirty years. Over the course of her career Meta worked as script supervisor for more than 200 films.
Meanwhile, across town, 29-year old Joan Harrison was working alongside her mentor, Alfred Hitchcock. Born in England, as was her boss, Joan also began her career as a secretary. When Hitchcock brought his wife Alma and their daughter Patricia to Hollywood in 1939, Joan came with them. She was soon considered a member of the family, regularly dining with them on Thursday nights at Chasen’s, the famous Hollywood restaurant where “Hitch” held court for his admirers. Joan became Hitch’s protege and soon began co writing his most famous films including Foreign Correspondent and Rebecca. In 1940 she was the first woman to be nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award. She went on to become one of the first women to work as a producer in Hollywood, beginning with her 1944 film, Phantom Lady.
Known for her stylish clothes and her command of the movie business, Joan left Hollywood in 1958 when she married Eric Ambler, a British novelist said to have pioneered the modern spy novel. They lived abroad until Joan’s death in 1994.
In creating SCRIPT GIRL, I chose bits and pieces from the lives of both these pioneering women to show my character Kate Regan’s struggles to be taken seriously in a man’s world, to overcome sexism and create a meaningful career against the glamorous wartime backdrop of Hollywood’s golden age. And because I love complicating my stories with a bit of mystery, there are a couple of haunting secrets that stand between Kate and her shot at happiness.
But secrets don’t stay buried forever….
Today’s Hollywood would be unrecognizable to Joan and Meta. With SCRIPT GIRL I take readers back to the era of the famous glittering nightclubs like Ciro’s and the Mocambo, jitterbug contests at the Trocadero, to the age when gossip columnists like Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons had the power to make or break a career. To the Hollywood canteen where Bob Hope and other stars served cake and coffee to American troops coming and going from the war.
Thank you for choosing my books, and for staying connected. I’ll keep you posted on future books. And as always you can contact me here or connect on Facebook.
