Kate Alcott’s Hollywood novels take us inside the sparkle of the star system to reveal real people, from Clark Gable and Carole Lombard on the set of Gone With The Wind to purity icon Ingrid Bergman’s spectacular fall from grace as an American darling. Hi there. I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and on the Joys of Binge Reading today Kate talks about growing up in Los Angeles and being a Hollywood insider, as well as assessing how women writers and actors fared in early Hollywood compared with today. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Her early inspiration from Louisa May Alcott Living in LA where ‘Hollywood ruled’ Her favorite character in all her 12 books Writing a best seller with best friend Ellen Goodman The secrets of the ‘Swiss Cheese Book Club‘ Her mother’s part in her best-selling Titanic story Where to find Kate Alcott: Website: http://www.katealcott.com/ Facebook: @KateAlcott Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5052587.Kate_Alcott What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny Wheeler: But now here’s Kate. Hello Kate, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. I was really touched when I discovered that you’ve just very recently married and you’re giving this time to do this interview when you’ve had a lot of great excitements in your personal life. So let me just first offer you our congratulations and thank you for giving us the time. Kate Alcott: Well, thank you very much. Jenny Wheeler: Did it all go well? Kate Alcott: It did. It all went well. 400 family members on both sides. Kate Alcott novelist, who has also written historical fiction under the name Patricia Alcott. Jenny Wheeler: Oh my goodness. That was a pretty big party! You’re an experienced journalist who’s obviously used to writing, but what made you decide to move into fiction and was there a Once Upon A Time moment when something grabbed your insides and you said, “I’ve really got to write fiction.” Kate Alcott: Well it was basically always a dream of mine from the time I was, I think about ten and I – and other women have said this – but it had a real influence. I was quite taken with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, particularly the story of Jo March. I identified with her. She wanted to be a writer, and I loved this character that she had created. And I’ve always felt that that was the beginning. I just knew almost automatically that what I wanted to do was to write fiction. Of course that had to wait a number of years. But eventually I was able to do it. Growing up in LA Jenny Wheeler: Yes, so I gather you grew up in LA, but possibly not in the Hollywood part of LA, and you’ve now published four highly praised historical novels and several of them dip very heavily into the early years of Hollywood. Could you talk a little bit about your background in LA and possible insider connections that give you unusual insight into how things work there? Kate Alcott: Well, I think that growing up in Los Angeles was an experience all in of itself. We really, in my lifetime as a young teenager, you lived and breathed the Hollywood stuff. I remember my father bringing home a copy of evening newspaper, and even then it struck me, we were so focused on what was happening with Hollywood. And here it was – four inch headlines on the evening news saying “Liz has flu” – like it was the equivalent of World War III. That’s Elizabeth Taylor. A Touch of Stardust I had a glimmer at that time that we might have a somewhat skewed idea, but I grew up in that atmosphere, even though not in a Hollywood family. Now my husband, Frank Mankiewicz, my deceased husband, did, and his family was very much a Hollywood family. His father was the writer of Citizen Kane. His uncle did All About Eve and many, many movies – that was Joe Mankiewicz. He grew up taking for granted Hollywood in a much closer way than me. He had movie stars living to the left, to the right, and it was all normal. You know, you saw them as real people. We had a lot of fun when I wrote A Touch Of Stardust, we had a lot of fun putting that together. He used to tell me about the parties his mother and father gave. We actually visited the house where he grew up and walked through it. And my imagination clicked in. I wrote a scene about a party at the Mankiewicz’s – that was fun. That was part of what drew my attention to writing that. It was a different scenario in The Hollywood Daughter, that was more about people being very aware of the whole atmosphere with the McCarthy hearings. The Hollywood Daughter People were afraid of their lives, of being ruined because they were branded as Communists and there were witch hunts going on during those years. And I asked myself what would it be like to live in that atmosphere? Kate Alcott’s story of Ingrid Bergman’s fight for autonomy One of both of glamor and fear. I created a young girl, The Hollywood Daughter, who grew up in a world laced with the glamor and fear. And I’ve always wanted to see places that I write about and go to them. That’s really important. As much as possible. For The Daring Ladies of Lowell, I went to Lowell, to see the places where the Lowell girls worked in the mills in the early 1800s – but anyway, that’s going off your question from Hollywood to New England. Jenny Wheeler: The Hollywood Daughter, which is your most recent book very much focuses on Ingrid Bergman and the real life scandals that erupted about her affair with Roberto Rossellini. It was seen as being totally scandalous in those years. I wondered what drew you to that particular topic, and was Ingrid Bergman a personal favorite of yours growing up? Kooky Carole Lombard Kate Alcott: Well, she wasn’t totally. I think the one I really fell in love was Carole Lombard, but that’s the book back, A Touch of Stardust. Jenny Wheeler: Yes, and I’d love to talk about that one too, because you do paint a wonderful picture of Carole. We will talk about Carol later because you do paint a wonderful picture of her. Ingrid obviously with a very different sort of personality, wasn’t she? She came over almost as being a Swedish ice cube in a way, didn’t she? Kate Alcott: She did initially, and of course, I remember being on my bike as a kid and was riding down the street with one of my friends and she yelled out and said, did you hear Ingrid Bergman had a baby? And she wasn’t married – well she was married, but not to the father of her child, and, I was so shocked because she was an icon of perfection. She was, as you said, so, so clear and clean. It turned out she was human. Hitting hard times and surviving And that really, I thought, what would it be like if this was someone that you just looked up to? You know, we all have our heroes and our heroine from childhood. And what you see is not always what you would see years later. I thought that Ingrid got treated terribly in this country. It was just shocking, even then, to realize she was denounced on U S Senate floor. She was banned from the United States for a couple of years. Work dried up here, but she continued to flourish in Europe and then she came back to do Anastasia, winning her third Academy Award. And that story of hitting bad times and surviving them and being brave enough to be yourself. I think that the kind of a theme of all women. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. And one of the other themes has been that taking a young woman, a younger woman. Even a young girl’s viewpoint, and telling the story through her eyes. Inspired by her mother’s story And you did the same with your first novel, The Dressmaker, which takes the story of the aftermath of the Titanic sinking. As a first book it was a great launch for you, wasn’t it? It was a best seller. It followed a young woman who joined the Titanic as a dressmaker for a very rich woman. Had the Titanic movie already been made when you, you wrote that book? The Dressmaker – Kate Alcott New York Times best seller set on the Titanic Kate Alcott: No. What really started me on that book was a story of my mother’s. My mother emigrated from Ireland to the United States, and I start the book out, as you might recall, with this woman upstairs, a maid in Belfast and throwing her cap at the mirror and marching out and going down to the docks and getting on one of the ships. Only one lifeboat went back Well, that was my mother. I thought, what would my mother’s story have been like if she had been on the Titanic? So that’s where that started. But you know, I’ve always loved – I needed – to get an anchor for each story. And one of the things that grabbed me about the Titanic was only one lifeboat went back to pick up survivors after. Only one, as that immense magnificent ships sank and with all those lives lost. And I thought, “only one” and this dress designer that I write about, she had commandeered one of the lifeboats and she came under great criticism for that later. I went down to the National Geographic Museum, in Washington DC at one point,where they had a replica of the lifeboat, just one of the lifeboats off of the Titanic, and it blew me away. Lombard and Gable love story You could stand there in front of it and imagine how empty it was. And then the other people, all of them dying. So each book, I wanted, my heroine, the dressmaker to really be trying hard for new life, as was my mother. So I said to my mother, you know, I’ll tell your story in the midst of mine. Jenny Wheeler: Oh, that’s gorgeous. Yes. And then A Touch of Stardust really did captivate my heart, with your portrayal of the relationship between Carole Lombard and Clark Gable. And all the carry on that went on behind the scenes on the sets of the making of Gone With The Wind, because it’s very much set it against that background of the making of that monumental movie Gone With The Wind. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard – he never recovered form her death – Pic NY Post It really paints a picture of Hollywood at that time. And I must admit, I didn’t really know about the consequential story and really the sadness of the ending of it all in real life. But it delves into the politics of. Hollywood’s relationship with Nazi Germany as well. So you become a little bit more political in that one, don’t you? Politics played important role Kate Alcott: Yes, I certainly did. And I did in The Hollywood Daughter too. But I know my years in journalism, there’s a lot of politics. So the political weaving in and out of the glamor. And the story of Hollywood, I felt was important to give extra dimension. Jenny Wheeler: Were you a fan of Carole Lombard yourself or was she someone you discovered if you wait too long? Kate Alcott: I think I discovered her as I went along, but you know what I try to do, with Carole Lombard, or Ingrid Bergman or any of the major true life characters. I do as much research to give me a really strong sense of connection of what they actually truly said. So I use some of the things that they said in their words and weave it into the story so that’s been a part of building the story. And when I saw some of the things Carole Lombard did, she was a real kook. I would have loved to put my feet up and have a talk with her. She was exuberant about her love for Clark Gable. Giving characters a true voice They were obviously such turbulent times. I think the marriages in Hollywood are under such intense scrutiny all the time. They deserve some sensitivity. She was just so alive. She became one of my favorite characters of any of my books. Jenny Wheeler: Yes, and that comes through, but it’s lovely to think that some of the dialogue that you give, are things that she said in real life. Kate Alcott: Oh, yes. Particularly Carole. That made her stand out more, and I thought, why not? She had say, give her her voice. There’s this early scene where this reporter wants to do an interview, and two young girls who are supposed to be monitoring the questions and she just blows them away. That made me laugh. Forgotten women of film Jenny Wheeler: Yes. There’s also a strong sense of highlighting the circumstances for women in the movie industry in those years, whether they’re starlets hoping to make it big as stars on screen or the script writers and giving recognition to some “forgotten names” like Frances Marion, who I guess you couldn’t really say she was forgotten because she won two Academy awards. But she has disappeared a bit into oblivion now, isn’t she? Kate Alcott: Oh, yes. And there were a number of women and they were in the vanguard of the industry. There hasn’t been enough written about that in nonfiction either. There was a very strong presence of women in some of the early films. There’s some magnificent silent films and Mary Pickford, she was a business genius and she knew what she was doing and she was also a great actress. And there was Frances Marion. She had actually power at a certain point. Mary Pickford and Frances Marion That’s what disappeared for women in the industry. So we’re in a very interesting and turbulent time now and just seeing how women get more access to the function-making and decision making portion of their art. And it’s better than it used to be, but for a long time people like Frances Marion just drifted into the past. Jenny Wheeler: Have women got back to where they were in the early years yet do you think? Kate Alcott: I really can’t say. I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think if it’s relative to the time that you’re in, you know, the first step was acknowledging the fact what you mean women won Academy awards for directing and writing and producing and acting? It was seen as taking over so much of the male world. Not to be too cynical, but once the industry began to make a lot of money, it became more of a man’s world. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. That seems to happen over and over again, doesn’t it? Just changing tack a little, could you give us an idea of your work process? First of all, how do you decide on the next book and then how do you go about beginning that process? Do you do a lot of research before you start writing a single word? How does that work? Getting to original sources Kate Alcott: Yes. I try to do that. It differs from book to book… Maybe not a huge amount in some, it’s more than another. Harriet and Isabella, which is book I wrote under my own name (Patricia O’Brien) ) about the Henry Ward Beecher adultery trial that caught my attention, I used many original sources. A famous adultery scandal that split a family – Kate Alcott writing as Patricia O’Brien With the Titanic story, and picking up on the information about only one lifeboat going back. I had access to transcripts of the hearings, the US hearing into the scandal of why that ship sank, which began the very next day at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York after the sinking. As you read the transcript of these people testifying and being questioned you get quite a sense of the raw stunned atmosphere. We’ve just got the ‘ this just happened’ feeling. And that was very important. I walk around the subject for awhile and as with any writers, I have projects that went two or three chapters, and then I think no, maybe another time. It’s not bouncing alive. I like the range of stories. I like a woman at the center. I always looked for a trigger that lets me inside a story. One of the last remaining Titanic lifeboats Jenny Wheeler: And what would you say was the trigger for A Touch of Stardust? Writing under two names Kate Alcott: I think basically it was Carole Lombard and Clark Gable. They drew me and Gone With The Wind was such story – it enthralled me when I read the book. I know it’s false now. I’m glad I read it back when I was perhaps not so discriminating. It was basically that, when there was a love story at the heart. Jenny Wheeler: You mentioned writing under your own name, but for people listening who aren’t so familiar, Kate Alcott is your writing name for these historic Hollywood novels and you write under Patricia O’Brien as well? Kate Alcott: Yes. Yes, that’s correct. And I will tell you a story of why. I wrote several novels under my own name and they did fine. And then I got all drawn into The Dressmaker, as I told you, and I’d gone and seen the lifeboats, and I decided to write that book. And it was, by the time I had it finished and ready to send to my editor, it was the 2008 crash of the economy when we all fell into recession here in the U S and I sent off my manuscript and I thought it would sell. I was spoiled, they all sold fast and it got returned. Good luck – or good management? And then my agent said, “Hmm, I don’t know what happened there.” And she sent it out to a couple more and they returned it too, wasn’t quite up to whatever. Finally we had 13 rejections of the dressmakers and my agent, a wonderful person named Esther Newburgh, in New York, said, Pat, it’s not the writing, it’s the economy. The book industry is crashing and they’re afraid to take a chance. She said “Would you be interested in publishing under another name? Then they don’t have to check. They don’t have to get all worried and check, you know, how much money prior books made.” And so I said, okay, it’s certainly legal. Lots of authors do it. I chose Kate Alcott and The Dressmaker was sent out. And it was bought by a wonderful editor at Random House in two days for more money than I’d ever received before. Jenny Wheeler: How amazing! Remembering Louisa May Kate Alcott: And it made the New York Times Bestseller list. So the story makes me laugh because I hope that other people who were trying to break into the business, young writers. Just listen to some of the absurdities, and don’t blame yourself for everything. Jenny Wheeler: Wonderful story. Did you choose the name Alcott from Louisa May and Little Women? Kate Alcott: Oh, how did you guess? Of course I did. That was my salute to Louisa. Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful. Turning to your wider career, away from the specific books we had mentioned a little bit about your earlier life and your journalistic work. I’m curious as to whether you actually covered Hollywood or the entertainment industry as a journalist before you started writing about it. And maybe also just a little bit of a background on what those first books as Patricia O’Brien – were they related to Hollywood in any way? Best Seller with Best friend Kate Alcott: No, they weren’t. I’m thinking back here. One was on the adultery trial and Harriet Beecher Stowes’ brother, Henry. No, they didn’t have a Hollywood connection. Jenny Wheeler: Were they nonfiction? Kate Alcott: No, they were fiction. I had written three nonfiction books. I have a total of 12 out there today. The first book was quite a number of years ago, called The Woman Alone, and it was on women’s lives and living alone. And the second book was on marriages that stay together. And then there were some political novels and I then I wrote a book with my best friend called, I Know Just What You Mean subtitled The power of friendship in women’s lives. A best seller with her best friend – Ellen Goodman and Patricia O’Brien And that’s Ellen Goodman. Ellen and I, we have been friends – best friends – for many years. We met at a journalistic program here in Boston years and years ago, and decided we had gone to all these places and been part of a lot of things. And one thing we had never done as writers was write something together. So we did. Twenty years in journalism Jenny Wheeler: Oh, fantastic. Who did you work for when you were a journalist? Kate Alcott: Well, I worked on several papers, but primarily in Chicago and Washington. I worked 20 years as a journalist. And I did a lot of politics, particularly in the last 10 years. I did radio commentary, and some television. I loved being a journalist. But there was a time where I was always dreaming of someday writing a novel. I’ll tell you another story. My husband, Frank and I were in the kitchen washing dishes and I was talking about something frustrating at work, and lamenting the fact that I wish I had had time somewhere to write a novel, and my husband throws the towel down to the floor and looks at me and he said, you want to write a novel? Write a novel. You can do it, you can do it. You write it. And I said “Oh? You think so? Okay.” Patricia O’Brien with her late husband, Frank Mankiewicz – he encouraged her writing. Go ahead and try I’d say to anybody out there wondering if they can write, go ahead and try. Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful and it leads nicely onto the question that I like to ask everyone I speak to here. And that is, is there one thing you’ve done, perhaps more than any other that’s been the secret of your success as a fiction writer? Kate Alcott: I think in terms that so much of breaking through is luck. There are many wonderful novels that get written that never get any attention. I was very fortunate with my quirky story about The Dressmaker, but I was very fortunate and that actually made it possible to hit the bestseller list. I did that twice, once with the friendship book too. But as far as one thing, good luck. Definitely one. Otherwise, basically, I’ll tell you what it really is. It’s deciding what you want to do, it’s getting up, having breakfast, walking, working out, whatever you do and going into your office and putting your rear end down on a chair and opening the computer and writing. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. No other secrets. Fact ends and imagination begins Kate Alcott: Well, if you’ve got a story in your head, and I love stories and to be able to scrape away, and you know, it is some point. People say the difference between nonfiction and fiction – nonfiction is, is a wonderful base but you always reach a point even in the most complicated biographies, and lengthy and exhaustive biographies – there’s always a place where knowledge ends. And where historical tension comes in. Its what then happened? What could happen? That is very much part of the flavor and tone of working as a writer. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. That’s wonderful. We’ve started to come to the end of our time together, and this is The Joy of Binge Reading. So I wonder what you like to binge read, and if you’ve got any recommendations for listeners of things that you’ve read recently that you really enjoy. What Kate is reading now Kate Alcott: Well, I’ve just read Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and what I’m finishing now is Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Modern classics. I belong to a club that calls itself the Swiss Cheese Book Club. It’s books that we missed, or thought we read, but hadn’t, you know, that kind of thing. My reading now, it’s a mix. It’s rediscovering fiction I overlooked, for example, Huckleberry Finn. Oh, I thought I’d read it because I knew all about it, but I never had. As for contemporaries, Hilary Mantel, I think she’s a wonderful writer. Margaret Atwood. I think she’s the wonderful writer and she’s current. There’s another book that’s current, but it is one that I think bridges fiction and nonfiction. Not in the sense of being fictionalized, but of employing the techniques of fiction. And that’s a book called The Library Book, (by Susan Orleans) which is a nonfiction book recounting the incredible story around the burning at the Los Angeles County public library years ago, the whole thing, thousands, thousands, and thousands of books destroyed. A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles – on Kate’s reading list And she has written quite a good story, and out of that could come a novel or two. And A Gentleman In Moscow, by Amor Towles, that’s a wonderful novel. It’s very good. And Doctorow of course . . . What would you change? Jenny Wheeler: Very much into the modern classics by the sound of it. So circling around, looking back over your fiction, writing life at this stage in your career, if you were doing it all again, what would you change, if anything? Kate Alcott: You know that that’s such an interesting question. Very, very little. I feel, I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve had the great, great, deep gift of being able to do what I love. I think the only thing I might have done at a certain time in my life, but I probably wouldn’t care for it now, is attend a writer’s workshop, back as a teenager or something. But I was married very young, and didn’t think of writing for a long time. I think I had a series of good luck, good fortune, things I’ve done professionally. I wouldn’t change. I might do something better, but it’s been a lot of fun… Jenny Wheeler: That’s lovely. The playful part of writing Kate Alcott: Writing is okay to see as play because it’s play as well as laying down coherence for people, readers. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. Yes. So what is next for Kate, the writer? What projects do you have in the works at the moment? Kate Alcott: Well, at the moment, I’m concentrating more on the essay format just to play again – a form of playing and doing some things woven around the fifties and sixties. Jenny Wheeler: And is that going to result in a volume of essays? Kate Alcott: At the moment, I don’t know. I’m just exploring. Take time to explore before, before committing yourself and I like experimenting with the essay form. Now I mean, essay fiction and essay nonfiction, and it’s really interesting to play with first person or third person… If you read a novel or a book, change in your own mind or do a couple of pages switching the voice and then you almost come up with a different story. Jenny Wheeler: It’s really interesting. I must admit, I haven’t found the time to do that kind of experimentation yet. Getting a feel for the 40’s Kate Alcott: Well, it’s fun. Oh, I know what else I was telling you about when I was doing A Touch Of Stardust what I really loved, and what was one of the great troves of material available were the old movie magazines from and I bought them up online and brought them home and settled back and took myself back into the 40s and 50s and that really got me to Carole Lombard. Jenny Wheeler: There was a famous one, wasn’t there? Photoplay was it? Kate Alcott: Oh yes, there were several. Photoplay was one of them. Jenny Wheeler: Oh, that’s great. Look, Kate, where can readers find you online and do you enjoy interaction with your readers? Kate Alcott: How do I say, I’m probably not as good at it as I should be I’ve had a new moves, you know, I’m in Boston now. Before I was in Washington. My website is http://www.katealcott.com/ and I have a Facebook page @KateAlcott. People are most welcome to reach me there. I’d love to hear from them, but I can’t always be responding right away. Jenny Wheeler: Your career would very much of spread from the pre email, across to the digital age and what’s happening now. When writers weren’t expected to be quite as “on call”for the readers as some of them are on it these days. Where to find Kate online Kate Alcott: That’s right. It becomes part of the writing and that’s not really my thing. You know? I to write the book. I want to talk to people who liked the book or a question about what I am doing. I like doing book readings, and all of those things and hearing what people think. As far as the total sweeping being totally in it online after you’ve written the book, I, I’m usually thinking of the next book so you’re right. You put that very nicely, but it’s true. I’m of a generation not quite is willing to bare all. Jenny Wheeler: Look, it’s been wonderful talking to you and I reiterate, I’m so grateful that you gave us this time when you’ve got so much else happening in your life at the moment. Thank you very, very much indeed. Kate Alcott: Well, thank you and I enjoyed it. If you enjoyed Kate perhaps you will also enjoy: More historical best sellers from Robin Oliviera Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]

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