Category Archives: The House Across the Bay

More Adventures in Writing: Dusty’s Christmas Surprise

1940s mystery, 1948, Barbara Struna, cats, Christmas, Christmas Noir, Cloisters, fashion 1940s, Holiday Noir, Jessica Minton, Joan Bennett, mystery, Mystery writing, Natasha, New York City, New York films, Sharon Healy Yang, Skating in Central Park, The House Across the Bay, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , ,

Previously, I blogged on the complexity and hard work behind developing Memories of You.  Well, now that draft #2 of Memories is marinating on my D drive, I’ve plunged into turning the outline for my fifth Jessica Minton mystery into an actual book.  However, Dusty’s Christmas surprise has not flown easily from my pen, despite the detailed outline crammed into a stack of variously sized, lined pages, all written down at multiple points over the past two years.

First, there was the background research for 1948, and not just December of the year when the story unfurls.  My general research started with an interesting little tome called Live It Again 1948. Lots on politics, the economy, home life, and domestic and international events.  Harry Truman’s hard-fought presidential victory, the Soviet Blockade and resultant Berlin Airlift, and Citation winning the Triple Crown were just a few important events. Did you know that Kitty Litter and Scrabble as  we now know it both came on the market that same year?  Dusty will certainly delight in the former. With Liz’s penchant for mangling the English language, I’m sure she’ll make some intriguing contributions to the latter.

You can see the notes I’ve been taking from this book above. Also observe that the picture to the right shows how I made up a calendar for December 1948 with room on the squares for each day to write in events occurring in the story – but written in pencil!  Once you start actually writing, you find that events may notconnect in the ways you’d expected or fit the order you’d originally planned.  Hence, a little erasing and a little rewriting, in pencil, enables you to make adjustments, so that you are always looking at the big picture over the weeks the story covers. It helps me to see the plot in a linear layout.

Another big help was a stack of movie magazines from 1948 that my fellow author Barbara Struna graciously donated to me.  They gave me the lowdown on what 1948 people were experiencing – directly, by reporting on films, gossip, music; indirectly, by showing advertisements for films, consumer goods, and photos of hair and clothing fashions.   Primary texts give you a nice picture of people’s everyday life in the time period of your choice.  Closer to creating a final draft, I’ll be looking at the New York Times for December 1948, to get more depth on world, national, and city concerns – as well as on entertainment, what people are buying and the costs, and personal interest stories.

Now, I also needed help with some nitty-gritty details.  Only three chapters in and I had to figure out how one character could check whether a thirty-eight was loaded, without getting fingerprints on the gun. God bless the Internet (sometimes).  Here you can see that I retrieved and printed instructions on how to check for bullets, while also getting a picture of the gun itself to see all the parts described.  So, I was able to describe how to handle the weapon without getting pesky fingerprints all over it.

Many people tell me that they love my descriptions of my era’s clothes,  often asking how I can create those images so vividly and accurately.  Here’s my “secret.”  I draw on photos of the actual styles of the era.  As I’ve mentioned in other of my blogs, I’m inspired by classic-era actors when I create my characters.  With Joan Bennett as an inspiration for Jessica, I often turn to images of her to inspire both scenes and descriptions of what she’s wearing in those scenes.  For a Saturday morning visit to The Cloisters, I selected this number from House Across the Bay.  Now, House was released in 1940, but the longer plaid skirt and nip-waisted jacket turned out also to suit (if you pardon the pun) 1948 fashions.

You can also see in the picture at the beginning of the previous paragraph that I have a layout of The Cloisters on my writing easel.  I had planned to take a trip there to refresh my memory for recreating that setting; however, I was unable to do so before writing this passage.  After checking online articles about the layout and exhibitions of The Cloisters in 1948, I blended that map with images and descriptions from those articles to create the setting of two dangerous encounters for Jessica.  Can you guess where Jess was hiding when she overheard a telling conversation?

Before things get dicey, this faithful dog memorialized beneath his nobleman owner’s feet leads Jessica to ponder if Dusty would do her similar honors, in stone, What do you think?

Additionally, I’d planned a scene where Jessica is pursued across a skating pond in Central Park by a mysterious predator. However, Yang claimed that the skating ring in the park was an open arena that wouldn’t allow any surreptitious, threatening chases.  Again, a little research confirmed that Yang’s rink only opened in 1950, but there was, indeed, a frozen skating area called The Pond fitting my needs exactly.  Its memory had haunted me from the 1948 film Portrait of Jenny.  The hair-raising chase was back on! So, enjoy these images that I discovered.  The article that particularly helped me was “NYC in film Portrait of Jennie 1948.”

Of course these photos were all taken during the day.  Jessica’s adventure had the added threat of taking place at night by lantern light.

Lastly, I needed an expert to certify that Dusty’s catlines is fully accurate.  Here’s Natasha, exhausted after her thorough vetting of what I’ve written so far.  Yup, ’Tasha Yang gives me two paws up – but she has to lean on something when she does it or she’ll fall over.

 

Scrabble Image: https://connecticuthistory.org/scrabble-copyrighted-today-in-history/
Truman image:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dewey_Defeats_Truman.jpg
Images from The Cloisters:
-Author’s collection:  dog resting beneath owner’s feet.
– Image of the Gothic Chapel: “The Cloisters,” Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloisters
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cloisters_Chapel_(3220524245).jpg
original sources:  This image was originally posted to Flickr by Sharon Mollerus at https://flickr.com/photos/38315261@N00/3220524245 (archive). It was reviewed on 29 July 2018 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.
Images from Central Park
Aerial shot:Golden Age of Travel, Associated Press –
https://www.facebook.com/groups/811703519221774/posts/2113878869004226/
Skaters on Ice (2 images):
“Portrait of Jennie on Film” NYC in Film, Finding Movie Locations in the Big Apple
https://nycinfilm.com/2022/05/07/portrait-of-jennie-1948/

 

“My Smart-Talking Gal Mystery Heroine: A Joan Bennett Birthday Tribute”

1940s mystery, Bait and Switch, Dark Shadows, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Film Actors, Film Noir, Jessica Minton, Joan Bennett, Letter from a Dead Man, mystery, Sharon Healy Yang, Sharon Yang, suspense, The House Across the Bay, The Man I Married, The Scar, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“My Smart-Talking Gal Mystery Heroine: A Joan Bennett Birthday Tribute”

It’s only natural to honor Joan Bennett on her birthday by explaining her powerful influence on my writing. A lot of this influence goes back to my earlier years watching old movies. As a kid, I started out hooked on Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and the rest of the stable of Universal and RKO horror films – God Bless Val Lewton! The mystery and otherworldliness of black and white film, the smart dialogue, the clever twists of plot that other forties and thirties film genres shared with horror lured me into a liminal world like a perpetual deep summer night. I was further captured by classic films’ biting wit, challenging plots, and independent women – especially in what I came to know as film noir. And who showed herself the queen of this world? Above them all, Joan Bennett.

I must admit that I first came really to know Joan when she appeared in Dark Shadows. Her Elizabeth Collins Stoddard was formidable, reminding me of my mother when I was in deep trouble. How could vampires, werewolves, and witches withstand her powerful, regal stare? Still, like my Mom, there was deep feeling and love for her daughter and her family. However, only in film did I discover Joan displaying one of the traits I loved best about my Mom: that witty, smart-talking-gal sense of humor. In outright comedy, Joan could drop a clever line with style and intelligence, but even in some of her darkest dramas that wit came through. What a delight to see her wield that humor to put firmly in their places anyone trying to crush or bamboozle her. In The House across the Bay, she undercuts a smart-mouth chorine who harangued her, “Cheep, cheep, cheep,” with “Where’s the birdseed?” When the obnoxious woman tries to go after her physically, Joan rakes her over the coals with, “Just a minute, Miss Dimwit.  I was silly enough to apologize, but now that you want to make something of it, I’ll give you a good reason. You’re a phony, you’ve got a voice like four panes of cracked glass, and about as much appeal as a can of embalming fluid. I could go on, but that ought to give you a rough idea of how I feel about you.” Eight years later, when Paul Henreid tries to disparage her cynicism towards him in The Scar with a deprecating, “You’re a bitter little lady,” she puts him in his place with a world-weary but tough, “It’s a bitter little world, full of sad surprises, and you don’t go around letting people hurt you.” In The Man I Married, Joan’s not even daunted by Nazis, telling her husband-turned-fascist, “Heil heel,” when he promises to dump her and take their son. Her feistiness isn’t limited to verbiage, either. Take a gander at this picture.
Like my Mom, Joan played women of wit, strength, humanity, and confidence – not just what the New York Times dubbed her gallery of “hydrochloric dames.”
So, in my twenties, when I decided to take my writing more seriously than developing Victoria Holt knock-offs or spoofs of Dark Shadows, I turned to 1940s style mysteries to inspire my own adventures of romance, danger, suspense, and wit. Interestingly, as a writer influenced by film, I found I could better create distinct, believable characters by casting them as actors with whom I was familiar, blending their traits with some of the people I knew (including myself!). I also knew that I didn’t want my heroine to be wimpy, weepy, and inclined to faint in the final reel or pages, which, unfortunately, did often happen on the page or screen in the ’40s and ’50s. Guess whom I saw as perfect for the role of Jessica Minton, a smart, independent, quick-with-a-quip forties gal? Someone who had a sensitive heart and a strong sense of responsibility, but didn’t take guff from anyone – and would smack said guff out of the ballpark with whip smart humor.
Surprise!
I do see a lot of myself in Jessica – and in Joan’s less nasty roles – or maybe an idealized version of myself, anyway. I know that mischievous banter with those I love and pointed barbs for those I don’t is something I share with Jess, which Joan plays to perfection. However, I doubt that, like Jessica, I’d have the guts to hold onto a mysterious package left by a mysterious and handsome British stranger at the risk of being liquidated by Nazi fifth columnists – to disguise myself as a maid to get into a criminal’s apartment while he’s still there (!) to retrieve a gun used to frame a friend – to grab a gunsel by the lapels and threaten to turn him into a soprano if he ever threatened my cat again – to show up in a shadow-draped room and wittily bargain with a gun-toting femme fatale and her hired gun to trade stolen jade for my friends’ lives – or to slip into a cove and explore a beached and rotting ship while layers of ocean fog swept in around me. I might dare to weaponize a banana-cream pie, but I can’t guarantee my aim would be as good as Jessica Minton’s. I can guarantee you that any fans of our Joanie could picture her carrying off these adventures with verve and wit, though not without human trepidation.
Those of us who love Joan Bennett and appreciate her talents would also, as Sam Fuller writes, see her as “a sensitive actress” enough to also believe her playing Jessica’s distress at being torn between loyalty to an old boyfriend and to a new man who brings her adventure and love; a sister who gets annoyed with her older sibling’s foibles leading them into danger but sticking by her to the end (though not without a smart quip or two exchanged between them); a sweetheart waiting to hear news of a fiancé lost in the war, then a wife supporting her husband’s struggle with memories from that war. And Jessica loves her cat. I know Joan was a dog person, but heck, there’s still part of me in Jessica Minton. So, she’s a cat person!
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject, but if you’d like to take a peek at some passages from Bait and Switch or Letter from a Dead Man, click on the links on the titles and have fun picturing Joan working her magic as Jessica Minton. Oh, and by the way, I cast her sister Elizabeth as Rosalind Russell (and my sister-on-law). Can you imagine what a grand ride it would have been to catch Joan and Roz trading quips with each other, then marshaling their humor to take on Nazis, criminally corrupt American aristocrats, femme fatales, underworld crooks, and crooked cops? And I’ve got two more books on the way! Viva Jessica Minton and Joan Bennett!
If you love mysteries on the screen or on the page, especially centered on the golden era, click here to go to my web page where you can find lots of interesting stuff – including my Joan Bennett tribute page!

 

 

Photos: Author’s collections