Mindy:

Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. 

Today's guest is Sarah Jane Stratford. Her first novel, Radio Girls, was based on the early days of the BBC and its pioneering talks producer, Hilda Matheson. Red Letter Days, her newest novel, continues that tradition by similarly highlighting a little known but influential woman in media set during the 19 fifties Red Scare and inspired by the real life TV producer Hannah Weinstein, Red Letter Days reveals the untold story of women who escaped the Hollywood blacklist. Sarah joined me today to talk about the inspiration for Red Letter Days and the research involved in writing about the Red Scare.

Mindy:

So your new book is called Red Letter Days, and it is all about the 1950s red scare and talks a bit about how it affected women, particularly on the Hollywood blacklist, which we've known and heard many stories about men in Hollywood who fell victim to the red scare. But as with all topics, we hear much, much less about the women. And so your new book is inspired in many ways by Hannah Weinstein. So if you would talk a little bit about who Hannah was and then also about how you came across the concept for the book and how Hannah's story drew you in, that would be great.  

Sarah-Jane: 

I love your introduction because that is exactly how I approach almost all my work. And even back when I was a student of history, it was always my question is  - whose stories are not being told? And inevitably, it was always the stories of women, stories of more marginalized people, and that was what I was naturally more drawn to. So, yeah, the case of Hannah Weinstein. She's this extraordinary woman who just deserves so much more recognition. She had initially been a fairly firebrand liberal journalist. She was a speechwriter. She worked for mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in New York, very staunch liberal, and she sort of saw which way the winds were blowing post war as the House UN American Activities Committee, it really was finding its feet. And she decamped from the US fairly early and completely reinvented herself as a producer. Came to a point where she was able to set up her own production company. And the first major program that the company produced was The Adventures of Robin Hood, which began in 1955. It's a wonderful program, it actually still really holds up. But at the time, there were a lot of people who talked about how well shot it was and how wonderful the scripts were. 

Well, behind the scenes, the reasons scripts were so wonderful is because every single one of them was written by a blacklisted writer and including it's the chief writer was Ring Lardner Jr. Who had won an Oscar for his script for Woman of the Year. He's famous if people know much about some of the Hollywood Ten's testimony before Congress. So he was one of the Hollywood 10 and when he was asked the famous question, Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? he answered. Well, I could answer the question as you'd like me to. But I'd hate myself in the morning." 

Which is a wonderful quote, they cited him for contempt of Congress, and he went to prison, as many of the Hollywood 10 did. He was very grateful to Hannah and helped get a lot of other writers in touch with her. Um and yes. So for the several years that Robin Hood ran, it was always scripted by blacklisted writers. You know, she was determined to try and keep people's careers going at great risk to herself. If the operation had been uncovered, she certainly would have faced extradition on prison. 

Mindy: 

So she was doing this work then from London. Is that correct?

Sarah-Jane:

Yes, that's correct. The company she ran was called Sapphire Films. It was based here in London. 

Mindy:

I know that your first book called Radio Girls, was about the early days of the BBC and a woman named Hilda Matheson. So did you come across information that led you to Hannah's story while you were working on Radio Girls?  

Sarah-Jane:

No, not at all. Although it is kind of funny. First book is radio second book is television, right? It's rather unintentional, but I kind of like the way it shook out. Um, no, look, I do love me some bad ass women. So that's that connection. But no, really, what led me to Red Letter Days was immediately following the 2016 election, I was despondent, and and I got to thinking about America and American history and American mythology about itself. There's just certain things, certain stories that as Americans here, we will believe about ourselves. And you know who we are, who we've always been. And of course, you know you don't need to poke at it too hard to find all the holes. 

It got me thinking about the blacklist, which was something I do as a historian, as a cultural historian. And and it did strike me as as having some interesting potential parallels which, actually at the time thought could happen. And of course, increasingly they have been happening. I mean, it's only in the past couple of weeks that have been talk of purges from the government, which was certainly something that happened during the red scare. People were on lists. It is interesting how little does change. 

But initially I was thinking about how The Red Scare came about a large part out of fear. And then that fear was used to suppress voices of liberalism, voices of dissent, and how once that began it was very easy to spiral. And of course you know so many of us when we we think about it, we do think about what happened in Hollywood, but in fact the red scare cast a very wide net. Teachers, journalists, union members, activists. The NAACP was very widely targeted. It was very far reaching and of course, what was most effective really was the climate of fear, and that was very long lasting. It was interesting. I went back and I was looking at a contemporary footage and things. And when they were attempting to desegregate schools in the south, Ah, lot of the anti desegregation forces were carrying signs saying, No Communists. That was just always that correlation. You know that that remained the idea, you know, through the fifties and well into the sixties and really still today.

Mindy:

Fear is how you control people. There's no doubt. 

Sarah-Jane: 

Absolutely.

Mindy: 

I wanted to follow up with you about when you're writing fiction that is based on a real person. In the case of Red Letter Days, Hannah Weinstein, your main character, though, is only based on her. It is not actually Hannah your main character's last name is Wolfson in the book. So how do you as a writer then blur those lines between fiction and history and reality? 

Sarah-Jane:

You know, it's a little different each time and to a certain extent, as I developed the character and think about the character, I let the character kind of go forge their path. In the case of Hannah, as I was working on it, I realized for the sake of my story, I was just going to make a lot of changes and suppositions. It just felt much more natural to have her be an inspiration, rather than try and write something that skewed a little more biographical.

You know at the end of the day, I'm a fiction writer I'm not a biographer. I do think a very good biography of her needs to exist, at the same time, I'm much more about the drama. It worked better to have her be slightly more fictionalized. Now, though, there were various and sundry little details about her life that it just wasn't going to work for my narrative, particularly as I created this wholly fictional character with whom she interacts. And it was the other main character of the book. It just worked out better. But yeah, each time is a little bit different. I I try not to have and a sort of a set formula. I don't like to put myself in a box. 

Mindy:

Coming up, the challenge of basing a fictional character on a real person and the lasting repercussions of the Red Scare.  

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Mindy:

Any time you're writing a historical novel, obviously you have to do research of some type. Everything has an element that perhaps you don't even consider. So, for example, I have written a novel. It's not published, but I've written a novel that takes place in 1918 and I have a woman falling down some steps and she loses consciousness, and at one point you know people are running over to her and I have her shoe, like, falling down a couple of steps below her. And then I got to thinking about it. I'm like, Well, wait a minute. What do her shoes look like? Could they even come off? And you know I did some research and it's like, no, her shoes probably were buckled up. Um, and more than likely could not have come off of her feet when she fell down the stairs. So that was something that just this tiny scene in this little visual of this shoe sitting there without a foot in it could that actually happen? Were there any scenes like that? Any small moments where you were like, Wait, I have to go do some research on some surprising thing that I just did not expect to pop up. 

Sarah-Jane: 

It's funny because yes, so many. And then I have to stop and think, Oh, yeah, but what were they exactly? For me, research is sort of the most fun and and yet also, in many ways, the most frustrating. Because you get an idea and you love it. And then you realize that actually wouldn't happen. Curses, curses. And it tends to be less so for me these days than not, only because I do so much research before that. By the time I sit down to writing sort of more or less feel fairly comfortable with the trappings of the daily lives, those should move along pretty well. I mean, there were definitely little things. At some point in an earlier draft. I had Hannah when she was still in the states, she was in, ah, particular press club and that it was only later that I realized Oh, wait, it hadn't yet opened its doors to women by this particular time. So it would be little things like that and and of course, it evidently, by the way, you always end up some mistake, always sneaks through. And then some reader, you know, will email you and say, I love the book. You know, you made this little mistake. Ugh! Rats! 

Mindy:

Yeah. That's why I don't I enjoy writing historical fiction. If I can get away with it, I never set my story anywhere that is real. Like, Obviously you have a particular story. But I always set it somewhere else because inevitably, you have people saying like Well, you have this street running north south that actually runs west east and I'm like I don't care. It doesn't matter. That doesn't affect the story, right? But they want to tell you that you're wrong. And so I very much I will write by the facts right up until it becomes arbitrary. 

Sarah-Jane:

Oh, completely. And Peter Morgan, who wrote Frost Nixon and the Queen and other such stories. Yeah, I once went to a talk he was giving, and he said he in fact, writes the story first and then goes back, does the research. Yeah, which I thought was amazing. And I queried it, actually. But he said, You know, really, the drama must take precedence over the history, and I guess so. And I and I respect that.

Mindy:

Absolutely. So same vein - did you have any assumptions that you, any preconceived notions that you were hoping to use or some element of the story? Or just as I said any any thoughts ahead of time that when you dove into your research, you found contradicts history? Did you have any assumptions that were erroneous about the time period, I guess, Or the story itself? 

Sarah-Jane:

Not so much erroneous. It's more that certain things were surprising about some of the details of what was going on, how people were persecuted by the FBI. I guess vis a vis things like phone tapping. I got a lot of my assumptions about that based on film and television, and so I thought, Okay, well, it must be a certain sort of way. And what I was not expecting was that it was actually absolutely bonkers. You could have a situation whereby so if you had more than one phone, but all the same line, one would ring. But then the other would ring a few seconds later. And it would really clue you in that actually something was amiss. 

And then it would get odder than that. You might answer the phone and nobody would be there, which more or less tracked with what I assumed might be the case. But what did often happen was that you would answer the phone and what you would hear was a recording of one of your very own conversations that might have happened, like a few days or a few weeks, or even further back than that. And, of course, what I thought was Well, now wait a minute, if someone would obviously pick up that their phone was being seriously interfered with. And that's when it hit me. Well, yes, of course. And that's the point. Yeah, because it comes back to what we said before. It's about the fear. 

Mindy:

Yeah, so they wanted people to know. 

Sarah-Jane:

Exactly. That's how your silence, people. That's how you get people from continuing to live comfortable lives, you know? But, I mean, if if someone is always looking behind them about themselves, that they can't be looking forward, you know people are less likely to continue to be activists or engaged with any level of society. If if they're now that nervous about what may be going on, it was an eye opener. 

Mindy:

That's fascinating. So fleeing to London, then she still suffered persecution. Wiretapping. Intimidation, things like this. So I have to say I personally don't know much about McCarthy era outside of the U. S. So, like, how would that work? Were British forces doing this? Was this the FBI. 

Sarah-Jane: 

Well, this was the FBI, and it's interesting. I mean, I was thrown. That was another thing that that really stunned me when I read it. But most European governments found the whole concept of the blacklist ridiculous. And even though they themselves were not exactly pro Communist, neither did they agree with what was going on in America. And to the extent they could, they did try to protect people, but things would happen. The American Embassy would send out erroneous notifications to Americans abroad, saying, Oh, you have to come to the embassy and bring your passport. We need to check it for something or other in the hopes that they would indeed come, and then their passport would be sequestered. And even if perhaps there was not grounds to arrest them, they would effectively find themselves stateless. So various and sundry things like that were going on, and it was pretty shocking. But the British government, to its great credit, really did try and help people as much as it possibly could, but also people really had to help each other.  

Mindy: 

What's interesting to me is that, of course, the 1950s was not all that long ago, and I remember 10, 15 years ago now, when Elia Kazan was given the Lifetime Recognition Award by the ah, by the Oscar by the Academy. And I was pretty young when it happened. I used to follow film really closely, and I remember watching that year and the camera pan the audience and there were quite a few actors that were not applauding and were not standing up and were refusing to participate, and I didn't understand why. And I ended up like asking my mother, and she explained a little bit about how he was one of the people that was giving up names and, uh, reporting on other people in film and then was rewarded for that with some of these roles that he was being recognized for. It was so interesting to me because, like I said, I was pretty young and I had no concept of the blacklist and McCarthy era like it meant nothing to me. And then here, you know, 40 years later, there were still repercussions, and there were people who were refusing to participate in the celebration of this person. 

Sarah-Jane:

Oh, absolutely. He was widely unforgiven, in large part because it was generally believed that he didn't have to do what he did, right? Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But indeed, the fact remains that he decided to name names and his career absolutely soared, whereas many others who were certainly just as talented and capable as he saw their careers ruined forever. It's a complicated question. I mean, it's interesting, because a large part of my research, I read memoirs. A lot of people were fairly philosophical about those who named names, saying, You know, it's difficult because obviously not everyone had the same opportunities and comforts as others. So whereas there were some who you had some other resources and could manage, there were others who were really caught. You know, if they had young Children or, perhaps elderly relatives, all of whom were relying upon them.  

And they could get philosophical themselves and saying the names are already known. So what difference does it make if I named them? Which, by the way, was true. So they went ahead and did it for the sake of their livelihood. And yeah, and and years later, there some who were able to say, well, it wasn't the choice I made, but I understand it and others who said, you know if we'd all stuck together. But who knows? It's complicated. That's why the playwright Lillian Hellman you called her memoir of the period Scoundrel Time. So many people were indeed scoundrels, but they were made to be by a situation that, you know, forced this upon them.  

Mindy:

Yes, and it's It's very difficult to put yourself in that type of situation. A lot of people - I work with high schoolers. I worked in a high school for about 15 years, and God bless them. I love their youth and their courage. But most often they haven't had enough experience yet in the world to understand a complex situation like that. Most of them, not all by far. but very often and with younger people and some naive adults too, saying things, they'll go, well, if that would've happened to me, I would have done this or I would have done that. It's like, No, you don't know what you would have done. You do not know until you're there. You cannot say with any type of conviction how you were going to perform or behave in a high stress situation until you are in it.

Sarah-Jane:

Oh, no, completely. And you know, these people's lives were just being intruded upon every day. They knew that they were being followed by FBI agents, and they knew that, you know everything they did, you know, and any any research they did in the library, the post they were receiving you, even even the groceries they were shopping for. They knew that all of it was being scrutinized. It is very difficult to live under after a while. Yeah, it's very grating of it's no wonder relationships fell apart. You know, there were schisms between children and parents, whole families where, there were whole groups of families who you know, really never spoke to each other again. It has is very, very complicated.  

Mindy:

It is complicated, complicated situation, and it's something that I see, you know, the same dynamics are at work in different areas, always. I mean, there are different parts of the world in different time periods where there are those who have the power and then those with less power and the people that are speaking out, and the people that are trying to squelch their voices, and it's always... it's the same dynamic. We're just wearing different hats, I think. 

Sarah-Jane:

No, completely, completely. And that was certainly something I had at the back of my mind whilst I was writing, and that's something I was hoping to put across. History is never really that far away. We always do need to think about what's come before, what's happening now and how could we apply it? And what can we try to do to do better this time around because that's the one thing that history does give us. It does give, you know, we have the opportunity to do better.

Mindy:

Very much, very much. Well, and that's when my students are saying things like, Well, this is what I would have done, you know, if the Nazis came for me and I'm like, Well, hey, you might get your chance. 

Sarah-Jane:

Yeah, fantastic.

Mindy:

Last thing. Why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can purchase the book.

Sarah-Jane:

Well, of course, I always say, please purchase from your local independent bookshop. We love our independent bookshops. For people who happen to be listening. right now, we haven't discussed it but you know, we are in in the middle of dealing with the Corona virus. And of course, not a lot of people are going out shopping. But it is a good time, particularly now to try and support independent businesses. Many independent bookshops will do online orders or even in person deliveries. You know, you just need to call and ask. That would be wonderful. Got to support our local businesses. Um, as for me, I have websites. Sarah janestratford dot com I am on Instagram at Sarah Jane Stratford, Twitter at Stratford S. J., Facebook, Where all else? The book is also available from the libraries. We also we do love our libraries. 

Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.