Author: rosemarylordwriter

 

I remember my first July 4^th in America. I’d only been in L.A. a few months and was still marveling at the endless sunshine. I was in Beverly Hills that day and saw a red English double-decker bus being driven slowly along Wilshire Boulevard. Along both sides were large white banners with “Happy Birthday America – love, Mum” written in bold print. It was an image I have never forgotten.

That first July 4th was spent with an international group in an Australian friend’s back garden (or yard, to use the local term) where we all celebrated the start of our new lives in California – the land of such promise, excitement and new ideas.

As the years progressed I won the coveted Green Card, so I was working as an actress and enjoying a thoroughly Americanized summer. On location in Colorado, we had the day off from filming, and had a big barbecue with the crew. (The little English kid in me thought, “Wow! Mum – look at me, in America, celebrating with a Hollywood film crew!”)

I also found myself a wonderful, gorgeous American husband, Rick! And so Independence Days were filled with our own new traditions of hot-dogs, baked-beans and hamburgers with friends and neighbors. Some years we had picnics in the park or by our favorite lake, creating lovely memories. And always the fireworks burst forth over the nearby Hollywood Bowl.

Some of the July 4ths we spent in Kentucky at my late mother-in-law’s farm. What a wonderful slice of Americana: the local town congregated together and roasted a wild hog over coals in a huge, rusty brazier thingy. A local country and western group performed on a flat-bed truck and American flags flew everywhere. It was a ‘pot-luck’ affair, so there were tables groaning with an assortment of pies, savory things and desserts. A delicious chicken-like dish that one of the neighbors had brought turned out to be frogs’ legs! “Frog Gigging” was a local past-time, I learned. “Ya just have to remember to cut the tendons before ya cook it, or the darned leg will hop right out of the pan before ya can catch it!” As Hardin County was a ‘dry’ county, I am not sure what they were all drinking from an assortment of bottles. “It’ll put hair on yer chest…” I heard. I decided to pass on that one.

Sometimes, Rick and I were back in England where Rick observed that July 4^th went strangely unnoticed – save for a few American ex-pats who had their own barbecues and flag-waving.

One memorable Independence Day we spent at sea. Rick’s boss, Oprah Winfrey, had rented a luxury cruise ship (as you do!) to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of her television show and to thank her entire staff for all their hard work over the years. Rick and I were tickled pink when we were invited to join this Mediterranean cruise. After we left the last stop on the island of Malta, we headed back to Barcelona and we were at sea on July 4^th – of course, not an occasion celebrated in Europe. The organization for that day was mind-boggling! The huge swimming-pool deck was covered and, after a ‘group photo’ of all the Harpo staff with their ‘plus-one’ and guests like Rick and me, the festivities began with a live band and several long tables filled with every sort of food imaginable and a large barbeque. The music and dancing went on until the small hours, long after we had retired. It was a good thing we were in the middle of the ocean with no neighbors to disturb – except the fishes and the dolphins.

I grew up watching American movies with July 4^th   Independence Day celebrations. They always appeared such a fun gathering for families and friends where everyone prepared their special dishes and decorated whole neighborhoods with red, white and blue. I loved being able to share this tradition.

But then I get the best of both worlds, as I can also celebrate Bonfire Night with fellow Brits or my family – as well as Boxing Day, which is just another workday in America.

When, as a young girl, I first heard about July 4^th – Independence Day – when all that British tea was thrown into the bay, my selfish reaction was – how many delicious cups of tea were lost? But lo these many years later, and now as an American Citizen, it’s a different matter.

I think about the meaning of Independence Day: America’s independence from Great Britain, free to make its own decisions and rules. These days we enjoy our individual sense of independence. Today, more than ever, most people are free to create their own lives, go their own direction. As writers I feel we are privileged to have each created our own literary world, writing about whatever takes our fancy – even following our own schedules and timetables – except for those pesky publisher deadlines.

Happy Independence Day, one and all!

“How come you know all that?” people sometimes ask, after reading my history-based books. I’m not sure. I mean, at school I didn’t find history that interesting: reciting dates of dead kings and assorted battles.  Instead, I’d gazed out of the window as the rain drizzled down, recalling some old Hollywood movie I’d seen on television – trying to figure out how I could possibly ever live in Tinsel Town.

 

 

 

 

So I certainly didn’t catch the history bug in school. Although, once I left school and started travelling, I became fascinated by the history of the old buildings in London that Charles Dickens wrote about, or Paris and Victor Hugo’s world. I’d caught the bug.

And when, after more travelling, I was finally living in Hollywood, California, I became captivated by the history of this movie town, where I found myself working at Warner Brothers, Paramount Studios, and Universal Studios. I drive by Charlie Chaplin’s old studio often and think about his early days there.

 

The Magic of Hollywood had been in my blood all my life. I recall my mum’s stories of when she was little and she would pore over the Hollywood movie magazines. She remembered the adverts for ‘eye black’ and the little round tubs of Bourjois rouge, and other cosmetics that movie stars Clara Bow or Jean Harlow bought – allegedly. I used a lot of this information in my Lottie Topaz novels about Hollywood in the 1920s.

 

Funnily enough, only last year, I met Jean Harlow’s hairdresser. At a Jean Harlow Celebration at the Woman’s Club of Hollywood, I had invited Alfred Pagano to speak to the enthralled audience. Alfred was 100 years old – still charming and dapper.  He had turned the young Jean Harlow’s hair that legendary peroxide blond, helping to create the first Blond Bombshell. He explained that he had experimented and used household bleach mixed with Lux soap flakes to create that color!  So I filed that tidbit, and many other things he shared with me, away for my writing research.

 

I realized that this is how I know all this ‘stuff.’ Not from sitting in a classroom, but by being ‘out-and-about’ and talking with people. Listening to older people’s stories is a great source of inspiration for me. We get clues and ideas from asking family members. The older generations are a font of information and memories for us to mine.  Family storytelling is becoming a lost art that we really must encourage and revive.

Mind you, I have spent hours in various libraries, looking at archive records and especially photos. They tell us so much. A picture really is worth a thousand words when you study the background, what people are wearing, how they were living.

 

I do, of course, “Google” people, places and things. It’s so easy to do. Although I learned that Google tracks and follows every key stroke you make. Then I get those annoying adverts all over the place from prior searches of mine. I feel like I’m being followed. I am. Bing.com is a good alternative – and a newer search engine called DuckDuckGo.com that was started by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008. These two search engines say they value your privacy and  don’t sell you information, so your search gets you the information you’re looking for, not what the top payers want you to see.

 

Old magazines and newspapers are a great source of ideas and research. I look for old magazines in Thrift Shops. It’s amazing what people get rid of. Skimming through articles in 1940s magazines can result in some nugget of information that triggers my imagination for a new story. Then I follow the clues; names of old organizations that have archive libraries, old department stores that have long been razed and replaced by anonymous concrete towers. Going back into their history, one finds odd little stories of people that lived or worked there. Bits of information that most would consider irrelevant, but that spark a story idea.

 

There are so many specialist magazines that have an eclectic assortment of articles or adverts. I never know where I will find something curious or interesting. Family Tree Magazine is a great source of genealogy, with articles on so many professions of yesterday, town histories, and letters from readers trying to trace their great-great grandparents and long-lost relatives.

I sometimes envy writer friends working on contemporary stories. They don’t have to research, unless there is some special skill involved.  It’s much easier to write things set in present day, because we write about our every day life without even thinking about it.

But the journeys I am taken on, once I start researching something, are true adventures. It’s easy to get side-tracked by a notice in the paper or an old advert. Obituaries are wonderful sources for inspiration, when you read of a life encapsulated.  I could spend my entire day doing research, without ever writing a word. It takes discipline not to get led astray and back on that yak-shaving train…….

 

Rosemary wrote her first book when she was ten years old – for her little brother. She also illustrated it herself. It was later rejected by Random House!

She has been writing ever since.

The author of Best Sellers Hollywood Then and Now and Los Angeles Then and Now,  English born Rosemary Lord has lived in Hollywood for over 25 years. An actress, a former journalist (interviewing Cary Grant, James Stewart, Tony Hopkins, John Huston amongst others) and a Senior Publicist at Columbia Pictures, she lectures on Hollywood history. Rosemary is currently writing the second in a series of murder mysteries set in the 1920s Jazz Age Hollywood featuring Lottie Topaz, an extra in silent movies.

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When it all comes plummeting down – what do you do?  When there seem so many small fires to be put out. And all around you people are having dramas – then turning to you for help. What do you do?

I just want to hide under the warm, plump duvet (a European eiderdown) and never come out. But I don’t have that luxury.

How do you keep your head – “when all around you seem to be losing theirs and blaming it on you.” As Kipling put it so well. “… if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowances for their doubting too. If you can wait and not be tired by waiting…”

But I digress.

So, how do you write when you’re snowed under?

How come other writers seem to have it all organized? Able to write at the same time each day, without distraction. Able to churn out book after book…..  I know that writer-mothers of young children seem to find the time to write their books – while the kids are napping or at school, waiting at soccer practice or for the laundry cycle to finish. My writer friends with full time jobs find a way. Sue Ann Jaffarian is a paralegal, Pamela Samuels Young an attorney. They write before going to work, in their lunch hour and at weekends.

Before I ever get to the office, the phone calls and urgent emails start early in the morning. And I can’t remember when I last stopped for lunch. For the last couple of years, I often work 6 or 7 days a week. So where am I going wrong?

(As Anthony Newley’s song “What Kind of Fool Am I?” floats around my head…)

Since my husband died so unexpectedly, I have been working day in and day out to save the Woman’s Club of Hollywood from being turned into an anonymous block of condominiums, instead of the charming Spanish-style historic property where Jean Harlow and Douglas Fairbanks went to school and where Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and a host of Golden Era celebrities helped served the Hollywood community for over 110 years. So I feel it’s worth saving. Worth fighting for. But at what cost – to me.

So here I am – an author, a writer who has so little time to write. One of my publishers has just asked me to do a new version of one of my Hollywood books. “How long do I have,” I asked, trying not to panic.

I’ve stayed up all night to finish a book by the deadline. Getting the copy sent off to London by eight in the morning – that is four o’clock in the afternoon in London time. But I did it. I’ve arisen at 5 am, in the dark, to get a couple of hours writing in before the day starts. But it doesn’t last. I get too tired, then find myself nodding off over the computer keys. And how is it that I seem to gain weight, when I hardly ever have time to eat? That’s just plain unfair!

Goodness! This sounds like whining. Not my intention. More a ‘Dear Abby, How do I get off this hamster wheel?” Or: I’m a writer – get me out of here!

I have so many voices in my head that need to be heard – or read. So many books to write, screenplays to finish. All the characters that float around my imagination, hoping that I will turn them into words on a page for readers to discover. All clamoring, ‘Me too! Don’t forget about me…”  And Lottie Topaz has been so very patient with me, waiting for me to finish her second volume and share her emerging adventures.

The people in my head, my wonderful characters that I can breath life into, they all have a song to sing – a story for me to tell.

So why are there so many things, big and small, going on in life that need my attention at the present? Am I avoiding something? Why can’t I be more disciplined and just focus on my writing. Ignore the pleas for help. Just tell people to get lost. Leave me alone.

Maybe I’m just going through a phase…

Although this week, after what seems like an eternity,  the court trial starts on behalf of the Woman’s Club trying to release itself of heavy financial burdens unfairly foisted on it by nefarious beings. So that will settle one long chapter in its saga. And hopefully offer me some respite.

Looking back, I could have taken a different path. Would it have been easier? Probably. But look how much I have learned, people I have met – characters and stories I have discovered.

But still, right now, what I’d really like to do is dive back under the warmth of my duvet – for a while.

Know what I mean?

 

Rosemary wrote her first book when she was ten years old – for her little brother. She also illustrated it herself. It was later rejected by Random House!

She has been writing ever since.

The author of Best Sellers Hollywood Then and Now and Los Angeles Then and Now,  English born Rosemary Lord has lived in Hollywood for over 25 years. An actress, a former journalist (interviewing Cary Grant, James Stewart, Tony Hopkins, John Huston amongst others) and a Senior Publicist at Columbia Pictures, she lectures on Hollywood history. Rosemary is currently writing the second in a series of murder mysteries set in the 1920s Jazz Age Hollywood featuring Lottie Topaz, an extra in silent movies.

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I was going to write about my many Bad Hair Days. But I realized that, by deciding that I could not write another word until my current strange hair color was sorted, this was just another form of Writers’ Avoidance Tactics – albeit colorful! That is a subject for a whole other Blog to come!

But it reminded me how important I felt the color of my character’s hair was. In my current novel series, my protagonist, Lottie Topaz, has copper-colored hair styled in the 1920s fashionable bob with ‘spit-curls’ on her forehead. ‘Spit-curls’ are so called because you spit on your fingers, then make a couple of curls from your bangs, securing them flat against your forehead with spittle. (Charming – I know!)

Lottie’s best friend, Flora, has jet-black hair in a sleek bob with straight bangs – or ‘fringe’ as we Brits call it. Very sophisticated.

This is why I love writing this series that is set back in the early Twentieth Century. It is such fun exploring the styles and fashions of that era. But not just that: recreating the life-style and sharing the whys and wherefores of a by-gone time. So that I and my readers are immersed in another world.

For instance, I find it fascinating to use a mystery setting where telephones were not readily available. Certainly no mobile-phones. How would they communicate, especially in an emergency?

Mysteries set in today’s world have so many solutions to use: computers, emails, Skype, texting. It appears much easier to explain clues and resolutions of the who-dunnits when you can show your characters following an email trail or intercepting a text message on a stolen cell-phone. Researching people’s backgrounds or tracking addresses or locations for present-day books is swiftly done on the computer.

So, why do I give myself this headache of working out how Lottie and her friends can find out about potential suspects or track locations where they may have traveled to? I guess that’s because one of my favorite things is research. I have Lottie and her friends do what I have always done: Of course, today I do use computer research. But I have always spent hours at the libraries, pouring over musty tomes, looking up old newspapers, checking magazines and advertisements. This gives me the color to weave into my stories, words and names that are not used today. I also glean ideas from those pages as to how to provide clues as well as challenges for my characters.

It is imperative that the details are authentic and that everything rings true. Even when I create situations with a little ‘poetic license’ – I always check it out so that it certainly could really have happened.  As a reader, I hate it when something jars because it is out of the realms of possibility – or just plain wrong! I find it difficult to continue reading after that. So I go to great lengths to ensure I have my facts right.

Then there is ‘the leg-work.’ Over the years I have been drawn to exploring wherever I go in the world. I stroll through streets, note book and pencil ready, checking out addresses and buildings, noting the conditions and architectural style of doorways, windows, even roofs that I can access. Up and down steps and stairways I wander. As I explore these old streets, buildings and gardens, I can really get a feel for what went before me. I get a sense of how people lived and worked.

Basements are especially fascinating. Because they are rarely cleared out thoroughly, I find old magazines, pages of newspapers, abandoned cases, luggage tags and labels on shelves and doors. They all tell a story.

I am very chatty. So in my wanderings I will always chat to people I come across: those guarding old buildings, neighbors in old houses, cleaners, workmen – just anybody I can. “How long have you been here?” I ask. “What was here before?” “How many generations of your family have been here” I ask lots of questions about the past. I am very nosey! But most people are eager to share whatever they know. They love to repeat stories they have heard or tell me about their grandparents, aunts and uncles. I find that almost everyone has a fascinating tale to tell. So I borrow and steal unashamedly from the past.

As I have previously confessed, I have an abundance of scraps of paper with these many notes on them.  Although I do occasionally get overwhelmed by the sheer volume I have accrued, mostly I absolutely love surveying them spread all over my desk and my floor as I piece together my stories.  Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, I work out what gem I can place where and string together a necklace of a mystery.

I have written contemporary stories. In many ways they are much easier, as I don’t encounter an ‘oops’ moment when my character switches on a light – at a time before  electricity was available.

Writing historical books and novels is considerably more time-consuming. But, for me, it is so much more fun.   I love to share what I have discovered about times gone by. I love the intricacies of weaving historical facts and people into my stories. I love using a vocabulary from earlier generations.

Although I am very grateful for modern plumbing, medical advances and internet access, I often feel that the world I write about was a kinder and gentler place – most of the time, anyway.

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