Diana Altman grew up in New York, the daughter of a talent scout for MGM who discovered some of the greatest film stars of all time – Jimmy Stewart, Joan Crawford, and Ava Gardner, to name a few. Altman has led an interesting life and she knows how to draw from it for her writing. Her first book, Hollywood East: Louis B. Mayer and the origins of the studio system tells the story of how the film industry began not in Hollywood, but in the East. Her second book, In Theda Bara’s Tent, is the fictional story of a young boy who is orphaned and how he grows up to find success in broadcasting, while also making his mark in film.
In her newest book, We Never Told, Altman likewise draws on her own childhood to weave a fictional tale of family secrets between a mother and the children she mysteriously leaves for months. To celebrate the book’s release on June 11th, Ms. Altman kindly took the time to talk with The Nerd Daily about her new novel, women’s issues, and her admiration for everyone from Shakespeare to Cher.
The description of your new novel, We Never Told, indicates that you pulled from your own childhood experiences when developing this story. Without giving any spoilers, could you discuss a little about how your personal experiences influenced this novel?
I wrote the book to make sense of what happened to me when I was fifteen and my mother went away for four months and swore me to secrecy. As Victor Hugo said, No one keeps a secret so well as a child. To protect me and my sister and herself, Mother lied about why she had to leave home. After I finished writing the book, including much that was totally made up, I found it quite easy to talk about the real-life events that inspired the work. The transformation of painful events into narratives seems to be a natural phenomenon. From ache to story. Over and over again all the time. Only authors get the pleasure of writing it down rather than just telling it at a cocktail party.
If you had to choose a character in We Never Told that you identify with most, which character would that be? How are you and this character similar?
The narrator is basically me. Sonya speaks for me but sometimes she says things that I wouldn’t.
Themes of women, children, and families are central in We Never Told. With respect to these themes, what do you hope the reader has learned by the time they turn the very last page?
We are living in an era that will never return. In the 1950’s/60’s, unmarried women were shamed into relinquishing their babies. Those babies are now middle aged and barging into the lives of the women who gave them away. This is the era of reckoning for those unmarried women and their babies. Those babies became adults and began what for many of them was a painful search. Just to find out the name of their birth mother was a trauma and took months of research. That won’t happen again now that we have open adoptions. Now we have such a thing as a “single Mom.” Unmarried women keep their babies and rear them without a husband. There’s no shame. Now we have abortion on demand. Now we cringe at the word illegitimate. We Never Told is a slice of American history as it relates to women.
Your father was a talent scout for MGM who was involved in the discovery of huge film stars such as Joan Crawford, Ava Gardner, and Jimmy Stewart. How did this impact your upbringing? Did it influence you in any way to become a writer?
Writers are born that way. We woke up like this. But my father’s career did influence the choice of the subject of my first book. Hollywood East: Louis B. Mayer and the origins of the studio system was my attempt to find out what exactly my father did for a living. By the time I was born, he was already famous having discovered more unknown actors who became great stars than any other talent scout in history. Unfortunately, he died when I was 22, too young to have asked him the right questions about his career. Through research I learned about the Hollywood studio system and how his career depended upon that system. Those were the days when the theatre companies in New York owned the Hollywood Studios and kept the indies mostly out of work. Publishing right now is going through a similar transformation, a time when indies are making themselves heard.
You seem to have a strong focus on women’s issues and rights, both in your writing and in your personal life. According to your website, you were the first married woman in the state of Massachusetts to keep her maiden name without going to probate court. You also played a key role in allowing midwives to legally practice in that same state. What women’s issue, or issues, in the present day do you feel passionate about?
I wish we could value childrearing more than we do. Now we have that belittling phrase stay at home Mom. What on earth does that even mean? What Mom stays home? First of all, she can’t be home because she has to be out on the sidewalk making sure her toddler doesn’t get run over and second of all her brain hasn’t dried up just because she had a baby. Because she’s not at someone else’s office, she’s borderline idiotic or else just a rich idle person. I see a current masculinization of the female and I don’t like it. In films she punches people and shoots them and kicks them. Or she’s the big boss at work. You never see her nursing her baby. In cartoons if she isn’t zapping someone with the ice that comes out of her palm, she’s waltzing around in a frilly dress that’s equally silly. And don’t get me started with how mothers are portrayed in films. The actor picks up the phone, hears his mother’s voice and makes an exasperated face. She’s a nag, she’s bossy, she’s helpless. I wish we could all just recognize that there are seasons to our lives and one of them includes taking care of children and making them come first. If we all thought this then even those women who must bring in money, which is most of us, wouldn’t be so hard pressed to “do both.” We’d have daycare at work so children could see their mothers and mothers could see their children. This is a long subject!
We Never Told is your third book. What lessons did you learn from writing the first two books (In Theda Bara’s Tent, published in 2010 and Hollywood East: Louis B. Mayer and the origins of the studio system, published in 1992) that you were able to incorporate into your newest release?
My first book was nonfiction so my feelings didn’t come into it that much. My opinions were expressed but only if they were backed up by facts. In Theda Bara’s Tent is fiction based on the research I did for my first book. I created a little boy who made his way into the early film business. Anyone reading the book will learn about the American film industry through a story. We Never Told is quite personal and required a different kind of concentration, one that required that I dig into myself. It was so incredibly cool to put words onto memories that were mostly fog.
In addition to these three books, you have had a number of short stories and articles published. Are you currently working on any new projects that you could share with our readers?
Because I had to dig so deep into myself for We Never Told I’m thinking of doing a book that lets me stay on the surface. I’ve been thinking of finding out the meaning behind place names in New York. Like, who was Wilbur Cross? Who was Merritt? Who was Henry Hudson? What does Bronx mean?
How long did it take you to write We Never Told? Do you have a routine or schedule that you follow when you are writing?
It took me about six years. While I’m writing, I sit down at my desk about ten and stay put until about three every day except Sunday. And not on Thursdays because I play squash. So, Thursdays I sit at my desk in the afternoon.
What advice do you have for aspiring writers who are not yet published?
If you give up you’ll never be published. It’s really as simple as that.
Let’s Get Nerdy: Behind the Writer with 9 Quick Questions
- First book that made you fall in love with reading: The Bobbsey Twins. I tried to read one of those books recently and couldn’t. But when I was six I loved those books. Also, Black Beauty.
- 3 books you would take on a desert island: The Remains of the Day, The Fish Can Sing, The Secret Agent
- Movie that you know by heart: Casablanca, National Velvet, Silence of the Lambs
- Song that makes you want to get up and dance: So many!
- Place that everyone should see in their lifetime: Fez, the Grand Canyon, New York City
- Introvert or extrovert: Half and half
- Coffee, tea, or neither: Both
- First job: I worked for a non-profit and we brought Head Start to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I ran a daycare center funded by the government.
- Person you admire most and why: Shakespeare. No one even comes close to comparing. And Leontine Price. No one even comes close to having such a beautiful voice. Murray Perahia for piano, Linda Ronstadt for singing and Cher for all her talents and her drive.
About the Author: Diana Altman is the author of Hollywood East: Louis B. Mayer and the origins of the studio system, a work of nonfiction that continues to be quoted in books of film history and movie star biographies. Her novel In Theda Bara’s Tent was described by Publishers Weekly as “enthralling.” Her short stories have been published in StoryQuarterly, Trampset, and The Notre Dame Review. Her articles have appeared in The NY Times, Boston Herald, Forbes, Yankee, Moment, American Heritage, Harvard Magazine, and elsewhere. She has appeared on radio and television, including on Entertainment Tonight. She has lectured at The New York Society Library, Harvard Club, M.I.T., Boston Public Library, and UJA of New York. She sings with the 92nd Street Y chorus and plays squash. She is a graduate of Connecticut College and Harvard University.
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