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Lying About the Truth

Pam Munter

    “Write what you know” is the best advice I ever heard, music to the ears of a memoirist. After all, I am the world’s foremost expert on my own life. After getting the MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts, it seemed almost inevitable that I would assemble the many published memoir essays into a book (As Alone As I Want To Be, Adelaide, 2018). I had signed on to the program as a nonfiction major. Fiction never amused or entertained me, and I read it only when it was assigned, which felt like I was under duress. To me, the lives of real people are more engaging.
    But when the program director announced we also had to study and write in a second genre, with great reluctance I agreed to try to write fiction. Where to start? Was there a handbook, a guru, a set of principles? Slogging through books of short stories didn’t help much. Other than Ernest Hemingway, fiction always seemed to be encased in florid, lyrical writing. I am a meat-and-potatoes writer, trained in journalism.
    Then one morning, as I emerged from the shower, that long-ago advice about writing what you know seemed virtually to bounce off the gleaming white towel in my hands. How can I write about what I know when it’s supposed to be fiction? Aha!
    I have spent much of my life reading (and later writing) about old Hollywood, those glorious days when everyone recognized the faces on the big screen without having to look at the credits. While I had my favorites like everyone else, I was fascinated by actors who didn’t quite make it to the first tier of stardom—or who were in countless films then seemed to disappear. Back in the golden age of film, the entire industry was controlled by the five major movie studios. All we knew about the famous were funneled by studio publicists into the only game in town, movie magazines. Ambitious actors allowed themselves to be groomed and sometimes renamed. Sadly, women were often subjected to audition by casting couch. Some of the biggest female legends came up by way of the back room. What happened to them when they were no longer sexually viable?
    I had found my answer to my dilemma. What I know is Hollywood history. From my extensive study, I knew the real stories, many of which had yet to be told. My first short story was about Mary Pickford and her favorite screenwriter, Frances Marion. Marion had written many of Pickford’s classic silent films, resulting in a long-term friendship. How to fictionalize that? What if Marion wanted more out of that relationship than Pickford was willing to give? How would Pickford’s real-life alcoholism play a role in her demise as an actor, and how might it impact their friendship? My brain went into overdrive, envisioning the possibilities.
    As I wrote, I included historical references, such as a description of the famous Beverly Hills mansion, Pickfair, where Pickford lived with two of her husbands. I even checked photographs for accuracy (you can’t keep a good researcher down). In the story, I put Marion at a dinner party there, with a drunken Pickford upstairs. While Marion awaits her arrival, she has a conversation with Peg Entwistle, a real-life wannabe starlet who became famous for her swan dive suicide off the Hollywood sign. In reality, Entwistle would have been an unlikely guest at such a prestigious event, but I couldn’t help myself. Real life kept intruding on my fictional fantasy.
    As I added more stories, I felt a little guilty, as if I were getting away with something. There was a nugget of truth in each one, a jumping off point for hang-gliding into this unknown world of fiction. And yet, as a former clinical psychologist, I found it increasingly comfortable to insert myself inside the head of my protagonist, imagine what she might be thinking, and how she would process her decline from the heights of fame. The stories are told in ways I hoped would be captivating, but their essence lies in the internal world of the people who reside within them.
    To find further inspiration, I thought about other actors who had mesmerized me in my youth. Doris Day had been a major role model for me, a woman with a personal life massively divergent from her life on the screen. My storehouse of information about her bulged at its seams, begging to be let out in a story. She had been swindled out of her entire fortune by her third husband, which she didn’t discover until after he had died. That was a fact. I wondered, though, how did she find out? How did she react? How did she integrate this appalling information with the life they had led together? I placed the shocking revelation in the mouth of her adult son, in the driveway of their home on North Crescent Drive in Beverly Hills. In reality, her son had taken over her assets and managed what remained of her career after the husband’s death.
    The process of writing the stories was an incremental one, following extensive incubation, taking about three years. Fading Fame: Women of a Certain Age in Hollywood materialized as ten short stories and two short plays, all with the same theme.
    What happens to women who have become accustomed to fame when they grow too old by Hollywood’s sexist and ageist standards? Some of the stories feature identifiable personages, others are psychological collages of several. In truth, I had delighted in having at least one personal conversation with several of them; others had images so familiar that we feel as if we have met them in person.
    My struggle with writing in an unfamiliar genre turned out to confirm that wonderful piece of advice given to all writers about using one’s own experiences and knowledge. Do write what you know, but it’s even more fun if you write what you love.

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