Early Silent Film in The Courtesan's Daughter by Susanne Dunlap

Listen in as I chat with Susanne Dunlap, author of more than a dozen historical novels for adults and teens. Susanne joins me on the Art In Fiction Podcast to discuss one of her newest novels, The Courtesan's Daughter, listed in the Film category on Art In Fiction.

NEW on The Art In Fiction Podcast: Watch my interview on YouTube!

Highlights include:

• Inspiration for The Courtesan's Daughter - Alice Guy-Blaché, a pioneering French filmmaker who appears in the novel
• Focus on developing the story of a mother and daughter in early-20th-century New York and exploring generational conflict.
• What silent films were like in 1910 when the novel is set.
• Research into the period--Vitagraph, the innovations of early filmmaker J. Stuart Blackburn, and why the film industry eventually moved from New York to LA.
• Role of "pornographic" postcards in the novel
• Writing the "messy middle" of a novel
• Themes in The Courtesan's Daughter
• Reading from The Courtesan's Daughter
• How story is the most important element in historical fiction
• Advice about research methods
• What Susanne is working on now

Press Play now & be sure to check out The Courtesan's Daughter and all of Susanne's other novels on Art In Fiction.

Susanne Dunlap's Website

Paganology, performed by The Paul Plimley Trio; composed by Gregg Simpson

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Transcript

Hello and welcome. I’m Carol Cram, host of The Art In Fiction podcast. This episode features Susanne Dunlap, author of more than a dozen historical novels for adults and teens.

Five of her novels are listed on Art In Fiction, including The Portraitist in the Visual Arts category, Émilie’s Voice and Liszt’s Kiss in the Music category and The Adored One in the Theater category. Today, I’m speaking with Susanne about The Courtesan’s Daughter, listed in the Film category on Art In Fiction. 

Susanne grew up in Buffalo, New York and has lived in London, Brooklyn, Northhampton, Massachusetts, and now Biddeford, Maine. Her love of historical fiction rose partly from her PhD research at Yale. Susanne is also an Author Accelerator Certified Book Coach in fiction and nonfiction, specializing in coaching, historical fiction and historical nonfiction. 

Carol Cram: Welcome to The Art In Fiction Podcast, Susanne.

Susanne Dunlap: It’s so great to be here. Thank you so much for asking me. 

Carol Cram: You’re welcome. I have never read a novel that centers around silent film in the early 20th century, which is what The Courtesan’s Daughter does. Can you tell us a little bit about why you chose this time period.

Susanne Dunlap: That’s so interesting because unlike maybe many writers, I don’t sort of take what I know about and decide to write on what I know about. I take something that interests me and then I investigate it and then that’s what I write about. I had some vague background knowledge. And I think I’d seen the Vitagraph sign on the chimney in Brooklyn, which I think has now been taken down. I think it recently was demolished. But, other than that, and some vague kind of, anecdotal information about it, I really didn’t know a lot, but I was also fascinated with the woman, Alice Guy-Blaché, who is the French filmmaker who was very pioneering and, and you know, when I found out she spent a chunk of time in New York and I thought, oh, there’s gotta be a story there somewhere.

Carol Cram: Yeah. That was fascinating. So, she’s real, Alice.

Susanne Dunlap: Oh, she’s absolutely real. Alice Guy-Blaché. She was involved in the film industry in France, and then came over and did a lot of things. I mean, her films that are mentioned in the book are real films that she made.

And she directed things and the description of her studio that was pretty close to what in Queens, I think, was hers, Brooklyn was Vitagraph, and yeah, so I’m always interested in women who are pioneering in various arts, and I thought about just making it about her more biographical, but I just didn’t feel like there was enough, I don’t know why, I just didn’t feel like there was enough, so I have her in it as an important character, but she’s not one of the protagonists, obviously.

Carol Cram: And that actually raises an interesting dilemma that we have as historical novelists. Like, do you center the novel around a real person, or do you have fictional people that interact with your real person, which is what you did. And so really, we get super-invested in the story of Sylvie and Justine.

It’s kind of a mother-daughter novel as well, isn’t it? 

Susanne Dunlap: Well, honestly, I actually set out to write a mother-daughter story because I realized that in all my other books, the mothers are just not there. They’re either dead or out of the picture or in some way just not there. And I thought, why is that? Why am I avoiding writing a mother into my fiction? And so, I decided I had to find a way to do it. And that was sort of part of the impetus for the book. 

Carol Cram: So you wanted do the mother-daughter, and then that kind of got with doing the Vitagraph and the silent film era.

Susanne Dunlap: And wanting, the generational conflict in terms of what Sylvie wanted from life versus what her mother wanted for her from life. Yes. And the fears and things like that that went along with it. 

Carol Cram: I could so relate to that. I, well, as a mother, I super-related to poor Justine and just how devastated, when her daughter leaves. And all the way through the novel, I’m like, oh, poor Justine, like I was really empathizing with her and a little annoyed that Sylvie wasn’t going back. You did that very, very well with the mother’s fears and what it would be like to lose your daughter or not know where she is.

Susanne Dunlap: Right, and the thing is too, when you add the historical, the period aspect to it, you know, you have to think about what it was that parents worried about then. And she, as an immigrant, and her living in that place in the tenements on the Lower East Side of New York, you know, her fears and everything are going to be very different from a mother’s fears today, which are also very real, but it’s, you know, it is a completely different thing.

And that’s part of what fascinates me, part of what draws me again and again to writing historical fiction is really digging in and putting myself in the place of those people and thinking, what must she have felt like, you know, she’s worked and worked and worked and thought she had everything all safe for her daughter and then bang, you know, 

Carol Cram: Her daughter has other ideas. So back to the silent film, it was just 1907. So this is really early. What were the films like in those days?

Susanne Dunlap: It’s actually 1910. I settled on that for a couple of reasons. One of them was that there was this historic snowstorm in New York. And it just provided me with a way for her, for Sylvie, to run away and not easily be able to get back and not easily be found, you know, not easily be traceable because whatever.

So that was one reason. The other reason was what was going on in, you know, when I started looking into Vitagraph and Edison’s world and everything, what was going on at the time. And J. Stuart Blackton, who was the main guy at Vitagraph. Fascinating character. And really the studio was, like, they had glass ceiling studios to get all the light. He really did that Moses thing and with this trick photography to get the staff turned into a snake. It really got loose in the studio, you know, that stuff. 

Carol Cram: Wow. Where did you find all that out? 

Susanne Dunlap: Oh gosh, you can find anything. There’s actually a biography that I have, I got a book about J. Stuart Blackton that had a ton of information in it. But also, there’s so much. You look in the archives and newspapers and it’s not hard to piece together where all of it came from, but there was just a lot of great real stuff that happened that, you know, and the things that I take liberties with obviously are what were the people really like.

For instance, the famous, the Vitagraph girl, whose name I’m just for some reason not able to call to mind. 

Carol Cram: Was that Florence?

Susanne Dunlap: Florence. Thank you, Florence. She was, she did start out as a seamstress and became an actor in the films. And by all accounts, she was a really nice person, but I needed her not to be.

Carol Cram: Yeah, exactly. 

Susanne Dunlap: Florence. The whole thing of that, they didn’t put the actors names on in the credits of the film. So, she was the Vitagraph girl, she did not have a name to the general public. 

Carol Cram: And they were very short too, weren’t they?

Susanne Dunlap: Oh yeah, they had to be because of the technology. And one of the things that Blackton did that was very cutting edge was to make these longer films with multiple reels, because nobody thought that anybody would sit through a long, you know, anything longer than a few minutes, but he did Midsummer Night’s Dream that was filmed in his garden, which was right near the studio.

So, he was very much a pioneer himself. And they also traded, you know, they cooperated with each other. They had their rivalries and whatnot, but they were all known to each other. And so it wasn’t like there were these big studios that were in fierce competition at the time.

Carol Cram: I found it interesting that they generally did all their filming outside so they could only do it in the summertime, which I guess kind of led me to believe, is that why they eventually moved to LA? 

Susanne Dunlap: Yes, it is. Absolutely. The weather was a big thing. But they filmed outside, but they also filmed in studios, but they were glass. So they had glass ceilings and everything so that they could have, you know, the lighting, the Cooper Hewitts, the big lamps that they use to illuminate. It could supplement the daylight, but it couldn’t supplant it.

So, when they figured out they could go to California, it was a huge step. 

Carol Cram: I’d never really thought about that, but that’s why, you know, but it started in New York, but they ended up in California. I mean, that was never said in the novel, but that’s sort of a nice thing as a reader when you go, Oh, that’s why they did that. Okay!

Susanne Dunlap: Right, right. The other fascinating thing to me was that a lot of the outdoor location things were filmed in New Jersey in Fort Lee. They take a ferry because the bridge didn’t exist at that time. It was built later. 

Carol Cram: All this information that you have to get as an historical novelist. Make sure it’s right.

Susanne Dunlap: I know. And then you research it and you’re writing along and something makes you go back and double check something and you think, Oh, that wasn’t quite right. 

Carol Cram: I know. I hate that when that happens, when the history doesn’t conform to your plot. And another plot point sort of running through the novel is the existence of the photographs of young women in underwear, which was considered, you know, pornographic. I presume that was real.

Susanne Dunlap: It was real. The circumstances that I created, I have no way of knowing would have been the case at all. That was very much fiction, but there is a lot of underworld stuff going on, you know, and with the gangs and that sort of thing then. And I was fascinated by that too.

Carol Cram: Because she gets her photograph taken and then unbeknownst to her, another photograph of her just in her underwear is then circulated as sort of dirty postcards kind of thing

Susanne Dunlap: Yes. And that it’s so interesting because I’m going to be teaching another workshop on March 2nd about the messy middle, about pacing in the messy middle. And the point is you have to seed those things at the beginning so that, you know, the fact of that photograph comes back at a point in the novel where it amps up the tension because it’s discovered, right? 

Carol Cram: That was really well done, actually. Yes, because when it came back, I went, Oh, yeah, right. I remember when she got that photograph taken. Oh. It is tough to get that messy middle. I’m in the messy middle right now in the novel I’m currently working on, and yeah, it’s messy. 

What would you say is the theme of The Courtesan’s Daughter? 

Susanne Dunlap: And I think the themes are, you know, a generational divide, mothers and daughters and expectations and that sort of thing. Also, always when, in these early circumstances and the difficulties that are there for women that are not there for men and how they have, what risk they’re at for things that men just don’t have to worry about.

And even though that’s still true today, I think it was true even more in earlier times. So, also I think always the importance and the power of artistic pursuits and creativity and how they can enrich people’s lives and how they are legitimate occupations and ways to carve an existence out of. And also, I think there’s another one, that you can’t always judge a book by its cover, to be really clichéd, and that, you know, just because somebody exists in a certain milieu doesn’t mean they have to, that they’re going to conform to it in the end. 

Carol Cram: So, we talked about you doing a short reading from The Courtesan’s Daughter. 

Susanne Dunlap: Yes, I thought I would read a little bit from when Sylvie first is at, she’s an accomplished seamstress, not as good as her mother, but she’s been helping her mother with piecework for as long as she can remember. So her way into the movie studio is by, they needed a seamstress to replace Florence, who became more of an actress.

And although that is historical in some way, the existence of Sylvie and what she did is not; it’s completely invented. But, it was just so much fun to look up all the actors from these films, this, you know, Gladys, who is this little girl actor was a real person 

So I thought I’d read a little bit about her, of one of her fittings, her first fitting for a costume for Gladys. 

Gladys arrived for her final fitting later in the afternoon, the day after I started working at Vitagraph. I found a folding screen in a corner and figured it would do to give her a little privacy.

But before I could set it up, Gladys breezed in and stripped down to her underclothes, not even shutting the door behind her. As fast as I could, I pulled the costume over her head and knelt down to mark the hem. 

“So where did you come from?” she said. 

My mouth was full of pins, which gave me a moment to think up an answer.

“Connecticut,” I said, after I’d marked where to sow flowers on the bodice, the final fairy like touch. I lifted the costume over Gladys’s head. She didn’t dress right away, though, just stood there looking at me. 

“Where in Connecticut? Mother’s folks are from New Haven.”

Damn. “Not there,” I said. “Out in the country, on a farm.”

“What about your mother and father?”

“They’re dead,” I said. 

This put an end to the conversation. 

“Here, try this on now.”

I watched Gladys twirl and flounce in the costume, which I considered a success and hoped the director, Mr. Kent, would too. 

“That’ll do, I guess,” she said, flicking the skirt and not looking at me.

“What about you?” I asked. “Where do you come from?” I wasn’t used to asking people questions about themselves, and it felt bold and dangerous to do it. 

“Oh, I’ve been in Manhattan mostly, except when I was touring in the Midwest.”

“Touring?”

She grimaced. “I hated it. Every night, the same thing. City after city. A song and a dance and reciting poetry until I got too old.”

“Too old. When was that?”

“A couple years ago. I was ready to quit anyway. Mama had me out there singing when I was three.”

To be on the stage so young, I couldn’t imagine it. 

“The dress is finished, but what will you wear on your legs?” I thought for sure she must need bloomers or stockings or something. 

“Mr. Blackton says my legs are to be bare. I don’t care as long as it’s warm in the studio.”

With that, she skipped out of the sewing room, kicking her heels up in a way I later learned was typical for her. 

Carol Cram: That’s really great. Thank you so much. It’s always great to actually hear some, a portion of a novel read by the author. I think it gives it an extra dimension. 

Susanne Dunlap: And it reminds the author of what she wrote. 

Carol Cram: Exactly, because by the time it’s out, you’ve kind of forgotten. I know, it’s like, oh really, did I write that?

Susanne Dunlap: Exactly, exactly. 

Carol Cram: So, one of my goals with The Art In Fiction Podcast is to talk about some writing-related questions. And so, tell us one thing that you’ve learned from writing historical fiction that perhaps you didn’t know before you started writing.

Susanne Dunlap: Well, one of the big things is how the story is the most important thing. History is important and that’s why we love the history. That’s why we write this stuff. But if you don’t let the story drive it, then it’s not going to be successful. That’s the biggest thing that I think you need to understand if you’re going to write historical fiction. 

Carol Cram: And I think that’s really true. I know it was in my case. I was terrified to write historical fiction. I said, you have to be a, you know, a PhD in history to write historical fiction, was the little voice in my head told me. But well, no, actually, you need to be a storyteller because you do know how to read.

Susanne Dunlap:  Yes, you can research, it’s all there. I mean, it was, you know, back in the day when, say, Anya Seaton was writing, she was one of the early proponents of historical fiction. She had to travel to, she had to go look in archives and everything because of course there was no internet. We are so spoiled.

Now you can find misinformation too, but the good information is there if you know how to look for it. 

Carol Cram: Exactly. And so what are some of your research methods? 

Susanne Dunlap: Well, the Library of Congress is always a great place to start. And, you know, honestly, I often start with Wikipedia because the good articles in Wikipedia have bibliographies.

And you can find books there that you can go digging down a little bit further into something that you need to know. And I’ve discovered books in there that I have then gone to bookfinder.com and gotten reprints or old copies of used books through them. If you have a really good library near you, if you have access to a university library, often you can get those books in that library.

I do have a PhD, and to a certain degree, it was responsible for my wanting to write historical fiction. I think as long as the story is good and you’re not putting in anachronisms all over the place, which really drives me nuts, readers will go along with you.

What they want is to be completely engrossed in the story, to love the protagonists, and to just keep reading and be immersed in this other time, and often learn something too.

Carol Cram: I shouldn’t say it’s easier to write historical fiction than to write an academic treatise, but you don’t have to have all those footnotes and you don’t have to justify every single word of what you wrote. I was an academic as well. I didn’t do a PhD in history, but I did do a master’s, so, you know, I’ve got an academic background and I remember feeling it was actually kind of relaxing that you didn’t have to footnote everything and you didn’t have to be rigid about what you could say and not.

Susanne Dunlap: Have you ever had a paper peer reviewed for publication?

Carol Cram: No, I didn’t go that high up.

Susanne Dunlap: Well, I have. I have one peer reviewed paper that’s in the journal Women in Music because mine was in music history. I submitted another paper for peer review. And to another journal and you get your peer reviews and when I received these, at least one of them, I think, the person was so nasty and so horrible and just tore it apart. And, you know, you didn’t, you didn’t do that, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, wow. I won’t go into the whole story of what started me writing actual historical fiction, but then when I submitted something to an agent, my agent I ended up with, basically I had this story based on some research that I’d done for my PhD that I was really interested in this period and this concept.

And he called me on the phone and said, what you’ve written is not a novel, but he then talked to me for an hour, sent me some things, books to read and everything. And when I started reading about the storytelling side, I went, Oh, I get it now. I see what the difference is. And in the meantime, I’d sent some pages off to, this was in the days where most agents still weren’t accepting electronic submissions.

And so I sent some pages off to an agent on the West Coast and you know, they went away. I figured, oh, that’s, you know, they, whatever. Months and months later, I actually got a response back and she didn’t take me, but she said, you know, you have a really interesting voice and this and that but it’s not really a page turner, which is what they like, but she was so nice about it. 

Carol Cram: Wow, that’s unusual. You don’t get that much anymore.

Susanne Dunlap: Yeah. Well, what you don’t get, they don’t tear you apart. They just sort of give you like a "sorry, not for me" kind of thing. As opposed to going into great detail about how awful it is, which is what the academic paper thing happened.

Carol Cram: Yes, I’m always rather grateful I didn’t go for the PhD. Mine was in theater. And I just thought, you know, I don’t think that’s for me. I want to be a novelist when I grow up. And I’m really interested in the fact that you did your PhD or your academic background was in music. So what era? 'Cause I also love music.

Susanne Dunlap: Music history, my dissertation was Viennese Italian reform opera. So mid-18th century. I love opera. That was a big thing. And I still haven’t written the book that includes opera. I’m not sure whether I will ever do that, but...

Carol Cram: Oh, you’ve got to do that. That’s perfect for Art In Fiction.

Susanne Dunlap: I know. I have the beginnings of a manuscript. The other thing is I was somewhat of a Handel scholar. I gave a paper at the International Baroque Conference in Dublin once. And, you know, and I really wanted to write about the woman who sang in the first performance of Messiah in Dublin. And she has a such an interesting story, but I started it and then, you know, one thing and another, you have all those fragments around and everything like that. So maybe someday I’ll go back to it.

Carol Cram: In addition to being a novelist, you’re a book coach and you do writing events. Tell us a little bit about what you do.

Susanne Dunlap: Yeah, I, you know, it sort of harkens back to my academic thing because I really wanted to teach. I love digging into figuring out how things work and really understanding things that I love and sharing that information with people. I love work. One of my favorite things to do is I work with writers one on one and help them write their books. It’s the book coaching thing. And we work over time. Usually, I have one author, one writer I’m working with. He’s almost finished with his big revision of his historical novel, and we’ve been working together for almost three years on it.

It’s really rewarding for me to see how far people come, you know, and that there’s times where if somebody comes to me and they’re not really ready for the kind of help I can give them, I can steer them somewhere else.

What I focus on is not teaching you how to write, but teaching you how to write a book, which is completely different. I mean, obviously they’re related, but that looking at the storytelling things, the craft elements of fiction or memoir, which I also coach. Memoir, interestingly enough, has a lot in common with historical fiction. Because it’s real people, it’s history, really, in a sense, there’s a new, another layer that it’s your history, but you also have to still find that thread in it that makes it a meaningful whole, and it’s not just this happened, then this happened, then this happened kind of thing.

So in fact, myself and two other book coaches who are friends of mine, one of whom lives in Italy, are doing our second annual women’s memoir retreat here in in Biddeford in Maine where I live. 

Carol Cram: What are you working on now? 

Susanne Dunlap: Funny you should ask. I have two projects, one that I was working on, which I have sort of shelved for the moment, for a reason I’ll explain.

I have this four timeline historical novel that starts in the 1830s and ends up in the 1990s that has to do with the textile industry in New England and its relationship to enabling slavery in the South, in antebellum South, and this sort of thing. And I’ve figured out a lot about it and I really like the story, but it’s a big challenge and it’s hard, hard, hard to do, you know, all those timelines are, because it’s like writing four separate novels in a way, putting them together.

And then I started, because I was doing, going to be doing this, uh, ProWritingAid workshop, I said, I just need to switch my mind into historical romance. And so I just started reading and, you know, exploring. And I have literally read six Georgette Heyer books in the last six weeks, you know. 

Oh, this is so wonderful. I love this. And she’s a masterful writer and, or was, you know, and impeccable research really early. Beautifully researched. She has it totally down to everything. And I just thought, I want to write a historical romance. And so I have started writing a historical romance, a Regency Romance.

Carol Cram: Regency. Favorite period.

Susanne Dunlap: Regency Romance. And it is so much fun. I just can’t tell you how much fun it is. So, and I think I’ll probably use a pseudonym, not because I’m ashamed of writing a Regency Romance, but because just to signal that it’s something different from my normal output.

And I’m working with my coach on that and it’s just so much fun. Yeah. 

Carol Cram: Oh, that would be fun. You know, it’s one of my favorite periods because, of course, I’m a huge Jane Austen fan. Who isn’t? Aren’t we all?

Susanne Dunlap: Yeah. Yeah, really.

Carol Cram: We owe so much to her. Thank you, Susanne, for talking with me. This has been just delightful. 

Susanne Dunlap: Oh, it’s so much fun. It’s like, yeah, we gotta do this again. 

Carol Cram: I’ve been speaking with Susanne Dunlap, author of several novels listed on Art In Fiction, including The Courtesan’s Daughter listed in the Film category at www.artinfiction.com. Be sure to check the show notes for a link to Susanne’s website at www.Susanne-Dunlap.com. You’ll also find a link for a 20% discount on a subscription to Pro Writing Aid, a fantastic editing tool for writers. If you enjoy The Art In Fiction podcast, please help us keep the lights on by donating a coffee on the Kofi website; the link is in the show notes. Also, please follow Art In Fiction on Twitter and Facebook. 

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