Episode 94: Laura by Vera Caspary

SPEAKERS
Sarah Harrison, Carolyn Daughters

Carolyn Daughters  00:14

Welcome to Tea Tonic and Toxin, the only book club and podcast dedicated to exploring mysteries chronologically, from Edgar Allan Poe to the present. We’re discussing the best mysteries and thrillers ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s most talented contemporary mystery and thriller writers. I’m your host, Carolyn Daughters.

Sarah Harrison  00:33

And I’m your host, Sarah Harrison. We aim to educate, entertain, and reignite interest in exceptional and often overlooked authors who shaped the genre. Check us out at teatonicandtoxin.com and on our socials to find tons of great content and take part in the conversation. We love hearing from listeners, and we’re excited you’re joining us on our journey through the history of mystery.

Good afternoon, Carolyn.

Carolyn Daughters  01:02

Good afternoon, Sarah.

Sarah Harrison  01:03

It’s Sarah “formal” Harrison, yes. How’s it going? Sarah, it’s going pretty good. I’m excited about some of the new stuff we’re trying.

Carolyn Daughters  01:14

What are we trying?

Sarah Harrison  01:16

Well, we’re doing some stuff, some episodes with the two of us, and then some episodes with the guests on the same topic. We’re mixing it up a little bit.

Carolyn Daughters  01:26

Sarah, what’s going on with you?

Sarah Harrison  01:29

Well, you know, I do a podcast from time to time.

Carolyn Daughters  01:33

How’s that podcast coming along?

Sarah Harrison  01:34

It’s a little behind, to be honest. I’m being honest. It’s May, and we’re about to wrap up 2024. I should say it’s May of 2025, but we’ll get there. Thanks to all our listeners for your patience with the episode publication rate. And I believe we do have a shout out to one of those listeners today. Do we not?

Carolyn Daughters  01:58

We do have a shout out. Our shout out today is Tommy Larrieu from Evans, Georgia. Tommy found us by way of David Morrell, who was a guest on our podcast for two episodes. David Morrell guested on our episode on Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household, and then he also talked with us about his first book. You may have heard of it. It’s called First Blood. It’s where Rambo was introduced.

Sarah Harrison  02:24

The great episode. And thank you so much for Tommy for caring.

Carolyn Daughters  02:30

Thank you. And also, I will say, if you’re enjoying this podcast, please do follow it. Subscribe to the podcast. There were other things I was going to say.

Sarah Harrison  02:43

Like, subscribe and rate it.

Carolyn Daughters  02:46

Yes, your five star rating helps other people find us. So your subscription, your follow. I’m using all the wrong words because I am secretly 95 years old. But if you do those things, you could even do it right now while you’re listening, and then rate the podcast five stars. That helps other people find us. It expands our listener base. And tell your family and friends. Surely they want to read mysteries and talk about them.

Sarah Harrison  03:13

Undoubtedly.

Carolyn Daughters  03:15

Sarah, I love this book that you’re going to introduce. It’s Laura by Vera Caspary.

Sarah Harrison  03:18

It was a great book, and I’m excited to introduce it. Meet Laura Hunt, a modern woman personified — ravishing, elegant, ambitious, and utterly unknowable. No one can resist her charms, not even the cynical NYPD detective Mark McPherson, sent to track down the killer who has turned Laura into a faceless corpse. By day, McPherson interrogates the men who loved her. By night, he combs her apartment for clues, gazing at her portrait, smelling her lingering scent. One stormy night into the investigation, the door opens to an electrifying plot twist. (We’ll spoil it in a second. Don’t worry.) Published in 1943, Laura by Vera Caspary is a work of riveting psychological suspense. Caspary was born in 1899. In her Edgar Award-winning autobiography, The Secrets of Grown Ups, she wrote, “I was born by accident in the 19th century.” In her 18 novels, 10 screenplays, and 4 stage plays, her main theme was the working woman and her right to lead an independent life. The novel Laura by Vera Caspary has largely been overshadowed by the 1944 classic film directed by Otto Preminger. In total, 24 movies were made from her scripts and novels. Vera Caspary died in 1987.

Carolyn Daughters  04:41

She lived a long life, 87, 88 years old. And really, I love that idea that she was born in the wrong century. She feels very modern to me.

Sarah Harrison  04:55

Yeah, that was a funny way to put it. I read that too. At first I was like, like, you weren’t supposed to be born in that century. But I think it was a double entendre there where she was also not exactly planned, from what I understood.

Carolyn Daughters  05:12

Her oldest sister was 18 years her senior, and her mother was in her 40s, which, though common today, was extremely uncommon back in 1899.

Sarah Harrison  05:23

Let’s not go so far as to say it’s common today. It’s increasingly common. It does happen. I don’t even know if that’s true. I’ve been doing some family research. A lot of my family members, back in the day of no birth control, did have babies in their 40s, and it’s increasingly challenging. Well, we won’t get into like, what’s going on that’s causing birth rate dip. There’s a lot of stuff going on.

Carolyn Daughters  05:54

That’s a completely different podcast. My maternal great grandmother, my mother’s grandmother, I believe, had her youngest child at around 49 or 50, which is incredible. And, yeah, I have a few stories that I won’t tell here or now.

Sarah Harrison  06:22

Tell me later.

Carolyn Daughters  06:24

I will definitely tell you later. And listeners, if you want to hear stories, I’ve got stories.

Sarah Harrison  06:29

Well, maybe you should make friends with us. Listeners, it starts with a like and subscribe.

Carolyn Daughters  06:37

Yes. Oh, I didn’t mention that Tommy is getting an awesome sticker. They’re really beautiful. For our subscribers and patrons, Sarah creates these mystery boxes. I have never even seen one.

Sarah Harrison  06:55

No, well, maybe you will one day. Carolyn, maybe you will. For paid patrons, we do make a flat swag mailer. So any flat swag I can stick in an envelope, some pictures, I’ll send it your way.

Carolyn Daughters  07:10

She might even have her children put together a nice little artwork.

Sarah Harrison  07:13

Right? Depends on what they’re doing.

Carolyn Daughters  07:16

Their interest level. Like, do they feel like creating this artwork.

Sarah Harrison  07:20

Do you have four year olds? Then you know what we’re talking about.

Carolyn Daughters  07:23

Yeah, it’s fridge worthy, that is for sure. I have some of it on mine. So Laura by Vera Caspary. I had not ever seen the movie by Otto Preminger, and I had never heard of the author before this. I’m almost embarrassed to say that. And yet, in reading this book, I loved it. It felt really modern to me.

Sarah Harrison  07:46

I agree with that. It was a page turner. Well, honestly, after the first three pages, it became a page turner. The first three pages were difficult for me to get through. After that, it became a page turner. And then it felt more and more modern the more I read it.

Carolyn Daughters  08:04

In Laura by Vera Caspary, we start with Waldo Lydecker. I think that’s how you would say his name. I think that’s how it was said in the film. He has this florid or floral prose style, and it’s well written, but it was a little bit difficult for me to get through. So at the start, I thought, Oh, this whole book is Waldo. And yet it’s not. It’s actually multiple voices. We hear from different characters, which I think is a really fun thing that Vera Caspary does with this book. But in doing that, she also shows her skill as a writer, and being able to give us Mark McPherson’s voice. He’s the detective. We get these different voices, and then we are able to situate Waldo as this pompous, snobby, cultured aesthete who is super full of himself.

Sarah Harrison  09:05

That was a struggle for me at the beginning. It wasn’t necessarily his style. It was that I didn’t like him right off the bat. We recently read, oh my goodness. What was the Albert Campion book?

Carolyn Daughters  09:24

Traitor’s Purse.

Sarah Harrison  09:25

Yes, Traitor’s Purse by Margery Allingham. And in that book, Campion, undergoes an amnesia moment, and he’s going through the whole book, and he gets this external view of himself, and I feel like it changed him for the better. In Laura by Vera Caspary, Waldo Lydecker seemed to have already a really transparent view of his faults, which he just embraced. It didn’t transform him, it didn’t make him better. He just wrote himself a pass for being a jerk all the time, and would talk about it and I really struggled with liking him.

Carolyn Daughters  10:02

He also sees himself in the third person. He refers to himself as Waldo Lydecker, and he can cringe at some of the things he says and does. But then he can also distance and see himself in the third person, and he makes himself this hero, like a child might have this hero character in their mind, their imaginary friend. Well, he can transform into that in his head. And if it’s sounding like he might be a little bit crazy, I think he might be a little bit crazy.

Sarah Harrison  10:42

He’s in at least some grandiose level. I feel like some interesting detachment issues and grandiosity happening and yeah, I mean, he’s a great character. I feel like reading Waldo. We’ve met while those in our life, at least I have, for sure, not an exact replica, but just I had a minute where I was struggling, like, Who is this person? What am I? What is the vibe I’m supposed to be getting from him through all this? And then I wish I had written that exact sentence down, but I do remember the word toward the end of his section. They called him fussy. I was like, that’s it. That’s what’s bugging me about him. He’s fussy.

Carolyn Daughters  11:35

He has like this, this dining ritual, and various things have to happen in in a specific order, and he can’t be interrupted, and he he’s very specific about the things in his day to day, upscale life that have to happen in a in a specific way.

Sarah Harrison  11:54

In Laura by Vera Caspary, it starts with his China collection. That’s the first thing we really mean about him, is his China collection, and he’s talking about his China, and how McPherson is looking at his China and wondering and eventually admiring it, and he writes this whole like internal story arc of his relationship with McPherson over time, which I think McPherson writes a very different story arc of that same relationship.

Carolyn Daughters  12:20

I loved that because they’re spending so much time together. They’re having a number of meals together. And at first you’re not sure why Mark McPherson, the detective, is doing this. Is he so obsessed with Laura, this dead woman, that he’s just gonna hang out with Waldo Lydecker nonstop, but when we get to Mark’s section of narration, we hear Mark’s side of the story, and we realize there’s a lot of intention underlying what he’s been doing. And this, these interactions with Waldo. A lot of it has been really to keep an eye on Waldo and to really figure out what makes him tick and what might have made him tick like, Is it, is it possible that he’s the murderer?

Sarah Harrison  13:04

He’s all the time investigating in Laura by Vera Caspary.

Carolyn Daughters  13:11

They needed this. Waldo and Laura have this restaurant, Montagninos. I wish I could pronounce this word. A good part of my family is Italian too, and I’m having a lot of difficulty with this. But it’s this really interesting restaurant with this amazing food, and it’s in the slums of New York. So while you’re there, like these slum smells mixed with the smell of Italian food, there’s the smell of the Rising Storm that’s happening outside, all of these things are intermingled, and they eat mussels, mustard greens and a Chianti along with chicken fried and olive oil laid on a bed of yellow tag tagliarini, tagliarini, again, I’m having trouble, garlanded with mushrooms and red peppers. And then they drink la Christie, which is this wine that’s produced on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. And I guess it’s supposed to be the wine that most closely mirrors the wine drunk by ancient Romans. And like the meal, details are so specific, and this is like Waldo’s spot with Laura, but it also becomes Waldo’s spot with Mark McPherson, and it becomes Shelby’s spot with Diane Redfern. This is New York, but there’s one restaurant in town sort of thing. Like, everybody gravitates to this place. It made me really want to go there.

Sarah Harrison  14:56

That’s interesting. I have a mixed feeling about that. Why? Um, because of Walter’s personality and a personality type that I actually don’t like the person that considers themselves this high class purveyor of fine things, like my taste is the best taste. And I’m going to give you some of my taste. I’m going to cultivate you. And so you see, Waldo is that person like, and it’s not the fancy place down on Broadway. It’s hidden away. It’s a hidden gem. And so you feel special when you find these places. And I like those sorts of places, but the way that it’s interacting with all these people I don’t like. It’s like, oh, I’m a whatever I am. I’m a foodie, I’m a coffee snob, I’m a “this” person. I’m a “that” person. I like. Find things and you identify yourself with this taste and materialism that again, it really rubs me the wrong so it feels pretentious. It feels pretentious, it feels fussy. It feels like off base. It feels like you’re mean in your heart, and you don’t have anything going on. I mean, so you see these people adopted. In Laura by Vera Caspary, I feel like Laura is a person that pushed back against, that she took on Waldo-isms where, where she did, but also he would talk about, her slummy taste like, Oh, she liked dance music, or she still liked this, or she still liked athletic men, and she just wouldn’t fully adopt while those fine tastes. And then you think about someone like Shelby, who’s trying to pretend at taste and trying to be bigger and classier than he is, especially for Diane, who adores him. He’s just taking on the mantle of tastes. It’s always like, well, Waldo and Laura loved this place, so then I’ll be the Waldo for Diane.

Carolyn Daughters  16:59

The purveyor of fine food. Yeah, I’m the I’m the guy who can introduce her to the hidden gem.

Sarah Harrison  17:05

Like, even the desire for that makes my stomach uncomfortable. Like, the reason Laura gave Shelby that gold cigarette case that factors prominently in the storyline is so he could feel like a big shot with his big shot friends.

Carolyn Daughters  17:20

And the reason he gives it to Diane is for the same reason, so he can feel like a big shot.

Sarah Harrison  17:25

There’s this the need to feel like a big shot. To me, I feel like stuff that down, hide it, get some help. But instead, it’s like, well, of course he needs it so he can feel like an equal. And I’m like, what that that shouldn’t be like, a trait that’s supported, that shouldn’t be like an okay tree, in my mind, that’s something that you’re like, whoops, I found out a bad trait about myself. Let me work on that instead of like, okay, then let me buy you this ridiculous gold cigarette case.

Carolyn Daughters  18:00

No, I can see all that, and also how it can be pretentious. I do love it. As a side note from Laura by Vera Caspary, I think there’s something in me that loves a hidden gem. Like, I went with eight or 10 friends, maybe a decade, 12 years ago, to New York, and we all got hotel rooms, and we had no reservations for dinner, because that’s how clueless we were, or just lack of planning, and wandered place to place on like a Friday night, nobody would take us in. Of course, there’s like 10 of us at least, and we walked along these side streets in Manhattan and came across this hole in the wall restaurant, and went inside, and it was stunning inside, and they had space for us and served us as a Polish restaurant, and served us the most amazing meal. We were all just blown away that somehow we fell into this place. I love that experience.

Sarah Harrison  19:01

I agree. I do. I think we all love a hidden gem. Most people will look maybe some people don’t. They’re like, where’s the Cheesecake Factory? With all respect for the Cheesecake Factory.

Carolyn Daughters  19:10

That menu, I gotta tell you, like, I haven’t been there since I took my sister, she was graduating high school, and we took her to the Cheesecake Factory and they dump a menu on the table in front of you.

Sarah Harrison  19:26

That’s got to be like, too solid, like a novel. It is everything we can make it.

Carolyn Daughters  19:30

I like a menu where there are a handful of things from which you can choose, but this one, I’m like, turning page, page, pay. I was like, Oh my gosh, I don’t know. How do people, how do they land on something? It’s a paralysis. I don’t understand it.

Sarah Harrison  19:44

But I like a hidden gem. What I don’t like is the character trait that that finds themselves. I’m the purveyor of hidden gems, right? I’m going to give you my good taste, and it’s all about it. It all flows outward. Nothing flows inward. They’re not about. Person that’s taking in other people.

Carolyn Daughters  20:04

There’s a lot of that theme in the book of Waldo’s pretension, and then passing that on to this person, who then passes it on to another person. There’s a lot of the passing down. And then you have a character like Mark McPherson, who’s the detective, who is really deeper and more philosophically bent than we’re given to realize on the first pages, and yet he recoils at a lot of this stuff Waldo Lydecker says and does, and he’s really not into this pretension to the point that he’s almost too far on the pendulum. The other way, he’s like, No, I don’t want anything to do with that. I’m not into that at all. But you can see why he has that reaction. He’s talking to this guy, Waldo, who is just, he is such a snob, and it’s he has very strong, acerbic opinions about everyone and everything, and I think it’s hard to be around it can be hard to be around people like that.

Sarah Harrison  21:07

In Laura by Vera Caspary, it can be in I think the way Waldo managed it, like many people, is through humor. So I think he was always like making Laura laugh through his mean little Snipes, but at the same time, causing her to lose respect for people. Mark, I really liked him as a character. And he does. It’s interesting to watch the relationships while Laura is dead. Who he’s going through, how he’s going through it. And there’s a really interesting exploration in the book that I don’t know we need to parse deeply, but it’s unavoidable, like the masculine and the feminine, right, and Marx constantly referred to as he’s a man, he’s a man. He’s a real man. And then Waldo and Shelby are set up as not, not living up to what Laura would like, what many people would consider, like positive masculinity.

Carolyn Daughters  22:12

Yeah, Bessie, Laura’s maid says Mark is a man. And then Aunt Sue also says, “don’t just give yourself away to a man.” But also, don’t turn away from the real deal when he’s in front of you and the real deal in front of her, is Mark McPherson.

Sarah Harrison  22:33

At first, like, it was so overt. I was like, it feels like a little too much. And then I was like, You know what? I don’t think it does. I think it feels relevant. But, and I think that reflects in Mark’s consideration of Waldo Lydecker, like every things that Laura had going on, even if it was a taste from Waldo, he liked in Laura’s apartment. He really liked Laura’s apartment. In Waldo, it struck a weird chord with him. He’s like, I don’t like this. Why is this guy so obsessed with his China collection?

Carolyn Daughters  23:02

Yeah, it felt too studied, I think, whereas I think it might be Waldo refers to Laura’s home or her main living space as a living room. And in Laura by Vera Caspary, the word living is italicized, like it’s living. It’s comfortable. It’s a place you want to be.

Sarah Harrison  23:23

It’s not a place for show, which is the opposite of Waldo’s personality. Yes, he’s so showy, but Laura takes the good parts and she makes them better.

Carolyn Daughters  23:34

I always I think about this sometimes, like some people, their houses are some people I’ve known are their houses are show pieces. They’re just stunning. But I think, okay, in a couple instances, or a couple cases I can think of the people are not super social, but they also don’t seem to love their spaces. So I’m like, Okay, if you’re not super social and having people constantly in your space to see how amazing your space is, and you’re not loving your space. Who did you do all this for? Yeah, I’ve, I don’t know. I’ve, I’ve seen that where there just seems to be this detachment from. They might have hired a designer or something, and the designer maybe didn’t sync up with their own perspective of what the house should look and feel like, so the designer had maybe free reign, and they do this thing, and then it’s, it’s serving no one, and it’s also not really a show piece, because they’re not in instances, I’m thinking of having tons of people over.

Sarah Harrison  24:43

Yeah, I can’t exactly say I know anyone whose houses are like a show piece. I’m trying to think of it, but I can’t think top of my head. But maybe you and I run in different circles.

Carolyn Daughters  24:52

My house, your house,

Sarah Harrison  24:56

No, but I think that’s a fair critique. Just listener, if you don’t know. Carolyn, and you might not, she’s an excellent hostess, and hostessing all the time, so she definitely has a good space for it, a living room.

Carolyn Daughters  25:10

I do have a living room, and the living space is indoors, outdoors. I’m all about how do I make myself and others feel comfortable in this space. I’m not like, oh, we need to have this really weird chair that is uncomfortable to sit in, in the corner, sort of thing. I will say as a side note, in Laura by Vera Caspary, the character of Laura is from Colorado Springs.

Sarah Harrison  25:37

Oh yeah, I forgot that, which in the book is considered such a Podunk place to be from? Yeah, I thought that was so funny, because I don’t feel like Colorado is perceived that that’s the thing that came up to that, I’m not sure we put in the notes, but came up for me a lot this where people are from, conversations kept happening a lot, yeah, so she’s from Colorado Springs, and so is considered like a country bumpkin.

Carolyn Daughters  26:04

He’s from, what, Covington, Kentucky?

Sarah Harrison  26:07

His heritage is Scottish. And there’s Mark McPherson. Shelby’s from Kentucky. Oh yeah, Shelby is from Kentucky, but he’s like a Southern gent, that’s right. And that comes up a lot. And then, yeah, Marx got this, I don’t know if he’s from Scotland directly, or just his, I think his family from Scotland. So you get all of this Scottish cop rhetoric that you just wound up here today. My maiden name was McMurray. So there’s this “Mc” rhetoric that you get when you have that obvious name, yeah, but you just doesn’t happen now. Doesn’t happen now at all, like it happens for Mark in the book.

Carolyn Daughters  26:46

At one point in Laura by Vera Caspary, Bessie, the maid, says to Mark, I was taught to spit on police officers and private dicks. And he says, Well, I was taught to hate the Irish, but I’m an adult now.

Sarah Harrison  27:02

Mark’s a good guy. He’s full of thinking, Yeah, I like him. And then Waldo Lydecker is probably the worst about it. Waldo is always he doesn’t just go into the Scottish traits, per se. It’s like Scottish Presbyterianism, like Scottish miserliness and all this stuff that you would not today necessarily even associate right with being Scottish, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s just less or maybe we’re just more diverse that it doesn’t stand out very much. I don’t know.

Carolyn Daughters  27:37

I feel like a lot of people’s prejudices have gone in different directions, and so we don’t have time for the Scots anymore.

Sarah Harrison  27:46

Like, who knows? Like, Presbyterianism used to be a thing, and that’s not the religion we’re all concerned about. Like, as new religions emerged or merged with older religions or other ones. It’s it creates ripples. But it was just weird to me being a Mick, that to think about what he was experiencing and how people were perceiving his Scottishness. There that it was a thing. It was a thing. I think the same. She was like, italianism used to be a real thing. I think is completely absent, like, Oh, can you cook me some cool Italian food?

Carolyn Daughters  28:28

My family members, including cousins, have been called a whole lot of derogatory names for being Italian, really, by who? Well, my cousins, when they were in school. Their schoolmates. Really, Chicago?

Sarah Harrison  28:44

Chicago, Chicago, yeah.

Carolyn Daughters  28:50

We’re based in Colorado. At least at present we’re in Colorado.

Sarah Harrison  28:56

Interesting foreshadowing there, Carolyn, thank you.

Carolyn Daughters  29:02

I have purchased a home in Manitou Springs, right outside Colorado Springs,

Sarah Harrison  29:10

but which is charming and not at all podunk.

Carolyn Daughters  29:15

So Colorado Springs, like it was, it’s always cool to see, like a little shout out, anything Colorado in a book, but also in Colorado, like I just can’t even imagine anybody having a derogatory thing to say about an Italian, whereas in maybe in Chicago or other places I don’t know, I don’t know, you guys will have to tell me we live in a bubble a little bit here in Denver.

Sarah Harrison  29:37

That’s true. That’s true, although I’ve lived all over and I’ve never heard anyone make derogatory Italian statements to like my peers or anything. It’s like you would hardly even know. Okay, if you don’t tell me where you’re from, like being Italian or being Scottish or anything else is like a little hard to determine.

Carolyn Daughters  29:55

My family last name is Gianpicolo.

Sarah Harrison  29:59

Your last name is Daughters.

Carolyn Daughters  30:03

My father’s name is Daughters, and so I am Daughters, but my mother’s a Gianpicolo, and my cousins are Gianpicolos.

Sarah Harrison  30:12

So I don’t know. Tell us, readers of Laura by Vera Caspary, what’s your experience?

Carolyn Daughters  30:18

Did you notice the way I was able to say that Italian word without stumbling. My first Italian words, 10 Ninos, montagnes,

Sarah Harrison  30:29

The G and the N, I think have to mush. I’m just gonna make up something.

Carolyn Daughters  30:36

I have a couple languages I’m working on. I’m working on Portuguese right now. I do not know any Italian.

Sarah Harrison  30:43

Do I mean to say my stupid Italian story? I do? I have to hear it now. So when I was in Italy, right? I’ve been there a few times, and the last time I was there, we were in some spots that didn’t speak English at all. It’s not like Rome or anything, but just some hallway spots, and no one could understand what I was saying unless I said it in what to me, sounded like a cartoon Italian accent. Okay? Like I’d be like, I’ll take the lemon, and I’m actually, I’m a person that mimics accents, and I try intentionally not to do that when I’m traveling. I do it naturally. I try not to do because I don’t want to seem like I’m, I don’t know, making fun of somebody or something. So I was like, very like, lemon, the lemon gelato, please. And they’re like, What? The lemon what?

Carolyn Daughters  31:41

You guys can’t see it, but there’s, like, a whole lot of facial expression and, like, hands waving right now.

Sarah Harrison  31:46

Le Mans, I would feel so goofy, but was the only way I could be understood is if I said the English word and what I perceived to be like an exaggerated accent, they would know what I was saying. So that’s why I’m like, I’m doing the same thing with the Nino Yes. Like, gonna exaggerate it, and maybe it’s right. You can tell me I’m an idiot, listener. That’s fine.

Carolyn Daughters  32:04

I thought it was lovely. Sarah, did you see Mark McPherson in Laura by Vera Caspary as sort of misogynistic?

Sarah Harrison  32:11

I feel like that’s a loaded question. My take is no.

Carolyn Daughters  32:16

I just wanted to yes or no so we can get to the next thing, no.

Sarah Harrison  32:20

My take is no. But I felt like Waldo Lydecker was trying to present him in that light to Laura, because he did say dame, and he did say doll, and he did engage in male female slang, but he also was something else too. He was a Scottish cop. He gave a dame a fox fur, as we’re told. But also the first thing he was attracted to about Laura was …

Carolyn Daughters  32:49

She got it out of him.

Sarah Harrison  32:51

She got it out of she got it.

Carolyn Daughters  32:52

She got a fox fur out of it.

Sarah Harrison  32:55

The first thing you liked about Laura was her bookshelf. And I feel like that said a lot. And he was like, Did she really read it? Because he had just gotten into reading bigger books, and they shared a favorite book in common.

Carolyn Daughters  33:07

Okay, pet peeve – digression from Laura by Vera Caspary. This is back with that, like somebody puts together the house, and it’s not really anybody’s vision, except maybe the interior designers there are untouched, unopened, never to be open books on shelves next to some weird vase that has no beauty or utility to the person, no history, like just stuff for stuff sake.

Sarah Harrison  33:40

I actually go too far with that? Excuse me. Excuse me. Listener, how do you go too far? Because I judge people, and I’m like, I order my book. My book ordering is very intricate. When my books go on the shelf, for example, I’ll have 50 years of the PORN reading program in chronological order on the bookshelf, and I have Tea, Tonic and Toxin in chronological order on the bookshelf, with Laura by Vera Caspary as the most recent book. I’ll group the Russians together. I’ll group the sci-fi together, like I’m always like coming up with these conceptual groupings.

Carolyn Daughters  34:21

PORN, people obsessed with reading novels, right?

Sarah Harrison  34:23

Thanks for clarifying.

Carolyn Daughters  34:24

Not a problem.

Sarah Harrison  34:26

Group together in the closet. No. And when I come in and people like group their books by colors for decorative purposes, I’m sorry if you do. It’s fine. It’s fine that you do that, I I’m the one going too far. I think in judging that, especially if you have read the books, like for me, books are the best decoration, but not because they’re decoration. It’s because I love them.

Carolyn Daughters  34:52

Because they to me, they give me a sense of safety and security and joy. I may or may not, today, tomorrow, the next day, have time to, you know, browse through these books, pick one off the shelf, read it. But there’s always a possibility.

Sarah Harrison  35:10

I know it is like again, we all have our feelings, right? And I’m the one that has to talk into a microphone right now, but when I see a lot of empty book someone has a house full big built in book shelves, and they filled it with nothing and some like weird Hobby Lobby sculpture in the middle of something. Hobby Lobby sells sculptures. Oh, my goodness. Oh Carolyn, I recently started going to Hobby Lobby, more like teaching the children’s classes at church. They have lots of craft supplies there. I’m not a hobby lobby fan. Well, every time I go there, I mean, if you need some walls of paper.

Carolyn Daughters  35:53

I would go to Michael’s.

Sarah Harrison  35:54

Okay. Is there one nearby?

Carolyn Daughters  35:55

I don’t know. I would still find it.

Sarah Harrison  35:59

I’m not that cheesy. But when I go there, I go to any big box store, I will have a meltdown with, like, so much stuff. But they sell everything. I need to go there and get some dried flowers. But then they’ll be like, sculptures and like, all these wooden blocks with words on them, hats and wow. Like, Why is this here? Why is it? But anyway, the empty book shelves that retain no meaning, like not even books, but also not even stuff that you like. So that’s what I was saying.

Carolyn Daughters  36:37

We’ll get back to Laura by Vera Caspary in a minute. But we’re in a studio right now that, because I’m packing things looks I’m going to just say crazy, but generally speaking, my house doesn’t look crazy. And I like everything to have either utility meaning or in a really cool. When possible, both. I want to have my stuff around me with intention, instead of just junk. Or, Hey, I picked up this vase at a Hobby Lobby, and I’ve put it on the shelf because it looked like it needed a vase there. I want to be able to look at the stuff around me and know why it’s there, and feel things when I see it. And if anybody ever asked me, like, Hey, tell me about this picture or this that I could tell you why it’s there, I could tell there’s a story. Of course, I am a little bit like rigid in this, and I’m hearing myself, and I’m like, wow, you’re sounding really rigid. I used to with books. Have not a grouping, as far as like, these are the Russians, and these are the French or these are the 19th century, and these the 20th I used to be alphabetical, and I have thousands of books. And so imagine the exercise of the alphabetical. And so I could always find my books because they were alphabetical, just as somebody if they’re grouping the Russians, and you could find them. But so for a long time, I’m not this way anymore. I’m more random with my books. But for a long time, I was like, people are just willy nilly putting their books on a shelf, like the Brontes are next to Dickens, who’s next to Zora Neale Hurston, who’s now back over to Jane Austen, like, that’s crazy.

Sarah Harrison  38:26

Yeah, no, I know we all have our internal systems, and I know people that organize by color, and I don’t think they listen to this podcast, but if you do it’s fine, do whatever you want.

Carolyn Daughters  38:38

If you’re reading the books, do whatever you want. But if you’re like, Oh, let me pick up some books, because books make me look like a reader, or whatever, that to me, that to me, that’s weird. Like, just be a reader. Don’t look like a reader. Be a reader.

Sarah Harrison  38:54

But I did. So I like that about Mark McPherson. That was my first indication into who he was and what he was looking for. And I think it’s fine that he hadn’t run into someone yet that really brought out the intellectual side of the connection, right? The person, I think is a misogynist is definitely Shelby, although he seemed like he was going to hide it. What’s your take?

Carolyn Daughters  39:17

In Laura by Vera Caspary, Shelby makes $35 a week, versus Laura’s $175 and he says he didn’t resent her; I didn’t resent her money. I didn’t, none of that. No, I mean, I was brought up to think of women differently. That’s what he says. So he’s, he’s tricky, because to me, he does seem, he seems like a, not a gigolo, because that’s that word is used and then dismissed multiple times about him. There’s a scene in the book where Auntie Sue, she says, I’m sorry, Mark says to her. Don’t like Shelby very much. Do you miss his Treadwell? She says, Oh, he’s a darling boy, but not for Laura. Laura couldn’t afford him. Not that he is a gigolo. Shelby comes from a wonderful family, but in some ways, a gigolo is cheaper. Where you are with a man like Shelby, you can’t slip the money under the table.

Sarah Harrison  40:18

Yeah, I like that. I know we’re going to talk about the movie in a different episode, but I really liked Auntie Sue in this one.

Carolyn Daughters  40:27

Auntie Sue Treadwell. Auntie Anne in the movie version of Laura by Vera Caspary.

Sarah Harrison  40:30

That confused me. Why wouldn’t they do things like that? Like, just keep the character’s name as Sue. I don’t know why you change your name. Like I’m in church, just keep her as Sue. I don’t know. Maybe they do. Maybe it’s a different one, because this one was a really, I liked her a lot. She was mercenary, but she also was unillusioned? And she really liked Laura, and she wanted what was best for Laura in the book, not in the movie?

Carolyn Daughters  40:59

So like Laura says at one point, Annie Sue is always nicer when there are no men around. She’s one of those women who must flirt with every taxi driver and waiter, and then she’s horrid because she must punish men for not desiring her. I love her, but when I am with her, I’m glad I was never a famous beauty.

Sarah Harrison  41:18

I loved that I did. I just really sometimes I feel like we don’t name personalities directly enough, because maybe it’s not nice, and maybe it’s harshly judgmental. And I think when we’re honest with ourselves, we know those ladies that are like that. They have to be the center of masculine attention. They grew up that way. I’ve thought that way myself about like some women that are so beautiful, how hard it’s got to be to grow up constantly like that, never really knowing why someone’s treating you the way they’re treating you.

Carolyn Daughters  41:58

Many doors, literally, even and figuratively, are opened for a beautiful woman.

Sarah Harrison  42:04

And closed.

Carolyn Daughters  42:05

Sure, and closed.

Sarah Harrison  42:06

I would say many it’s, it’s a different it’s just like an alternate reality to be a crazy, beautiful woman that just men desire, and then and then, like Auntie Sue, to grow out of that. And so I think because she’s in her 50s, and she is still a beauty, like they remark when she walks into the room, like, wow, and not think that was her age, but she’s not a 20 year old, yeah. She’s not a Diane Redfern beauty. She’s a 50 year old.

Carolyn Daughters  42:36

And Diane is differentiated from the novel Laura by Vera Caspary because Diane is a model, and from the sense you I get from reading the book, Diane looks more like a model. Laura is an attractive person, but it’s you wouldn’t look at her and just say, oh my gosh, she should be on the cover of every magazine, right? The plot hinges on them having almost identical bodies, but it sounds like Diane has in high face, yeah. And, and it’s the face that gets blown off. We will discuss this in our movie episode. But casting Jean Tierney as Laura blows that whole issue.

Sarah Harrison  43:15

I mean, she was maybe a little too pretty, but maybe for the time, she wasn’t blonde, she wasn’t like the blonde bombshell type.

Carolyn Daughters  43:23

I lot of models and actresses weren’t blonde. In that,

Sarah Harrison  43:28

I don’t know. I think Laura in Laura by Vera Caspary self-deprecated a little more. She was pretty, but not model pretty. That’s maybe your only fault, maybe that I could find with the casting.

Carolyn Daughters  43:42

So Shelby had come from money, old money, but the money no longer existed. So I think the idea was, okay, Shelby is this fine person without the money to fund the lifestyle he wants to or should be leading.

Sarah Harrison  44:02

Well, and you can’t. And I love Aunt Susie’s comment that you can’t fund it directly. You can’t just give him an allowance. You have to sneak it to him in a way that doesn’t hurt his pride. And it’s impossible. It’s all back to the cigarette case. He needs to feel like a big shot with his big shot old money friends, and that means I have a gold cigarette case, but I can’t just give him money, and I can’t just buy him a cigarette case. I have to give it as a gift, in a way that doesn’t hurt his pride, but it does in a way.

Carolyn Daughters  44:33

Though she wants to have that reverse role. She wants to be the person who can hand the cigarette cased him.

Sarah Harrison  44:42

I don’t know about that. She wants to be a person that has money, and she doesn’t want to care that he makes less. That’s my take. And I think maybe she doesn’t care, but he does, and so she’s jumping through hoops, not wounding his pride. And it is. I like towards the end of the book, when you get to read her diaries. She’s having this realization, like, wow, he must have really despised me, and he hit it. I think he hid it from himself, like the way he despised her, and he would just lash out by hit it from himself, sleeping with poor, poor girls and giving them lavish gifts and taking them to hidden gems for restaurants.

Carolyn Daughters  45:26

He didn’t seem particularly introspective.

Sarah Harrison  45:30

No amount. Anti interest.

Carolyn Daughters  45:33

She does say, at one point, I had used Shelby as women use men to complete the design of a full life, wearing him as proudly as a prostitute wears her silver foxes to tell the world she owns a man going on 30 and unmarried, I’d become alarmed, pretending to love him and playing the mother game. So she buys him this 14 carat gold case, she says, As a man might buy his wife an orchid or a diamond to expiate infidelity. And she said he still needed the help I could give him, but he hated himself for clinging to me, and hated me because I let him cling. So she has this incredible level of self-awareness and also awareness of the people in her life that I just it blew me away, how clear she saw herself and others.

Sarah Harrison  46:20

And she did see it in retrospect. To be fair, I don’t think she saw it at the time. Like when you are one over, and I did, like, a role reversal, right? We’ve all seen the successful businessman with the gorgeous trophy wife. It’s a definite type. And so she’s the successful business lady, and she’s got her trophy man, and she was putting together a picture. I don’t think she necessarily saw it until, like, the whole Shelby’s infidelity came crashing down.

Carolyn Daughters  46:54

She’s interesting for any time, but for the 1940s this career woman who is extremely successful in her career, and that seems to be her primary focus. And Shelby ends up being this means to an end where she can check this box and say, Okay, I’ve got, I’m in my 30s, or I’m 30, here’s this guy. I can, I can have him by my side, and that says something about me. And so it’s really this interesting role reversal, where she feels almost stereotypically masculine in these ways. I don’t know. How did you feel about that? About just this career woman in the 40s? Did she feel new and fresh to you in Laura by Vera Caspary? Did she feel like she was adopting especially for the 40s and ninth, like a masculine role, almost like this was really it felt new to me.

Sarah Harrison  48:05

I would say she is a fresh character, and it goes back to what we’re saying at the beginning. The book really does explore the masculine and feminine, and creates these different maybe archetypes, and then unravels them a little bit like Shelby, Southern gent gentlemanliness, and like what he does and how he like thinks he’s protecting Laura. And Auntie Sue, the faded beauty, and her mercenary approach to marriage and Mark McPherson and is opening up of his mind of possibilities. Laura herself, who is extremely feminine, but makes the money, so it’s not like they made her a masculine character. To my thinking, they put her in what would be, for the time, a masculine role as a very feminine lady trying to find her way through that.

Carolyn Daughters  49:02

Yeah, she’s not a victim, she’s not a damsel in distress. She just makes her way in the world. I love that about Laura by Vera Caspary.

Sarah Harrison  49:11

She’s smart, she’s smart and she’s pretty, and she’s capable and good at stuff, and has good taste, and is, like, doggedly persistent. They talk about her will. She’s got grit, and she’s got taste.

Carolyn Daughters  49:26

She’s got a lot of fight in her she applied initially, I think, for something like 68 advertising agencies to get an employment like she was, she was gonna get hired by an ad agency. It reminds me a little bit of Mad Men. What is her name? It’s gonna drive me nuts. Oh, Mad Men’s amazing. But the female character, who starts as a stenographer, works. Them for the main character, and then she comes into her own, becomes a copywriter and really almost like ad exec level, like she is the one that people start turning to and relying upon. And that’s what’s happening here for Laura. And there are parallels also with Vera Caspary herself, who was producing or writing ad copy and working at ad agencies and taking on roles much like her character, Laura is writing about what she knows.

Sarah Harrison  50:35

I thought that part was fascinating. Goodness we are somehow at time for this episode on Laura by Vera Caspary.

Carolyn Daughters  50:42

Elizabeth Moss is the actress, and I’m just Peggy. Her name is Peggy Olson on Mad Men. Elizabeth Moss, and Jon Hamm is her boss. Don Draper, how have you you’ve not seen Mad Men?

Sarah Harrison  50:55

Long, long stretches of my life with no television.

Carolyn Daughters  51:00

I can get that for sure. But Mad Men? Really, really good. Are we really at time?

Sarah Harrison  51:11

I’m sure we’ll carry some of these themes into our movie discussion. So bonus content coming in, we’re going to do a Laura movie discussion. Gonna bring some of more of these for our Patreon subscribers and anyone you can buy movie episodes individually if you have that interest. And then I think we have a mystery guest going forward. And then we’ll do a different, maybe broader discussion.

Carolyn Daughters  51:40

We have a couple mystery guests, one on Vera Caspary and one on Margaret Allingham.

Sarah Harrison  51:45

More to come listeners, lots of good stuff coming.

Carolyn Daughters  51:48

Yeah, we’re on like, page four of 400 pages of Laura by Vera Caspary.

Sarah Harrison  51:53

We’re going to talk about the rest in our discussion of the film by Otto Preminger. Thanks so much for listening. Please help other mystery lovers find our show with a like, subscribe, share, or rating. It’s totally free, and it means the world to us.

Carolyn Daughters  52:14

If the spirit of mystery so moves you, we have a few ways you can financially support our labor of love. Click the link in the show notes to support this podcast. Buy your books through our Amazon store or join our Patreon, where subscribers have access to additional episodes that include bonus content and discussions of the movies inspired by some of the greatest mysteries ever written.

Sarah Harrison  52:36

Thanks for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. Until next time, stay mysterious.