Speaker 1: It's Mark Thompson here.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited to have a best selling author in
Speaker 2: the midst here with a book that takes place in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles. It's set against the backdrop of Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: The Library Journal already saying that her nuanced and sympathetic
Speaker 2: characters and stellar writing are nearly as brilliant as in
Speaker 2: The Great Gatsby. Wow it is. It's pretty amazing that
Speaker 2: you got this from Bloomberg. Bloomberg chooses your book as
Speaker 2: one of the ten best books of the summer. How
Speaker 2: about it for Kira Davis, Lori and the Great Man,
Speaker 2: which is your new book, Bravo. Wow Man is spelled
Speaker 2: Mann and it's being released.
Speaker 1: I think is it next week that it's released.
Speaker 3: Tent right around the corner.
Speaker 2: So tell me about where it's set, because it's set
Speaker 2: in a part of LA that is sort of very
Speaker 2: different now than it was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the area is called West Adam Heights and right
Speaker 3: now there's the Ten Freeways right through it. But that
Speaker 3: did not that wasn't always the case. So West Adam
Speaker 3: Heights was Los Angeles' Beverly Hills before we had Beverly Hills.
Speaker 3: So all the La aristocracy lived there, and then the
Speaker 3: stock market crashed and as the thirties wore on, people
Speaker 3: discovered it was actually really expensive to keep up your mansion, right,
Speaker 3: so they had to sell. But the only people who
Speaker 3: were able to buy at that time were the newly
Speaker 3: wealthy African Americans. So you had African American oil tycoons, hoteliers,
Speaker 3: business moguls, and then the Hollywood movie stars and they
Speaker 3: started buying up these mansions. And Hattie McDaniel was one
Speaker 3: of the people who lived there, and she would throw
Speaker 3: these gala parties where her guest list would include Bing Crosby,
Speaker 3: Clark Gable, Lena Horne, Duke Ellington was her entertainment and right,
Speaker 3: I mean, so it was extraordinarily Gatsby esque, which is
Speaker 3: why I took the framework of the Gatsby and said
Speaker 3: it in this real world that was right here in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Apparently it's amazingly successful, this narrative. So this veteran who
Speaker 2: is your main character, arrives back in nineteen forty five
Speaker 2: Los Angeles to this area and figuring there'd be a
Speaker 2: fresh start, this affluent neighborhood that you describe, and then
Speaker 2: take us through a little bit of what he encounters, right.
Speaker 3: So Charlie Trammel, he is, he was in World War
Speaker 3: Two and he's just come back to his home. And
Speaker 3: he came back home to his home in Virginia, in
Speaker 3: rural Virginia where his family was sharecroppers. But as what
Speaker 3: just was the case, as with the case in the
Speaker 3: end of World War One, black veterans were not treated well,
Speaker 3: particularly in the South. There was a lot of violence
Speaker 3: and abuse. And he decides that's the stock going to work.
Speaker 3: And he has a cousin who he hasn't seen forever,
Speaker 3: who's in Los Angeles. He's like, yeah, come on out here,
Speaker 3: lots of opportunity. This is good. He goes out and
Speaker 3: discovers it's not just that she's doing okay, she's living
Speaker 3: the life. Okay, you know, she's coming out. She's got
Speaker 3: diamonds in her ears, she's driving like a nice car.
Speaker 3: You know, she's got clothes that look like they were
Speaker 3: designed just for her. And you know, when he knew her,
Speaker 3: I mean she left young, but like she's his cousin.
Speaker 3: This was this was a sharecropping family, so he doesn't
Speaker 3: really know the full trajectory. And she married this guy
Speaker 3: who's living up in West Adam Heights, which had been
Speaker 3: nicknamed at that point LA's Sugar Hill. So he gets
Speaker 3: brought into this world from the sharecropping world and as
Speaker 3: well as the the drama and trauma of World War Two,
Speaker 3: into this world of black luxury that he didn't know existed.
Speaker 3: And he's seeing, you know again, movie stars. And one
Speaker 3: of the things really interesting for him with the black
Speaker 3: movie stars is, like a lot of African Americans of
Speaker 3: that period, there was a lot of mixed feelings about
Speaker 3: their black movie stars because they were taking these roles
Speaker 3: that were really stereotypic, typical, and frequently demeaning.
Speaker 1: Sure, the.
Speaker 2: Servant the exact yeah, of course, right, you know.
Speaker 3: They were the they were there to be subservient and
Speaker 3: the butther of the joke, you know. And then he
Speaker 3: meets these people and they're the they're so the dichotomy
Speaker 3: between them and the character they play is gigantic, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, as he meets Louise Beaver's who was a
Speaker 3: huge star at the time, less known now by the time,
Speaker 3: she was as big as Hattie McDaniel, and she played
Speaker 3: roles that, you know, these plaintive roles of you know,
Speaker 3: these the the servant, the main occasionally occasionally the slave,
Speaker 3: right you know. And and she in reality, she was this.
Speaker 3: She has a three story house, she's you know, makes
Speaker 3: a point like, I don't touch the kitchen. That's not
Speaker 3: my job. My husband's gonna have to do that. She
Speaker 3: smokes cigars, She has poker games every Sunday up on
Speaker 3: the third floor, right you know. I mean, she loves
Speaker 3: being first row of the boxing Max. And he says,
Speaker 3: it's like it's the same she has the same voice
Speaker 3: and the same face, but a completely different spine than
Speaker 3: what I've seen on screen.
Speaker 2: So it's he's just like he's trying to reconcile these
Speaker 2: these two world exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: And what's really one of the things I found so
Speaker 3: compelling about that that community is Charlie was not Again,
Speaker 3: he was not alone in having mixed feelings about the celebrities,
Speaker 3: the black celebrities. In fact, the black business elite generally speaking,
Speaker 3: really resented the black celebrities because they felt they were
Speaker 3: undermining their own social progress, that these images that we
Speaker 3: were seeing on the screen were demeaning the entire race.
Speaker 3: And there wasn't a lot of sympathy for the position
Speaker 3: that these actors were in. They were genuinely trying to
Speaker 3: open doors, right, but the opportunities weren't there for better roles.
Speaker 3: And for instance, when they did get better roles, those
Speaker 3: roles were frequently thanks to the Hayes Office, which was
Speaker 3: a censorship office, the parts that showed the racism, that
Speaker 3: showed their agency were taken out like that was not acceptable.
Speaker 3: And so even when they accepted roles that they thought, oh,
Speaker 3: this is the role where I get to show my strength.
Speaker 3: Then it's literally in a movie that Louise Beaver's was
Speaker 3: in Imitation of Life, someone from the Hayes Office wrote
Speaker 3: and said, looking at the script, it would appear you
Speaker 3: don't seem to see how these the black servants don't
Speaker 3: want more than being a black servant, that they want
Speaker 3: to be independent. Surely, I know that you must be
Speaker 3: wanting to show that they are happy with their place
Speaker 3: in society, but it's not coming through, so you need
Speaker 3: to adjust the script right exactly exactly so. But there
Speaker 3: wasn't sympathy for that in the black communities or in
Speaker 3: the black business elite.
Speaker 1: And that's interesting.
Speaker 2: So even within this affluent world, and Black America is
Speaker 2: flourishing in this way, and your main character is coming
Speaker 2: from this place where he just can't believe all these
Speaker 2: black people are doing so well. But even within that
Speaker 2: community there is this conflict. They're the business people and
Speaker 2: then there's show people, the show business exactly.
Speaker 1: Hold that thought. I'm because it's interesting.
Speaker 2: You have to research all this right as a writer,
Speaker 2: you know, getting the plot, finding your main character that's
Speaker 2: going to run through this entire world. You have to
Speaker 2: research that world because it is historically based your novel, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I want to talk to you a little bit about that,
Speaker 2: and you know about what La was like it was
Speaker 2: the mid nineteen forties, right, Yeah. I want to get
Speaker 2: to again the books called The Great Man, and I
Speaker 2: do want to mention Kira if you want to meet her.
Speaker 2: There is a series of upcoming events. June tenth at
Speaker 2: Romans in Pasadena. They always have great events there, They
Speaker 2: just do such great Yeah, June eleventh, Diesel a bookstore
Speaker 2: Santa Monica, another great spot. And then June nineteenth Chevalier's
Speaker 2: Books in Los Angeles. Again the tenth, the eleventh, and
Speaker 2: the nineteenth Romans, Diesel and Chevalier's. All that information, I
Speaker 2: think is on your website. Is it's Karrad.
Speaker 3: Davis, Kiridavisluriy dot com.
Speaker 2: Cia Davislivery dot com. I knew you when you were
Speaker 2: Kira Davis. Then you married an esteemed director, Rod Lurie.
Speaker 2: He's very creative, also very talented guy.
Speaker 3: He loses a lot of money to you in poker.
Speaker 2: That's not the way I usually live it. But it's
Speaker 2: a lot of creativity under that roof of yours. So
Speaker 2: that's great Kira Davis Lorie. We continue the book is
Speaker 2: The Great Man and more. As we continue, we're talking
Speaker 2: to Kira Davis LORII. Kira Davis Lourie is a best
Speaker 2: selling author. Her latest is The Great Man m A
Speaker 2: double n She has, you know, book signings, and I
Speaker 2: would imagine they'll read probably from the book as well
Speaker 2: at these events June tenth at Romans and Sadena, June
Speaker 2: eleventh at Diesel in Santa Monica, and June nineteenth at
Speaker 2: Chevaliet's Books. It takes place in the nineteen forties, and
Speaker 2: again it's historical novel. And this is your first piece
Speaker 2: of historical fiction, I think, right it is, Yeah, and
Speaker 2: so you had to research this period of the mid
Speaker 2: nineteen forties and this part of LA, this affluent black
Speaker 2: community made up of, as you suggested, show business performers
Speaker 2: top of their game and the business elite top of
Speaker 2: their game. These are real people. This is a real
Speaker 2: place existed in LA in the mid nineteen forties. Two things,
Speaker 2: were there things that surprised you? First of all in
Speaker 2: your research and also was there stuff in there that
Speaker 2: you didn't get a chance to include in the book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, so much of it was surprising. For one thing,
Speaker 3: you have to think of how people's feelings and their
Speaker 3: view and the lens they saw Los Angeles through was
Speaker 3: so different in good and bad ways. One of my
Speaker 3: characters John Alexanders, he was the first African American to
Speaker 3: graduate from USC. He had a dentistry degree and the
Speaker 3: top of his class and opened up a huge luxury
Speaker 3: hotel and YadA YadA. But he wrote not a biography,
Speaker 3: and in it he talks about how Los Angeles, yes
Speaker 3: there's racial problems, but we're so much more enlightened than
Speaker 3: the majority of the country. For instance, you don't see
Speaker 3: the race riots in Los Angeles that you see in
Speaker 3: other parts of the country, and which was true when
Speaker 3: he wrote that book.
Speaker 1: But if you can always stick around a little wit
Speaker 1: right exactly.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh wow, this is like such a different
Speaker 3: kind of viewpoint of what LA is. Right.
Speaker 2: It was a sense, by the way, and just in
Speaker 2: general in California, there's a sense of openness, of an acceptance.
Speaker 2: I don't know to what extent that's just sort of
Speaker 2: a brand that we have in California. How much of
Speaker 2: it is really true, Yeah, but it's interesting that there
Speaker 2: there was real his real sense, palpable sense of it.
Speaker 1: Back in the mid nineteen forties.
Speaker 3: He was I mean, he well, he was a very
Speaker 3: he was a very optimistic man, and he definitely saw
Speaker 3: he saw the opportunity. He felt like if you just
Speaker 3: talked to people, were reasonable with them, things would progress.
Speaker 3: And that was frequently his experience. Now, it is also
Speaker 3: true that Los Angeles, a California in general, but definitely
Speaker 3: particularly Los Angeles, had a lot of what they called
Speaker 3: racial covenants. About eighty percent of Los Angeles the a
Speaker 3: percent of the homes of Los Angeles had a covenant
Speaker 3: on them saying that the only people who are allowed
Speaker 3: to live in those homes were white people. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: the only and if you were black, the only way
Speaker 3: that you were allowed to live in those homes was
Speaker 3: if you were a servant to white people and so,
Speaker 3: and that included the homes in West Adam Heights. So
Speaker 3: there was actually in the book at details there was
Speaker 3: a lawsuit from the white neighbors who were trying to
Speaker 3: get these people kicked out of their homes because of
Speaker 3: the racial covenants on there.
Speaker 2: So wow, yeah, in battle to their own neighborhoods exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: And that's and it's sort of an interest again talk
Speaker 3: about economies. You have these people in Minx who are
Speaker 3: on the verge of being homeless because of people trying
Speaker 3: to kick them out of their homes. So it's it's
Speaker 3: based on race and nothing else. And at that time,
Speaker 3: the racial covenants were considered legal, so it was it
Speaker 3: was a real battle and that really started to be honest,
Speaker 3: not with African Americans. It was a push against the
Speaker 3: Chinese residence of the turn of the twentieth century in California,
Speaker 3: and then it just sort of moved another ethnic group. Yes,
Speaker 3: exactly exactly exactly what.
Speaker 2: And what what what part of this world that your
Speaker 2: researched in that mid nineteen forties world, in that neighborhood
Speaker 2: that you described that's the backdrop for this book, The
Speaker 2: Great Man. What would you have liked to include that
Speaker 2: you couldn't, Okay, So.
Speaker 3: Hattie McDaniel, she was Mammy and gone with the wind.
Speaker 3: They had the premiere in a Georgia, Atlanta theater. It
Speaker 3: was a segregated theater, so she was not allowed to
Speaker 3: attend the premiere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's so many of those kinds of stories exactly.
Speaker 3: So they had this big premiere and just to put
Speaker 3: an exclamation point on the whole thing, they brought in
Speaker 3: a kid's choir that they kind of dressed up in
Speaker 3: rags and they were it was a black kids choir
Speaker 3: and they were going to sing and it was supposed
Speaker 3: to be like the slaves of the plantation South for
Speaker 3: this white audience and like to entertain them before in
Speaker 3: that choir, one of the kids in that choir was
Speaker 3: Martin Luther King.
Speaker 1: J Wow. Yeah, what a fact, right, what a fact?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: How did you discover that that was?
Speaker 3: I mean when I was so that's again it's document.
Speaker 3: When I was researching Hattie McDaniel looking through all the
Speaker 3: materials of that premiere, I mean, that was in there,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, but but nobody in nineteen forty five
Speaker 3: knows who Martin Luther King Junior is. I can't include it.
Speaker 3: I can't include it. It's like, so it doesn't But
Speaker 3: but how much did I want to?
Speaker 1: Right somehow? Exactly? That's wild.
Speaker 2: That's so true though, when you immerse yourself in a
Speaker 2: time period, you can't just jump out and go, hey,
Speaker 2: by the way.
Speaker 3: Right, it's nice h MLK and the yeah, and they're
Speaker 3: going to be like, I'm sorry, who so sure, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's And there was so much like that, and it
Speaker 3: was really it was really a challenge for me choosing
Speaker 3: what to include and and what just was just ended
Speaker 3: up sounding like a lecture.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like I want to need to just be entertainment
Speaker 3: and so but there was like all of this extra
Speaker 3: stuff that I learned. I wish I could just sort
Speaker 3: of pack in there, and you can't. Yeah, exactly, And
Speaker 3: by the way.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like there's no but it's got to
Speaker 2: be a good ride for your reader, That's what I mean.
Speaker 2: Obviously you're a best selling author. That's what you've been
Speaker 2: true to and that ride for the reader. The great man,
Speaker 2: so your character in the last couple of moments that
Speaker 2: we have your character does get into this world and
Speaker 2: again after military service, and I think falls in with
Speaker 2: I was just reading about the book I have to
Speaker 2: get into the book falls into with some not so
Speaker 2: savory characters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, okay, so I do have a gas b
Speaker 3: esque character, right, So James quote unquote reaper man, right.
Speaker 3: Reaper is his molecule that nobody uses to his face, right,
Speaker 3: And it's he clearly has extraordinary wealth. He is like Hattie,
Speaker 3: throwing huge gala events, except even bigger. The neighborhood. Both
Speaker 3: the business moguls and the Hollywood elite are a little
Speaker 3: nervous about this guy because they don't really know where
Speaker 3: he came from or where his money came from. And
Speaker 3: they're already battling for their homes, so they don't really
Speaker 3: need any extra controversy that he may be bringing in.
Speaker 3: But Charlie is really drawn to him, and he's very
Speaker 3: kind to Charlie, and the parties are amazing, and so
Speaker 3: he sort of gets wrapped up in his world too,
Speaker 3: of just a little bit of like mystery, the hint
Speaker 3: of maybe something nefarious but you don't really know ry
Speaker 3: And and of course, as in Gatsby, it turns out
Speaker 3: that he is truly in love with Charlie's cousin, who
Speaker 3: is the one who brought him out. So it's like yeah,
Speaker 3: so so yeah, so you know got and she is married,
Speaker 3: so you know, there's the love triangle, there's like the
Speaker 3: who is this guy? And there is also the clash
Speaker 3: of the two communities and the court case and everything
Speaker 3: going on.
Speaker 2: Oh that's terrific. There sounds like there's so much in
Speaker 2: this book. The great man Kia Davis Lourie, Hey, listen again.
Speaker 2: I encourage you to meet Kira and participate in one
Speaker 2: of three events. June tenth at Romans they do great
Speaker 2: stuff in Pasadena.
Speaker 1: You can meet Kira. She'll sign your book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's at seven, by the way, seven pm,
Speaker 3: so come after work.
Speaker 2: Oh great, okay, good, it's a nice evening event. June
Speaker 2: eleventh at diesel a bookstore that's at sixth that's at
Speaker 2: six in Santa Monica and Chevalier's Books in La on
Speaker 2: the nineteenth.
Speaker 1: What time is that.
Speaker 3: Six six thirty? I think six thirty.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, you can check the website. Kira is k
Speaker 2: y r A Kira Davis Lourie l u R I E.
Speaker 2: Kiradavislurie dot com has all the information again. Romans, Diesel
Speaker 2: and Chevalier's The book is out June tenth, The Great Man.
Speaker 1: It takes place right here in La.
Speaker 2: There's a Hollywood connection and La as most of us
Speaker 2: had not seen it, I mean in the mid nineteen forties.
Speaker 2: You know, I've learned more about La in the nineteen
Speaker 2: forties in this conversation with you than I ever knew.
Speaker 1: So You're so cool to stop to the studio. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me give my best
Speaker 1: to your husband.
Speaker 2: I absolutely he was also a very talented guy filmmaker.
Speaker 2: I hope his next work comes out soon and we
Speaker 2: can talk to him as well.
Speaker 3: It's going to be amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks Kira,