"The Seventh Veil of Salome" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a winner of the Locus, British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards, is our "GMA" Book Club pick for August.
The author, who was born in Mexico and currently resides in Canada, has written several novels including "The Daughter of Doctor Moreau" and "Mexican Gothic," among others.
Moreno-Garcia's new novel, set in the 1950s during the Golden Age of Hollywood, takes readers through the life of "a young woman wins the role of a lifetime in a film about a legendary heroine," according to a synopsis. "Every actress wants to play Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary woman whose story has inspired artists since ancient times," the synopsis reads. "So when the film’s mercurial director casts Vera Larios, an unknown Mexican ingenue, in the lead role, she quickly becomes the talk of the town. Vera also becomes an object of envy for Nancy Hartley, a bit player whose career has stalled and who will do anything to win the fame she believes she richly deserves." Determined to make it in the show business, the actresses navigate scandals and gossip, exploring both the glamorous side of Hollywood parties and the hidden side of the industry.This month, we are also teaming up with Little Free Library to give out free copies in Times Square and at 150 locations across the U.S. and Canada. Since 2009, more than 300 million books have been shared in Little Free Libraries across the world. Click here to find a copy of "The Seventh Veil of Salome" at a Little Free Library location near you.
Read along with us and join the conversation all month on our Instagram account, @GMABookClub, and with #GMABookClub.
***************************
I'd spent most of the day tucked away at the Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard, working through a pile of notes.
Its high-backed, padded red leather booths were the perfect hiding spot for harried writers trying to clobber their way through script changes and, boy, did I have script changes.
Some folks called Max Niemann a bully and others called him a genius. I called him an obsessive workaholic.
I was laboring on yet another draft of The Seventh Veil of Salome, and I was the third writer that Niemann had hired. His propensity for new notes was enough to send any scribe howling out the door, but I didn't mind him.
Previously, I'd done work for other directors of note: Howard Hawks, who liked to mutter disparaging comments about Jews, and I'd had to stomach Michael Curtiz's creative barrage of hyphenated insults -- no-good-son-of-a-b---h -- ad nauseam.
Niemann didn't think highly enough of writers to abuse them, reserving his barbs for his actors and assistants, so I was in a relatively serene state of mind.
After a couple of whiskey sours and a plate of grilled lamb kidneys, I tucked my portable Smith-Corona Sterling into its case and headed back to the studio to deliver the pages Niemann had been asking about.
Pacific Pictures was a midsize player. The gorillas in the business were MGM, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros. The crown jewels of Hollywood.
Then you had RKO, Universal, Columbia, and of course Pacific Pictures.
We were not providers of Poverty Row fare, like Grand National, but we didn't have MGM's dazzling facilities, either.
We made a heck of a lot of mindless comedies, our share of corny romances and dramas, and a couple of big-budget opuses each year. Just as you'd expect, like clockwork.
Things were changing, though, in more than one way, around town.
The antitrust case against the majors dealt a blow to the mega studios, and TV was picking up speed and viewers.
Charlie Chaplin sold his studio at La Brea after being declared persona non grata in the US, and a bunch of writers decamped to Mexico for fear of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
I'd stayed put. HUAC had lots of us spooked, but I needed the work, and work meant living in Hollywood.
So, nu, anyway, that's not what your documentary is about, I know. Salome, let's talk about her.
Among all this hustle and bustle, there was Niemann's elusive "Seventh Veil of Salome."
It was one of those sword-and-sandal flicks that were terribly popular back in the day.
You were not a real studio if every couple of years you didn't have at least one picture with a camel, a palace, and a garbage plot thinly inspired by a Biblical story.
Hedy Lamarr squeezed the biceps of Victor Mature in Samson and Delilah, Gregory Peck romanced Susan Hayward in David and Bathsheba, and now it was Niemann's -- and my -- turn to make more meat for the masses, like an employee stuffing sausages for the Hebrew National Kosher Sausage Factory, except when you worked there you got to eat a tasty sausage and you didn't have to worry about evading a code administrator eager to mark every other page as objectionable.
Niemann's project had been in the works forever, and Fred Dressler was breathing down his neck.
They'd start shooting soon, no doubt about it, and if the studio was lucky Niemann wouldn't return with a three-hour monstrosity.
Niemann was good, but he was stubborn, and we were already making bets on how far behind the production would fall once it began what was sure to be at minimum a ninety-day shoot.
At the lot I ran into Harry Merriam, who was a serviceable writer of women's pictures and a prodigious gossip. He pulled me aside and told me that Niemann had tested a girl and finally found his Salome.
"Absolutely, and I'm Burt Lancaster," I said. Niemann had screen-tested every actress in town for more than a year and hadn't signed anyone.
Word was the screen tests were a publicity stunt, and he was biding his time, desperately trying to get his hands on Jane Russell, but the sexy brunette wasn't biting.
She was finishing a stint at RKO. She'd just done an adventure flick for them, "Underwater!," which had sailed into rough seas after a model called Lyn Jones sued the company for using her as an uncredited body double in publicity pictures.
Then, at the premiere for "Underwater!," which took place in a swimming pool, Jayne Mansfield's bikini top had popped off, a neat trick that soon became a regular occurrence with Jayne.
Jane Russell was probably fed up with gimmicky flicks like that and likely suspected "The Seventh Veil of Salome" was another silly gimmick.
Anyhow, no Russell and no Mansfield had been signed, but that wasn't my business.
"The girl's a nobody," Harry said.
"Now I know it's a lie," I replied.
If Niemann couldn't snatch a bona fide star, surely he'd avail himself of a semi-famous starlet or a pretty pinup.
There were heaps of girls itching to get a crack at films. "Max's not going to have a nobody anchor his flick, and even if he'd wanted to, Dressler won't let him. They'll grab a cheap, reliable contract player, mark my words."
"You haven't seen her. She's a real peach of a girl. They're giving her a tour of the studio."
"Fakakta," I said and took out a cigarette and then, just as we were beginning to talk about other business, Harry pointed excitedly to the building in front of us.
"There she is. That's the girl. That's Salome."
She was wearing a simple yellow sundress and sandals, and her hair hung loose down her back.
She had a nice figure, but so did many budding stars, often with the help of strategic padding. She had a pretty face, but a good makeup artist can make a siren out of a dumpy librarian.
A certain elegance in the walk elevated her a tad, perhaps, but that can be learned.
The pouty, kissable mouth was a delightful touch, and yet I wasn't convinced I'd have chosen her picture from a stack of glossies.
And then the girl looked at us, as if sensing our gaze, her wide eyes locking with mine for one second before she looked away, a nervous, hesitant smile dancing on her lips.
Shyness warring with delight, with pride; poise and caution in the turn of the head. Charming, but more than that it was the gesture, the look, of the character as I'd imagined her. Temptress and vestal maiden in one.
As you write a story you hope for the best when it comes to casting. Sometimes actors are close to the mark, and often they're far from what you pictured when building the part.
This, however, was the first time I'd seen a character I'd been working on drift off the page and into a studio lot, breathing, walking, living. I immediately saw what the casting director must have glimpsed: the luscious, exciting possibilities that lay ahead.
The girl, swaddled in silks and sequins, set against exotic vistas and sand dunes with dramatic music punctuating her entrance.
That minuscule tilt of the head, the long fingers brushing away a rogue strand of hair from her face: during a close-up the viewers would swoon.
But even as she stood there in a sundress with a flower print, with nothing but the California sun to light her face, the truth was plain to see.
This, there was no denying it, was Salome in the flesh.
It's a tragedy what befell her. How do you tell a tragedy, anyway? For all the artistic tricks a writer can deploy, I suppose the only way to do it is you start by saying there once was a girl....
***************************
Excerpt from "THE SEVENTH VEIL OF SALOME" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, copyright © 2024 by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Used by permission of Del Rey, an imprint of Random House Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Audio excerpted with permission of Penguin Random House Audio from "The Seventh Veil of Salome" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia; Read by Caitlin Kelly, Atlanta Amado, Victoria Villarreal, Arthur Morey, Andrew Eiden, Kristen DiMercurio, Frankie Corzo, Lauren Fortgang, Javier Prusky, Fred Sanders, Lee Osorio and Cassandra Campbell © 2024, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, ℗ Penguin Random House, LLC.
