Ross MacDonald

by Tom Nolan

  As for his own work in progress, Millar warned, “It’s going to be a strange book. I don’t like it but I’m sort of fascinated by it—a mixture of sex, action, the negro problem, love, tragedy, melodrama, about five murders, in some places quite good writing, and farce.” He claimed to have broken free of his strongest influence: “I can’t be bothered cleaving to the Chandler line any more.” But when he wrote a final sequence filled with “poetically” graphic violence, he admitted his Chandler manner was back: “Please don’t tell me I’m too completely Chandlerized, though I know I bear his mark still (The Red Badge of Chandler). But from page to page I write as I please. . . . If Raymond and I get excited about the same things, O.K., O.K.” Except for his author wife, Millar said, Chandler was “the only one that carries me away.”

  After reading the chapters he mailed her, Margaret told him, “It does sound Chandlerish of course; but you can write rings around him and you know it. He’s not various enough.” Though she was the one who’d steered him to Chandler in the first place, her own enthusiasm for Chandler’s work had cooled. But she did try telephoning Chandler when she spent a March day in LA, she wrote Millar: “Just did it so I could report to you.” (No one answered at Chandler’s end.)

  Margaret spent weeks traveling up and down the coast by rail, from San Diego to Carmel, scouting communities for a rental house where she and Millar could work, “slinging crap at a few cents a word.” Her first choice to live was La Jolla, but prices there were too high; anyway, nothing was available. Wherever they ended up, she assured Millar, “you will not have to, and you will not go back to teaching of any kind unless you feel compelled to by urge divine: rather doubt you will.”

  Meanwhile, Millar got a finished copy of The Iron Gates by mail on the Shipley Bay. He read it again and wrote Margaret, “I think it’s excellent. I don’t think you have to worry about its success. A fine piece of writing, and it makes me envious. You don’t get that far with style without working on it steadily for years, which is what I plan to do after the war.” Her book was “an extraordinary piece of writing,” he told her, “it will go down as a classic of its kind, and I mean it.”

  Early reviews bore him out. A Book-of-the-Month-Club critic said The Iron Gates was no mere detective story but “a good novel built around a murder.” Dorothy B. Hughes, herself a noted mystery writer, called Gates “one of the finest psychological mysteries of all time,” a book that achieved “the status of literature.” Unicorn Mystery Book Club chose Gates as a member selection, which meant five hundred dollars for Margaret. A reprint edition brought her another five hundred. On the strength of the Gates showing, Ivan von Auw got Random House to advance Margaret a further two thousand dollars, which she put to quick use.

  In mid-April, Margaret Millar notified her husband he would soon be co-owner of a home in Santa Barbara, California, a city she’d found almost by chance while passing through by train. “There are mountains and the sea, and Santa Barbara is between; and the trees are lovely and the city not too small. . . . It is not as pretty as La Jolla but it is more beautiful, I think. And I, personally, Margaret Millar, love it.” Their new home at 2124 Bath was “a good solid Spanish structure,” she said, priced at $6,750. Margaret and Linda would be moved in by the end of the month, with Linda enrolled in a school across the road. “We can live here for years, see?”

  No one could say she hadn’t acted decisively. However pleased (or startled) he was, Millar couldn’t help but see how completely all this had been Margaret’s doing, and how it was her success that made it possible. “Sweet, darling Gates,” as she wrote proudly, “it bought us a house!”

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  Chandler is undoubtedly one of the best of mystery story writers and it is my belief that if he had not been subject to the blind pigeonholing which has affected all mystery stories, his novels might well have appeared on the best-seller lists. . . . The first publisher who senses this, who chooses the right man and the right book, might well be surprised, may find that instead of a four to ten thousand sale there may be a forty to a hundred thousand sale. Does it seem ridiculous? But has any publisher tried to see if it is ridiculous?

  —D. C. Russell, “Raymond Chandler, and the Future of Whodunits,” New York Times Book Review, 1945

  Now a publisher with a promising manuscript—a manuscript, say, like Margaret Millar’s The Iron Gates—will naturally hesitate to call it a detective story and so, almost infallibly, limit its sales. Random House called The Iron Gates “a psychological novel” and from the evidences of its advertising, must have sold a good many more copies than would have been sold without such merchandising.

  —James Sandoe, “Dagger of the Mind,” 1946

  The Millars expected good things from Margaret’s sixth book, but what happened with The Iron Gates exceeded their most optimistic daydreams.

  Advertised in the New York Times and the Saturday Review, its first printing of eighty-five hundred copies sold out, as did a second of two thousand; Random House ordered a third printing. Two reprint editions (hard- and softcover) vied to bring The Iron Gates to an even wider audience. The book was condensed in Liberty magazine. In New York there were two nibbles for stage rights: one from producers associated with Lillian Hellman, another from actor Raymond Massey. Margaret’s agents stalled these theater people because Ober’s Hollywood contact H. N. Swanson thought he could make a movie deal for Gates.

  Swanson’s instinct was good. Mysteries of all types were hot in Hollywood, and the studios were especially impressed by books that were well promoted by publishers. On June 12, Margaret wrote Millar with this stunning news: Warner Bros, had bought movie rights to The Iron Gates for fifteen thousand dollars, and she was being hired to write its script for seven hundred fifty dollars a week. She’d be supervised by senior producer Henry Blanke, who hoped Bette Davis would star in the film. “I am excited, scared and miss you like hell,” Margaret told Millar. “What I feel so damn marvellous about is that when you get out of the navy, you won’t have to go job-hunting or asskissing or nothing. You’ll just come home & we’ll write.”

  Ensign Millar’s delight was unmitigated. He drew a cartoon of himself leaping with joy and enclosed it in a message filled with congratulations and happy advice. He told Margaret, “I know you won’t go Hollywood. I wouldn’t give a damn if you decided to work there steadily.”

  The same week Millar got his wife’s news, Okinawa fell to U.S. forces, in the only major battle the Shipley Bay took part in; at its conclusion, Millar’s ship left the Pacific theater. In mid-July, Millar saw San Francisco come into view. No city had ever looked better to him. Margaret was there to meet Ken, and they spent a day and a night’s leave together before he put back to sea and she took the train to Hollywood.

  As soon as she hit the Warner lot, Margaret was sending her husband daily bulletins:

  Hello my darling, Here I am. And all those books on Hollywood were so much crap. I am working like mad; I am the cynosure of all eyes, especially Mr. Blanke’s; & I am the sole writer on the script. . . . I have an office as big as our whole house, + a desk I could float to Pearl on top of. . . . Lunched with Mr. B. in a small room containing, among others, Cary Grant, Charles Boyer, & Bette Davis. Ha ha ha! They look exactly as they look on the screen, but older, especially Davis.

  The new screenwriter was in fast company. Among other authors under contract at Warners were fellow Ober client William Faulkner, W. R. Burnett (Little Caesar, High Sierra), John Collier, Elliot Paul, Jo Pagano, Kurt Siodmak, and young Chris Isherwood. “All writers lunch together except Faulkner who is so pathologically shy that he once came to lunch, couldn’t eat with so many people, left. Glimpsed him today. Nice-looking, gray hair, black moustache. No one ever sees him unless they go to his office.” Margaret got up the nerve to speak to Faulkner: “I then tried to tell him what I tho’t of Light in August, got tonguetied & left with an abrupt ‘Well, that’s all.’ No doubt Faulkn
er thinks I’m as crazy as he is.” A few mornings later “Bill” Faulkner telephoned to invite Margaret to his office for coffee. “He was perfectly charming in his shy way, using the most extraordinary words in his Mississippi drawl. We talked of books and stories.” Faulkner expressed great admiration for Melville, and he and Margaret agreed Faulkner was a much better writer than Hemingway. “I stayed for an hour and a half. It is THE FIRST TIME Faulkner has ever approached another human being on the lot and I felt most flattered.”

  As part of her duties Margaret saw a screening of Warners’ just-completed version of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (done from a script by Faulkner and Leigh Brackett), starring Humphrey Bogart and newcomer Lauren Bacall. Margaret reported, “It’s not good. Bacall can’t act for beans & whole thing is muddled but fairly enjoyable.” There were other duties: “WE ALL had to listen to J. [Jack] Warner make a speech last night about his experiences in Europe. It lasted nearly as long as his trip. I had the sorest ass this side of paradise. Arrived at hotel at NINE oclock, hungry, thirsty and bitter.”

  While working weekdays and half-Saturdays at the Burbank studio, Margaret lodged “over the hill” at the Hollywood-Roosevelt, while six-year-old Linda in Santa Barbara was looked after by her old Ann Arbor nursery school teacher. Margaret had arranged for this woman to come “take over the house and Linda” for the summer. The separation would do both mother and daughter good, Margaret rationalized; and they would see each other most weekends. Millar agreed no harm would be done. In any case, Margaret said, it couldn’t be helped: “I’m so busy I can’t turn around. I mean, I’m a career gal now.”

  Decked out in a new wardrobe, Margaret was enjoying her studio labors. She felt camaraderie with the other writers and enjoyed the attentions of such slick types as British playwright Barre Lyndon (“He said, ‘Good God it isn’t Iron Gates Millar, is it? It’s just a kid.’ He’s a smooth customer. I like him”) and Hollywood agent H. N. Swanson (“Tall [very], handsome [very, very], 46, suave; I can hardly take him seriously, he’s too ultra”). But she resisted Swanson’s efforts to get her to sign several long-term contracts. Margaret vowed not to stay long at the studios. “Encourage me in this,” she urged Millar, “for I think Hollywood is a bad place & can do only bad things for people. I am not joking. I have always felt the presence of evil, strongly, & this place has it more than I dreamed of. . . . For us, for our marriage, for our family life, I want to get out of here.”

  Millar soon saw Hollywood for himself. When the Shipley Bay put into San Diego in August, Ensign Millar went to LA on extended leave. He met Margaret at the Chapman Park, a bungalow-style Wilshire Boulevard hotel where she was now staying. The next day they went to the Warners lot in Burbank.

  A visit to a major studio would have been a big event for any movie-mad American in 1945, but Millar’s trip to Warners on Tuesday, August 14, 1945, became unforgettable. At four that afternoon, word broke of Japan’s unconditional surrender. Hidden bottles of liquor came out of desk drawers in the writers’ building. Margaret Millar had her first shots of hard liquor toasting the end of World War II.

  The Millars had earlier invited Elliot Paul and his wife for dinner, and the couples carried on as planned. They drove in the Pauls’ car from Warners across the Cahuenga Pass, through Hollywood streets jammed with riotous celebrants, to the Chapman Park. After dinner, Mrs. Paul drove the four of them slowly through even more crowded streets back to the Valley, to the Toluca Lake home of MCA agent Johnny Hyde (who in a few years would get Marilyn Monroe her first movie roles). From Hyde’s they traveled once more over the hill to the Pauls’ house in Hollywood. Elliot Paul, a sad-faced man with soft-boiled eyes and a thick gray goatee, was the Random House author of the 1942 number one best-seller The Last Time I Saw Paris and several humorous mysteries. His wife was a senator’s daughter. (“I don’t know how she got stuck with him,” Margaret said.) Paul was fond of liquor and had applied for a license to found something called Alcoholics Incorporated. He invited the Millars to be charter members; they declined. Nonetheless, Millar recorded, “Everybody got gloriously tight” this raucous evening. The Pauls had two pianos in their front room, and Elliot and Margaret played them for two hours, with Paul giving a marathon display of boogie-woogie. Margaret woke the next morning with her first (and she claimed last) hangover.

  Another highlight of Millar’s Hollywood stay was a brief meeting with William Faulkner, who told the Millars of his concern for a foaling mare he’d given his daughter in Mississippi. (Not long after, Faulkner checked into a sanitarium to dry out from alcohol.)

  Millar was intrigued by these glimpses at the inner workings of an industry whose product had entranced him since he was a kid in Wiarton. But he was appalled by Hollywood. Beneath the studio writers’ high jinks lay the despair and self-pity of people who sold themselves into long-term slavery and then whimpered about betraying their art. The studio world seemed a mecca of corruption. Millar wasn’t sorry to leave the garish sprawl of LA in late September for sea duty.

  His ship became a troop transport shuttling combat vets back from the Pacific zone. Millar’s next return to the States on October 9 brought him to San Francisco, where he and Margaret stayed four days. His last night in port, Millar and his wife met someone whose effect on his life and career would be nearly as great as W. H. Auden’s.

  Thirty-four-year-old Anthony Boucher, an owlish-looking man in hornrimmed spectacles, came to the Millars’ hotel for several rounds of drinks. A graduate of USC with a master’s from Berkeley, Boucher (a pseudonym for William A. P. White) was making his name on the mystery scene as a novelist, short-story writer, editor, and radio scriptwriter (The New Adventures of Sherlock Homes, The Adventures of Ellery Queen). It was as a reviewer, though, that “Tony” Boucher would be most influential, writing about mysteries in regular review columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and later the New York Times.

  Millar, who thought Boucher’s critique of The Iron Gates had been that book’s best, noted, “He has a knack for many-sided concentrated praise which no writer could fail to appreciate.” Boucher liked Millar’s work too; he said The Dark Tunnel showed great promise and joked it was unfair that one family should have so much writing talent.

  The unwritten rule that reviewers and authors don’t mingle wasn’t much observed in the genre communities, where writers and critics felt united in common cause to promote higher standards, bigger sales, and more respect for books that the mainstream sneered at. As Boucher and the Millars got pleasantly tight, Tony invited them to join the newly formed Mystery Writers of America, whose motto was “Crime does not pay—enough.” And Boucher urged both Millars to enter the Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine short-story contest, which was offering five thousand dollars prize money.

  “I liked Boucher,” Millar wrote Margaret from the Shipley Bay, “even tho’ I disapprove of the professional anything, and he’s the professional Mystery Man. But a good guy, and intelligent enough for keeps.” (He was also an influential person to cultivate; Millar soon initiated a lifelong correspondence with the critic.) Boucher’s few words of praise, as distilled as one of his choice printed paragraphs, spurred Millar to immediate action. In his cramped cabin below the waterline, he began a short story for the EQMM contest. He set it partly in Hollywood, and for its detective he concocted a private eye named Joe Rogers. Millar seemed to have an instant affinity with the private-eye form. “I really enjoyed writing for the first time in ages,” he told Margaret. He quickly did a second story with Rogers and informed his wife, “I’m developing a detective (successor to Marlowe) and a style I think with which I’ll go on for a bit till I hit pay dirt.” Even dashing off stories for a magazine contest, Millar set his sights at the summit. Believing (erroneously) that Raymond Chandler was about fifty, the nearly thirty Millar told Margaret, “Give me another twenty years, baby.” He wondered though whether these first stories were good enough to submit, but Margaret declared them “marvellous” and in November had the
m entered (by Ober) in the contest. A month later she sent good news to the Shipley Bay: Millar’s “Find the Woman” won a $300 fourth prize. Whether he knew it or not, the course of Millar’s career was set.

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  The dandified esthete and the noble savage thus united their antisocial instincts to produce the detective—a combination of schoolboy athletic hero and sadistic sophisticate.

  —Herbert Marshall McLuhan, “Footprints in the Sands of Crime,” 1946

  I make a point of noticing people who make a thousand a week. I do that because a thousand a week is fifty thousand a year.

  —Kenneth Millar, “Find the Woman”

  Whatever the future might bring, right now Margaret was the family’s big breadwinner. The couple’s 1945 income was thirty thousand dollars, with Ken Millar contributing only five thousand of that. Millar didn’t like living on a woman’s earnings, even if the woman was his wife—especially if. It made him feel outclassed.

  Their first clash over the Hollywood money had to do with buying the Bath Street house. Millar advised paying off the mortgage, but Margaret preferred to put cash in savings. He gave in quickly, saying, “It’s your own business”—and indeed it was. Now that Millar was writing his own books, Margaret’s contracts no longer bore his name. The Iron Gates was her first work under the new arrangement, and the big money it earned underscored how far Millar had “fallen behind.”

  His resentment boiled over when Margaret made a will (with the help of a bank estate expert) in which half her money would go to him and half to Linda in trust. In a January 1946 letter from the Shipley Bay, he expressed deep offense: