Girl Sleuth

by Melanie Rehak

  Thrilled as she was about her daughter’s future, Harriet was living happily in her own present, too busy with work and the ongoing pleasure she took in her marriage to Russell to pine for her college days. “Aunt Edna is still at the shore, and I am busy not only with book matters, but with remodelling the office. By the time she will have returned, I expect to have most of the old furniture sold and the place looking modern and attractive. I am hoping that she will not cut me up into small pieces for my bravery!” she continued in her note to Patsy. “We trust you are having a splendid vacation, and are awaiting eagerly your first letter. Lots of love.”

  Dear Carolin Keene. I am 4 and a half yrs. old and I liced your fasson [crossed out] fasin [crossed out] fastinate [crossed out] wonderful book about the haunted bridge. it was a corker, ex-peshly the mistery parts. My daddy sez to never cross yor bridges untill you come to them, but I notis he is allways in a stoo about bizness. Wen I get big my mama sez I can rite stores like you rite Carolin Keen. I rote a story for teacher last Wensdy that she said it was exslent . . . Pleze rite more books soon, my mama and daddy will by them for me rite away when they cum out down to Katzes drug store wer they hav A library and mama sets and smokes buts and reeds all the gunk they have there. With all my luve, Virginia Cook

  Thanks to the ongoing enthusiasm—fan mail for Nancy and her creator continued to pour in—Harriet had been able to make a deal with Warner Brothers to do a series of Nancy Drew pictures. She had sold them the rights for $6,000, and in addition to high hopes for exposure for the series and more money, the deal had given her the opportunity to change the release forms that Mildred and other writers signed. Now, instead of just right, title, and interest, the writers released their rights to all possible further use and resale of the stories and confirmed, once again, that the signee had done them “from complete working outlines.” Because the Nancy Drew stories had an actual buyer, as opposed to just a theoretical one, Mildred had to sign a special letter worked up by Warner Brothers, giving up her right to any royalties and assuring the company that she would not sue. This she did, happily, and in late 1938, Nancy Drew: Detective hit theaters around the country.

  With scripts written by Warner Brothers employees, all of the films starred saucy fifteen-year-old Bonita Granville as Nancy and Frankie Thomas as “trusted friend” Ted Nickerson (a name change that appears to have been completely superfluous). Nancy Drew: Detective, which took some of its plot from The Password to Larkspur Lane, was a flimsy kidnapping story involving a wealthy elderly woman, secret messages delivered by carrier pigeon, and a bogus nursing home. In it, Nancy comes off as both bossier and yet somehow more traditionally feminine than she does in her books. She has none of the gracious elegance that defines her in print and often makes faces to get a point across. She’s mean to Ted, who enters the picture by destroying her flower beds during a practice football tackle, and spouts endless maxims about women’s intuition and being strong that don’t quite add up with her behavior. In one of the early scenes of the movie, which takes place at the Brinwood School for Young Ladies—Nancy is a student there despite the fact that she never sets foot in its building again—she announces, “I think every intelligent woman should have a career.” But every time she gets excited, she talks so quickly, and with such babyish breathless-ness, that it’s hard to take her seriously.

  Her supporting cast doesn’t help much. Carson Drew, who figures much more prominently in the film than he ever does in a Nancy Drew Mystery Story, spends a lot of time trying to convince her to get off the kidnapping case, telling her at one point: “These men are not going to stand for Nancy Drew poking her little nose into their affairs.” In general, almost everyone talks down to Nancy, from the police chief who refers to her constantly as “little girl,” earning some very un-Nancy-like scowls, to Ted, who sighs “Just like all women, aren’t you? No one can convince you of anything.” After getting back at him by pointing out that “statistics prove from 15 to 20 a woman is five years mentally older than a man of the same age” and telling him he’s about as “chivalrous as an oyster” (to which Ted responds, “Okay, then, I’m an oyster”), Nancy makes him dress up in drag as a nurse to break into the fake nursing home and, ultimately, save Miss Eldridge. In one of the most inventive, and least plausible, scenes in the film, Ted finds an old X-ray machine in the basement where he and Nancy are being held captive and uses it to broadcast interference in Morse code to the River Heights radio station, which leads to their rescue. It all takes place in sixty-six action-packed minutes, and by the end, even Police Chief Tweedy agrees Nancy is brave, in spite of her fainting at the sight of his very large gun.

  Nancy Drew: Detective was followed, in short order, by three more films, Nancy Drew: Reporter and Nancy Drew: Trouble Shooter, neither of which had any relation to the plots of Syndicate books, and Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, which drew on the book of that title. Unlike the books, however, which continued to shy away from any violence that went beyond a good conk on the head, the movies featured shoot-outs using a wide variety of guns, no doubt a ploy to get in older audiences, who were becoming accustomed to brassier women in their favorite movies. Though the Nancy Drew films were ostensibly for children, Warner Brothers was clearly trying to maximize their potential—or at least make the parents of their child audience interested enough to go to the theater along with them. The publicity for the films tried to pitch Nancy as a slightly edgier character than she was in print. “One side, flatfeet . . . let a real sleuth show you how it’s done!” shouted the posters. “She may be just sixteen, but she’s got something you guys never had . . . feminine intuition!” “Meet the toughest sleuth who ever captured . . . your heart! It’s none other than that master man hunter, that champ criminologist . . . Nancy Drew Detective,” ran another. “Nancy’s through playing with dolls! . . . she’d rather play with danger!” The Warner Brothers publicity machine also tried to make her seem a little racier by playing up her association with men and playing down her intelligence. “She may get the answers wrong in school . . . but she gets the right men . . . in jail!” one ad teased. “What chance has a crook with Nancy Drew on his trail?” another asked. “Her homework may not be so hot . . . but her police-work is 100%!” In her silver-screen incarnation, Nancy was a kind of junior version of the current reigning female archetype in movies—the feisty dame. Women like Hildy Johnson—the tough, newly divorced reporter played by Rosalind Russell opposite Cary Grant in His Girl Friday (1940)—were in the spotlight as Hollywood churned out picture after picture featuring the gutsy woman who, “at the end of the movie . . . has established herself as a smart, savvy professional who can do a ‘man’s job.’”

  Two other such women had become acquainted in person at last in the summer of 1938, when a vacation brought Mildred east and she paid a visit to the Syndicate, her first since meeting Edward in his New York offices more than a decade earlier. She and her boss hit it off, however briefly. “I enjoyed having you drop in to the office but regret that you could not stay longer,” Harriet wrote to Mildred after the meeting. “After you had left I thought of many things I should have liked to have talked over with you.” Mildred responded with equal appreciation: “I enjoyed my little chat with you a great deal and was sorry to have missed Mrs. Squire [sic].” When the Nancy Drew movies were released, Mildred wrote to Harriet and Edna to say that she had seen Nancy Drew: Detective, liked it very much, and was eagerly awaiting the arrival of the other films in Toledo. “I am glad that you enjoyed the moving picture and wonder if by this time you have seen others,” Harriet wrote to her in the summer of 1939. She also appeared to have enjoyed the films, though she confessed to Mildred that her hopes had not been fulfilled in one rather important way. “I have seen only the first two, although three have been shown in this area, and I have just heard that a fifth is in production. Up to date we have not found that having Nancy Drew on the screen has increased the sale of the books any, but perhaps it takes a while to get those thi
ngs started.” Even special editions of The Password to Larkspur Lane and The Hidden Staircase with jackets that said, “This is the book from which the Warner Bros. photoplay . . . was made,” didn’t have much of an effect.

  In fact, that fifth film was never made, for audiences did not seem to like Hollywood’s interpretation of their favorite detective. She was something of a vixen, perhaps too womanly for her loyal fans, or too boy-crazy. She was too old for the kids and too young for adults, and, in truth, the films themselves were simply not very good. Though they were deemed somewhat appealing for “occasional holiday nights when the youngsters are on the loose,” they had very little else to recommend them. “Yarn so implausible it’s virtually a satire on newspaper pictures,” complained a reviewer about Nancy Drew: Reporter. “Plot is so shaky it is entirely unclear why the chauffeur of the two maiden ladies is shot and killed” was the verdict on Hidden Staircase. It was no matter, however. For even though book sales did not get the hoped-for shot of adrenaline, Nancy Drew did not need the help of Warner Brothers or anyone else.

  By the late 1930s, her adventures had permeated American culture so deeply that they were being put into Braille by the American Red Cross Services for the Blind. By the end of 1940, on the tenth anniversary of publication, the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories had sold roughly two and a half million copies. Her most recent title, The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion, had sold forty thousand copies in the first six months after it was published in January of 1941. As one article noted, the slender detective had transformed the conventional wisdom about girl readers. “Nancy Drew . . . has caused publishers to readjust their ideas, and now they reason that a growing number of outside activities is causing a drop among their boy readers, whereas the increasing quality of books in the girl’s field is recruiting a growing army of readers.” Having at last given girls what they had been clamoring for since the turn of the century—adventures of their own—and selling them with the new marketing tools that were available, like radio advertising and tie-ins with movies, publishers should not have been surprised by this turn of events. But they had underestimated the allure of Nancy Drew, which was about to grow even stronger as America, and its women, emerged from another world war more powerful than ever.

  10

  “They Are Nancy”

  “WHEN YOU RECEIVE your copy of the next Nancy Drew book you will probably wonder what in the world happened to it after it left your hands,” Harriet wrote to Mildred toward the end of 1939. She was referring to The Mystery of the Brass Bound Trunk. The story took Nancy on a fabulous journey to England—or at least it had when Mildred handed it in. As always, the Syndicate had undertaken the final edit of the manuscript. This time, however, the revisions had been extreme, and not because of Harriet’s or Edna’s whims. “The story is this: At the time the manuscript was being corrected war news was particularly bad,” Harriet explained, “and it looked as if the situation in England might become steadily worse: For this reason we had a conference with the publishers and decided it would be far better to transfer Nancy’s trip to Buenos Aires.” For the first time in its thirty-four-year history, the Stratemeyer Syndicate had run up against a reality it couldn’t ignore.

  Hitler had been in power in Germany since 1933, and he had ordered a massive book-burning campaign to “purify” German culture, as well as the opening of the Dachau concentration camp that same year. In November of 1938 the Kristallnacht attack on Germany’s Jews had signaled the start of the Holocaust, and by the end of 1939 the Nazis had annexed Austria to Germany and taken Poland and Czechoslovakia as well, provoking Britain, France, Australia, and New Zealand into declaring war officially. Though America was still mired in its traditional isolationism after the disaster of World War I, her citizens followed the news from Europe watchfully, wondering how long it would be before their men in uniform were called to duty.

  But even after Roosevelt instituted the first peacetime draft in the country’s history in September of 1940, he continued to run for president on a platform of neutrality. More than sixteen million Americans turned up to register for duty on the first day of the draft as their leader pledged to keep them out of harm’s way: “And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance,” he told nervous parents. “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” Though he was not sending any troops, Roosevelt was providing unprecedented arms and aid to America’s friends abroad. In a fireside chat in December of 1940, the president told his citizens, “The people of Europe who are defending themselves do not ask us to do their fighting. They ask us for the implements of war, the planes, the tanks, the guns, the freighters, which will enable them to fight for their liberty and for our security . . . We must be the great arsenal of democracy.”

  As Hitler’s forces invaded France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg in 1940, isolationists at home, including the Congress, still believed the United States should only fight if directly threatened. Though Britain was America’s closest ally, the country stood by and did nothing during the London Blitz, which ran from September 1940 through May 1941, destroying entire residential neighborhoods and killing thousands. In just one week in mid-October, more than 1,300 Londoners perished. By August of 1941 Germany had taken over most of Europe and the British were fighting for their lives every day. Nevertheless, when Roosevelt wanted to extend the draft term, his proposal passed in the House of Representatives by only one vote.

  Among the young men called to duty was Harriet’s older son, Sunny, who had become a pilot and was training military flyers down in Florida. Though his service made Harriet nervous—she referred to her affliction as “patriotic discomfort”—she also felt herself caught up in the sweep of history. “These are stirring times and I agree with you that it is a privilege to be part of this great effort to make our country safe again,” she wrote to one of her ghostwriters, whose son was becoming a doctor. “I think we shall be proud of our young people and the wonderful spirit they are showing. All America is with them, surely.” Still, her maternal instinct was stronger than her patriotism at certain moments, and she relied on her work to get her though, confessing in another letter to the same ghostwriter. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have made miracle children out of these sons and kept them ageless like the Bobbseys!”

  Under such conditions, certain literary concessions were necessary, even if Harriet tried to make them as innocuous as possible. Writing to Leslie McFarlane, who was at work on a Hardy Boys story called The Melted Coins, Harriet explained the Syndicate’s somewhat tortuous efforts to have things both ways. “We are trying to play along with the War effort by not using gasoline, etc., in the stories. This need not be mentioned in the books, as we trust these stories will be read long after the War is over. We merely are trying to avoid criticism for the duration, so we are having our heroes do more walking, or going by bicycle. Here and there where a car is used, it might be termed ‘essential driving.’” As the average person in America was entitled to only four gallons of gas a week, it would not do to have Frank and Joe tootling around their hometown of Bayport on pleasure trips.

  Even Nancy Drew was not immune to world events. In Norway, the first foreign country to publish the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories in translation, the Nazis had stopped production of the books after six volumes. And girls were writing in to say they wanted Syndicate characters, including Nancy, to have husbands or steady boyfriends, a trend that troubled Harriet until she concluded that it was all about the war. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, forcing the United States into the action at last. Wrapped up in the plight of their boys overseas, children longed for the presence of able-bodied men in their fiction to make up for the ones who were missing from dinner tables and movie houses everywhere.

  In light of all this, the Syndicate had to come up with a better way to acknowledge the events unfolding across the ocean th
an simply having characters ride their bikes more frequently. “As you no doubt know from your own series, it is difficult to know what to do with certain characters in war time,” Harriet wrote to Mildred. “We find it best to leave the war out of stories like the Nancys, but some of the readers wonder about this. Will you please, without mentioning the war, announce that Ned Nickerson is not appearing because he is in Europe. Also, note here and there that Nancy is taking an airplane lesson, and infer that this has something to do with the war effort, without mentioning the war. In future volumes it no doubt will be interesting to readers for her to acquire a pilot’s license.”

  Mildred, however, had a good deal more to worry about than Nancy’s response to current events. In late 1940 Asa Wirt had become ill, succumbing to the first of what would eventually be a long, debilitating series of strokes. Harriet’s characteristic generosity and patience kicked in during what she recognized to be a rough situation—Peggy was only four years old, and Mildred was working as relentlessly as ever—but it became undeniable that Mildred’s writing was suffering. Once again, Harriet and Edna tried to help her by writing extremely full outlines, so that she would, in their words, “be able to write the story with ease.” When it came to Nancy Drew, especially, the sisters did not want any variation from their winning formula, which, by 1941, had been set out to the last blue frock and polite phrase.