Speaker 1: Art originals.
Speaker 2: This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 3: So as the woman here at very special episodes, I
Speaker 3: feel like it's incumbent upon me to note that, as
Speaker 3: we all know, Friday, March eighth is International Women's Day,
Speaker 3: So it feels important at least to take a few
Speaker 3: minutes at the top of the episode to honor some
Speaker 3: of the incredible women in our lives, especially because this
Speaker 3: is such a female centric episode.
Speaker 4: So Dana, I'm going to queue you up.
Speaker 5: I don't think we need my perspective as a father
Speaker 5: of daughters, nephew of aunts.
Speaker 4: Why don't you tell us.
Speaker 5: About a professional person in your life who's been an
Speaker 5: idol or a mentor, Oh.
Speaker 3: My god, an idle. I have a lot of idols.
Speaker 3: Alyssa Mastromonico, who is just an incredible woman in person.
Speaker 3: She worked in the Obama administration and now I've worked
Speaker 3: with her on this podcast called Hysteria. She's just so
Speaker 3: smart and grounded and cool and down to earth. She's
Speaker 3: just sort of like the model that I try to
Speaker 3: base everything I do on in terms of just like
Speaker 3: other idols. Sometimes when I feel too good about myself,
Speaker 3: I'll read a Joan Didion book and be like Oh,
Speaker 3: we're both writers, but we're not doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: Oh, man, I know exactly what.
Speaker 4: You mean by that. Saren.
Speaker 5: Any any women mentors you want to shout out for
Speaker 5: International Women's Day?
Speaker 1: Oh well, I mean, I wouldn't even be on this
Speaker 1: show with y'all if it wasn't for my two English teachers,
Speaker 1: Vicki Serati and Pamela Mauri. Thank you both. But like
Speaker 1: I have, and I think as a guy, it's incumbent
Speaker 1: upon me to point out how many female role models,
Speaker 1: women who inspire me, Like I have a list here
Speaker 1: before me, Jason, I just kind of jotted down a couple.
Speaker 1: Agatha Christi right, mystery writer, Lucy Parson's political organizer, stage coach,
Speaker 1: Mary Black woman on the front here alone, Erica Jong, writer,
Speaker 1: Bessie Coleman pilot, Thelma Shuna maker editor, Catherine Bigelow filmmaker,
Speaker 1: Agnes Varda filmmaker, Anita Franco Folk sanger, Vera Rubin astronomer,
Speaker 1: Poncho Barnes, pilot friend of the early astronauts, Emily Noather,
Speaker 1: mathematician who developed the theory of least action, and of
Speaker 1: course Amelia Earhart, my first role model.
Speaker 4: So there you go, that's pretty impressed.
Speaker 5: I think we got five or six future episodes out
Speaker 5: of that list right there. Just taking notes, but I
Speaker 5: feel like we should probably start to get to the
Speaker 5: episode here, Dana, in honor of International Women's Day. Yes,
Speaker 5: we're have Zaren tell you the story this week.
Speaker 3: This is great. I get a week off. This is
Speaker 3: exactly how I want to spend International Women's Day.
Speaker 5: Saren, you want to just set this one up for
Speaker 5: us before we get in.
Speaker 4: We'll talk about it at the end.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, this one is. I loved this story. It
Speaker 1: was told to me, and the question of the story
Speaker 1: I think is so central to the story. I'll just
Speaker 1: hit you with the question, which is, do you know
Speaker 1: who wrote Nancy Drew?
Speaker 3: No, but here's an really embarrassing confession. So I don't
Speaker 3: know who wrote Nancy Drew, just like off the top
Speaker 3: of my head, which I feel like I should. I
Speaker 3: was never a big Nancy Drew kid, but I did
Speaker 3: like the computer games.
Speaker 4: Okay, I feel ja hunky.
Speaker 3: That's my Nancy Drew connection. If anyone shout out to
Speaker 3: the Nancy Drew computer games, hit me up in my DMS.
Speaker 3: If you also loved those games.
Speaker 1: Rereader's gammers. You're all welcome to this story, because this
Speaker 1: is Nancy Drew. In the late nineteen seventies, an eleven
Speaker 1: year old girl was kidnapped from the town of Richfield, Minnesota.
Speaker 1: The eighty pound girl was trapped in the trunk of
Speaker 1: her kidnappers car for fourteen hours. The young girl never
Speaker 1: gave up. She eventually figured out how to escape from
Speaker 1: the trunk of the nineteen seventy Ford. She unscrewed the
Speaker 1: bolts from the car's tail light. Then she kicked out
Speaker 1: the light and squeezed her way out. The girl was
Speaker 1: able to flag down a passing car. How did an
Speaker 1: eleven year old manage to do this simple? She asked herself,
Speaker 1: what would Nancy Drew do? Then she did exactly that.
Speaker 1: The astounded police told the local press that the girl
Speaker 1: had read around forty five Nancy Drew books, and the
Speaker 1: mystery stories prepared her mind to deal with the situation
Speaker 1: and to escape. The story was often repeated in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the first Nancy
Speaker 1: Drew books. Nineteen eighty was also the year that the
Speaker 1: mysterious publishing syndicate behind Nancy Drew was dragged into court
Speaker 1: to settle a dispute over who owned the rights to
Speaker 1: the mystery series. Millions of dollars of profits and royalties
Speaker 1: were on the line. Two women, both accomplished and successful
Speaker 1: in their respective careers, sat in that New York courtroom.
Speaker 1: One was seventy four years old, dressed in a powder
Speaker 1: blue pantsuit and not exactly eager to take the stand.
Speaker 1: The other was an eighty seven year old woman, and
Speaker 1: she owned the publishing house. It had been decades since
Speaker 1: the two women had seen each other. Both would be
Speaker 1: called to testify, and both would swear to the judge
Speaker 1: and jury that she was the real writer behind Nancy Drew.
Speaker 1: Welcome to very special episodes an iHeart original podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Zaren Burnett, and this is the case of
Speaker 1: the two Nancy Drews. It should be no surprise that
Speaker 1: Nancy Drew has enjoyed an enduring relevance in the culture,
Speaker 1: nor should it surprise anyone that she remains such a
Speaker 1: beloved fictional character. Nancy Drew was and is the plucky
Speaker 1: teen girl detective with a wicked, sharp mind who's just
Speaker 1: as fearless as she is smart, It's a rather irresistible
Speaker 1: combination for a detective. The most interesting mystery of this
Speaker 1: teen girl detective isn't her popularity, and it also isn't
Speaker 1: hidden in the plots of the books. The greatest mystery
Speaker 1: is right there on the cover of the books. It's
Speaker 1: the name of the author. Most folks have no idea
Speaker 1: the author, Carolyn Keene, never really existed, which begs the question, well, then,
Speaker 1: who was Carolyn Keene? That was not the mystery that
Speaker 1: author Melanie Rayjak set out to solve. Melanie originally was
Speaker 1: just looking for a good story to tell. She'd wanted
Speaker 1: to write a biography of the Ohio based journalist in
Speaker 1: general all around badass, Mildred Wirt Benson.
Speaker 6: And there were all these tidbits in the obituary that
Speaker 6: were really fascinating to me, like that she had a
Speaker 6: pilot's license and that she had been a journalist for decades.
Speaker 1: Mildred was the first woman to graduate with a master's
Speaker 1: degree from the University of Iowa's School of Journalism, and
Speaker 1: she went on to be one of America's great mid
Speaker 1: century journalists, one who happened to be a woman. Mildred's
Speaker 1: other claim to fame. She was the main writer behind
Speaker 1: the Nancy Drew books. There was another big reason that
Speaker 1: Melanie was interested in that fact.
Speaker 7: I was a crazy Nancy Drew reader.
Speaker 6: These books were sort of always floating around in our house,
Speaker 6: and I read all of them millions of times.
Speaker 1: But as she started looking through Mildred's archives, she kept
Speaker 1: running across something else, another.
Speaker 6: Name I kept coming across. Threaded in with all of
Speaker 6: her stuff about you know, her upbringing and her schoolwork
Speaker 6: and all the things she'd done in Iowa and her
Speaker 6: career afterwards, these stories about Harriet Straatemeyer. And although clearly
Speaker 6: was connected to Nancy Drew, that seems odd to me
Speaker 6: that she would preserve the story of this other person
Speaker 6: in her personal documents.
Speaker 1: It grabbed Melanie's full attention, intrigued her, and as she
Speaker 1: looked further into it, she hit upon a realization.
Speaker 6: It kind of emerged, you know, as if sort of
Speaker 6: out of the ether. I was like, oh, she's preserved
Speaker 6: this story because there are these competing narratives about how
Speaker 6: Nancy Drew came to be.
Speaker 1: Melanie stepped into her own real life Nancy Drew mystery.
Speaker 1: It was up to her to solve the mystery of
Speaker 1: who is the real Carolyn Keene. The next thing Melanie
Speaker 1: Rayjak discovered was that she was not alone. Others had
Speaker 1: also attempted to solve this mystery before her, most importantly
Speaker 1: one other teen detective Jeffrey s. Laban.
Speaker 6: He didn't do it for anything. He did it for Mildred.
Speaker 6: I think that to be a fan is to be
Speaker 6: a volunteer champion, and is only ever motivated by love
Speaker 6: and passion. And those are great things in the world.
Speaker 1: Motivated by love and passion. This quite accurately describes our
Speaker 1: other amateur detective, Jeffrey s Laban.
Speaker 8: Jeff is fine, saves time.
Speaker 1: Jeff is a retired cellist. He played for four decades
Speaker 1: with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. He is a man powered
Speaker 1: by love and passion. Back when he was a boy
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties, he was a young reader of
Speaker 1: series mystery books. Later, those same forces would fuel his
Speaker 1: desire to solve the mystery of who is the real
Speaker 1: Carolyn Keene.
Speaker 8: One of the department stores downtown would have once a
Speaker 8: year a sale on children's series books, and so it
Speaker 8: would generally be the first two or the three volumes
Speaker 8: of each series.
Speaker 1: His mother would order a box of these books for
Speaker 1: her young, voracious reader, and one of those boxes of
Speaker 1: books would change the shape and the course of her
Speaker 1: young son's life.
Speaker 8: I remember that the first one that I opened to
Speaker 8: read was The Hidden Staircase. And here she sneaks into
Speaker 8: the house during a rainstorm, and while she is hiding
Speaker 8: in the closet in this room, she feels something poking
Speaker 8: in her back, and she turns around and pushes it,
Speaker 8: and its door slides open, and she falls down this
Speaker 8: long stone staircase.
Speaker 1: Jeff poured through all of the available Nancy Drew books.
Speaker 1: Along the way, he grew more and more enamored with
Speaker 1: the voice of this author. What so clearly resonated with
Speaker 1: young Jeff was not just the dark and moody vibe,
Speaker 1: but also the mysterious presence on the other side of
Speaker 1: the page. He'd read a lot of series books, but
Speaker 1: the writing of the Nancy Drew books was a cut above.
Speaker 1: Over time, Jeff also noticed that in some Nancy Drew
Speaker 1: books the writing was noticeably better than in others. He
Speaker 1: didn't yet know it then, but even as a young reader,
Speaker 1: Jeff could intuitively tell one writer hadn't written all of
Speaker 1: the books in the Nancy Drew series. Indeed, there was
Speaker 1: more than one Carolyn Keene. What that meant was a
Speaker 1: mystery yet for him to solve. But soon enough he
Speaker 1: would discover that truth, which would lead to the most
Speaker 1: important question, who is the heroine of this tale? And
Speaker 1: could that same woman also be the villain? Our two
Speaker 1: amateur detectives, Jeff and Melanie, were both undaunted. They'd cracked
Speaker 1: this case, just like their girl, Nancy Drew. The long
Speaker 1: hot days of summer finally gave way to the embrace
Speaker 1: of the cool and brisk of autumn. It was nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine September, to be exact. Looking to the future,
Speaker 1: a businessman put his thoughts to paper as he typed
Speaker 1: up a memo. Edward Stratamier had first started his company
Speaker 1: Stratamire Syndicate back in nineteen oh five. Back then, he
Speaker 1: wrote and published dime novels, most notably books that were
Speaker 1: aimed at children. This was his main business series books,
Speaker 1: adventure books, mystery books. He was quite good a natural storyteller.
Speaker 1: Edward eventually began to use pen names so he could
Speaker 1: write more and more books in different genres. Soon enough,
Speaker 1: he couldn't keep up with all of the contracts for
Speaker 1: books he had signed, so he hired ghostwriters. He'd come
Speaker 1: up with the story and they'd write it out.
Speaker 4: To keep things.
Speaker 1: Simple and to make sure that there were plenty of books,
Speaker 1: Edward attached a pen name to each series. That way,
Speaker 1: if the author behind it changed, the public would never
Speaker 1: be the wiser. This marked the true beginning of the
Speaker 1: Stratamier syndicate, and then for decades his firm cranked out
Speaker 1: series novels meant to be devoured by young readers. His
Speaker 1: business plan proved steadily profitable. In nineteen twenty nine, Edward
Speaker 1: Stratemier had an idea for a new series. He put
Speaker 1: his thinking down in a memo. It was straightforward, matter
Speaker 1: of fact, as was his style.
Speaker 9: These suggestions are for a new series for girls verging
Speaker 9: on novels. I've called this line the Stella Strong Stories.
Speaker 9: Stella Strong, a girl of sixteen, is the daughter of
Speaker 9: a district attorney. He is a widower and often talks
Speaker 9: over his affairs with Stella. Then, quite unexpectedly, Stella plunged
Speaker 9: into some mysteries of her own and found herself wound
Speaker 9: up in a series of exciting situations and up to
Speaker 9: date American girl at her best, Bright, clever, resourceful, and
Speaker 9: full of energy.
Speaker 1: Edward found a partner in a small publishing house called
Speaker 1: Grosset and Dunlap. They agreed to a contract for three
Speaker 1: books of the new series. After Edward Stratemire got the
Speaker 1: green light, one of the first things he did was
Speaker 1: to rework the name of the girl. Detective Stella Strong
Speaker 1: lacked a certain realism. She sounded like a comic Carowin.
Speaker 1: Edward wanted something that made her seem more relatable to
Speaker 1: the everyday girl. He and the publisher traded ideas until boom,
Speaker 1: they landed on it. The name we all know Nancy Drew.
Speaker 1: Now with the right name and a contract in place
Speaker 1: for a three book series, Edward took his next important step.
Speaker 1: He reached out to a young writer he'd worked with
Speaker 1: a few times before on a series for girls, in
Speaker 1: particular his Ruth Fielding series.
Speaker 9: I have just succeeded in signing up one of our
Speaker 9: publishers for a new series of books for girls. These
Speaker 9: will be bright, vigorous stories for older girls, having to
Speaker 9: do with the solving of several mysteries.
Speaker 1: Edward laid out his expectations for their working relationship. The
Speaker 1: writer would pen all three books for the Nancy Drew
Speaker 1: mystery stories. The novels would be based on outlines supplied
Speaker 1: by him. The writer would have four weeks to turn
Speaker 1: in a manuscript, and in turn, the writer would receive
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five dollars for their work. That's
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five per book, no royalties, nothing else.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, the ghostwriters would sign away their rights to
Speaker 1: their work and would receive no credit for their writing. Instead,
Speaker 1: the author of the series would be the fictitious Carolyn Keene.
Speaker 1: The young writer considered the offer, and then in October
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine, she agreed to the deal. The writer's
Speaker 1: name was Mildred Augustine. Later Mildred worked by marriage, and
Speaker 1: even later Mildred worked Benson by a second marriage. As contracted,
Speaker 1: Mildred wrote the first three books in the Nancy Drew series,
Speaker 1: The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, and
Speaker 1: The Bungalow Mystery. Those first three books would become an
Speaker 1: instant success for the publisher. They marked the beginning of
Speaker 1: a new American icon. While Edward Stratemeyer created the bones
Speaker 1: of Nancy Drew, and he drew the sketches of the
Speaker 1: outlines of the first three stories. It was Mildred who
Speaker 1: would go on to flesh out the character and give
Speaker 1: Nancy Drew life. She transformed the outlines into a compelling,
Speaker 1: in vivid world of mystery and spooky portent, culminating in
Speaker 1: the payoff of well earned justice at the end. According
Speaker 1: to Mildred's diaries, Edward Stratamier never really gave her much
Speaker 1: to work with In those original outlines.
Speaker 2: The basic plot was simply that there was an old
Speaker 2: clock in which there was a booklet hidden, and the
Speaker 2: booklet gave the clue to the fact that the will
Speaker 2: was in a safe deposit box. Then there was detail
Speaker 2: on that and the conflict of people wanting to get
Speaker 2: the old man's money. But that was the basic plot,
Speaker 2: which was a very old, hackneyed thing.
Speaker 1: That's all there was, which left much for Mildred to do.
Speaker 1: What was particularly fresh about Nancy Drew was that she
Speaker 1: was made specifically four girls, and not only that she
Speaker 1: was a new type of American girl, as Edward Stratamier put.
Speaker 9: It, an up to date American girl at her best right, clever,
Speaker 9: resourceful and full of energy.
Speaker 1: This same attitude was reflected in his own home and
Speaker 1: in how Edward raised his daughters.
Speaker 6: Stratamar were a very sort of upstanding, fairly upper class family,
Speaker 6: and I think he cared a lot about patriotism of
Speaker 6: the day, and he educated his daughters, which was not
Speaker 6: always the case in that era.
Speaker 1: More than a mere capitalist, Edward Stratmeier was the sort
Speaker 1: of American we don't see much of these days.
Speaker 7: I would have loved to sit down and talk to him.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think that he really was a wonderful
Speaker 6: person who was very smart and cared a lot about
Speaker 6: how people take up their place in the world.
Speaker 1: Yet Edward was still a man of his time, and
Speaker 1: thus he never actually expected his daughters to follow him
Speaker 1: into business and take over his publishing empire. But cruel
Speaker 1: reality stepped in. The first Nancy Drew mystery story was
Speaker 1: published on April twenty eighth, nineteen thirty. The thing about
Speaker 1: any beginning is that it also marks the end of something.
Speaker 1: In this case, that was the literal truth, because just
Speaker 1: as this new American icon first came into being, Edward
Speaker 1: stepped out of the frame. On May tenth, nineteen thirty,
Speaker 1: a mere twelve days after the first Nancy Drew book
Speaker 1: was published, Edward Stratemeyer dropped dead. He passed away at
Speaker 1: home after a bout of pneumonia. He was sixty seven.
Speaker 1: Left behind in his impressive wake of success and brought
Speaker 1: low by loss and bereavement were Edward's two daughters, Harriet
Speaker 1: and Edna. After his sudden passing, his daughters inherited their
Speaker 1: father's publishing empire, built on the backs of ghostwriters in
Speaker 1: series books. Their father never taught them about business affairs,
Speaker 1: so most folks assumed his daughters would sell the company
Speaker 1: and live off the profits. But the trouble for that
Speaker 1: plan there was this thing called a Great Depression. In
Speaker 1: October nineteen twenty nine, the same month Mildred first started
Speaker 1: work on the new series, the stock market cratered, plunging
Speaker 1: America into a financial catastrophe. America entered the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: The heiresses tried the reasonable response first, they actively courted buyers,
Speaker 1: but the collapse of America's economy six months prior to
Speaker 1: their father's death made it exceedingly difficult for the two
Speaker 1: heiresses to sell their father's publishing company. There were no
Speaker 1: buyers to be found anywhere.
Speaker 6: They are unable to do that because it's the depression
Speaker 6: and no one is buying this company, no one has
Speaker 6: any money. And so this is the moment at which
Speaker 6: my feelings about Harriet's Roudemyer Adams and the story kind
Speaker 6: of changed.
Speaker 1: It's a real and raw moment. What would or could
Speaker 1: the Stratomeyer daughters do. The one asset the daughters had
Speaker 1: on their side was their father's personal secretary. She'd worked
Speaker 1: with Edward for fifteen years and was familiar with the
Speaker 1: inner workings of the business.
Speaker 6: They decide they're going to have to keep the company,
Speaker 6: and they're going to have to run the company. To me,
Speaker 6: Harriet sort of emerges in this moment as someone who
Speaker 6: has suddenly been given an opportunity to really do something
Speaker 6: in the world, which she.
Speaker 7: Hadn't had and probably wouldn't have had any other.
Speaker 6: Way, because she was sort of well to do, housewife
Speaker 6: and mother for and I think she was really into it.
Speaker 6: I think she was like, I'm going to actually have
Speaker 6: a chance to use my education and to run this
Speaker 6: company that I love, which was started by my father
Speaker 6: who I adored. And so they take it up and
Speaker 6: they really made a go of it.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, the sisters shared the daily workload of
Speaker 1: they're new to them publishing empire. But rather quickly it
Speaker 1: became self evident that Harriet had a head for business.
Speaker 1: Edna did not, so she took a step back.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 1: Harriet, whose married name was Adams, plunged herself into the
Speaker 1: business world, which was not at all ready for someone
Speaker 1: like her.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of correspondence in the files where people
Speaker 6: just address her as mister Adams, like they can't even
Speaker 6: conceive of the idea that a woman is running this
Speaker 6: company and she just sort of.
Speaker 7: To deal with it. And so I really sort of
Speaker 7: came to admire her this way.
Speaker 6: It really gave me a different perspective on her, to
Speaker 6: think about what it must have been like in nineteen
Speaker 6: thirty to take that over, and how in some ways
Speaker 6: it must have fulfilled some dream she had.
Speaker 1: To aid the fulfillment of her dream. Harriet had a
Speaker 1: few key assets on her side. One her father's publishing
Speaker 1: empire's track record of success, two his profit minded business model,
Speaker 1: three the guidance of her father's personal secretary. And above
Speaker 1: all else, Harriet had one all important asset Nancy drew
Speaker 1: that said, Harriet also had one other key asset, her ghostwriter, Mildred.
Speaker 1: The sisters reached out to their ghostwriter and asked her
Speaker 1: about writing another Nancy Drew book, a fourth in the series.
Speaker 1: It would be followed by many, many more. The resulting
Speaker 1: contracts made official their long and lucrative partnership. When our
Speaker 1: other amateur sleuth, Jeff, first encountered the mystery of who
Speaker 1: is the real Carolyn Keen, he didn't yet know it
Speaker 1: at the time, but he'd stepped into a role he'd
Speaker 1: only ever imagined, a real life teen detective. For both
Speaker 1: real and fictional detectives, to solve a mystery often requires
Speaker 1: a great deal of shoe leather. For Jeff, just like
Speaker 1: for Melanie RayJack, it meant a great deal of time
Speaker 1: spent in the library. Before the Internet, the library was
Speaker 1: a great place to solve a stubborn mystery. There the
Speaker 1: library in the nineteen sixties, That's where Jeff came across
Speaker 1: his first big clue that Carolyn Keene wasn't who he
Speaker 1: thought she was. The clue was discovered in the library's
Speaker 1: card catalog index. Jeff recalls well that moment when he
Speaker 1: first read those three magic words Carolyn Keene pseudonym.
Speaker 8: Well, first of all, I didn't one with pseudonym meant,
Speaker 8: and so I asked the librarian and she said, well,
Speaker 8: that means. It is what they also call a pen name.
Speaker 8: They have made up a name to write under to
Speaker 8: hide their identity. For some reason, he.
Speaker 1: Had to know more. It was like a magic spell
Speaker 1: had been cast, or perhaps more accurately, it felt like
Speaker 1: the burn for justice of a gumshoe. Detective Jeff knew
Speaker 1: he had to solve this mystery.
Speaker 8: I had gotten bitten by the bug, so that's why
Speaker 8: I just went on this quest to figure out what
Speaker 8: is going on here.
Speaker 1: The teen detective discovered his next clue at a second library,
Speaker 1: Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library.
Speaker 8: It was really exciting. On the main floor they had
Speaker 8: their general reference section, and on the one set of
Speaker 8: bookcases they had these huge, huge volumes, massive tones, and
Speaker 8: they listed by year all the books that had just
Speaker 8: been published or came into print that year. And I
Speaker 8: remember just simply looking up the name Carolyn Keene because
Speaker 8: I was wondering, well, what can I find out about
Speaker 8: this pseudonym? And someone had very thoughtfully penciled in an
Speaker 8: ass to risk next to the name Carolyn Keene and
Speaker 8: it says real name word Comma Mildred A.
Speaker 1: Wirt Mildred A. The asterisk note led Jeff to another
Speaker 1: one of those massive tones where he found more.
Speaker 8: Clues, and they listed not only her name, but a
Speaker 8: lot of other pseudonyms. It also said Carolyn Keene. Well,
Speaker 8: so that was when the bells went off for me,
Speaker 8: and I said aha. And then also in the same
Speaker 8: reference room, they had telephone books from around the country,
Speaker 8: and since it listed that she lived in Toledo, I
Speaker 8: looked at the Toledo telephone book and sure enough, there
Speaker 8: she was listed.
Speaker 1: Jeff jotted down the information, but then time passed. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was years. During college, Jeff moved Indianapolis. Once there,
Speaker 1: he realized he didn't live far from Toledo, Ohio. Jeff
Speaker 1: was no longer a teen detective. Now he was a
Speaker 1: young adult about to pursue his own career, and one
Speaker 1: day he was reminded of the mystery who is the
Speaker 1: real Caroline Keen? When The Saturday Review published an article
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine with the title The Secret of
Speaker 1: Nancy Drew and in the article the writer credited Harriet
Speaker 1: Strademeier as the author of all at the time forty
Speaker 1: three published Nancy Drew Books. Jeff was surprised to see
Speaker 1: that that was much different information than what he'd learned
Speaker 1: in the library as a kid. So Jeff decided, since
Speaker 1: he was so close, perhaps he could meet Mildred in
Speaker 1: person and hear what she had to say about that
Speaker 1: particular article. Since it was the nineteen sixties, Jeff sent
Speaker 1: Mildred a letter sure enough good to her Midwestern nature.
Speaker 1: She responded she invited him to come meet her, not
Speaker 1: at her home, because who knows what sort of fan
Speaker 1: he might be, but he could meet her at her office.
Speaker 1: Jeff was elated.
Speaker 8: I took a Greyhound bus over to Toledo and met
Speaker 8: her at a newspaper office where she worked, the Toledo Blade.
Speaker 8: And I remember that when she would just opened her
Speaker 8: desk drawer to put away her scarf, sitting in the
Speaker 8: top of the drawer was that issue of Saturday Review.
Speaker 8: I knew I had come to the right place.
Speaker 1: When Mildred was confronted by the diligent young detective, she
Speaker 1: wasn't keen to talk. You see, Mildred had legally sworn
Speaker 1: in contracts that she'd never speak publicly about her work
Speaker 1: for the Stratamyer Syndicate. Consequently, Mildred rarely revealed her identity
Speaker 1: as a ghostwriter, whether out of professional courtesy or out
Speaker 1: of fear of the syndicate's lawyers. She was a professional,
Speaker 1: and she had her newspaper career to think of. The result,
Speaker 1: her identity remained a secret. That is save for in
Speaker 1: the Ohio area, where local newspapers often proudly cited Mildred
Speaker 1: as the author and ghostwriter of the Nancy Drew books.
Speaker 1: So Mildred's neighbors they may have known the secret of
Speaker 1: the Stratamyer Syndicate, but most folks, even those in the
Speaker 1: publishing industry itself, had no idea. However, Mildred was still human,
Speaker 1: and slowly, over time and after numerous visits, she warmed
Speaker 1: to Jeff and she trusted him with her secret.
Speaker 8: It eventually got to the point where there were quite
Speaker 8: a few Thanksgivings when I would drive over and have
Speaker 8: Thanksgiving dinner with her at the Toledo Club, and after
Speaker 8: that we would go back to her house and just
Speaker 8: sit and talk and talk.
Speaker 1: During these long conversations, Mildred opened up about her secret
Speaker 1: life as Carolyn Keene. For one, it wasn't super glamorous.
Speaker 1: When Mildred was writing the books, she had to make
Speaker 1: time to write. She paid serious costs to get those
Speaker 1: words down on paper. Her routine was this, She'd return
Speaker 1: home from work at the newspaper. Her mother would be
Speaker 1: there taking care of Mildred's kids. Her husband, Asa worked
Speaker 1: was sickly in bedridden, so there at his bedside, she'd
Speaker 1: set up a little table, situate her typewriter and write
Speaker 1: her Nancy Drew stories.
Speaker 2: Lots of people think that Nancy Drew just came, but
Speaker 2: I paid for that with blood, with real blood. I
Speaker 2: sweat when I wrote the books, and I worked hard,
Speaker 2: unbelievably hard. I don't think very many people would ever
Speaker 2: work as hard as I worked during the most active
Speaker 2: years of my life. I would never do it again.
Speaker 1: Over the course of their friendship, Mildred expressed the same
Speaker 1: sentiment to Jeff. She shared the cost of bringing Nancy
Speaker 1: Drew to life, and she spoke of the time that
Speaker 1: she lost.
Speaker 9: From her own.
Speaker 8: There were certain things that I felt I needed to
Speaker 8: steer clear of with her her first husband Asa, when
Speaker 8: he was ill, and she just set up her typewriter
Speaker 8: next to his bed, and I remember asking her a
Speaker 8: question and she said, oh, there, don't go digging up
Speaker 8: all his memories again. And she just didn't want to
Speaker 8: deal with it, so I would never press her for
Speaker 8: details about anything in her personal life.
Speaker 1: At the time, back when she spent all those sleepless
Speaker 1: nights tending to her ill husband as she breathed life
Speaker 1: into a teen detective. There was a very understandable reason
Speaker 1: why Mildred did it, as she told Harriet in a
Speaker 1: thank you note.
Speaker 2: During the past four and a half years, while my
Speaker 2: husband has steadily gone downhill following a series of seven strokes,
Speaker 2: there have been times when I seriously considered giving up writing.
Speaker 2: Some of the copy I turned out a year or
Speaker 2: so ago probably was not my best. But you are
Speaker 2: very patient, and I feel now that I am over
Speaker 2: the hump, so to speak. The syndicate gift of one
Speaker 2: thousand dollars is more than generous, and to say I'm
Speaker 2: appreciative expresses it mildly. I trust Nancy will go on
Speaker 2: for many years, and that she will vie with the
Speaker 2: Rover Boys in carving a lasting name for herself in
Speaker 2: popular fiction.
Speaker 1: Which Nancy Drew certainly did, but Mildred did not seek
Speaker 1: to make a name for herself as the writer of
Speaker 1: the beloved Teen Girl Detective, and thus no one could
Speaker 1: ever know about what she'd sacrificed to give them. Nancy Drew,
Speaker 1: that was the deal, and she knew it. She accepted it.
Speaker 1: So then why did she open up to Jeff. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's because, at that very human level, it must have
Speaker 1: been nice to have someone know what she'd done, what
Speaker 1: she'd given, to have someone come and thank her and
Speaker 1: tell her what she and her work meant to him.
Speaker 1: It must have felt like a small but meaningful reward
Speaker 1: for her labors. She got to see and feel for
Speaker 1: herself the impact her writing had on her readers. While
Speaker 1: Jeff was slowly uncovering the details of the woman behind
Speaker 1: Nancy Drew, the rest of the world was hearing a
Speaker 1: much different story. Back to that Saturday Review story that
Speaker 1: Jeff mentioned in the January twenty fifth, nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: issue of Saturday Review, and a story with the title
Speaker 1: The Secret of Nancy Drew, the writer purported that the
Speaker 1: quote grandmotherly lady end quote who penned the Nancy Drew
Speaker 1: mystery stories was Harriet Strathemier, and that she with the
Speaker 1: lightly mentioned help before ghostwriters, but mainly she had written
Speaker 1: the series dating back to nineteen thirty. That same story
Speaker 1: claim that in nineteen sixty nine, Harriet was about to
Speaker 1: complete her forty third Nancy Drew book. That was not
Speaker 1: exactly true. The number was true, but not the part
Speaker 1: about her completing the work. But who could question her
Speaker 1: version of events? The ghostwriter contracts made that near impossible. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: at this same time, the end of the sixties and
Speaker 1: the beginning of the seventies marked a renaissance for the
Speaker 1: teen girl detective. In the culture, Nancy Drew was highlighted
Speaker 1: as an early feminist icon and heroin for multiple generations
Speaker 1: of girls and women. And while the articles of the
Speaker 1: day did credit Harriet as the writer, there was some
Speaker 1: growing skepticism. For example, an article in the Chicago Tribune.
Speaker 1: It praised Harriet, but it also included this line that
Speaker 1: Harriet's secretary quote said she prefers not to answer the
Speaker 1: questions of whether her boss had written every book in
Speaker 1: the series end quote. The answer to that all important
Speaker 1: question was about to be revealed in a very public place,
Speaker 1: specifically in a courtroom.
Speaker 4: In New York.
Speaker 1: There had been early attempts to get at the truth
Speaker 1: of who is the real Caroline Keene In the first
Speaker 1: decade of Nancy Drew's existence. The trade publication Blusher's Weekly
Speaker 1: did the legwork. The subsequent story revealed the actual inner
Speaker 1: workings of the Stratmeier syndicate under Harriet's leadership. There was
Speaker 1: mention of ghostwriters. There was another article by Fortune magazine,
Speaker 1: and it was more of an expose, laying out in
Speaker 1: detail how Edward used uncredited writers to churn out book
Speaker 1: after book. The expose by Fortune provided the undeniable proof
Speaker 1: that no real Carolyn Keene existed, that Nancy Drew, The
Speaker 1: Hardy Boys and all the other book series were the
Speaker 1: product of a small cabal of ghostwriters, and Mildred was
Speaker 1: but one. This is another important fact. Mildred was not
Speaker 1: the only ghostwriter who penned Nancy Drew books, but she
Speaker 1: wrote the vast majority of them. Yet, in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: for reasons we perhaps can only assume, the Library of
Speaker 1: Congress credited another ghostwriter as the sole author behind the
Speaker 1: pseudonym Carolyn Keene, a man by the name of Walter Kerrig.
Speaker 1: He'd written just three Nancy Drew Mysteries. For many years after,
Speaker 1: this error was often repeated in the press. This confusion
Speaker 1: was particularly irritating to Harriet's Stratamire, and consequently it motivated
Speaker 1: her to erect barriers around the Stratamire Syndicate and its operations.
Speaker 1: As well, she labored to correct the record in her favor.
Speaker 1: Whenever she had the opportunity with the press, Harriet worked
Speaker 1: to construct a new narrative. The story she spun was that,
Speaker 1: despite any talk of ghostwriters, she was the real author
Speaker 1: of Nancy Drew stories. As the years marched on, newspapers
Speaker 1: and magazines began to exclusively tell Harriet's carefully curated story,
Speaker 1: the one where she was the real Carolyn Keene, and
Speaker 1: through it all, Mildred remained quiet. She didn't come forward
Speaker 1: to dispute the narrative at first, and for many years
Speaker 1: decades even things were good. The Nancy Drew books allowed
Speaker 1: the syndicate to survive the Depression, to thrive after, and
Speaker 1: to grow into the home of one of the most
Speaker 1: beloved American characters. As thanks for her hard work and
Speaker 1: her loyalty, Harriet was often generous with Mildred. For instance,
Speaker 1: she'd sent Mildred the extra money while her husband was ill,
Speaker 1: but gestures like that bonus were infrequent, and over time
Speaker 1: tensions crept into their relationship. The two women had developed
Speaker 1: vastly differing ideas of who Nancy Drew was, and as
Speaker 1: the years wore on, the tastes of the day changed,
Speaker 1: the styles and politics followed suit that divide between the
Speaker 1: women and their view of Nancy Drew only grew more obvious.
Speaker 1: Eventually it was as if they were talking about two
Speaker 1: different girls. In the end, it was Harriet who decided
Speaker 1: to cut ties. She and her sister Edna felt that
Speaker 1: Mildred had become argumentative and difficult. The sisters preferred to
Speaker 1: replace Mildred with someone who'd gladly accept the assignment and
Speaker 1: do as instructed and contracted without so much hassle, someone
Speaker 1: who'd likely do it for less money, and, as Harry
Speaker 1: it saw it, with far less headaches. Finally, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, she made it official. After two decades of
Speaker 1: working together and twenty three books, Harriet and her sister
Speaker 1: Edna decided to sever their professional relationship with Mildred when
Speaker 1: they replaced her. They never even wrote to tell her. Instead,
Speaker 1: they ghosted her. The irony is almost comical. Mildred turned
Speaker 1: her back on the Stratamire Syndicate. She went on with
Speaker 1: her life as a newspaper writer. There would be no
Speaker 1: more Nancy Drew for her. Yet, that small indignity and
Speaker 1: the bitter pill of Harriet taking credit for Mildred's work,
Speaker 1: those weren't the only insults that she had to endure.
Speaker 1: Around that same time. In the nineteen fifties, the Stratamire
Speaker 1: Syndicate began a series of revisions of the original Nancy
Speaker 1: Drew books. Times had changed, technologies had changed, Television was
Speaker 1: disrupting everything. Nancy Drew books needed to be updated to
Speaker 1: reflect this. One example, her age was up to eight team.
Speaker 1: Why because it allowed Nancy Drew to drive in all
Speaker 1: fifty states. This was just one of the many changes
Speaker 1: made to reflect the real world of the readers.
Speaker 7: They did need to make the books shorter.
Speaker 6: They were like these books now, you know, children are
Speaker 6: like watching television and a kind of like precursor to
Speaker 6: our current era, Like everything started moving faster and kids
Speaker 6: had less attention, and so the action has to happen
Speaker 6: much faster, Like we can't have these sort of wandering
Speaker 6: byways down.
Speaker 7: The dark road with the.
Speaker 6: Large spooky trees overhanging it as the rain begins, you know,
Speaker 6: and all that stuff, that atmospheric stuff that made the
Speaker 6: book so great.
Speaker 1: There were also the vast social changes developing in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, namely the civil rights movement and the sprouting
Speaker 1: seeds of feminism. These social changes also pushed the Stratumier
Speaker 1: Syndicate's revisions of some characters and scenes in the Nancy
Speaker 1: Drew books, especially the carecharacters, who were rendered as rather
Speaker 1: racist stereotypes of the times. Harriet had labored diligently to
Speaker 1: make Nancy Drew less independent and more like the new
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties ideas of femininity. It was Nancy Drew as
Speaker 1: a young June Cleaver.
Speaker 8: She made Nancy much more wishy, washy and like toned
Speaker 8: down because the readers could identify with a more wishy
Speaker 8: washy person and they could you know, make themselves, you know,
Speaker 8: fitting into that role.
Speaker 1: Harriet rewrote the series to her taste. Doing those revisions
Speaker 1: gave Harriet Stratemeyer the rare opportunity to try her hand
Speaker 1: at writing, while she also erased and forever changed the
Speaker 1: work of Mildred. This gave her more of a feeling
Speaker 1: that she'd actually written the books, since now technically she had,
Speaker 1: even if it was just a rewrite of the ghostwriter's words.
Speaker 8: First of all, she said that, well, her father had
Speaker 8: written the first three Nancy Drew books, and when he died,
Speaker 8: she had found them all and she revised them and
Speaker 8: sold them to the publisher. But then she changed the stories.
Speaker 8: Eventually she took credit for having written them all herself.
Speaker 1: If Harriet wanted to claim credit for the ghostwriter's work,
Speaker 1: there was little they could do to stop her. All
Speaker 1: Mildred could do was watch wordlessly as her beloved creation
Speaker 1: morphed into someone unrecognizable to her. But while Mildred couldn't
Speaker 1: say anything publicly, that certainly didn't stop Jeff. Harriet's claims
Speaker 1: on Mildred's legacy bothered him. He decided he'd do something
Speaker 1: about it. He wanted the rest of the world to
Speaker 1: know about his friend Mildred. To Jeff, this was an
Speaker 1: act of justice, just like something Nancy Drew would do.
Speaker 8: It just wasn't fair that somebody else was taking credit
Speaker 8: for somebody else's work. I just thought that, well, I
Speaker 8: have a mission, and I can do this.
Speaker 1: Jeff wrote articles, He wrote a journal paper. He pushed
Speaker 1: newspapers to dig into the story and discover the truth.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen seventies, the public narrative began to shift.
Speaker 1: One newspaper story carried the title quote the Artful ways
Speaker 1: of Millie Nancy Drew was her brainchild end quote. That
Speaker 1: story detailed how Mildred was quote afraid any publicity will
Speaker 1: get her in touch with Stradamerson.
Speaker 4: Close.
Speaker 1: Quote in that same article, Mildred confided.
Speaker 2: You say anything that hurts sales, and they'll be right
Speaker 2: on my neck.
Speaker 1: This ongoing correcting of the record was a similar motivation
Speaker 1: for Melanie Rayhack to write her book Girl Sleuth, Nancy
Speaker 1: Drew and the women who created her. She also wanted
Speaker 1: to put facts down on paper for all to see,
Speaker 1: so that they could make up their minds about who
Speaker 1: is the real Carolyn Keene. Eventually, as with all things,
Speaker 1: the truth would went out. Back when Melanie Rayhack first
Speaker 1: stepped inside the University of Iowa's library to pore over
Speaker 1: the archive of Mildred's papers, she'd come to track down
Speaker 1: a pioneering woman. What she disa discovered was not a mystery,
Speaker 1: but confirmation that Mildred was a badass of mid century America.
Speaker 6: All of Nancy's sort of intrepid intelligence comes from Mildred,
Speaker 6: and I think that's why Edward had her picked out
Speaker 6: to write the series.
Speaker 7: I mean he knew. He was like, this is what this.
Speaker 6: Character is supposed to be, and this is a person
Speaker 6: who is naturally going to be able to put that
Speaker 6: quality into her, you know, and all this sort of athletic.
Speaker 7: Stuff and the physical stuff.
Speaker 6: So Mildred was a diver, I mean, she was athletic,
Speaker 6: so she put all that stuff into Nancy too. You know,
Speaker 6: there's all kinds of like scrape where she's dumped out
Speaker 6: of a boat in the middle of the lake and
Speaker 6: she's swimming.
Speaker 7: They were thrilling for readers at the time.
Speaker 6: To see this teenage girl performing also these physical acts
Speaker 6: which now we think of as like, oh yeah, sure,
Speaker 6: swimming whatever, but you know, kind of a big deal.
Speaker 6: So Mildred brought all of that to Nancy.
Speaker 1: She had put her heart and soul into Nancy. And
Speaker 1: so over time, Harriet's rewrites would come to bother Mildred
Speaker 1: to Melanie. That tension between Harriet and Mildred's conceptions of
Speaker 1: Nancy Drew. It wasn't so easy to sort.
Speaker 6: Out I saw from both women's standpoints at that point, right.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think it's indisputable that Mildred really helped
Speaker 6: create her as the sort of iconic character that we
Speaker 6: all remember, and really put a lot of herself into
Speaker 6: the character. I think where I had a lot more
Speaker 6: sympathy for Harriet than I originally thought I would was that,
Speaker 6: you know, without her, we wouldn't have had Nancy Drew,
Speaker 6: like if they had not taken over the company, if
Speaker 6: they had just let it fall apart.
Speaker 1: Eventually, life did offer up a way to parse the
Speaker 1: two women's contributions and to determine who was responsible for
Speaker 1: the enduring popularity of Nancy Drew. In nineteen eighty, the
Speaker 1: Stratamier Syndicate decided to part ways with their long term publisher,
Speaker 1: across It and Dunlap. This action would drag the truth
Speaker 1: into the light of a courtroom for all to see.
Speaker 1: After Harry announced her plans to switch publishers to Simon
Speaker 1: and Schuster, Grossid and Dunlap came forward to protest the
Speaker 1: sale and sued them both for one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars. Grossid and Dunlap did not want to lose
Speaker 1: their golden goose, and they were willing to fight in
Speaker 1: court to prevent the sale. Their lawyers alleged that there
Speaker 1: were financial improprieties, for instance the royalties that should have
Speaker 1: been paid to the firm's many ghostwriters. To help make
Speaker 1: their case, Grosset and Dunlap flew in a very special witness, Mildred.
Speaker 1: She was set to testify about how she'd not received
Speaker 1: proper royalties from the syndicate, which ultimately was the sole
Speaker 1: credit she did receive for her work the money. The
Speaker 1: stage was now set. The two women would finally be
Speaker 1: face to face with a judge and jury to weigh
Speaker 1: the truth and decide their fates. At the time, Harriet
Speaker 1: was eighty seven years old and not in good health.
Speaker 1: Mildred was seventy four and still in fighting shape. Jeff
Speaker 1: was there too to support his friend.
Speaker 8: She was wearing a powder blue pantsuit and had a
Speaker 8: black shoulder bag. She had her handler with her, you know,
Speaker 8: somebody driving her around, whose name was Dick Molina. He
Speaker 8: was an attorney. And when we arrived, Harriet was already
Speaker 8: there and Dick Molina introduced Millie to Harriet.
Speaker 1: As Melanie Rayhak recorded in her book, when Harriet saw Mildred,
Speaker 1: she said to her, just one.
Speaker 7: Thing, Arthorn, you were dead.
Speaker 1: That's ice cold. That's cinema in fact. A moment like
Speaker 1: that is why fact will always beat fiction. Inside that
Speaker 1: New York courtroom, the two women met and through sworn testimony,
Speaker 1: they battled slyly, fighting over the legacy of Nancy Drew.
Speaker 1: Both women rose to the occasion.
Speaker 6: It's like they both have total transference. They both basically
Speaker 6: speak as though they are Nancy Drew, like I created Nancy.
Speaker 4: She is me.
Speaker 6: I mean, they're elderly by this point, and they're in
Speaker 6: this courtroom defending their rights to this character that they
Speaker 6: became involved with as young women.
Speaker 1: Mildred showed up at court dressed in Nancy Drew's iconic
Speaker 1: powder blue color. She attempted to make her points clear
Speaker 1: as she distinguished the two Nancys. And when she says,
Speaker 1: missus Adams, this is, of course, Harriet Strathmier Adams.
Speaker 2: My Nancy would not be Missus Adams. Nancy, Missus Adams,
Speaker 2: was an entirely different person. She was more cultured, and
Speaker 2: she was more refined. I was probably a rough and
Speaker 2: tumble newspaper person who had to earn a living, and
Speaker 2: I was out in the world. That was my type
Speaker 2: of Nancy. Nancy was making her way in life and
Speaker 2: trying to compete and have fun. We just had two
Speaker 2: different kinds of Nancies.
Speaker 1: Mildred took her a moment on the stand to claim
Speaker 1: her credit for herself.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm not angry at them. I don't resent anything.
Speaker 2: I think if there are misstatements of fact, they should
Speaker 2: be corrected, because when a statement is made wrong and
Speaker 2: is repeated over and over and over again, it becomes
Speaker 2: firmly entrenched in the mind of the reading public as truth.
Speaker 1: Mildred didn't come to court to fight over money from
Speaker 1: the sale of the company. Nope. She just wanted the
Speaker 1: world to know she had given them Nancy Drew. Mildred
Speaker 1: wanted the truth to be known. When Harriet Stratamier took
Speaker 1: the witness stand in the trial, she made quite a scene.
Speaker 1: She testified for five days. At one point she got
Speaker 1: so worked up she even fell out of her chair
Speaker 1: and out of the witness.
Speaker 4: Stand order in the court.
Speaker 1: But through it all she stuck to her story.
Speaker 8: A friend of mine who was the head of Juvenile
Speaker 8: Literature division at the Library of Congress. At one point
Speaker 8: she said of Harriet, she's gone off with the fairies.
Speaker 8: I mean, she was believing her own hype that she
Speaker 8: had written all these books herself.
Speaker 1: Hearing the account of the courtroom scenes, it feels like
Speaker 1: poetic justice from Mildred and the other ghostwriters. The enduring
Speaker 1: mystery was finally revealed and confirmed in a courtroom. Nancy
Speaker 1: Drew had been written by Mildred and other ghostwriters based
Speaker 1: off of outlines supplied first by Edward Stratemeyer and later
Speaker 1: his daughter Harriet, who'd also revised the books after they'd
Speaker 1: been published. Outside the courtroom, it felt like Mildred had won.
Speaker 1: The truth was now on the public record. People would
Speaker 1: know Mildred had written the books that first made them
Speaker 1: fall in love with Nancy Drew, while Harriet had merely
Speaker 1: rewritten them. However, inside the courtroom it was Harriet and
Speaker 1: Simon and Schuster who won the lawsuit. The sale of
Speaker 1: the book rights could go forward, and the publisher did
Speaker 1: not have to pay Grosset and Dunlap for any of
Speaker 1: the ghostwriters any additional money. Sometimes justice and truth are
Speaker 1: not the same thing as any good mystery writer will
Speaker 1: tell you. So what was it like for Jeff to
Speaker 1: witness his friend Mildred finally be acknowledged.
Speaker 8: Well, let's just say I'm very proud, because it was
Speaker 8: so important for her to get, you know, the fair
Speaker 8: credits that she deserved for so much. We were, you know,
Speaker 8: without being related, We were really family and we had
Speaker 8: the most gotten Going to start cheering up, we had
Speaker 8: the most wonderful, loving relationship that was unlike any that
Speaker 8: I had had with anybody.
Speaker 1: For Melanie Rayhak, she also got to come full circle
Speaker 1: emotionally as well. In writing her book on Nancy and
Speaker 1: the women who created her. She got to live as
Speaker 1: an amateur literary detective inspired by her girlhood hero as
Speaker 1: she chased down a real life mystery. It made her
Speaker 1: feel more connected to the women at the heart of
Speaker 1: this story, both women.
Speaker 6: Writing this book gave me really a new appreciation of
Speaker 6: what all the generations of women who came before me.
Speaker 7: Had gone through.
Speaker 6: That I can do what I do in all kinds
Speaker 6: of ways as a parent and as a writer just
Speaker 6: made me very It made me very grateful in a
Speaker 6: way that I had not been. There's a lot of
Speaker 6: warring in the Nancy Drew world, and people tend to
Speaker 6: take a side are you. Are you on the Mildred
Speaker 6: side or the Harriet side? And I think where I
Speaker 6: tried to land and my book is in the middle.
Speaker 6: That it's important to recognize what each of them did,
Speaker 6: which was not the same thing, but equally valuable or
Speaker 6: equally necessary, because without them we wouldn't have her.
Speaker 1: Eventually, even Mildred grew a little sick of all the
Speaker 1: attention on her and the teen girl detective. As The
Speaker 1: New York Times quoted in her obituary, she'd once told
Speaker 1: a Times report her quote.
Speaker 2: I'm so sick of Nancy Drew i could vomit.
Speaker 1: Which this seems sensible considering all that she'd been through
Speaker 1: over the decades. In the end, though, we'll give Mildred
Speaker 1: the final word on Nancy Drew a kinder word. Mildred
Speaker 1: once told the San Francisco newspaper that while Nancy Drew
Speaker 1: may have seemed a lot like Mildred, it was actually
Speaker 1: the reverse quote.
Speaker 2: I didn't consciously make her like myself. I made her
Speaker 2: good looking, smart and a perfectionist. I made her a
Speaker 2: concept of the girl I'd like to be.
Speaker 4: So, Zaren Dana.
Speaker 5: There were certain book series that I was introduced to
Speaker 5: as a kid that now I know we're part of
Speaker 5: the Stratameier syndicate.
Speaker 4: The Bobbsey Twins.
Speaker 5: The Happy Hollisters, Pardy Boys, Yeah, the Hardy Boys, and
Speaker 5: Nancy Drew though, have somehow remained in the zeitgeist far.
Speaker 4: Longer than all these other ones.
Speaker 3: What do you think is it about Nancy Drew that
Speaker 3: people keep coming back to?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, having just you know, done all this
Speaker 1: research about her and her appeal and listening to a
Speaker 1: lot of people have like formed their opinions about it.
Speaker 1: There is this irresistible qualit about a girl who is defying,
Speaker 1: not you know, like in an aggressive way, but just
Speaker 1: defying all of the expectations of her time period, in
Speaker 1: particular of girlhood. And so she's just out there being adventurous.
Speaker 1: She's carrying guns, she's driving her own car. She's just
Speaker 1: like downright cool, but not in an attitude per se,
Speaker 1: but in her actions, you know, and everybody was just
Speaker 1: so impressed with her. You're just like, I want to
Speaker 1: be like that girl.
Speaker 3: I love a mystery book. I read a lot of
Speaker 3: mystery which is why it's so baffling that I skipped
Speaker 3: over Nancy Dry For some reason, I loved when I
Speaker 3: was a kid, cam Jansen, did you ever read those books?
Speaker 3: This is like our generational divide. It was a girl,
Speaker 3: like a very plucky girl, solving mysteries because she had
Speaker 3: a photographic memory. Ooh, I love it, which I'm like,
Speaker 3: give us that you know network for ce Durrel.
Speaker 5: I can remember being in fifth grade. We had something
Speaker 5: called the book chain, where anytime you read a book
Speaker 5: you got to write the name of the book and
Speaker 5: the author, make a little construction paper.
Speaker 4: Ring and put it on the chain.
Speaker 5: And we came back from from probably Christmas break, and
Speaker 5: I'd read nine Nancy Drew and Nancy Drew Slash Hardy
Speaker 5: Boys and Hardy Boys books like this was my wheelhouse
Speaker 5: for a while. I was so proud, like I was
Speaker 5: going to walk in here with so much construction paper.
Speaker 4: It was going to be like an art class me
Speaker 4: cutting this up.
Speaker 5: And I made all my nine rings and I went
Speaker 5: to put them on the chain. My teacher said, Jason,
Speaker 5: you really need to diversify your reading. She was a
Speaker 5: spot on, totally right, but that stuck with me. Like,
Speaker 5: all right, don't get too cocky walking into these reading competitions.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this summer reading competition. If you read
Speaker 1: so much, I'm sure you guys are both readers like
Speaker 1: I was, where you would come back to people like
Speaker 1: the teacher, the librarian and they would not believe your list.
Speaker 1: They're like, come on, did you really read all these books?
Speaker 3: I was one of those kids. I was like the
Speaker 3: annoying kid. He threw off the reading curve totally.
Speaker 4: It worked. Look where it got you today.
Speaker 5: Casting, No, you don't know if this could be a
Speaker 5: movie's Aaron, what do you got?
Speaker 1: Okay? I thought about this one right, and I did
Speaker 1: it two ways. I thought modern casting and then timeless casting. Right,
Speaker 1: So modern casting, imagine Mildred wort Is played by Kathy
Speaker 1: Bates and Harriet Stratamyer Adams She's played by Jane Fonda,
Speaker 1: and then you have Edward Stratamyer played by Paul Giamatti.
Speaker 1: Now timeless casting.
Speaker 3: Right, Paul Giamatti, As.
Speaker 1: I know, I struggled on that one. I'll freely admit it.
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know, but I just kind
Speaker 1: of liked he had like an honesty and like when
Speaker 1: he played John Adams. He has this decency that just
Speaker 1: emotes from him. But either way, I may not be
Speaker 1: spot on in that call. But say, for timeless one
Speaker 1: Mildred Wort, how about Shirley Maclain, Harriet Stratamyer Adams as
Speaker 1: Catherine Hepburn, and Edward Stratimyer as Claude Rains.
Speaker 4: Oh how's that?
Speaker 3: I mean, you're really good at this.
Speaker 5: This is just your segment from now because no one
Speaker 5: can compete with this.
Speaker 4: I love the Giamati.
Speaker 5: You could have a big, big name actor there who
Speaker 5: dies in the first ten minutes and then.
Speaker 3: Yeah it is you gotta have someone with integrity, someone
Speaker 3: with some real gravitas.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's because it feels like he's a decent guy.
Speaker 1: You don't want him to seem like just like a businessman,
Speaker 1: you know. So, yeah, did you guys have a very
Speaker 1: special character from this one? Did anyone jump out for you?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: I like Jeff Lapan, the amateur detective.
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I love an amateur detective showing up
Speaker 3: in a Nancy Jerry story the right.
Speaker 1: How about also as writers, I want for every writer
Speaker 1: for them to have a like, basically a champion, like
Speaker 1: Jeff who just goes out there and defends them, defends
Speaker 1: their work, fights the publishing industry. I think, especially women
Speaker 1: writers in particular, I think they all deserve at least
Speaker 1: one Jeffrey Laypan.
Speaker 5: One of the things that keeps coming up again and
Speaker 5: again on these episodes, even episodes that have very little
Speaker 5: to do with each other topics, is the idea of
Speaker 5: people's motivations, like why what was so important for Jeff
Speaker 5: to get involved in this story? And we see this
Speaker 5: in earlier episodes with the people trying to recapture the
Speaker 5: moon rocks and the people trying to prove the Pledge
Speaker 5: of Allegiance is not written by who you think it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that's just what life is. Find your thing,
Speaker 4: go be obsessed with something.
Speaker 5: I don't know what it's going to be for the
Speaker 5: three of us, but we will find it by the
Speaker 5: end of the series and let those enrich us.
Speaker 3: So I mentioned it at the start of the show,
Speaker 3: but the team here at Very Special Episodes is celebrating
Speaker 3: International Women's Day this week, and so if you're looking
Speaker 3: for more programming honoring the incredible women at the network
Speaker 3: and worldwide, head over to iHeart Podcasts. International Women's Day
Speaker 3: feed by searching Women take the Mic. Wherever you look
Speaker 3: for podcasts, We're featured along shows like The Psychology of
Speaker 3: Your Twenties, Dear Chelsea, Therapy for Black Girls. So if
Speaker 3: any of those sound good, that's Women take the Mic
Speaker 3: on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 5: Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 5: This episode was written by Zarn Burnett. Our producer, editor
Speaker 5: and sound designer is Josh Fisher. Our story editor is
Speaker 5: Marissa Brown. Additional editing and sound design by Jonathan Washington,
Speaker 5: Mixing and mastering by Beheid Fraser. Original music by Elise McCoy.
Speaker 5: Research and fact checking by Jocelyn Sears, Austin Thompson, Marissa Brown,
Speaker 5: and Zaren Burnett. Show logo by Lucy Quintonia. Very Special
Speaker 5: Episodes is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnette, and me
Speaker 5: Jason English. I am your executive producer and we'll see
Speaker 5: you back here next Wednesday. Special Thanks to Julia Weaver,
Speaker 5: Ali Perry, Laura Tropiano and Carry Lieberman for including Very
Speaker 5: Special Episodes and the International Women's Day festivities. Very Special
Speaker 5: Episodes is a production of iHeart podcasts,