KALAMAZOO GAZETTE
SUNDAY, JULY 21, 2013 G5
Books WRITTEN FROM THE MITTEN
‘Whistle Stop’ turned heads
Grass Lake’s Maritta Wolff gained notoriety by depicting ‘seamy side of life’ Editor’s note: This is part of a series this summer on Michigan-connected authors and where to learn more about them.
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Learn more about Maritta Wolff
§ Visit the Grass Lake Depot or “whistle stop,” 210 E. Michigan Ave., Grass Lake, 517-522-4384. § The Grass Lake Heritage Day Festival is Sept. 7. § Rent the movie, “Whistle Stop,” starring George Raft and Ava Gardner
BY DAVE AND JACK DEMPSEY FOR MLIVE.COM
Maritta Wolff, born in Grass Lake, (1918-2002)
M
any writers, frustrated with slow progress on their work, put it on ice for a while. But Grass Lake native Maritta Wolff might be the only author who ever put hers on ice for three decades — and got a favorable New York Times review when the manuscript finally, metaphorically, thawed. Although almost forgotten today, Wolff was a sensation as a young author. Critics termed her early novels vulgar and sordid — and they sold like crazy. Born on Christmas Day, 1918, Wolff was the daughter of a young local woman and a newspaper/novelist father. Her childhood was lonely, Wolff later recalled. She said she “seldom played with other children” and attended a oneroom rural school. “It would be nice if I could say I walked two miles to school every day, but if I remember correctly, it was only half a mile that I walked.” Wolff enrolled at the University of Michigan after graduation from high school. An English major, she produced an 830-page manuscript for a composition class. It captured the university’s 1940 Avery Hopwood Prize for writing. It also caught a publisher’s eye, and in a 450-page redraft, became a 1941 blockbuster. “Whistle Stop” is a story of what today would be called the dysfunctional Veech family, who live in a small town resembling Grass Lake, a whistle stop on the rail line connecting Jackson and Detroit. The book takes on alcoholism, infidelity, incest, dementia and sociopathy. The book shocked critics and intrigued readers because of its subject matter and the age of its author. This 23-year-old had somehow acquired penetrating insight into the complexities of the human character. She
COURTESY
Shown is a poster from the film “Whistle Stop,” based on the book by Grass Lake native Maritta Wolff. The film starred George Raft and Ava Gardner.
This historic photo shows the whistle stop in Grass Lake, where author Maritta Wolff lived. She used the small town as a setting for her first book, “Whistle Stop,” shown at right.
rendered dialogue so realistically and faithfully that one reviewer called it “scientifically exact.” The result charmed author Sinclair Lewis, also a chronicler of the depths beneath small-town Midwestern life, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Commenting on “Whistle Stop,” he tagged Wolff as a writer to watch, saying she “writes the seamy side of life with glittering skill and a brutal, brawling, turbulent sense of character and human drama.” He called the book the most important novel of the year.
Local reaction
The Grass Lake community didn’t know what to do with its young celebrity. Some kept her at arm’s length, suspicious that Wolff was mocking its people and way of life. There was no doubt, however, that she was
describing their town — its two church spires, the water tower, the old road bed over which the interurban passed on its way through the village on its way between Jackson and Detroit, its weedy lake at the outskirts, and Wednesday night band concerts on the main street. The Grass Lake News noted the unease but came down on the side of the author. While noting that some local residents “have been slow to place their stamp of approval” on “Whistle Stop,” the newspaper was pleased the small town was getting national advertising. “Whether we place our approval on the book or not, the fact remains that Miss Wolff has written a story — a modern story in the accepted modern style — which is the sensation of the nation.” Wolff’s second novel, “Night Shift,” followed in 1942. A New York Times review
praised the book’s description and dialogue of automobilebumper plant workers, taxi drivers, greasy-spoon waitresses and “beautiful dumb women and beautiful smart ones who haunt small-time night clubs.” The setting of “Night Shift” is a mid-sized industrial town like the Jackson of the early 1940s. Like “Whistle Stop,” it became fodder for a B-movie. The adulteration of her novels contributed to her jaundiced view of Hollywood, expressed in her 1962 novel, “The Big Nickelodeon.” In the 1950s, Wolff moved to the Los Angeles area. She published four novels after “Night Shift,” then apparently fell silent the rest of her life before passing away in 2002. But the story was not so simple. Tucked away in her Los Angeles kitchen refrigerator was a manuscript she had completed
in the early 1970s, but never published. Apparently miffed that a publisher had rejected the work, she had stuffed it away but apparently not given up all hope. A refrigerator was one place where her manuscript would survive a house fire. Her family took the manuscript to Scribner, which published it in 2005 as “Sudden Rain.” Prominent critics took notice of the posthumous novel. Janet Maslin, of the New York Times, said the novel preserved a cultural Pompeii of American life “flawlessly in literary lava.” In her eighth decade, Maritta Wolff made one of her few pilgrimages to the town of her youth. The occasion was the 1992 dedication of the restored railroad depot that had helped make Grass Lake “a whistle stop.” By that time, with her initial novel out of print and difficult to find, the city’s leaders might have been unaware that the book illuminated the dark side of Grass Lake’s people and ways. Wolff rode among locals on an Amtrak train from Ann Arbor that made a special stop in Grass Lake to commemorate the depot’s rededication. Dave Dempsey is an environmental consultant and a Michigan Notable Book Award winner for his biography of Gov. William G. Milliken. His brother, Jack Dempsey, is an attorney, historian and author of “Michigan and the Civil War, ” which won a Michigan Notable Book Award. The above article is adapted from “Ink Trails: Michigan’s Famous and Forgotten Authors, ” published by Michigan State University Press. The book details the lives of more than 19 Michigan authors and showcases sites where they worked and lived — and which you can visit as you tour Michigan.
Filmmaker’s wit enlivens ‘My Lunches with Orson’ Orson Welles would enter the trendy Los Angeles restaurant Ma Maison through the kitchen, thus avoiding being seen arriving by wheelchair. His girth as wide as his talent, the director of 1941’s “Citizen Kane” sat in a mammoth restaurant chair with his toy poodle, Kiki. Eager for almost any kind of work in the early 1980s, the one-time boy wonder behind the film regularly declared the greatest ever made had become a living symbol of how Hollywood could abandon its geniuses. For years, the writer and director Henry Jaglom joined Welles at Ma Maison nearly every week. He was Welles’ unofficial agent and representative, trying to get his friend’s movie projects off the ground. Over lunch, they discussed practically anything — Welles’ weight was out of bounds — and Welles offered seemingly unguarded observations, at times humorous and profane, in spite of the presence of a tape recorder. On actors: “English actors are more modest than Americans, because they’ve never had (“method” acting teacher) Lee Strasberg to teach ’em
“My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles” was edited by Peter Biskind.
THE JACKET
BY DOUGLASS K. DANIEL THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
‘My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles’ Author: Peter Biskind Publisher: Metropolitan Books Pages: 320 Price: $28
AP | METROPOLITAN BOOKS
rule
that they know better than the director.” On gossip columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper: “You don’t know the power those two cows had in this town! People opened the paper, ignoring Hitler and everything else, and turned right to Louella and Hedda.” On the Irish: “They hate themselves. I lived for years in Ireland. The majority of intelligent Irishmen dislike Irishmen, and they’re right.” Decades after Welles’ death in 1985, author Peter Biskind presents the transcripts from those recorded lunches. Welles appears uncensored — and it’s not a pretty sight. Fascinating, amusing and eye-opening, to be sure, but “My Lunches with Orson” is
yet more evidence that one of the wonderful minds of theater and film was in a creative death spiral in his final years. Not that Welles didn’t have ideas, but he couldn’t find backers for them — and that was a dark weight on his mind. Lightening up their chats are his tart appraisals of stars such as Laurence Olivier (“seriously stupid”), Norma Shearer
(“one of the most minimally talented ladies ever to appear on the silver screen”), Humphrey Bogart (“both a coward and a very bad fighter”), Spencer Tracy (“I hate him so ... he’s one of those bitchy Irishmen”) and Joan Fontaine (“just a plain old bad actor ... she’s got four readings, and two expressions, and that’s it”). He has praise for many
others, including Clark Gable (not bright but “terribly nice”) and Carole Lombard (“I adored her”). Although he appeared memorably in movies such as “The Third Man” and “Touch of Evil,” Welles considers his own acting an amateur pursuit. Welles’ taste in movies can be surprising. Among his many dislikes are the American films of Alfred Hitchcock, whom he considered burdened by egotism and laziness. Of “Rear Window,” one of Hitchcock’s most popular films, he says, “Everything is stupid about it.” Worse, he adds, is “Vertigo.” Fortunately for his sake, Welles did not live to see “Vertigo” replace “Citizen Kane” last year as the best film ever in the decennial Sight & Sound poll of film critics. In a lean and lively essay, Biskind captures the essence of Welles and the conundrum posed by his artistic ups and downs. The star of this engaging book, as he was in nearly everything he did, remains Welles. Like Falstaff, a character he loved to play, he is witty and vain — and, in the end, a tragic figure. Douglass K. Daniel is the author of “Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks” (University of Wisconsin Press).
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