Interview: February 13, 2015

Michael Callahan is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a former deputy editor at Town & Country and Marie Claire. His knowledge of style and culture certainly comes in handy in his debut novel, SEARCHING FOR GRACE KELLY. It’s the story of three young ladies --- all staying at the glamorous Barbizon Hotel in 1950s New York --- who embark on a journey of self-discovery that will take them from the penthouse salons of Park Avenue to the Beat scene of Greenwich Village to Atlantic City’s Steel Pier. In this interview with 20SomethingReads.com’s Rebecca Munro, Michael talks in stunning detail about the world that these women inhabited, as well as what drew him to the Barbizon Hotel in the first place. He also considers the timeless allure of a “bad girl,” how he created well-rounded characters out of tried-and-true archetypes, and what he thinks is the modern version of the Barbizon experience (hint: It’s not nearly as glamorous!).

The Book Report Network: How did you first learn of the Barbizon Hotel, and why did it make such an impression on you?

Michael Callahan: I write a lot of magazine “retrospectives,” stories about things in the past and why they still matter now. I wrote one in 2006 about the 50th anniversary of Grace Kelly’s wedding to Prince Rainier for Philadelphia magazine, and in researching it found out that Grace had lived at the Barbizon Hotel for Women for two years in the late ‘40s. It got me wondering who else had lived there.

TBRN: This book originated from a piece in Vanity Fair. How did that piece come about?

MC: When I started to dig into the Barbizon’s history, I unearthed a treasure trove of amazing women who had lived there before they were famous: some for just a few days, others for years. But the fact remained that the hotel was a crossroads for many glamorous women of the 20th century. I pitched a story about that to Vanity Fair, which they assigned and then published in 2010.

TBRN: How did you conduct your research for SEARCHING FOR GRACE KELLY?

MC: Well, I had already written the story about the Barbizon, so I felt I knew life inside the hotel inside and out. Assembling the rest—what the girls wore in 1955, where they went, what movies were big, what shops were open --- was going to be trickier. The smartest thing I did was to hire a freelance researcher, Christine Wei, to help me. We sort of split up the research and then went through as many archives and old dusty books and spools of microfiche as we could find. It was sort of like gathering up as many puzzle pieces as you can before you glue them together to make a cohesive picture. Christine was amazing. I could not have done this without her.

TBRN: The character of Laura Dixon is so ambitious and strong-willed, but still very childish at times as a result of her sheltered upbringing. Do you feel this was typical of the women of the times?

MC: It was certainly typical of the women who ended up at the Barbizon. In a way, it was the landing pad for the daughters of the original helicopter parents. Affluent families whose daughters wanted to go to New York, either to study or model or simply experience it, were frightened out of their wits to have the girls roaming Manhattan unattended. The Barbizon was sort of a chic convent, with strict rules of dress and conduct, and --- most important to parents --- a fanatical policy about male visitors. It was very, very difficult to sneak a guy into your room there. Though of course the craftier girls --- the Vivians of the world --- always managed to find a way to do it. But for every girl who bristled at the stifling rules, there was another who was scared of the city and who found it intimidating. Many girls came a few months and then rushed to the phones, crying to their mothers to come get them.

TBRN: Among Laura, Dolly and Vivian, it seems like every reader will have a favorite Barbizon girl. Was there one that was a favorite for you to write?

MC: I get asked this a lot, and it’s an interesting question. There are traits in each I identify with, and traits in each that are completely foreign to me personally. But Laura’s desires to break out of her parochial family expectations and to be a writer were certainly identical to my own, even if my own family was far different. Vivian’s saucy rejoinders are not unlike my own --- especially if I’ve had a cocktail. And Dolly’s tragic history of romance and indulgence in comfort food to ease the pain are, alas, familiar. I don’t have one favorite among them, though. It would be like picking one of your children.

TBRN: Though the character of Pete is less sophisticated than Laura's other suitor, Box Barnes, he alone succeeds in drawing out the writer in her. What did you like most about writing these scenes dealing with writing?

MC: Oh, those were such fun. I have such fondness for Atlantic City in that period --- in fact, my next novel is set there --- and that scene where Pete forces Laura to close her eyes and “write” the Boardwalk was one of my favorites. I wanted to convey what writing can mean to a person, which I think is especially poignant today, when publishing is going through such a dramatic shift in the digital age. But we’ll always need storytellers. And I loved being able to get in that anecdote about John W. Hallahan High School in Philadelphia. It’s my mother’s alma mater. She’s the one who told me those stories about “Will the girl…” It felt special to be able to put something in the book that was a shared memory of ours. 

TBRN: Although the novel takes place in a different time period, you leave readers with a great window into the publishing world. Contrast Laura’s journey with what people encounter today. While Mademoiselle’s program ended in the late ’70s or early ’80s, has anything replaced it?

MC: I think publishing is going through today what horse breeding did after Henry Ford invented the automobile. Transportation was never the same. Neither will publishing be, after the invention of the Internet, and, just as important, the smart phone. I grew up on print and in it, so it pains me deeply to see it disappearing. There is just something very special to me about picking up a book or a magazine and holding it in your hands and experiencing it. But change is inevitable. Today, a young person who wants to be a writer needs to also have social media skills, video skills, Photoshop skills. Everything now is about being interactive. And yes, while Mademoiselle and its “college editors” are gone, there are still great programs for young people. The American Society of Magazine Editors offers a terrific internship program every summer.  

TBRN: The character of Vivian barges right into the narrative and takes a firm grip on the reader's attention. Is she based on anyone in particular, or a collection of people?

MC: This is going to sound ludicrous, but I always pictured Vivian a bit like Jessica Rabbit. Vivian was sort of my homage to those great femme fatales of midcentury film noir, like Bacall or Veronica Lake or Lizabeth Scott, who just died. I think there is always something seductive about the bad girl, whether she’s Betty Anderson in PEYTON PLACE or Betty Rizzo in Grease. Because we’re always wondering what’s going on underneath all of the sass, just who the woman is under all of that emotional armor.

TBRN: Although Laura’s mother, Marmy, appears only briefly in the novel, she makes quite an impression as the overbearing Connecticut mother. Did you enjoy poking a bit of fun at her?

MC: Well, she’s an archetype, no doubt, sort of like Donna Mitchell, who played Betty Warren’s mother with such icy flair in 2003’s Mona Lisa Smile. But in meeting these sorts of women throughout my career, I was always struck by how lethal they can be --- bloodless assassins in gloves and pearls. I needed a talisman to exemplify what these girls were often pushing back against in the 1950s. Marmy was perfect for that. 

TBRN: I'll be the first to admit that I was charmed by Box, even when I was expecting him to be a womanizing playboy. Was it difficult to balance his two sides?

MC: I didn’t want Box to simply be this cad. That was too easy. I think hopefully what the story does bring out is that he is at war with himself. He has settled into this role as the heir living this life of louche glamour, but he also has a part of him who, as he tells his mother, wants to be a better person. I think it made him more well-rounded as a character.

TBRN: Characters get in a writer’s head. What do you think happens to Laura? Does she achieve success as a writer?

MC: Ah. You know, I haven’t really thought about this much, to be honest. I mean, the storybook ending would be she and Pete get married, both become great writers, get an apartment in Greenwich Village and go on road trips and have lovely kids. But in truth I suspect that is not what really would have happened. For all of her desire to elbow out of her gilded cage, Laura knows little else. Somehow I suspect she would have ended up married to a lawyer or banker. But I really have no idea. Her life was clearly headed to a crossroads.  

TBRN: You did a terrific job of name-dropping famous characters from the ’50s without making the writing feel forced. Have you always been interested in the time period? Or is it a new fascination?

MC: Growing up as a teenager I was forever looking at old family pictures of my mother and aunts and uncles, who all got married in the 1950s. I mean, my family had no money, but still everyone looked terrific and stylish. I loved reading books like PEYTON PLACE and THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, and watching movies like Written on the Wind and Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows. They were just these tremendous soap operas done with such élan. I think a lot of people are wistful for that elegance and panache, which is why everyone is gnashing their teeth at the impending end of “Mad Men.” There was a lot wrong with life in the ’50s. But in terms of style and glamour, there was a lot right.

TBRN: The character of Vivian's boyfriend, Nicola, seems suspicious at first, but soon becomes a dark force in the girl’s life. Was it difficult to write some of his more graphic scenes? It was disturbing to see that such violence could affect someone as strong as Vivian.

MC: Well, I needed some way to convey that it wasn’t all champagne and hatboxes for these girls. And I also felt very strongly that I did not want Vivian victimized in a traditional way --- that she made choices, and some of them were foolish, and that there was a cost to that. That even girls who were sophisticated and street smart could found themselves cornered. Which was a reflection of how limited choices were for women of that era.

TBRN: How many of the secondary places, such as the bars, nightclubs and shops the girls frequent, are real? Was it fun researching old menus and prices?

MC: Almost every place in the book is a real place that existed in 1955, from the theaters to the nightclubs to the churches to the stores to the restaurants. It was so fun to go through all of those old menus and advertisements. It was really important to me to try and establish as much authenticity as possible to the narrative. The Barnes & Foster department store and MacDougal Books & Letters are the only two places that are fictional, though their locations are not.

TBRN: What do you think is a modern version of the Barbizon experience?

MC: Probably going away to college comes closest, especially if you are going away to an urban campus, like at Penn or the University of Miami or Chicago, where the delights of exploring a new city and everything in it are there for the taking. But I think there are very few avenues left where young people are thrown into living situations with others who come from radically different backgrounds and economic strata. We’ve become pretty Balkanized as a society. The girls being photographed for Vogue and the girls studying stenography are not living in the same buildings anymore.