So, perhaps it’s no surprise that her debut novel combines the best of both worlds.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Where did the idea for this story start?
MAUREEN LEE LENKER:Actually, it’s a funny story.
‘It Happened One Fight’ by Maureen Lee Lenker.Jenifer Prince/Sourcebooks Casablanca
The idea for this book came froman EW interview I did back in summer 2018.
I just got this idea, like, what if that was real?
What if two movie stars got married for real, accidentally on a set?
Author and EW senior writer Maureen Lee Lenker.Ariel Barber
And I’m a huge fan of classic Hollywood.
I know you’ve long had a fascination with old Hollywood.
What kind of research did you do to immerse yourself in this time period?
I’ve been a classic film fan for forever.
I wasn’t allowed to watch PG-13 movies until I was 13 and R until I was 17.
So that left unrated black and white movies and Disney films.
I read biographies of Gable and Crawford to help me flesh out ideas for backstory and motivation.
Hopefully, people who are fans of the period will have fun picking those out.
The biggest area I had to do research in was Reno.
I basically knew that as a concept inThe Women,but that was my only understanding of it.
They had all these divorce ranches, too.
You could go and stay in town in a hotel for six weeks or find an apartment.
Then, after six weeks, they would get their divorce and go home.
So, I did a lot of research into that.
Clark Gable actually spent some time on one of the famous ones in the late ’40s, I think.
You watch a lot of classic Hollywood films, and everyone talks about going to Reno for their divorce.
It’s such a fascinating part of American history.
Yeah, and it’s a weird little town because it’s a very transient population.
There are all these people coming in for six weeks, in and out.
I just delved a lot into that and into all the crazy traditions of that period.
[Laughs]
You mentioned being strongly influenced by Joan Crawford and Clark Gable.
What were some of the other influences you were thinking about?
They were constantly fighting with the studio heads for better projects and to be taken seriously as actresses.
Honestly, I feel like that’s something we’ve lost culturally, a little bit.
So that was my starting point for my heroine.
Oh, and my villain is a gossip reporter, who’s based on Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons.
Yeah, I have thought about that a lot.
That’s the thing: Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper were horrible human beings who did really unforgivable things.
They supported the Hollywood Blacklist.
They ruined people’s lives.
So they’re excellent fodder for a villain in a story because they were not good people.
How did that shape your approach to this book?
I just love reading it and studying it and talking about it.
In terms of the classic Hollywood stuff, that’s just my catnip.
And like you said, there were so many extraordinary women who helped shape Hollywood in the 1930s.
Once film became a business proposition and a money-making entity, women were basically edged out.
Although I will definitely say that there is nothing harder than knowing you have to be funny.
But once I found Joan and Dash’s voices, the banter came very easily between them.
I also definitely cribbed some turns of phrase from some films I watched.
So I wrote that down because I was like, “That’s such a good line.
I could never come up with that.”
[Laughs]
But immersing myself in the films of that era was really helpful.
