Elizabeth Crowens - Round Up the Unusual Suspects

In this episode, host Terry Shepherd welcomes award-winning author Elizabeth Crowens to discuss her latest novel, Round Up the Unusual Suspects. This exciting release is the third book in her classic Hollywood mystery series. The story transports readers back to 1942, where a stagehand is murdered on a Warner Brothers soundstage during the filming of the iconic movie Casablanca. Studio chief Jack L. Warner enlists the help of private investigators Babs Norman and Guy Brandt to solve the case and keep the cameras rolling.

What to Expect in This Episode

Elizabeth dives deep into the fascinating blend of fiction and real-life history that shapes her books. Here are some of the highlights from their conversation:

• The Origins of the Detectives: Crowens explains the backstory of her fictional private investigators, Babs Norman and Guy Brandt.
• A Unique Meet-Cute: The sleuthing duo originally met as out-of-work actors. They bonded while eating stolen, discarded food during a picnic in a Hollywood cemetery.
• Wartime Hollywood History: The interview explores the very real underground Nazi movements that threatened studio heads in Los Angeles.
• Real-Life Heroes: Listeners will learn about Leon Lewis. He was a real-life attorney who built an underground spy network to fight fascist organizations.
• Movie Magic Secrets: Listeners will discover how wartime rationing led to recycled movie sets. Crowens also explains why the famous foggy airplane scene used a cheap balsa wood plane, little people as mechanics, and forced perspective.
• The Writing Process: Elizabeth shares her unique "plotzing" method. She reveals how she chose the novel's killer by tossing character index cards into the air.
• Relevant Social Themes: The episode touches on how the book addresses the 1942 Japanese internment mandate. Crowens notes the parallels between this historical event and modern social issues regarding immigration.

About the Guest

Elizabeth Crowens boasts a career spanning over twenty-five years in the New York and Los Angeles entertainment industries. In addition to her Hollywood mysteries, she is also highly regarded for her Time Travel Professor sci-fi series.

To learn more about Elizabeth and her books, visit her website at elizabethcrowens.com.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:35

In conversation with Terry Shepard, award-winning broadcaster, narrator, and author. A deep dive into the writer's craft with the artists and support systems who create the stories we love.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Today's guest takes us behind the gates of wartime Hollywood, where glamour, propaganda, forbidden romance, and murder collide on the set of one of the most beloved films ever made. Elizabeth Crowens is an award-winning author whose career has spanned more than 25 years in the entertainment industries of New York and Los Angeles. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Black Belt, Black Gate, and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, as well as the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthology, A New York State of Fright. Her many honors include Agatha and Lefty Award nominations, an Eric Hofer First Prize, and multiple Santa Clare Review Awards. Her latest novel, Round Up the Unusual Suspects, returns readers to the Golden Age of Hollywood. When a stage hand is murdered on the Warner Brothers soundstage during the filming of Casablanca, studio chief Jack L. Warner calls upon private investigators Babs Norman and Guy Brant. Their investigation leads through bomb scares, Nazi sympathizers, Japanese internment, unruly parents, family turmoil, and the complicated secrets of Hollywood's most famous dream factory. With Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and the Casablanca ensemble drawn into the mystery, the cameras must keep rolling while the detectives race to expose a killer. Elizabeth Crohn's, what a cool idea for a story.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

And this isn't your first exploring old Hollywood or classic Hollywood. Take us through the canon you're developing.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Yeah, no, this is the third book in a series. And the first one involves canine dognapping in 1940s Hollywood. It's almost like a turtle classic movies screwball comedy. It is laugh out loud funny. These are all really funny, actually. That one, believe it or not, does not entail murder. A lot of people have their lives threatened, but it involves crime and terrible people, of course, committing the crimes, but yeah, it primarily involves celebrity dog napping. And my two PIs end up getting into the case because they have rescued a box of kittens and running to Basil Rathbone at a vet's office who's despondent because somebody's taken one of his dogs and he goes to the. Could you imagine him going to the LAPD or the to the city pound? And he just had two very successful Sherlock Holmes movies, and he's asking for help to find his dog. They laugh at him. It's like, go find him yourself. You're the world's greatest consulting detective. And it happens to be that he's got a copy of Variety Magazine under his arm, and there's a full-page ad for MGM. And Aster from the Thin Man movies has been stolen as well. So that's how they decide that they'll take on Basil's case if he helps hook them up with William Powell and Myrna Loy. And there's a huge reward from MGM. So that's where the money is. So they're willing to get into the case if they get involved with the two other actors who play PIs on movies, and it goes from there. So that's where it started out. And then the all the dogs are returned. No dogs die, of course. And at the very end of book one, Guy Brandt, who is my Babs Norman's sidekick, ends up having a conversation with Humphrey Bogart, whose dog was also stolen. And they exchange cards, and next thing you know, the book two opens up where somebody has threatened Humphrey Bogart while they've been filming the Maltese Falcon. So that's where book two starts out, and then book two ends on December 7th, 1941. We all know that's a day of infamy, right? And they just heard the announcement from President Roosevelt on the radio, and they're trying to figure out what is next. And that's actually happened. The release of the Maltese Falcon was about a month before. The PIs are looking for their next case, and they're trying to figure out what's going on, and the world's going to war. And it just happens to be, and I did not make this up, this is real life documentation history, is on December 8th, 1941, a screenplay was discovered in the slush file over at Warner Brothers. And one of the readers pulled it aside. It was called, it was actually a stage play, not a screenplay. And it was called Everybody Comes to Ricks. And it ended up Stephen Carnot, who was the person who discovered it, pulled it aside, took it to Hal Wallace, who was one of the main producers over at Warner Brothers, and said, I think we've got something. He acquired it, and that ended up becoming Casablanca. So a very good transition from book one, you know, book two to book three, and that's how it started. Is it hard to take real people and inject them into fiction with it because there was so much history going on, and I think the history is the big deal for me. Yes, of course, you do want to work with major actors, but I like incorporating world events, and there was a lot going on in Los Angeles in 1940 for the first book, 41 for the second book, and 42 for the third book. And of course, the war's going on. We kind of knew that the war was going on in Europe, but the America didn't really get involved until then. But there was a lot going on, and I get into it in actually the first book, second book, and third book, it becomes full-blown. But there were a lot of underground fifth columnist movements in Los Angeles. And besides, of course, the mob wars and everything else going on, there was so much rich and interesting history going on in LA during that period of time. And a lot of people don't know about it. So I capitalized on a lot of that, and some of it was downright awful. There were underground Nazi movements, obviously, were anti-Semitic. And it happened to be that all of the studio heads, except for one, were George. So they there were constant threats, and sometimes it was through underground pamphlets. One guy, I think he got up on a high-rise building at Hollywood in Vine, and like literally, kind of like confetti, we dumped pamphlets like over the edge. So they flew all over Hollywood Boulevard about how he wanted to kill the studio heads and various Jewish actors in Los Angeles. People were nuts. And there were, I have one character that becomes introduced in the books, and he is real, he's based on a real person, but he actually created his name is Leon Lewis. He was a practicing attorney. He had founded, I think he had been involved with like some of the early movements of I think the anti-defamation league and Benet Breath. But he founded an underground network of spies to try to destroy these fascists that wanted to threaten people. So he was they they ended up disbanding as soon as America actually declared war on Germany. Prior to that, he couldn't even get the F the FBI ended up taking over a lot of the functions that he was doing. But most of the time prior to World War II and our and the U.S. involvement, he was more interested in, or the FBI was more interested in the Red Scare. They were more worried about communists as opposed to Nazis in their backyard. Go figure, right? But these are real people and they were getting involved. And I took advantage of the fact of who they were and what they did and made them characters, getting involved in these social causes.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Elizabeth Crowens is our special guest. Book is Roundup the Unusual Suspects. Elizabeth, you are also one of the greatest time travel authors in sci-fi that I think I have ever read. Right up there with Jack Finney, H.G. Wells, the best of the best. And your time travel professors series, I think, is one of the best kept secrets in the genre. It also deals with historical events and real people.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Yes, it does. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

What's the attraction of all of that for you?

SPEAKER_02 10:27

I guess I got my feet wet with that series. So because I wanted to include, there are some very famous people that mixing in with my fictional people, but I've got Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini and HD Wells that are characters throughout that series. And I just again had to read lots of biographies, and I would try to get timelines where I could plausibly have some of these people interact with each other. And that was a challenge because we're talking about you didn't have the technology, you didn't have Zoom meetings, you didn't have that back in 1942 either. But you didn't have not everybody had a telephone, or you if you had a phone, you usually had one, it was usually like in a front hallway, and you were wealthy. Of course, Doyle was, so is HG Wells. But to have a phone not only in the front hallway, but also in your private office, that really said something back in 1919 or whatever. So you had to you had to work with the technology at the time, and it wasn't always easy to get a hold of everybody.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

What was the greatest challenge in blending your fictional detectives, who are two amazing characters, by the way, with real people?

SPEAKER_02 11:57

I didn't have a problem at all. I just assumed they were real people. I just again I was looking at timelines, certainly for the third book. There are books out that talk nonfiction books that are in print that talk about the making of Casablanca. One of the things that I ran into is they're not always consistent. And I think I know where one of the culprits was, but I will not name names, but I think one of the people who documented it was incorrect. And however, it got to the point where I was sitting on the fence at one point, and part of me said, Okay, you have a choice. You understand film production because you've been involved in it professionally. You could either try to requisition the old call sheets and find out for yourself exactly what happened on what day and what was shot in what order and all that stuff, or you could just go with the flow and the narrative. And I said, that's what I'm gonna do. Because what I do know is that everything in a movie is shot out of order, so you could be reading the script, and it's not gonna be shot the way that it's written, and uh, so what I did is between the biographical information and the that I would find, for example, two actors were on another movie when they started the production, Paul Henry and Claude Reigns. They were both on Now Voyager, which was a Warner Brothers production starring Betty Davis. And so they weren't even available. So when Castle Blanca started filming, they needed to start with the not only the scenes without them. Now you have to realize that Claude Reigns is in a lot of the scenes, certainly more than Paul is. But anytime you see Rick's Cafe, he's pretty much in there, and then of course, he's got his police station and whatever, but he's in a lot of scenes. So they had to start in scenes where neither one was in them, but also, and this is again documented with all the information I was juggling. I've got a lot of sticky notes, like in a lot of books. You should see all the colored tabs, right? But the sets weren't always completed, so they had to work with the art department as to what sets were available plus what actors were available. And so, of course, they couldn't go in the correct order. And what was really bizarre, and this is what I found out in researching everything, is there was a lot, you hear usually more of it in what was going on in London, but even in the United States, there were ration, there was rationing and certain laws where you could only you had to get gas coupons and you food coupons, you could only buy so much during a certain period of time because they wanted to make sure enough was available for the troops and the GIs. And one of the restrictions that Warner Brothers and, of course, all the studios ran into was building materials and construction. So a lot of times they just they thank God Warner Brothers is a huge studio lot. They've got gigantic soundstage size buildings. They're almost like airplane hangars. That's how big they are. But they were able to tear down and recycle some sets. And believe it or not, there was some of the Casablanca street scenes and also the train station where Rick they're leaving Paris. That was a recycled set from another. They just added a few things. I think they added a railing, a few extra signs, and they said, okay, this is the Paris train station going to Marseille, the last train to Marseille. And it was a recycled set. And there, I actually got to watch it, it wasn't a very good movie, but there was a another movie that, believe it or not, was a musical, but it's was supposed to take place in the desert, and they actually took some sets from that and recycled it and tweaked it and used those for the Casablanca Marketplace and a few other things. So there was a lot of recycled sets that were going on, and because of that, of course, the shooting schedule would change. So it was like set availability, and most of it was filmed on sound stages. So I think there were three three main sound stages that they were switching out stuff on, and then one of the few scenes that was actually shot off uh site was over towards Van Nuys Airport or whatever, one of the airport scenes where you actually had to see a plane going, but there was a really you learn like all sorts of really weird trivia, and there was and I've I put it in the book because it's interesting, but there was this the airplane scene. Oh, the fog, the fog, okay. There is no fog in Casablake, and that famous scene between Rick and Elsa where he's telling her, go on the plane, go with go with your husband. I'm staying behind. You see a lot of fog. And the reason why they did the fog, okay, is because they first of all it looked good. Secondly, they were trying to hide the airplane. The airplane that you do not see flying, okay, but in the background was a fake airplane that was not to scale, and it was made out of balsa wood, and it was done very quickly and very cheaply. So they figured if they fog up the place, they could hide the fact that this was done very expediently, and what and it gets better, okay. They hired little people to be the airplane mechanics and purposely did a force perspective so it looks like it's far away and it's two scale because the people are smaller in relationship to this fake plane that's being hidden in the fog.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

We're talking with Elizabeth Crowins about Roundup the Unusual Suspects. Her website is elizabethcrowens.com. Your two protagonists are fascinating people. Give us the 411 on Babs Norman and Guy Brandt.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Well, Babs is the one who owns the agency, okay? But it's 1942, and she starts it a few years before. In fact, in the first book that starts in 1940, they haven't had the agency all that long. They're fairly newbies, they really need a big celebrity case, and of course, they get the one looking for Asta and working with Basil Rathbone and Myrtaloy and William Powell. But they a lot of times they her sidekick, Guy Brandt, has to front because a lot of people will not believe that she is the head of the agency and he's actually under her. So, but they and they were both. I do talk about how they got into it in book three, and they were both out-of-work actors, they weren't doing too, and apparently they were on an audition together and then recognized each other and said, I've seen you a few times before at auditions, and they ended up stealing some food that was thrown out from one of the productions, and they snuck in, they were over at Paramount Studios, and right behind Paramount Studios. If you've ever been over there, there's two cemeteries right behind them, and including the one it was called Hollywood Memorial Park, but now it is called Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where a lot of very famous people, including Cecil B. DeMille, Mel Blank, Valentino, Peter Laurie, all and in fact, Todo, okay, is buried there. Yes, there's a lot of really famous people buried over there. And then there is, there was for a while, but now maybe they might have merged them. I, you know what? I know somebody who gives the tours. I could always pick her brains. Carrie Bible, by the way, if anybody's listening, is the tour guide over there, and she is great. But uh for a while they had a Jewish cemetery that was separate, but now part of Hollywood Forever, they have a Jewish section. So I think they might have merged it, but I think back in the 40s, they were two, they might have been two separate cemeteries. But uh they sneak into the cemetery to eat the food, basically have a picnic lunch for the stolen food, and they haven't eaten all day. They're absolutely starving, and that's kind of how their friendship bonds, and they decide that they're going the he he drives her home. She took three buses to get to this audition, and she finds a classified ad in the paper about how to get a PI license without being in law enforcement, and they end up getting their license and giving a go at it, and they're a little awkward at first, but but they become really good, and obviously, after they've solved the Maltese Falcon case in the book two, Jack Warner is concerned because there's a murder on one of his sound stages at the very beginning of book three. He decides you know what, these kids are all right. I'm gonna hire them to make sure nobody else gets killed on book three. But a lot of stuff's It's happening, besides, of course, the ups and downs of the pre-production and production of Casablanca. And I play a lot with the history of what's going on. And one of the big things that happens during the actual pre-production of Casablanca is on February 18th or 19th. I'd have to look it up. 1942 is when Roosevelt had his mandate for Japanese internment. And I established in book two that Babs was renting an extra room, a guest room out in her house to a Japanese gardener. And all of a sudden, he's worried she wants to protect him. So all of a sudden, they're working a murder case and she's got a problem at home. And then on Guy's behalf, again, they're working the murder case. He gets drafted. Exactly. He's the right age, and the war just broke out. So everybody has their own personal hurdle that they have to deal with. And of course, Warner doesn't want any excuses. He wants his case solved, he wants to know every everything's going to be okay. And it ends up that my PIs end up having to draft the cast of Casablanca to help them solve the murder.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

How do you throw in killers, red herrings, and other people that are not part of the history that we know without your readers saying, that's a fake person, they obviously did it.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

I just treat my fictional characters as if they're real.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

It's that simple.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

What was the hardest part about writing the book?

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Figuring out who the bad guy was gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

And how did you do it? What did you finally do to get to the bad guy?

SPEAKER_02 24:26

This was the first book that I think I wrote. I used the standard screenplay structure. And I have an act one, act two, and act three, but act two actually is a part A and a part B with a midpoint in between. So you could call it three X or you could call it four X, but it is the standard screenwriting structure, story structure. And I had finished Act One, and I'm an outliner, generally. Okay. My very first time travel book, no, I was fancing it. It took forever, but that was my first novel. After that, I started outlining, and I could easily have a 150-page outline with 200 pages of notes. It's I'm nuts, but it is historical, and I'm juggling a lot of balls. With this one, I was outlining and then realized I'm not sure who did it. I gotta figure, and there are certain obvious factors. It can't be one of the cast of Casablanca, it just can't. They cannot be the killer. So there's a few people that obviously are eliminated. And it can't be Jack Warner, it can't be or Hal Wallace, his executive producer. So there's certain people that it can't be. But out of the other people, and especially fictional people, who can be? And it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy. I painted myself into a corner at first. And when I was outlining the second act, at one point I just made file cards of all the characters. And I said, okay, can't be these guys, but it could be these guys. And I took the maybe could-be's and took the file cards, shuffled them, and threw them up in the air, and picked one. And that's how I started outlining, working around it. And that is really unusual for me to do, but that's what I ended up doing. But I again, once I picked one, I stuck to it and I outlined around it to make it plausible. So I kind of call it plotsing, pantsing and plotting combination of the two. But ironically, I'm working on a new project now, which I can't talk about too much, but I am mostly pantsing it and I'm actually enjoying it. And I'm I will come up with ideas and I'll come up with chapters, and then I will work it into an outline afterwards. So it's like pantsing first, then outline. So it's still kind of keeping the structure, but it's the complete opposite way that I normally work, and I'm actually getting pretty far. So, hey, if it works, I'm happy.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

What do you hope that readers will take away from their encounter with Roundup the Unusual Suspects?

SPEAKER_02 27:30

It's they'll learn something about history, certainly, that they probably didn't know before. But I'm just hoping that they'll enjoy my style of writing and say, hey, she's somebody I want to follow. I want to see, I want to read whatever she's got coming up. I want to read it, I want to know what she's up to. So, but I do get into a lot of social issues, and ironically, a lot of them are very pertinent now, and that wasn't planned. I what was planned is I was gonna be writing in the timeline of 1942, it just happened with the Japanese internment, happened during the time when Casablanca was in pre-production, and now we're dealing with ice. So we're dealing with immigration and forceful removal of people, and it's socially very relevant. So uh I guess I just got I don't know if the word is lucky, but I just lucked into a social issue that was huge then and it's big now. It's relevant now.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

If you've ever seen Casablanca, you are going to want to read Round Up the Unusual Suspects. In fact, the three-book trilogy is just a joy from start to finish, especially if that is your era for classic Hollywood. All written by our special guest, Elizabeth Crowins, her website, elizabethcrowans.com. It's great to see you. Thanks so much for the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Thank you. In conversation with Terry Shepard, it's a copyrighted presentation. All rights reserved. I'm Lisa Davis. Join Terry Shepherd next time in conversation.