A Writer's Tale

Dan Marlowe was one of the biggest names from the heyday of Fawcett Gold Medal, author of the Earl Drake series (The Name of the Game is Death is one of the best hard-boiled crime novels I’ve ever read), and winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers of America. He started showing up at the Pink Teas in the company of Al Nussbaum, and became a regular member (while Al only showed up once in a while).

Even though Dan suffered from amnesia, he wrote better stories than any of us. And you always got the feeling, with Dan, that he was really listening to you, and that he cared.

Marshall Oliphant, a guy about my own age, has always wanted to be a writer and hasn’t done much about it. He did get a couple of very nasty, funny short stories published in men’s magazines. And he is always threatening the world with a novel that never quite gets done. I once tried to collaborate with Marshall on a horror novel, but it didn’t work out.

Ted Williams and his wife, Carol, started coming to the Pink Tea because they were friends and neighbors of Matt and Patty. They were nice, friendly people and really interesting, but neither of them was a writer. Ted wasn’t the baseball legend, either. But he was a professional photographer, and he did photos for the covers for some of my Pitman stories.

Vic Auer started coming to the Pink Teas as a friend of Arthur Moore. He was a very friendly, eager, enthusiastic fellow with a major-league smile. I don’t know much about his background, but it seems that he wrote for television and movies. Unlike most of us, he did his writing in restaurants instead of at home writing longhand at a corner table for hours at a time. A very Hemingway thing to do.

Bonnie Cardone, a good-looking young gal, recently divorced and living in Brentwood in the heyday of the Pink Tea, was cheerful and enthusiastic but didn’t seem very interested in being a writer. She brought several interesting guests to the Pink Teas. Including some very snotty guys and at least one strange and ditzy gal whose behavior was quite amusing but whose name luckily escapes me.

The Decline and Fall

Things happened.

Warner Law passed away. Matt and Patty moved away from Los Angeles.

And some new people, who shall remain nameless, started showing up at the Pink Teas.

They were women who didn’t appreciate smoke or hard liquor.

And they brought friends.

Ironically enough, they were turning the Pink Tea into a Pink Tea.

The low point was struck when these same ladies invited a celebrity to the Pink Tea, and then the celebrity and her celebrity husband hosted a Pink Tea and I decided not to go because I wanted our group to be about writing, not about celebrities.

Gary Brandner and some others felt the same way I did, so we broke away from the sissified remains of the original group. With Gary mostly at the helm, we started a new group.

Which was interesting in itself. Its members included Chris Lacher, Bill Relling, Tom Elliot, Bill Carney, Vic Auer, Creighton Barnes, Les Roberts and several others.

Gary hosted most of the new meetings, and I hosted a couple of them. But it wasn’t the same. One thing led to another, and I quit after a while.

The Summing Up

My involvement with the Pink Tea went on for about a decade, and had a tremendous impact on my life.

I don’t know how much good the “literary criticism” did. In fact, Ann and I eventually came to the conclusion that much of the advice and suggestions about my fiction (in the later years) was often counterproductive. But it was extremely inspiring and educational just to be associated with the original group of colorful, professional writers.

Most of them were considerably older than me. I admired them and took their advice to heart and never dreamed that I would ever be as successful as any of them. I held them in awe.

After years of getting advice from teachers and fellow students who rarely knew what they were talking about, the opportunity to learn at the feet of real writers was so incredibly great that it can hardly be expressed.

Aside from the influences these people had on my writing and attitudes, etc., they had an amazing, direct effect on all aspects of my life.

You know the old poem, “For want of a shoe, a horse was lost… ?”

For want of the Pink Tea, major parts of my life would’ve been either lost or entirely different.

Look at this:

1. Clayton Matthews got me his agent, Jay Garon. Garon, for all his faults, launched my career.

2. When I was down on my luck, Richard Hughes gave me the job at his law offices.

3. Marshall Oliphant set me up on a blind date with Ann Marshall, a friend of his girl friend, Loretta. Ann and I got married and had Kelly.