Michael Callahan is the author of the new novel The Night She Won Miss America. He also has written Searching for Gene Kelly. He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and his work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Elle and Departures. He lives in Philadelphia.
Q: You based The Night She
Won Miss America on actual events. How did you learn of the story, and what did
you see as the right blend between the historical and fictional as you wrote
the novel?
A: I covered my first Miss
America contest in 1987, and by chance I ended up sitting with the family of
that year’s winner. It was one of the craziest, most nerve-wracking things I
have ever witnessed. And I sort of got hooked on it.
Years later I was at another
magazine in New Jersey and was wondering why Miss New Jersey never wins. So I
did some digging, and found out that only one ever had, in 1937—and that she
had run off with her escort that very night. I wrote a piece about it, and two
decades later, when I was looking for an idea for my next novel, I remembered
it.
Of course, the real story,
which I detail in the Author’s Note, was basically over the next day. But I
thought about what might happen if it didn’t end the next day—if it turned into
something of a caper.
It just had to ring true. I
love historical and archival research, and I love the history of Miss America
and of Atlantic City. So it all came together.
All of the places in the book
are real, some of the supporting characters are real, the pageant judges in the
book were the actual judges in 1949, even the final-night program is the actual
program, in that order. So I tried to really get all of the details right, but
leave enough breathing room to fill them out with a good old galloping yarn.
Q: How did you research all
the historical details you incorporated into the novel, and was there anything
that especially surprised you?
A: Well, as you know,
Atlantic City is not exactly in great shape at the moment, so there has not
been a lot of funding put into things like cultural preservation. It took some
sleuthing to pull together all of the details of what life was like, and what
the pageant was like, in 1949.
But there are some amazing
archivists in Atlantic City who live and breathe this stuff like I do, and they
were remarkably kind. And BeBe Shopp Waring, who was Miss America 1948, was an
incredible gift. She patiently answered endless questions over the phone, and
she is as sharp as ever.
I had done a lot of research
prior of young women in this era for my first novel, so I felt I understood
what life was like for them, and any film made between 1945 and 1950 that was
broadcast on Turner Classic Movies, I watched.
What surprised me was what a
big deal and national obsession Miss America was in this country in midcentury.
By 1960, 80 million people watched it. 80 million! It was the Super Bowl of its
heyday.
Q: Did you know how the novel
would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the
way?
A: I think you’re always changing
your mind as you write, because the narrative opens up for you, the writer,
just as it does for the reader. It’s the beauty of fiction—you don’t have to
stick to the story.
As happened with my first
novel, the ending I had originally thought I wanted was not the one I ended up
with. I felt the stakes weren’t quite high enough in the original outline.
I mean, it’s one thing to do
what Bette Cooper, the inspiration for the story, did in 1937: to basically
say, You know, I just don’t want any of this, get me the heck out of here. It’s
quite another to say, I cannot bear to be without you, and I will happily give
this all up if you will take me away and we can be together.
I really needed to dig out
what you would have to feel and think in order to do what Betty Jane Welch
does. The drama needed be heightened.
So for example, I added the
character of Chick Kaisinger, the reporter who works with Eddie Tate, fairly
late. But he turned out to be a great device to achieve what I needed to inject
more sizzle into the narrative.
Q: What do you think
fascinates people about Miss America?
A: Because America is not
Europe, we never had royalty here, and Miss America brought a little of that to
us, even it was all rather tinny and faux.
And remember that Miss
America was the first reality show—the first national competition where there
was a group of people slowly whittled down to one winner. American Idol, The
Voice, Survivor—they all trace back to her.
And remember, the contest
started almost a hundred years ago. That’s pretty solid cultural resilience. You
can laugh at it all you want, but the fact pageant is still here says something
about its place in Americana.
In our culture, where last
year’s iPhone is obsolete, there is something oddly reassuring about the
constancy of Miss America.
Q: What are you working on
now?
A: I have just finished most
of the research for my next novel, Until Martha’s Vineyard. It’s set in
1959—yes, I am still happily traipsing about midcentury America—and it’s the
story of a young movie actress on the cusp of stardom who is married to a fiery
Greek director in Hollywood, and their marriage is in trouble.
To try and fix it they go to
Martha’s Vineyard off of Cape Cod for a week, but things go badly and she
decides to rent a cottage on the island for the summer.
She drifts into a summer
stock production, and meets a brooding oysterman who is the black sheep of one
of the island’s oldest and most prominent families; she doesn’t know he’s also
running from a terrible memory.
As they grow closer, at summer’s
end she must decide which life she is going to choose.
Q: Anything else we should
know?
A: Just that I hope people
walk away from this with a bit more sentimental feeling for Miss America. She
gets such a bum rap, in my view. Is it ludicrous that women still parade down
in bikinis and heels on a runway to win scholarship money? Uh, sure.
But yet we think women who
earn their college money pole-dancing are gritty and determined. A former
swimsuit model is now the first lady. Young college men who barely keep a GPA
above water but who weigh 300 pounds and can tackle a quarterback are heroes.
It would be nice if people
could cut old Miss A. some slack.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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