When it comes to juicy source material for crime fiction, you can’t go wrong with the Bible. It’s got betrayal, duplicity, incest, political intrigue, racism and murder both mass and singular. And this is where Silvia Moreno-Garcia found inspiration for The Seventh Veil of Salome, a Bible-meets-Hollywood story of the making of a technicolor sword-and-sandal extravaganza at the tipping point of the Hollywood studio system that’s told from multiple points of view and accompanied by the parallel story of Salome.
Nancie Clare
In your author’s note you wrote, “It seemed appropriate when looking at a mythical woman to think about the place where women were made into myths.” Was that sentiment the operating principle that got you into this story?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
I wanted to tell a story about Salome—a Bible story—and the way to do it was through the lens of Hollywood. It became a way to access that story because of all those Bible films and sword-and-sandal films that I watched as a child. It’s funny, a lot of younger people have told me that they have no idea who Salome is from the Bible. The people who have heard of her will often say, “Oh, in that movie, The Ten Commandments,” or something like that. They’ve had a mediated experience essentially. And I think nowadays a lot of our experiences are mediated through things like movies, video games, so that we understand the past—and even mythology—not through the actual texts, but through the interpretation of things like Hollywood.
Nancie Clare
When it comes to shocking behavior and betrayal and political intrigue, racism, murder, incest, and generalized duplicity, you can’t do much better than the Bible, you might say it’s inspirational. Is that part of what got you into this story?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Bible is full of juicy stories! As a kid, I loved reading it and my Bible had illustrations, so that was even better. There’s Judith, the general [who saved her people], and Delilah cutting the hair of Samson. And you’re right, there’s all kinds of lies and treason and murder and love stories. It’s like the first telenovela ever made!
Nancie Clare
We should mention that Salome is never actually named in the Bible. She’s named by other historians of the time. She lived in the court of Herod, who is mentioned in the Bible. Her father was Herod’s brother Archelaus, and Herod seduced and married her mother, Herodias. That’s some serious incest and Hamlet inspiration.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
She’s just mentioned as an aside. But Salome tickled the imagination of a lot of artists through the centuries because of her involvement in the execution of John the Baptist. So even though Salome is a really, really tiny figure in the Bible, she is represented in a lot of media, a lot of paintings, and eventually in literature and film. It’s kind of like a bit player who eventually ends up being a major star.
Nancie Clare
Also in your author’s note, you wrote that through the ages Salome has been portrayed as a temptress, as someone who is a bad girl. And in your telling of her story, she’s more like a girl that’s being pushed and pulled in different directions, not unlike Vera, the woman who is cast as Salome in the movie. I thought that was a very interesting parallel and I’m sure an intentional one.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Salome gets a lot of different portrayals and it depends what time period and what media you’re talking about. Sometimes she is a temptress which is the case of Oscar Wilde and the opera Salome. But there are also movies in which she’s an innocent player. The Rita Hayworth film that was done in the 1950s portrayed Salome as somebody who is unintentionally dragged into the execution of John the Baptist but doesn’t really want any part of it. And then you have those other kinds of media in which Salome does become kind of like a femme fatale, like Theta Bara’s 1918 film. There are a lot of variations of Salome. Salome is a figure that changes through time; a character that is in flux. That’s why I liked her more than any other character in the Bible. This was somebody that seems to be many things at many points in time and also many things at once.
Nancie Clare
Personally, I’ve always been a fan of John the Baptist.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
There’s a lot of tension in that time period because the Jewish people didn’t like Herod and his family. And then you’ve got people like John the Baptist who are causing a lot of political problems for the Herodian dynasty. There are many different factions fighting. There is conflict, executions, drama. It’s a powder keg! And that’s the [time period] where Salome appears. This novel evokes just this sort of place of tension where everybody is about to jump at each other’s throats.
Nancie Clare
There’s a parallel to what’s going on in Hollywood in the fifties because the politics of that time, both micro—within the studio system—and macro, specifically the House Un-American Activities Committee’s reach into the entertainment industry on its relentless quest for famous people to name names. And Vera, who is the 21-year-old Mexican young woman who finds herself in the role of Salome, finds herself pushed and pulled. She’s not a communist, but she is not a blue eyed blonde haired American princess either.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
There’s a lot of issues with hierarchy, with racism, with sexism and with a studio system that is starting to fray at the edges. Eventually the film studios go from having all the power to more independence for actors, and newer kinds of directors coming up, newer kind of productions. But in 1955, there is this struggle with the old and the new, and it’s a similar struggle to what happened in the ancient world with the old and the new. Salome and her cousin represent the newer faction trying to rise up and figure out this really complex web of power. And in the 1950s in Hollywood, there’s an equally complex web of power that Vera is thrown into. And you’re right, she doesn’t know how to handle this. It’s exploring two different labyrinths of power.
Nancie Clare
There are three women central to this story. Salome, or course. And Nancy Hartley, who is a not quite an ingenue anymore, who never quite makes the cut. There’s Vera, whose given name is Francisca Severa Larios Gavaldon. Hollywood being Hollywood, it is shortened to Vera Larios. Nancy represents the old school Hollywood system of which she never ascended the ranks, and Vera, who is “discovered,” represents the new direction. Nancy’s self-delusion, entitlement and jealousy is in contrast with Vera’s colossal lack of confidence and her imposter syndrome. The push and pull between those two propel this story. That’s a delightful tension.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Vera and Nancy certainly represent opposite poles of experience, not only because Vera is a Latin American woman in Hollywood while Nancy is more of the All-American girl. But because Vera is completely inexperienced and Nancy has a wealth of experience, and the thing is, in Hollywood, there were plenty of people who had the trajectory of Vera Larios, of being discovered. This was a time when Miss Potato USA would get a ticket to Hollywood. Audrey Hepburn was just sitting in the lobby of a hotel, got discovered, got into theater, and then got a major movie career within two years.
And then you had the complete opposite experience. Actors that are trying to work through Hollywood, move up the ranks, and they never get discovered or do anything major. They are the footnotes in history. And that can be a very frustrating experience. You don’t get to be in the limelight like you hoped or expected. And there’s plenty of those stories.
It’s hard to predict in Hollywood, so there are really surprising stories. The studio didn’t like Fred Astaire when he did his screen test. They were like, “Nah, he’s a little bit bald. He’s not very handsome. We don’t really like him.” Somehow Fred Astaire, because he was a really good dancer, and I guess he got lucky, he had a major career. There were other perfectly beautiful Hollywood men who probably were talented and could perform, and they never got that big break. So it’s that contrast between these two experiences: the more glamorous side of Hollywood and the seedier side of Hollywood that you get to see in the novel.
Nancie Clare
One of the things that struck me as I read the book is a consistency in the parenting that Salome, Nancy and Vera endure, as in their parents are certainly not stingy with their disapproval. Salome’s mother, Nancy’s father and Vera’s mother are only interested in how their daughters can further their agendas. And all three seem to be pawns in their parents’ worlds. Laura Leblanc, who reviewed your book for the New York Times, put it exactly right, “Salome’s story about a young woman trapped by a cursed family dynasty and torn between her devotion to her kin and the seductive pull of John the Baptist, only highlight the portrait of a modern society bent on manipulating women as decorated pawns in a bloody game of empire.” I thought that was a brilliant way of looking at your book and the three main characters.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Thank you. The way Salome is portrayed in the Bible is that she is the daughter of someone and the stepdaughter of somebody else, she doesn’t kind of have her separate story. She is connected to her family. That got me thinking about how to approach this. Family and kin are really important in all three of the stories. In all three of the women, you are the daughter of X and Y instead of being yourself. It’s those familiar relationships that become really important in the novel.
Nancie Clare
And yet The Seventh Veil of Salome is a love story.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
It’s several love stories at once. You’ve got Salome falling in love with John the Baptist at first sight, a very dramatic idea of love, this unrequited love, this love that cannot be. And then you have Nancy [strategically] navigating her love life, especially with Benny, who really seems to care about her, although she doesn’t seem quite sure about it. Nancy wants Jay Rutland, [but Jay wants] Vera. How all these stories coalesce at the end is part of the trick that I’m trying to play.
Nancie Clare
You’re primarily known as a writer of gothic, horror and noir. How do you feel about being identified with a specific genre? Do you find it restricting, suffocating, supportive, or just a shrug? You don’t care?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
It can be a problem when people expect the same experience from one book to the other. And I’ve found that unfortunately, sometimes people don’t really read the descriptions of books or pay too much attention! So I have had some readers who have been quite disappointed that, “Oh, you haven’t done anything quite like this thing that you did before,” or “The book that followed was quite different. It contrasted a lot with the previous one.” But that’s the way I like to write. I don’t think I could write any other way. I like to switch genres and to explore different spaces. It does make it challenging for the audience to grasp where I’m going. It also makes it challenging for the marketing and publicity team to sometimes sell me in certain spaces. And some of my books are things that don’t clearly belong on a [particular] shelf.
[My books] have a multitude of places they inhabit. Yeah, it’s got a little bit of a goth feel, but it’s really a historical drama, and oh, and we also get to see not only Hollywood, but we get to see ancient Judea! That can be pretty hard to explain to somebody in a soundbite! And where you put it on the shelf becomes a struggle. But I like things that are complex that inhabit several realms at once. I feel a desire to [write in different genres] rather than to locate myself in a firm space and say, “I’m going to be a horror writer. I’m only going to write horror from now on, and I’m only going to be found on a horror shelf.” That would inhibit my creativity and I wouldn’t be able to work very well.
Nancie Clare
You write nonfiction, edit anthologies, and write fiction. What do you have next on your agenda?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
My next novel is called The Bewitching, and it’s a horror novel. It’s split between Massachusetts and Mexico, and it has three timelines, and they all involve witchcraft.
Nancie Clare
Is there anything else you’d like to say about The Seventh Veil of Salome? A point that I didn’t touch on that you think is important?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
I think that it’s a really fun book, and if you in any way are interested in Hollywood, it’ll be a really exciting to experience the 1950s setting. But if you, on the other hand, are not so much into Hollywood, but you like Bible stories like I did when I was a kid, you can chew on that part of the story. There’s a little bit for both crowds, for the people like me who are really fascinated by Bible tales and for people who just love Hollywood stories and stories of famous people and the glitz and glamor of that space.
