Thursday, April 19, 2007

Missing Person: Marty (Mary) Holland

I probably won’t get any responses to this because it’s a bit obscure, but does anyone out there have any information about Marty- real name, Mary- Holland, who wrote the novel on which Fallen Angel is based, and the story on which The File on Thelma Jordan is based? Both are, of course, film noir classics, but virtually nothing is known about Holland, other than the fact that she changed her first name, presumably to disguise her gender, and that was a novelist of some repute during the late 1940s. She also wrote three novels: Fallen Angel, also titled Blonde Baggage (1945), Darling of Paris (1949) and Glass Heart (aka Her Private Passions, 1948). Thanks to the research skills of Megan Abbott, who has recently become one of my favourite noirists, I discovered that Holland is often mentioned in the Los Angeles Times during the late 1940s regarding various projects, including a stage play and a movie project with Rita Hayworth. After that, she vanishes from sight and from public memory. Anyone who has seen either Fallen Angel or Thelma Jordan will know that Holland must surely be an interesting writer of noir fiction and deserves recognition. Can anyone out there help solve the Marty-Mary Holland mystery?