Behind the Scenes Minis: Dorothy and Strawberries

Tracy and Holly talk about Dorothy Arzner's reluctance to talk about her past projects. Holly questions some of the statistics about strawberry consumption. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about Dorothy Arsner this week.
We sure did back you. You researched and wrote the

(00:23):
Billy Burke episode where we had previously mentioned Dorothy Arsner.
And when I looked back at that, I was trying
to remember, like what specifically we had said, and you
had a little note in there that said, maybe a
future episode. Finally its own episode written by the opposite

(00:43):
person from the person who wrote the Billy Burke episode. Yeah, yes,
Sometimes I don't get to him. And you had asked me,
are you doing this one? And I was like no, now,
so hooray for Tracy. I also will say maybe a
future episode and then forget that I ever said that. Yeah,
rediscover a person five years later and say oh yeah,

(01:04):
oh so number one. Boy? Did I love reading everything
about Dorothy Arsner. I love all the pictures of Dorothy Arsner.
I find her personal style to be great. I love
the pictures. I love the pictures of her, like on
a film set in a cowboy suit. Well, I was

(01:25):
very into that. You know, I love a little themed dressing.
I think it's super fun. Yeah, I love that she
was able to carve out a career for herself in
Hollywood at a time when because of her gender and
her sexual orientation like that would have been really hard
for her. And it is kind of speculative, but I
do think that's one of the reasons that she just

(01:46):
didn't want to talk about herself, and she didn't even
want to talk about her work. And this included like
doing publicity for a film, not wanting to discuss the
immediate previous film, or even doing publicity for a film
that just came out and not even really wanting to
talk about that film anymore. So there was one interview

(02:09):
that she gave in nineteen thirty six and they were
asking about it her work, and here's what she said. Quote,
as far as I'm concerned, they are ancient history. The
latest picture of mine Craig's Wife happens to be a hit,
But why should I talk about it and think about it? Now?
It's finished, I'm through with it. There's nothing more I
can do about it, So why should I dwell on it?

(02:29):
You know, I understand this completely. I understand this in
terms of the way our podcast work, but you tell
me your understanding of it. Yeah, same thing. I mean,
it's like it's one of those things where I feel like,
once you've put a thing out into the world, unless
you're gonna go back and edit it, which some creators do,

(02:52):
talking about it a whole bunch just gets you hung
up in it. Sure, and you know, potentially like, what
are you going to answer some one who is like,
but why didn't you blah blah blah, I just didn't write. Yeah,
it's not gonna change. And then also, you know, she
seems like somebody that was so I'm trying to think
of exactly the right word. She's very driven and focused

(03:15):
in her work, which I think probably meant like I'm
busy thinking about the next thing. I don't really have
time to retread. Yeah that makes sense too. Yeah. Yeah.
I similarly will like if I make an actual error
and someone alerts me to that error in something that
I have done, yeah, I will correct that error. Yeah.

(03:38):
But sometimes it's like this should have been phrased in
a very subtly different way and it's not anything meaningful,
And I'm like, if I continue to think about that
for the next ten years, all of my life will
be regrets. Yeah, I mean it will. It will block
you from getting other good work done because your brain

(04:02):
is occupied with an unshiftable gear, I mean, ruminations on
things that have already happened. I wonder too if she
also just like was uncomfortable with accolades. Oh possibly, Yeah,
you know, because even when people are saying nice things
about my work, I don't want to talk about it.

(04:23):
That feels weird and yeah, self indulgent and gross. Yeah.
Occasionally I will be somewhere being introduced to someone and
someone will like make a big deal about the podcast,
and I'm like, I want to leave now. Like I
usually say something very potty mouthed and self deprecating at

(04:44):
that point. Yeah. One of the books that I read
for this did have that partial autobiography in it as
one of the sort of appendices. And we don't know
for sure that she stopped writing because she got about
to the point where she was going to meet Marian
And how how do you have an autobiography where you're
not talking about that when that's a big part of

(05:06):
your life. Again, speculative, but totally makes sense. She worked
on that. I think it about nineteen fifty five, so
after her film career was done, but you know, she
still had some decades of her life left after that.
Apparently she was in a restaurant in nineteen seventy three,

(05:26):
which was, you know, much closer to the end of
her life, and the server asked her when she was
going to write her autobiography and she said never. Yeah,
and I loved that. Anyway, this is one of the
most fun to me episodes that I have worked on

(05:47):
in a little bit. Yeah, she's delightful. I liked her
a lot. We've not talked about her for very long,
but I don't feel like I have a whole lot
more to say. Some of some of them are lost,
as we said, some of her movies you are able
to find through streaming services and things like that. Some

(06:08):
of them are old enough to be in the public domain,
some not. I did watch some of the bullfighting footage
that she entered cut together. I kind of thought about
what if I had like a Dorothy Arsner film weekend
and watched a bunch of drothy Arsner movies. I did
not wind up doing that, but I may still at

(06:33):
some point check out various movies that I've seen, not
seen all of beyond the clips that I saw for
the purposes of research here Strawberry Domestications. We did. Some
aspects of this reminded me a little bit of when
we did that episode on Nick's versus Headden and the

(06:56):
decision of whether tomatoes were fruit or a vegetable. Some
similar stuff in there about which things are fruits and Yeah,
though to the best of my knowledge, there's never been
a big, yucky legal battle over this one. I don't think, zoo.
There are One thing that I wanted to mention is
that it fell to you to read a section of

(07:18):
the outline that featured the title of a book called
The Great herbal And It's spelled in very old timey
spellings when things were not standardized E T E and
then herbil is E R B A L L. I
think I don't have a handy in front of me.

(07:39):
And the whole time I was doing research, every time
I came across it, I called it the Great hair
Ball and make myself giggle. It's not that funny, but
you know, we find our joy where we can. I
also one of the other things that made me think
about this, I follow a lot of gardeners on huh
social media, one of whom is this amazing English gardener

(08:02):
named Simon Ackroyd, and he was pointing out it's in
he has a new book out that's about like how
you can cultivate your own plants from things that you
would buy for your grocery supply, like okay, strawberries, and
one is you know, like slicing off some of the
exterior skin of a strawberry, letting it dry on a
paper towel, and then when it's dry, you can scrape

(08:24):
the seeds off and plant those, which I am in
the middle of propagating, which is very exciting, but it
really is easier to do it just from Yeah, but
you don't have the whole plant if you're buying a
strawberry at the grocery store. I also had a moment
where those statistics we were reading at the end about

(08:44):
each person eating an estimated four zero point eighty five
pounds of strawberries annually. I don't know if I believe
that in which direction both okay and I think it's
because like they're there are years of my life where
I'll be like, yeah, strawberries, and I eat a ton

(09:04):
of them, and then I could go two years without
eating a strawberry. Yeah. So I just don't know how
common they are in other people's diets. I love strawberries,
and I love berries in general, and having gotten in
the habit of trying to shop more locally when we
are able, that means a lot of my berry consumption

(09:26):
is now happening when the berries are in season in Massachusetts, right,
And the strawberry season in Massachusetts, you know, unless you're
somewhere where there's a big greenhouse set up and all
of that, Like, it's not a long season no for
strawberries and Massachusetts. But I do love them. I like them.

(09:46):
I'm you know, once again, we're back to the hydroponic garden. Yeah,
so I can have this is part of it. I
want things year round. Yeah, And I don't I don't
love the idea of all of the the travel that
fruits and vegetables have to go through and how long
they are sitting in survival climate as they try to

(10:08):
make their way in all of the the you know,
the waste that comes from those shipments. So if I
could just grow them here at the house, yeah, in
my house, So I can mash them into cocktails. Marvelous.
When I was living in the Atlanta area the first year,

(10:28):
I was going to have a nice little container garden
out on the back patio, and I had gotten all
these little plants, and it included a number of strawberry plants.
I was so excited. And then I broke my leg
and refused anyone, refused to ask anyone for help with anything,
and so all of my plants died. Yeah, and I

(10:52):
have never since then made the same level of attempt
at like growing food plants at home. I've govern other
plants at various times, but not so much with the
food plants. Did have a good herb garden, yeah, on
the back deck here for a couple of years. You

(11:12):
have a good climate for lettuce. Do have a good
climate for lettuce? You could be growing lettuce all the time. Yeah.
I have put off any of my ongoing questions of
growing things indoors because we are trying to track down
a potential allergy situation with one of the cats, just
like trying not to introduce more things into the household

(11:36):
for a little bit. Yeah, yeah, uh yeah. We mostly
keep the cats out of the rooms where the plants are,
oh sure. However, one of our newer cats, it's her
habit in the mornings to walk all the plants with
me check them. I love that. It's pretty cute. Really.

(11:57):
She just wants to hang out in our bar all
the time. Yeah. I don't know how I got a
barfly cat, but I did, and that's fine with me.
And that's where like our our hydroponics are because I
use them for garnish. Yeah, and she just wants to
run in there. She'll sit there and cry at the
door because she wants to drink. I don't know. I
don't know what she thinks is going to happen. But
it's pretty cute. But she has to be watched like
a hawk because without any pre sniff or investigation, she

(12:21):
will run up to any plant and bite it. Okay,
so we have to be careful and not Yeah. I
don't have anything right now that would be dangerous to cats. Yeah,
but I don't want to risk it either. To return
to when I was living in Atlanta, one time I
got a little container garden of succulents. Would that me
or you? And I came into the house with the succulents,

(12:44):
and I returned to the car to get the second
load of thing to bring in, and in the time
that I was gone, Cestina just bit the end right
off one of the succulent plants and it was I
made sure it was not a plant that was gonna
hurt her, but it was. It's probably very bitter because
then she foamed at the mouth and I was like,
maybe you took me one minute I was not in

(13:08):
the house to go take a bite out of this plant.
And I'm sorry this happened to you, but this is
a consequence. Yeah. Cats will always pick out one moment
that you're not looking, yep, and be like, you know what,
I'm gonna raise some hell today. Here we go. I
love them me too. Our newer babies are sort of

(13:30):
hell racers. I will tell an unrelated to history story
about them. We have talked anything on the show before
about the Murphy door that we have that goes to
my husband's office. Ahh. He had wanted one for a
long time and I bought him one for his birthday
some years back. And so you know, when we first
installed it, it was tricky to get the balance right

(13:53):
so it could smoothly open and close. It's quite heavy,
and yet the new cats can easily open it, which
his office is not really organized in a way that's
super safe for cats to run around in and also
create just havoc. And so as a temporary fix, he

(14:15):
put several heavy boxes in front of it, like when
we're not here, intending it for to be when we're
not here, but no, sooner had he put them up,
and they're substantially heavy items. But one of the new ladies,
who is a big, beautiful woman, she's a big cat,
trotted down there hip checked the boxes out of the

(14:37):
way and just walked right into his office like it
was a minor annoyance. So we are still having to
figure out how we work around that. They're diabolical, the
new ladies. We love them, but they are a whole
new level of tricky than we have dealt with since
the years when mister Burns was a youth. They're like

(14:58):
that level of tricky. I sure like plant history though, Yeah,
I just love it. Yeah, I love it, and I
like that there's a spy involved. Yeah. When you told
me you were working on an episode on strawberries, I
was like, what is there to say historically about strawberries?
And it was a delightful story. So spy missions, yeah,

(15:20):
they're very interesting and they've I mean, the one thing
that's interesting is that that mission has been written about
quite a lot throughout history, Yeah, which is nice. I
always wonder when that happens, because you know, other than
Fresier's original book, which isn't like hey, I was a spy,
it's more like, hey, I was I was exploring these areas.

(15:45):
I always wonder how much of it is colored by
like the early writeups of it. Yeah, have been reiterated
throughout time, but there's no good way to go back
and comparatively fact check that to reality. Right, But it's
pretty pretty widely accepted that he is the only one
who brought those five plants back. So thanks Harad, and

(16:10):
do shame because we love strawberry I love them a lot.
If this is your weekend coming up, I hope you
eat something delicious, whether that's a strawberry or anything else.
If you don't have time off, I still hope you
eat something delicious that delights your palette and your soul hopefully,
and then maybe you share a meal with somebody, because look,

(16:31):
in hard times, that's what's getting me through is meeting
friends for dinner, or having people over for drinks, or
whatever we gotta do to keep the faith. We will
be right back here tomorrow in a classic episode, and
then on Monday we will have something brand new. Stuff

(16:52):
you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
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