June 1, 2025 • 19 mins
Author Kyra Davis Lurie joins Mark Thompson to discuss her new historical novel, The Great Mann, set in the glamorous West Adams Heights neighborhood of 1940s Los Angeles. They explore the rich culture of the Black business elite, the controversies around Black performers of the time, and the larger-than-life figures who brought the community to life. Kyra also shares upcoming events to promote her book and why The Great Mann is being compared to The Great Gatsby—don’t miss it!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Mark Thompson here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm so excited to have a best selling author in
the midst here with a book that takes place in
Los Angeles. It's set against the backdrop of Los Angeles.
The Library Journal already saying that her nuanced and sympathetic
(00:21):
characters and stellar writing are nearly as brilliant as in
The Great Gatsby. Wow it is. It's pretty amazing that
you got this from Bloomberg. Bloomberg chooses your book as
one of the ten best books of the summer. How
(00:44):
about it for Kira Davis, Lori and the Great Man,
which is your new book, Bravo. Wow Man is spelled
Mann and it's being released.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I think is it next week that it's released.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Tent right around the corner.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So tell me about where it's set, because it's set
in a part of LA that is sort of very
different now than it was.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah, the area is called West Adam Heights and right
now there's the Ten Freeways right through it. But that
did not that wasn't always the case. So West Adam
Heights was Los Angeles' Beverly Hills before we had Beverly Hills.
So all the La aristocracy lived there, and then the
(01:32):
stock market crashed and as the thirties wore on, people
discovered it was actually really expensive to keep up your mansion, right,
so they had to sell. But the only people who
were able to buy at that time were the newly
wealthy African Americans. So you had African American oil tycoons, hoteliers,
(01:56):
business moguls, and then the Hollywood movie stars and they
started buying up these mansions. And Hattie McDaniel was one
of the people who lived there, and she would throw
these gala parties where her guest list would include Bing Crosby,
Clark Gable, Lena Horne, Duke Ellington was her entertainment and right,
(02:20):
I mean, so it was extraordinarily Gatsby esque, which is
why I took the framework of the Gatsby and said
it in this real world that was right here in
Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Apparently it's amazingly successful, this narrative. So this veteran who
is your main character, arrives back in nineteen forty five
Los Angeles to this area and figuring there'd be a
fresh start, this affluent neighborhood that you describe, and then
take us through a little bit of what he encounters, right.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
So Charlie Trammel, he is, he was in World War
Two and he's just come back to his home. And
he came back home to his home in Virginia, in
rural Virginia where his family was sharecroppers. But as what
just was the case, as with the case in the
end of World War One, black veterans were not treated well,
(03:13):
particularly in the South. There was a lot of violence
and abuse. And he decides that's the stock going to work.
And he has a cousin who he hasn't seen forever,
who's in Los Angeles. He's like, yeah, come on out here,
lots of opportunity. This is good. He goes out and
discovers it's not just that she's doing okay, she's living
(03:35):
the life. Okay, you know, she's coming out. She's got
diamonds in her ears, she's driving like a nice car.
You know, she's got clothes that look like they were
designed just for her. And you know, when he knew her,
I mean she left young, but like she's his cousin.
This was this was a sharecropping family, so he doesn't
really know the full trajectory. And she married this guy
(03:57):
who's living up in West Adam Heights, which had been
nicknamed at that point LA's Sugar Hill. So he gets
brought into this world from the sharecropping world and as
well as the the drama and trauma of World War Two,
into this world of black luxury that he didn't know existed.
(04:19):
And he's seeing, you know again, movie stars. And one
of the things really interesting for him with the black
movie stars is, like a lot of African Americans of
that period, there was a lot of mixed feelings about
their black movie stars because they were taking these roles
that were really stereotypic, typical, and frequently demeaning.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Sure, the.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Servant the exact yeah, of course, right, you know.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
They were the they were there to be subservient and
the butther of the joke, you know. And then he
meets these people and they're the they're so the dichotomy
between them and the character they play is gigantic, right,
I mean, as he meets Louise Beaver's who was a
huge star at the time, less known now by the time,
(05:08):
she was as big as Hattie McDaniel, and she played
roles that, you know, these plaintive roles of you know,
these the the servant, the main occasionally occasionally the slave,
right you know. And and she in reality, she was this.
(05:30):
She has a three story house, she's you know, makes
a point like, I don't touch the kitchen. That's not
my job. My husband's gonna have to do that. She
smokes cigars, She has poker games every Sunday up on
the third floor, right you know. I mean, she loves
being first row of the boxing Max. And he says,
it's like it's the same she has the same voice
(05:52):
and the same face, but a completely different spine than
what I've seen on screen.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
So it's he's just like he's trying to reconcile these
these two world exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
And what's really one of the things I found so
compelling about that that community is Charlie was not Again,
he was not alone in having mixed feelings about the celebrities,
the black celebrities. In fact, the black business elite generally speaking,
(06:25):
really resented the black celebrities because they felt they were
undermining their own social progress, that these images that we
were seeing on the screen were demeaning the entire race.
And there wasn't a lot of sympathy for the position
that these actors were in. They were genuinely trying to
(06:48):
open doors, right, but the opportunities weren't there for better roles.
And for instance, when they did get better roles, those
roles were frequently thanks to the Hayes Office, which was
a censorship office, the parts that showed the racism, that
showed their agency were taken out like that was not acceptable.
(07:10):
And so even when they accepted roles that they thought, oh,
this is the role where I get to show my strength.
Then it's literally in a movie that Louise Beaver's was
in Imitation of Life, someone from the Hayes Office wrote
and said, looking at the script, it would appear you
(07:33):
don't seem to see how these the black servants don't
want more than being a black servant, that they want
to be independent. Surely, I know that you must be
wanting to show that they are happy with their place
in society, but it's not coming through, so you need
to adjust the script right exactly exactly so. But there
(07:57):
wasn't sympathy for that in the black communities or in
the black business elite.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
And that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
So even within this affluent world, and Black America is
flourishing in this way, and your main character is coming
from this place where he just can't believe all these
black people are doing so well. But even within that
community there is this conflict. They're the business people and
then there's show people, the show business exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Hold that thought. I'm because it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
You have to research all this right as a writer,
you know, getting the plot, finding your main character that's
going to run through this entire world. You have to
research that world because it is historically based your novel, right, yeah, yeah,
I want to talk to you a little bit about that,
and you know about what La was like it was
the mid nineteen forties, right, Yeah. I want to get
(08:43):
to again the books called The Great Man, and I
do want to mention Kira if you want to meet her.
There is a series of upcoming events. June tenth at
Romans in Pasadena. They always have great events there, They
just do such great Yeah, June eleventh, Diesel a bookstore
Santa Monica, another great spot. And then June nineteenth Chevalier's
(09:06):
Books in Los Angeles. Again the tenth, the eleventh, and
the nineteenth Romans, Diesel and Chevalier's. All that information, I
think is on your website. Is it's Karrad.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Davis, Kiridavisluriy dot com.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Cia Davislivery dot com. I knew you when you were
Kira Davis. Then you married an esteemed director, Rod Lurie.
He's very creative, also very talented guy.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
He loses a lot of money to you in poker.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
That's not the way I usually live it. But it's
a lot of creativity under that roof of yours. So
that's great Kira Davis Lorie. We continue the book is
The Great Man and more. As we continue, we're talking
to Kira Davis LORII. Kira Davis Lourie is a best
selling author. Her latest is The Great Man m A
double n She has, you know, book signings, and I
(09:55):
would imagine they'll read probably from the book as well
at these events June tenth at Romans and Sadena, June
eleventh at Diesel in Santa Monica, and June nineteenth at
Chevaliet's Books. It takes place in the nineteen forties, and
again it's historical novel. And this is your first piece
of historical fiction, I think, right it is, Yeah, and
(10:15):
so you had to research this period of the mid
nineteen forties and this part of LA, this affluent black
community made up of, as you suggested, show business performers
top of their game and the business elite top of
their game. These are real people. This is a real
place existed in LA in the mid nineteen forties. Two things,
were there things that surprised you? First of all in
(10:36):
your research and also was there stuff in there that
you didn't get a chance to include in the book.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yeah, so, so much of it was surprising. For one thing,
you have to think of how people's feelings and their
view and the lens they saw Los Angeles through was
so different in good and bad ways. One of my
characters John Alexanders, he was the first African American to
(11:03):
graduate from USC. He had a dentistry degree and the
top of his class and opened up a huge luxury
hotel and YadA YadA. But he wrote not a biography,
and in it he talks about how Los Angeles, yes
there's racial problems, but we're so much more enlightened than
(11:24):
the majority of the country. For instance, you don't see
the race riots in Los Angeles that you see in
other parts of the country, and which was true when
he wrote that book.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
But if you can always stick around a little wit
right exactly.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
It's like, oh wow, this is like such a different
kind of viewpoint of what LA is. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
It was a sense, by the way, and just in
general in California, there's a sense of openness, of an acceptance.
I don't know to what extent that's just sort of
a brand that we have in California. How much of
it is really true, Yeah, but it's interesting that there
there was real his real sense, palpable sense of it.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Back in the mid nineteen forties.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
He was I mean, he well, he was a very
he was a very optimistic man, and he definitely saw
he saw the opportunity. He felt like if you just
talked to people, were reasonable with them, things would progress.
And that was frequently his experience. Now, it is also
true that Los Angeles, a California in general, but definitely
(12:31):
particularly Los Angeles, had a lot of what they called
racial covenants. About eighty percent of Los Angeles the a
percent of the homes of Los Angeles had a covenant
on them saying that the only people who are allowed
to live in those homes were white people. Yeah, and
the only and if you were black, the only way
(12:53):
that you were allowed to live in those homes was
if you were a servant to white people and so,
and that included the homes in West Adam Heights. So
there was actually in the book at details there was
a lawsuit from the white neighbors who were trying to
get these people kicked out of their homes because of
the racial covenants on there.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
So wow, yeah, in battle to their own neighborhoods exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
And that's and it's sort of an interest again talk
about economies. You have these people in Minx who are
on the verge of being homeless because of people trying
to kick them out of their homes. So it's it's
based on race and nothing else. And at that time,
the racial covenants were considered legal, so it was it
(13:38):
was a real battle and that really started to be honest,
not with African Americans. It was a push against the
Chinese residence of the turn of the twentieth century in California,
and then it just sort of moved another ethnic group. Yes,
exactly exactly exactly what.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
And what what what part of this world that your
researched in that mid nineteen forties world, in that neighborhood
that you described that's the backdrop for this book, The
Great Man. What would you have liked to include that
you couldn't, Okay, So.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Hattie McDaniel, she was Mammy and gone with the wind.
They had the premiere in a Georgia, Atlanta theater. It
was a segregated theater, so she was not allowed to
attend the premiere.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah, there's so many of those kinds of stories exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
So they had this big premiere and just to put
an exclamation point on the whole thing, they brought in
a kid's choir that they kind of dressed up in
rags and they were it was a black kids choir
and they were going to sing and it was supposed
to be like the slaves of the plantation South for
(14:51):
this white audience and like to entertain them before in
that choir, one of the kids in that choir was
Martin Luther King.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
J Wow. Yeah, what a fact, right, what a fact?
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Right?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
How did you discover that that was?
Speaker 3 (15:07):
I mean when I was so that's again it's document.
When I was researching Hattie McDaniel looking through all the
materials of that premiere, I mean, that was in there,
and I'm like, but but nobody in nineteen forty five
knows who Martin Luther King Junior is. I can't include it.
I can't include it. It's like, so it doesn't But
but how much did I want to?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Right somehow? Exactly? That's wild.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
That's so true though, when you immerse yourself in a
time period, you can't just jump out and go, hey,
by the way.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Right, it's nice h MLK and the yeah, and they're
going to be like, I'm sorry, who so sure, yeah,
it's And there was so much like that, and it
was really it was really a challenge for me choosing
what to include and and what just was just ended
up sounding like a lecture.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
It's like I want to need to just be entertainment
and so but there was like all of this extra
stuff that I learned. I wish I could just sort
of pack in there, and you can't. Yeah, exactly, And
by the way.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
You know, it's like there's no but it's got to
be a good ride for your reader, That's what I mean.
Obviously you're a best selling author. That's what you've been
true to and that ride for the reader. The great man,
so your character in the last couple of moments that
we have your character does get into this world and
again after military service, and I think falls in with
(16:35):
I was just reading about the book I have to
get into the book falls into with some not so
savory characters.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, well, okay, so I do have a gas b
esque character, right, So James quote unquote reaper man, right.
Reaper is his molecule that nobody uses to his face, right,
And it's he clearly has extraordinary wealth. He is like Hattie,
throwing huge gala events, except even bigger. The neighborhood. Both
(17:09):
the business moguls and the Hollywood elite are a little
nervous about this guy because they don't really know where
he came from or where his money came from. And
they're already battling for their homes, so they don't really
need any extra controversy that he may be bringing in.
But Charlie is really drawn to him, and he's very
(17:29):
kind to Charlie, and the parties are amazing, and so
he sort of gets wrapped up in his world too,
of just a little bit of like mystery, the hint
of maybe something nefarious but you don't really know ry
And and of course, as in Gatsby, it turns out
(17:50):
that he is truly in love with Charlie's cousin, who
is the one who brought him out. So it's like yeah,
so so yeah, so you know got and she is married,
so you know, there's the love triangle, there's like the
who is this guy? And there is also the clash
of the two communities and the court case and everything
(18:10):
going on.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Oh that's terrific. There sounds like there's so much in
this book. The great man Kia Davis Lourie, Hey, listen again.
I encourage you to meet Kira and participate in one
of three events. June tenth at Romans they do great
stuff in Pasadena.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
You can meet Kira. She'll sign your book.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, and that's at seven, by the way, seven pm,
so come after work.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Oh great, okay, good, it's a nice evening event. June
eleventh at diesel a bookstore that's at sixth that's at
six in Santa Monica and Chevalier's Books in La on
the nineteenth.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
What time is that.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Six six thirty? I think six thirty.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Okay, Well, you can check the website. Kira is k
y r A Kira Davis Lourie l u R I E.
Kiradavislurie dot com has all the information again. Romans, Diesel
and Chevalier's The book is out June tenth, The Great Man.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
It takes place right here in La.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
There's a Hollywood connection and La as most of us
had not seen it, I mean in the mid nineteen forties.
You know, I've learned more about La in the nineteen
forties in this conversation with you than I ever knew.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
So You're so cool to stop to the studio. Thank you,
Thank you so much for having me give my best
to your husband.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
I absolutely he was also a very talented guy filmmaker.
I hope his next work comes out soon and we
can talk to him as well.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
It's going to be amazing.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, thanks Kira,
It's Mark Thompson here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm so excited to have a best selling author in
the midst here with a book that takes place in
Los Angeles. It's set against the backdrop of Los Angeles.
The Library Journal already saying that her nuanced and sympathetic
(00:21):
characters and stellar writing are nearly as brilliant as in
The Great Gatsby. Wow it is. It's pretty amazing that
you got this from Bloomberg. Bloomberg chooses your book as
one of the ten best books of the summer. How
(00:44):
about it for Kira Davis, Lori and the Great Man,
which is your new book, Bravo. Wow Man is spelled
Mann and it's being released.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I think is it next week that it's released.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Tent right around the corner.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So tell me about where it's set, because it's set
in a part of LA that is sort of very
different now than it was.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah, the area is called West Adam Heights and right
now there's the Ten Freeways right through it. But that
did not that wasn't always the case. So West Adam
Heights was Los Angeles' Beverly Hills before we had Beverly Hills.
So all the La aristocracy lived there, and then the
(01:32):
stock market crashed and as the thirties wore on, people
discovered it was actually really expensive to keep up your mansion, right,
so they had to sell. But the only people who
were able to buy at that time were the newly
wealthy African Americans. So you had African American oil tycoons, hoteliers,
(01:56):
business moguls, and then the Hollywood movie stars and they
started buying up these mansions. And Hattie McDaniel was one
of the people who lived there, and she would throw
these gala parties where her guest list would include Bing Crosby,
Clark Gable, Lena Horne, Duke Ellington was her entertainment and right,
(02:20):
I mean, so it was extraordinarily Gatsby esque, which is
why I took the framework of the Gatsby and said
it in this real world that was right here in
Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Apparently it's amazingly successful, this narrative. So this veteran who
is your main character, arrives back in nineteen forty five
Los Angeles to this area and figuring there'd be a
fresh start, this affluent neighborhood that you describe, and then
take us through a little bit of what he encounters, right.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
So Charlie Trammel, he is, he was in World War
Two and he's just come back to his home. And
he came back home to his home in Virginia, in
rural Virginia where his family was sharecroppers. But as what
just was the case, as with the case in the
end of World War One, black veterans were not treated well,
(03:13):
particularly in the South. There was a lot of violence
and abuse. And he decides that's the stock going to work.
And he has a cousin who he hasn't seen forever,
who's in Los Angeles. He's like, yeah, come on out here,
lots of opportunity. This is good. He goes out and
discovers it's not just that she's doing okay, she's living
(03:35):
the life. Okay, you know, she's coming out. She's got
diamonds in her ears, she's driving like a nice car.
You know, she's got clothes that look like they were
designed just for her. And you know, when he knew her,
I mean she left young, but like she's his cousin.
This was this was a sharecropping family, so he doesn't
really know the full trajectory. And she married this guy
(03:57):
who's living up in West Adam Heights, which had been
nicknamed at that point LA's Sugar Hill. So he gets
brought into this world from the sharecropping world and as
well as the the drama and trauma of World War Two,
into this world of black luxury that he didn't know existed.
(04:19):
And he's seeing, you know again, movie stars. And one
of the things really interesting for him with the black
movie stars is, like a lot of African Americans of
that period, there was a lot of mixed feelings about
their black movie stars because they were taking these roles
that were really stereotypic, typical, and frequently demeaning.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Sure, the.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Servant the exact yeah, of course, right, you know.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
They were the they were there to be subservient and
the butther of the joke, you know. And then he
meets these people and they're the they're so the dichotomy
between them and the character they play is gigantic, right,
I mean, as he meets Louise Beaver's who was a
huge star at the time, less known now by the time,
(05:08):
she was as big as Hattie McDaniel, and she played
roles that, you know, these plaintive roles of you know,
these the the servant, the main occasionally occasionally the slave,
right you know. And and she in reality, she was this.
(05:30):
She has a three story house, she's you know, makes
a point like, I don't touch the kitchen. That's not
my job. My husband's gonna have to do that. She
smokes cigars, She has poker games every Sunday up on
the third floor, right you know. I mean, she loves
being first row of the boxing Max. And he says,
it's like it's the same she has the same voice
(05:52):
and the same face, but a completely different spine than
what I've seen on screen.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
So it's he's just like he's trying to reconcile these
these two world exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
And what's really one of the things I found so
compelling about that that community is Charlie was not Again,
he was not alone in having mixed feelings about the celebrities,
the black celebrities. In fact, the black business elite generally speaking,
(06:25):
really resented the black celebrities because they felt they were
undermining their own social progress, that these images that we
were seeing on the screen were demeaning the entire race.
And there wasn't a lot of sympathy for the position
that these actors were in. They were genuinely trying to
(06:48):
open doors, right, but the opportunities weren't there for better roles.
And for instance, when they did get better roles, those
roles were frequently thanks to the Hayes Office, which was
a censorship office, the parts that showed the racism, that
showed their agency were taken out like that was not acceptable.
(07:10):
And so even when they accepted roles that they thought, oh,
this is the role where I get to show my strength.
Then it's literally in a movie that Louise Beaver's was
in Imitation of Life, someone from the Hayes Office wrote
and said, looking at the script, it would appear you
(07:33):
don't seem to see how these the black servants don't
want more than being a black servant, that they want
to be independent. Surely, I know that you must be
wanting to show that they are happy with their place
in society, but it's not coming through, so you need
to adjust the script right exactly exactly so. But there
(07:57):
wasn't sympathy for that in the black communities or in
the black business elite.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
And that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
So even within this affluent world, and Black America is
flourishing in this way, and your main character is coming
from this place where he just can't believe all these
black people are doing so well. But even within that
community there is this conflict. They're the business people and
then there's show people, the show business exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Hold that thought. I'm because it's interesting.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
You have to research all this right as a writer,
you know, getting the plot, finding your main character that's
going to run through this entire world. You have to
research that world because it is historically based your novel, right, yeah, yeah,
I want to talk to you a little bit about that,
and you know about what La was like it was
the mid nineteen forties, right, Yeah. I want to get
(08:43):
to again the books called The Great Man, and I
do want to mention Kira if you want to meet her.
There is a series of upcoming events. June tenth at
Romans in Pasadena. They always have great events there, They
just do such great Yeah, June eleventh, Diesel a bookstore
Santa Monica, another great spot. And then June nineteenth Chevalier's
(09:06):
Books in Los Angeles. Again the tenth, the eleventh, and
the nineteenth Romans, Diesel and Chevalier's. All that information, I
think is on your website. Is it's Karrad.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Davis, Kiridavisluriy dot com.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Cia Davislivery dot com. I knew you when you were
Kira Davis. Then you married an esteemed director, Rod Lurie.
He's very creative, also very talented guy.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
He loses a lot of money to you in poker.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
That's not the way I usually live it. But it's
a lot of creativity under that roof of yours. So
that's great Kira Davis Lorie. We continue the book is
The Great Man and more. As we continue, we're talking
to Kira Davis LORII. Kira Davis Lourie is a best
selling author. Her latest is The Great Man m A
double n She has, you know, book signings, and I
(09:55):
would imagine they'll read probably from the book as well
at these events June tenth at Romans and Sadena, June
eleventh at Diesel in Santa Monica, and June nineteenth at
Chevaliet's Books. It takes place in the nineteen forties, and
again it's historical novel. And this is your first piece
of historical fiction, I think, right it is, Yeah, and
(10:15):
so you had to research this period of the mid
nineteen forties and this part of LA, this affluent black
community made up of, as you suggested, show business performers
top of their game and the business elite top of
their game. These are real people. This is a real
place existed in LA in the mid nineteen forties. Two things,
were there things that surprised you? First of all in
(10:36):
your research and also was there stuff in there that
you didn't get a chance to include in the book.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yeah, so, so much of it was surprising. For one thing,
you have to think of how people's feelings and their
view and the lens they saw Los Angeles through was
so different in good and bad ways. One of my
characters John Alexanders, he was the first African American to
(11:03):
graduate from USC. He had a dentistry degree and the
top of his class and opened up a huge luxury
hotel and YadA YadA. But he wrote not a biography,
and in it he talks about how Los Angeles, yes
there's racial problems, but we're so much more enlightened than
(11:24):
the majority of the country. For instance, you don't see
the race riots in Los Angeles that you see in
other parts of the country, and which was true when
he wrote that book.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
But if you can always stick around a little wit
right exactly.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
It's like, oh wow, this is like such a different
kind of viewpoint of what LA is. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
It was a sense, by the way, and just in
general in California, there's a sense of openness, of an acceptance.
I don't know to what extent that's just sort of
a brand that we have in California. How much of
it is really true, Yeah, but it's interesting that there
there was real his real sense, palpable sense of it.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Back in the mid nineteen forties.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
He was I mean, he well, he was a very
he was a very optimistic man, and he definitely saw
he saw the opportunity. He felt like if you just
talked to people, were reasonable with them, things would progress.
And that was frequently his experience. Now, it is also
true that Los Angeles, a California in general, but definitely
(12:31):
particularly Los Angeles, had a lot of what they called
racial covenants. About eighty percent of Los Angeles the a
percent of the homes of Los Angeles had a covenant
on them saying that the only people who are allowed
to live in those homes were white people. Yeah, and
the only and if you were black, the only way
(12:53):
that you were allowed to live in those homes was
if you were a servant to white people and so,
and that included the homes in West Adam Heights. So
there was actually in the book at details there was
a lawsuit from the white neighbors who were trying to
get these people kicked out of their homes because of
the racial covenants on there.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
So wow, yeah, in battle to their own neighborhoods exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
And that's and it's sort of an interest again talk
about economies. You have these people in Minx who are
on the verge of being homeless because of people trying
to kick them out of their homes. So it's it's
based on race and nothing else. And at that time,
the racial covenants were considered legal, so it was it
(13:38):
was a real battle and that really started to be honest,
not with African Americans. It was a push against the
Chinese residence of the turn of the twentieth century in California,
and then it just sort of moved another ethnic group. Yes,
exactly exactly exactly what.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
And what what what part of this world that your
researched in that mid nineteen forties world, in that neighborhood
that you described that's the backdrop for this book, The
Great Man. What would you have liked to include that
you couldn't, Okay, So.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Hattie McDaniel, she was Mammy and gone with the wind.
They had the premiere in a Georgia, Atlanta theater. It
was a segregated theater, so she was not allowed to
attend the premiere.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah, there's so many of those kinds of stories exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
So they had this big premiere and just to put
an exclamation point on the whole thing, they brought in
a kid's choir that they kind of dressed up in
rags and they were it was a black kids choir
and they were going to sing and it was supposed
to be like the slaves of the plantation South for
(14:51):
this white audience and like to entertain them before in
that choir, one of the kids in that choir was
Martin Luther King.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
J Wow. Yeah, what a fact, right, what a fact?
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Right?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
How did you discover that that was?
Speaker 3 (15:07):
I mean when I was so that's again it's document.
When I was researching Hattie McDaniel looking through all the
materials of that premiere, I mean, that was in there,
and I'm like, but but nobody in nineteen forty five
knows who Martin Luther King Junior is. I can't include it.
I can't include it. It's like, so it doesn't But
but how much did I want to?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Right somehow? Exactly? That's wild.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
That's so true though, when you immerse yourself in a
time period, you can't just jump out and go, hey,
by the way.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Right, it's nice h MLK and the yeah, and they're
going to be like, I'm sorry, who so sure, yeah,
it's And there was so much like that, and it
was really it was really a challenge for me choosing
what to include and and what just was just ended
up sounding like a lecture.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
It's like I want to need to just be entertainment
and so but there was like all of this extra
stuff that I learned. I wish I could just sort
of pack in there, and you can't. Yeah, exactly, And
by the way.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
You know, it's like there's no but it's got to
be a good ride for your reader, That's what I mean.
Obviously you're a best selling author. That's what you've been
true to and that ride for the reader. The great man,
so your character in the last couple of moments that
we have your character does get into this world and
again after military service, and I think falls in with
(16:35):
I was just reading about the book I have to
get into the book falls into with some not so
savory characters.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, well, okay, so I do have a gas b
esque character, right, So James quote unquote reaper man, right.
Reaper is his molecule that nobody uses to his face, right,
And it's he clearly has extraordinary wealth. He is like Hattie,
throwing huge gala events, except even bigger. The neighborhood. Both
(17:09):
the business moguls and the Hollywood elite are a little
nervous about this guy because they don't really know where
he came from or where his money came from. And
they're already battling for their homes, so they don't really
need any extra controversy that he may be bringing in.
But Charlie is really drawn to him, and he's very
(17:29):
kind to Charlie, and the parties are amazing, and so
he sort of gets wrapped up in his world too,
of just a little bit of like mystery, the hint
of maybe something nefarious but you don't really know ry
And and of course, as in Gatsby, it turns out
(17:50):
that he is truly in love with Charlie's cousin, who
is the one who brought him out. So it's like yeah,
so so yeah, so you know got and she is married,
so you know, there's the love triangle, there's like the
who is this guy? And there is also the clash
of the two communities and the court case and everything
(18:10):
going on.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Oh that's terrific. There sounds like there's so much in
this book. The great man Kia Davis Lourie, Hey, listen again.
I encourage you to meet Kira and participate in one
of three events. June tenth at Romans they do great
stuff in Pasadena.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
You can meet Kira. She'll sign your book.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, and that's at seven, by the way, seven pm,
so come after work.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Oh great, okay, good, it's a nice evening event. June
eleventh at diesel a bookstore that's at sixth that's at
six in Santa Monica and Chevalier's Books in La on
the nineteenth.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
What time is that.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Six six thirty? I think six thirty.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Okay, Well, you can check the website. Kira is k
y r A Kira Davis Lourie l u R I E.
Kiradavislurie dot com has all the information again. Romans, Diesel
and Chevalier's The book is out June tenth, The Great Man.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
It takes place right here in La.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
There's a Hollywood connection and La as most of us
had not seen it, I mean in the mid nineteen forties.
You know, I've learned more about La in the nineteen
forties in this conversation with you than I ever knew.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
So You're so cool to stop to the studio. Thank you,
Thank you so much for having me give my best
to your husband.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
I absolutely he was also a very talented guy filmmaker.
I hope his next work comes out soon and we
can talk to him as well.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
It's going to be amazing.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, thanks Kira,
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