0:09

Art originals.

0:10

This is an iHeart original.

0:13

So as the woman here at very

0:16

special episodes, I feel like it's incumbent

0:18

upon me to note that, as we all

0:21

know, Friday, March eighth is International

0:23

Women's Day, So it feels important at

0:25

least to take a few minutes at the top of the episode

0:28

to honor some of the incredible women

0:30

in our lives, especially because this is such

0:32

a female centric episode.

0:34

So Dana, I'm going to queue you up.

0:36

I don't think we need my perspective as

0:38

a father of daughters, nephew of

0:41

aunts.

0:41

Why don't you tell us.

0:42

About a professional person in your life

0:44

who's been an idol or a mentor,

0:47

Oh.

0:47

My god, an idle. I have a lot of idols.

0:51

Alyssa Mastromonico, who is just

0:53

an incredible woman in person.

0:56

She worked in the Obama administration and now

0:58

I've worked with her on this podcast called Hysteria.

1:01

She's just so smart and

1:03

grounded and cool and down to earth. She's

1:06

just sort of like the model that I try

1:08

to base everything I do on in

1:10

terms of just like other idols. Sometimes

1:13

when I feel too good about myself, I'll read

1:15

a Joan Didion book and be like Oh, we're

1:17

both writers, but we're not doing the same thing.

1:20

Oh, man, I know exactly what.

1:21

You mean by that. Saren.

1:23

Any any women mentors

1:25

you want to shout out for International Women's

1:28

Day?

1:28

Oh well, I mean, I wouldn't even be on this show with y'all

1:30

if it wasn't for my two English teachers, Vicki

1:33

Serati and Pamela Mauri. Thank you both.

1:35

But like I have, and I think as a guy, it's

1:37

incumbent upon me to point out

1:39

how many female role models,

1:41

women who inspire me, Like I have

1:44

a list here before me, Jason, I just kind of

1:46

jotted down a couple. Agatha Christi

1:48

right, mystery writer, Lucy Parson's political

1:50

organizer, stage coach, Mary Black

1:53

woman on the front here alone, Erica Jong,

1:55

writer, Bessie Coleman pilot,

1:57

Thelma Shuna maker editor, Catherine Bigelow

1:59

filmmaker, Agnes Varda filmmaker,

2:02

Anita Franco Folk sanger, Vera Rubin

2:04

astronomer, Poncho Barnes, pilot

2:06

friend of the early astronauts, Emily Noather, mathematician

2:09

who developed the theory of least action,

2:11

and of course Amelia Earhart, my first

2:14

role model.

2:15

So there you go, that's pretty impressed.

2:17

I think we got five or six future episodes

2:19

out of that list right there. Just taking

2:21

notes, but I feel like we should probably start

2:24

to get to the episode here, Dana,

2:27

in honor of International Women's Day. Yes,

2:29

we're have Zaren tell you the story this week.

2:31

This is great. I get a week off. This

2:34

is exactly how I want to spend International

2:36

Women's Day.

2:38

Saren, you want to just set this one up for us

2:40

before we get in.

2:41

We'll talk about it at the end.

2:43

Okay, Well, this one is. I

2:45

loved this story. It was told to me, and the question

2:47

of the story I think is so central to

2:49

the story. I'll just hit you with the question, which is,

2:52

do you know who wrote Nancy Drew?

2:54

No, but here's an really embarrassing

2:57

confession. So I don't know who wrote Nancy Drew,

2:59

just like off the top of my head, which I feel like I should.

3:02

I was never a big Nancy Drew kid,

3:04

but I did like the computer games.

3:06

Okay, I feel ja hunky.

3:07

That's my Nancy Drew connection. If anyone shout

3:10

out to the Nancy Drew computer games, hit me

3:12

up in my DMS. If you also loved those

3:14

games.

3:15

Rereader's gammers. You're all welcome to this story, because

3:17

this is Nancy Drew. In

3:23

the late nineteen seventies, an eleven year old

3:25

girl was kidnapped from the town of Richfield,

3:27

Minnesota. The eighty pound girl

3:29

was trapped in the trunk of her kidnappers car

3:32

for fourteen hours. The

3:34

young girl never gave up. She eventually

3:36

figured out how to escape from the trunk of

3:38

the nineteen seventy Ford. She unscrewed

3:41

the bolts from the car's tail light. Then

3:43

she kicked out the light and squeezed her way

3:45

out. The girl was

3:47

able to flag down a passing car.

3:51

How did an eleven year old manage to

3:53

do this simple? She asked

3:55

herself, what would Nancy Drew

3:57

do? Then she did exactly

3:59

that. The astounded police told

4:02

the local press that the girl had read around

4:04

forty five Nancy Drew books, and

4:06

the mystery stories prepared

4:09

her mind to deal with the situation and

4:11

to escape. The story

4:13

was often repeated in nineteen eighty, the

4:15

fiftieth anniversary of the publication of

4:17

the first Nancy Drew books. Nineteen

4:20

eighty was also the year that the mysterious

4:22

publishing syndicate behind Nancy

4:24

Drew was dragged into court to settle

4:26

a dispute over who owned the rights

4:29

to the mystery series. Millions

4:31

of dollars of profits and royalties were

4:33

on the line. Two women, both

4:36

accomplished and successful in their respective

4:38

careers, sat in that New York courtroom.

4:42

One was seventy four years old, dressed

4:44

in a powder blue pantsuit and not

4:47

exactly eager to take the stand. The

4:49

other was an eighty seven year old woman,

4:52

and she owned the publishing house. It

4:54

had been decades since the two women had

4:56

seen each other. Both would be called

4:58

to testify, and both would swear

5:00

to the judge and jury that she was

5:03

the real writer behind Nancy Drew.

5:09

Welcome to very special episodes

5:11

an iHeart original podcast. I'm

5:13

your host, Zaren Burnett, and this

5:16

is the case of the two Nancy

5:18

Drews.

5:28

It should be no surprise that Nancy Drew has

5:30

enjoyed an enduring relevance in the culture,

5:33

nor should it surprise anyone that

5:35

she remains such a beloved fictional

5:38

character. Nancy Drew was and

5:40

is the plucky teen girl detective with a wicked,

5:42

sharp mind who's just as fearless as

5:45

she is smart, It's a rather irresistible

5:47

combination for a detective. The most interesting

5:50

mystery of this teen girl detective isn't

5:52

her popularity, and it also isn't

5:55

hidden in the plots of the books. The

5:57

greatest mystery is right there on the

5:59

cover of the books. It's the name of

6:01

the author. Most folks have no idea

6:04

the author, Carolyn Keene, never really

6:06

existed, which begs the question, well,

6:08

then, who was Carolyn Keene? That

6:12

was not the mystery that author Melanie Rayjak

6:14

set out to solve. Melanie originally was

6:16

just looking for a good story to tell. She'd

6:18

wanted to write a biography of the Ohio based

6:20

journalist in general all around badass,

6:23

Mildred Wirt Benson.

6:25

And there were all these tidbits in the obituary that were really

6:27

fascinating to me, like that she had a pilot's

6:29

license and that she had been a journalist

6:31

for decades.

6:32

Mildred was the first woman to graduate

6:34

with a master's degree from the University of Iowa's

6:37

School of Journalism, and she went on

6:39

to be one of America's great mid century

6:41

journalists, one who happened to be a woman.

6:44

Mildred's other claim to fame. She

6:46

was the main writer behind the Nancy Drew

6:48

books. There was another big reason that Melanie

6:51

was interested in that fact.

6:53

I was a crazy Nancy Drew

6:55

reader.

6:55

These books were sort of always floating around

6:57

in our house, and I read

7:00

all of them millions of times.

7:02

But as she started looking through Mildred's

7:04

archives, she kept running across something else,

7:07

another.

7:07

Name I kept coming across.

7:10

Threaded in with all of her stuff about you

7:12

know, her upbringing and her schoolwork

7:14

and all the things she'd done in Iowa and her

7:16

career afterwards, these stories

7:19

about Harriet Straatemeyer. And although

7:21

clearly was connected to Nancy Drew, that

7:23

seems odd to me that she

7:25

would preserve the story of this

7:27

other person in her personal documents.

7:31

It grabbed Melanie's full attention, intrigued

7:33

her, and as she looked further into it,

7:35

she hit upon a realization.

7:37

It kind of emerged, you know, as if

7:40

sort of out of the ether. I was like,

7:42

oh, she's preserved this story

7:44

because there are these competing narratives

7:47

about how Nancy Drew

7:49

came to be.

7:50

Melanie stepped into her own real life

7:52

Nancy Drew mystery. It was up to her to

7:54

solve the mystery of who is the

7:56

real Carolyn Keene.

8:00

The next thing Melanie Rayjak discovered was

8:02

that she was not alone. Others had

8:04

also attempted to solve this mystery

8:07

before her, most importantly one other

8:09

teen detective Jeffrey s.

8:11

Laban.

8:12

He didn't do it for anything. He

8:14

did it for Mildred. I

8:16

think that to be a fan is

8:19

to be a volunteer champion, and

8:22

is only ever motivated by love

8:25

and passion. And those are great

8:27

things in the world.

8:28

Motivated by love and passion. This

8:30

quite accurately describes our other amateur detective,

8:33

Jeffrey s Laban.

8:34

Jeff is fine, saves time.

8:36

Jeff is a retired cellist. He played

8:38

for four decades with the Indianapolis Symphony

8:41

Orchestra. He is a man powered

8:43

by love and passion. Back when

8:45

he was a boy in the nineteen fifties, he was

8:47

a young reader of series mystery books.

8:50

Later, those same forces would fuel

8:52

his desire to solve the mystery of

8:54

who is the real Carolyn Keene.

8:57

One of the department stores downtown would

9:00

have once a year a sale on children's

9:02

series books, and so it

9:04

would generally be the first two or the

9:06

three volumes of each series.

9:09

His mother would order a box of these books

9:11

for her young, voracious reader, and one

9:13

of those boxes of books would change the

9:15

shape and the course of her young son's life.

9:18

I remember that the

9:20

first one that I opened to read was The Hidden

9:22

Staircase. And here she sneaks

9:24

into the house during a rainstorm,

9:27

and while she is hiding in the closet in this

9:29

room, she feels something poking

9:32

in her back, and she turns around and pushes

9:34

it, and its door slides open,

9:36

and she falls down this long

9:39

stone staircase.

9:42

Jeff poured through all of the available

9:44

Nancy Drew books. Along the way, he

9:46

grew more and more enamored with the

9:48

voice of this author. What so

9:50

clearly resonated with young Jeff was not

9:53

just the dark and moody vibe, but also

9:55

the mysterious presence on the other side

9:57

of the page. He'd read a lot

9:59

of series books, but the writing of the Nancy Drew

10:01

books was a cut above. Over time,

10:04

Jeff also noticed that in some Nancy

10:06

Drew books the writing was noticeably better

10:08

than in others. He didn't yet know it

10:11

then, but even as a young reader, Jeff

10:13

could intuitively tell one writer

10:16

hadn't written all of the books in the Nancy

10:18

Drew series. Indeed, there

10:20

was more than one Carolyn Keene.

10:23

What that meant was a mystery yet

10:25

for him to solve. But soon enough he would

10:28

discover that truth, which would

10:30

lead to the most important question, who

10:32

is the heroine of this tale? And could

10:34

that same woman also be the

10:37

villain? Our two amateur detectives,

10:39

Jeff and Melanie, were both undaunted.

10:42

They'd cracked this case, just like their

10:44

girl, Nancy Drew.

10:55

The long hot days of summer finally

10:57

gave way to the embrace of the cool and brisk

10:59

of autumn. It was

11:02

nineteen twenty nine September, to be exact.

11:04

Looking to the future, a businessman put his thoughts

11:07

to paper as he typed up a memo.

11:09

Edward Stratamier had first started his company

11:11

Stratamire Syndicate back in nineteen

11:14

oh five. Back then, he wrote and published

11:16

dime novels, most notably books that were

11:18

aimed at children. This was his main

11:21

business series books, adventure

11:23

books, mystery books. He was quite good a

11:25

natural storyteller. Edward

11:28

eventually began to use pen names so he

11:30

could write more and more books in different

11:32

genres. Soon enough, he couldn't

11:34

keep up with all of the contracts for books

11:36

he had signed, so he hired ghostwriters.

11:39

He'd come up with the story and they'd write it

11:41

out.

11:42

To keep things.

11:42

Simple and to make sure that there

11:44

were plenty of books, Edward attached

11:46

a pen name to each series. That

11:49

way, if the author behind it changed,

11:51

the public would never be the wiser. This

11:54

marked the true beginning of the

11:56

Stratamier syndicate, and then

11:58

for decades his firm cranked out

12:00

series novels meant to be devoured by

12:02

young readers. His business plan proved

12:05

steadily profitable. In nineteen twenty

12:07

nine, Edward Stratemier had an idea for a

12:10

new series. He put his thinking down

12:12

in a memo. It was straightforward, matter

12:14

of fact, as was his style.

12:17

These suggestions are for a new series

12:19

for girls verging on novels. I've

12:21

called this line the Stella Strong Stories.

12:24

Stella Strong, a girl of sixteen,

12:26

is the daughter of a district attorney. He is a

12:29

widower and often talks over his affairs

12:31

with Stella. Then, quite unexpectedly,

12:33

Stella plunged into some mysteries of her

12:35

own and found herself wound up in a

12:38

series of exciting situations and

12:40

up to date American girl at her best,

12:42

Bright, clever, resourceful,

12:45

and full of energy.

12:49

Edward found a partner in a small publishing

12:51

house called Grosset and Dunlap. They

12:53

agreed to a contract for three books

12:55

of the new series. After Edward

12:57

Stratemire got the green light, one of

12:59

the first things he did was to rework the

13:01

name of the girl. Detective Stella Strong

13:04

lacked a certain realism. She sounded like

13:06

a comic Carowin. Edward wanted something

13:08

that made her seem more relatable to the

13:10

everyday girl. He and the publisher

13:12

traded ideas until boom,

13:14

they landed on it. The name we all

13:16

know Nancy Drew. Now

13:19

with the right name and a contract in

13:21

place for a three book series, Edward

13:24

took his next important step. He

13:26

reached out to a young writer he'd worked with a

13:28

few times before on a series for girls,

13:30

in particular his Ruth Fielding series.

13:33

I have just succeeded in signing up

13:35

one of our publishers for a new series of books

13:38

for girls. These will be bright, vigorous

13:40

stories for older girls, having to do with

13:43

the solving of several mysteries.

13:45

Edward laid out his expectations for their

13:48

working relationship. The writer would

13:50

pen all three books for the Nancy Drew mystery

13:52

stories. The novels would be based

13:54

on outlines supplied by him. The

13:56

writer would have four weeks to turn in a

13:59

manuscript, and in turn, the

14:01

writer would receive one hundred and twenty

14:03

five dollars for their work. That's

14:05

one hundred and twenty five per book,

14:08

no royalties, nothing else. Most

14:11

importantly, the ghostwriters would sign away their

14:13

rights to their work and would receive no credit

14:15

for their writing. Instead, the author of the series

14:17

would be the fictitious Carolyn

14:19

Keene. The young

14:22

writer considered the offer, and then in October

14:24

nineteen twenty nine, she agreed

14:26

to the deal. The writer's name was Mildred

14:29

Augustine. Later Mildred worked

14:31

by marriage, and even later Mildred worked Benson

14:34

by a second marriage. As contracted,

14:36

Mildred wrote the first three books in the Nancy

14:38

Drew series, The Secret of the Old Clock,

14:41

The Hidden Staircase, and The Bungalow

14:44

Mystery. Those first three books

14:46

would become an instant success for the publisher.

14:48

They marked the beginning of a new American

14:51

icon. While Edward Stratemeyer created

14:53

the bones of Nancy Drew, and he drew

14:56

the sketches of the outlines of the first three

14:58

stories. It was Mildred who

15:00

would go on to flesh out the character

15:02

and give Nancy Drew life. She

15:04

transformed the outlines into a compelling,

15:07

in vivid world of mystery and spooky

15:09

portent, culminating in the payoff

15:11

of well earned justice at the end. According

15:14

to Mildred's diaries, Edward Stratamier

15:17

never really gave her much to work with In

15:19

those original outlines.

15:20

The basic plot was simply that there was an

15:22

old clock in which there was a booklet hidden,

15:25

and the booklet gave the clue to the fact

15:27

that the will was in a safe deposit box.

15:30

Then there was detail on that and the conflict

15:33

of people wanting to get the old man's money. But

15:35

that was the basic plot, which was a very

15:38

old, hackneyed thing.

15:39

That's all there was, which left

15:42

much for Mildred to do. What was

15:44

particularly fresh about Nancy Drew was that

15:46

she was made specifically four girls,

15:48

and not only that she was a new type

15:50

of American girl, as Edward Stratamier

15:52

put.

15:53

It, an up to date American girl

15:55

at her best right, clever,

15:57

resourceful and full of energy.

16:00

This same attitude was reflected in his

16:02

own home and in how Edward

16:04

raised his daughters.

16:06

Stratamar were a very sort of upstanding,

16:09

fairly upper class family,

16:11

and I think he cared a lot about

16:14

patriotism of the day, and

16:16

he educated his daughters,

16:19

which was not always the case in

16:21

that era.

16:22

More than a mere capitalist, Edward

16:24

Stratmeier was the sort of American we don't

16:27

see much of these days.

16:28

I would have loved to sit down and talk to him.

16:29

I mean, I think that he really

16:32

was a wonderful person

16:34

who was very smart and cared

16:37

a lot about how people

16:39

take up their place in the world.

16:42

Yet Edward was still a man of his time,

16:44

and thus he never actually expected

16:46

his daughters to follow him into business

16:48

and take over his publishing empire. But

16:51

cruel reality stepped in. The

16:53

first Nancy Drew mystery story was published

16:55

on April twenty eighth, nineteen thirty.

16:58

The thing about any beginning is that

17:00

it also marks the end of something. In

17:02

this case, that was the literal truth,

17:05

because just as this new American icon

17:07

first came into being, Edward

17:09

stepped out of the frame. On May

17:11

tenth, nineteen thirty, a mere twelve days

17:14

after the first Nancy Drew book was published,

17:16

Edward Stratemeyer dropped dead. He

17:19

passed away at home after a bout of pneumonia.

17:22

He was sixty seven. Left

17:24

behind in his impressive wake of success

17:26

and brought low by loss and bereavement

17:29

were Edward's two daughters, Harriet

17:31

and Edna. After his sudden passing,

17:33

his daughters inherited their father's publishing

17:35

empire, built on the backs of ghostwriters

17:38

in series books. Their father never

17:40

taught them about business affairs, so

17:43

most folks assumed his daughters would sell the company

17:45

and live off the profits. But the trouble

17:47

for that plan there was this thing called a

17:49

Great Depression. In October nineteen

17:52

twenty nine, the same month Mildred first

17:54

started work on the new series, the stock

17:56

market cratered, plunging America

17:58

into a financial catastrophe. America

18:01

entered the Great Depression. The

18:04

heiresses tried the reasonable response

18:06

first, they actively courted buyers,

18:09

but the collapse of America's economy

18:11

six months prior to their father's death

18:13

made it exceedingly difficult for the

18:15

two heiresses to sell their father's

18:17

publishing company. There were no

18:19

buyers to be found anywhere.

18:22

They are unable to do that because it's the depression

18:24

and no one is buying this company, no one has any money.

18:27

And so this is the moment at which

18:30

my feelings about Harriet's Roudemyer Adams

18:32

and the story kind of changed.

18:35

It's a real and raw moment. What

18:37

would or could the Stratomeyer daughters

18:40

do. The one asset the daughters

18:42

had on their side was their father's personal

18:44

secretary. She'd worked with Edward for

18:46

fifteen years and was familiar

18:49

with the inner workings of the business.

18:51

They decide they're going to have to keep the company,

18:53

and they're going to have to run the company. To

18:56

me, Harriet sort of emerges

18:58

in this moment as someone

19:01

who has suddenly been given

19:03

an opportunity to really

19:06

do something in the world, which she.

19:08

Hadn't had and probably wouldn't have had any other.

19:10

Way, because she was sort of well to do, housewife

19:13

and mother for and I

19:15

think she was really into it. I think she was

19:18

like, I'm going to actually have a chance

19:20

to use my education and to

19:22

run this company that I love, which was

19:25

started by my father who I adored. And so

19:27

they take it up and they

19:30

really made a go of it.

19:33

In the beginning, the sisters shared

19:35

the daily workload of they're new to them publishing

19:37

empire. But rather quickly it

19:39

became self evident that Harriet had a

19:41

head for business. Edna did not, so

19:44

she took a step back.

19:45

Well.

19:45

Harriet, whose married name was Adams,

19:48

plunged herself into the business world,

19:50

which was not at all ready for someone

19:53

like her.

19:53

There's a lot of correspondence

19:55

in the files where people just

19:58

address her as mister

20:01

Adams, like they can't even conceive of

20:03

the idea that a woman is running this company

20:06

and she just sort of.

20:07

To deal with it. And so I really sort of

20:09

came to admire her this way.

20:10

It really gave me a different perspective on her, to think

20:12

about what it must have been like in nineteen thirty

20:15

to take that over, and how in some

20:18

ways it must have fulfilled some

20:20

dream she had.

20:22

To aid the fulfillment of her dream. Harriet

20:24

had a few key assets on her side.

20:27

One her father's publishing empire's track

20:29

record of success, two his profit

20:32

minded business model, three

20:34

the guidance of her father's personal secretary.

20:38

And above all else, Harriet had

20:40

one all important asset Nancy

20:43

drew that said, Harriet

20:45

also had one other key asset,

20:48

her ghostwriter, Mildred. The

20:50

sisters reached out to their ghostwriter and asked her

20:52

about writing another Nancy Drew book,

20:54

a fourth in the series. It would be followed

20:56

by many, many more. The resulting

20:58

contracts made official their long and lucrative

21:01

partnership. When our other

21:03

amateur sleuth, Jeff, first encountered

21:05

the mystery of who is the real Carolyn

21:07

Keen, he didn't yet know it at the

21:09

time, but he'd stepped into a role he'd

21:12

only ever imagined, a real

21:14

life teen detective. For

21:16

both real and fictional detectives, to solve

21:18

a mystery often requires a

21:20

great deal of shoe leather. For

21:23

Jeff, just like for Melanie RayJack, it

21:25

meant a great deal of time spent in the library.

21:27

Before the Internet, the library was a

21:30

great place to solve a stubborn mystery.

21:32

There the library in the nineteen sixties,

21:34

That's where Jeff came across his first

21:37

big clue that Carolyn Keene

21:39

wasn't who he thought she was. The clue

21:42

was discovered in the library's card catalog

21:44

index. Jeff recalls well that

21:46

moment when he first read those three

21:48

magic words Carolyn Keene

21:52

pseudonym.

21:53

Well, first of all, I didn't one with pseudonym

21:55

meant, and so I asked the

21:57

librarian and she said,

21:59

well, that means. It is what they also call a

22:01

pen name. They have made up a name

22:04

to write under to hide their identity.

22:06

For some reason, he.

22:08

Had to know more. It was like a magic spell

22:10

had been cast, or perhaps more

22:12

accurately, it felt like the burn

22:14

for justice of a gumshoe. Detective

22:17

Jeff knew he had to solve this

22:19

mystery.

22:20

I had gotten bitten by the bug, so

22:22

that's why I just went on this quest to figure

22:25

out what is going on here.

22:26

The teen detective discovered his next

22:29

clue at a second library, Baltimore's

22:31

Enoch Pratt Free Library.

22:33

It was really exciting. On the main

22:36

floor they had their general

22:38

reference section, and on

22:40

the one set of bookcases they

22:42

had these huge, huge

22:44

volumes, massive tones,

22:47

and they listed by year

22:49

all the books that had just been published

22:51

or came into print that year. And

22:54

I remember just simply looking up

22:56

the name Carolyn Keene because I was

22:58

wondering, well, what can I find

23:00

out about this pseudonym? And

23:03

someone had very thoughtfully

23:05

penciled in an ass to risk next

23:08

to the name Carolyn Keene and it says real name

23:10

word Comma Mildred A.

23:13

Wirt Mildred A. The

23:16

asterisk note led Jeff

23:18

to another one of those massive

23:20

tones where he found more.

23:22

Clues, and they listed not

23:24

only her name, but a lot of other

23:26

pseudonyms. It also said

23:28

Carolyn Keene. Well, so that was

23:31

when the bells went off for me, and I said aha.

23:33

And then also in the same reference

23:36

room, they had telephone books from around

23:38

the country, and since it listed that

23:40

she lived in Toledo, I looked at the Toledo

23:43

telephone book and sure enough, there she was

23:45

listed.

23:45

Jeff jotted down the information, but then

23:48

time passed. In fact, it was

23:50

years. During college, Jeff

23:52

moved Indianapolis. Once there, he realized

23:55

he didn't live far from Toledo, Ohio. Jeff

23:57

was no longer a teen detective. Now he was a

23:59

young adult about to pursue his own career,

24:02

and one day he was reminded of the mystery

24:05

who is the real Caroline Keen?

24:07

When The Saturday Review published

24:09

an article in nineteen sixty nine with the title

24:12

The Secret of Nancy Drew and in the

24:14

article the writer credited Harriet

24:16

Strademeier as the author of all

24:19

at the time forty three published

24:21

Nancy Drew Books. Jeff was surprised

24:24

to see that that was much different information

24:26

than what he'd learned in the library as a kid.

24:28

So Jeff decided, since he was so close,

24:31

perhaps he could meet Mildred in person

24:33

and hear what she had to say about

24:35

that particular article. Since it was

24:37

the nineteen sixties, Jeff sent Mildred

24:39

a letter sure enough good to her Midwestern

24:42

nature. She responded she

24:44

invited him to come meet her, not

24:47

at her home, because who knows what sort of fan he might

24:49

be, but he could meet her at her office.

24:52

Jeff was elated.

24:54

I took a Greyhound bus over

24:56

to Toledo and met her at

24:58

a newspaper office where she worked, the

25:00

Toledo Blade. And I remember

25:03

that when she would just opened her desk drawer

25:05

to put away her scarf, sitting

25:07

in the top of the drawer was that issue of

25:09

Saturday Review. I knew I had

25:11

come to the right place.

25:14

When Mildred was confronted by the diligent

25:16

young detective, she wasn't keen to talk.

25:19

You see, Mildred had legally sworn in contracts

25:21

that she'd never speak publicly about her work for

25:23

the Stratamyer Syndicate. Consequently,

25:26

Mildred rarely revealed her identity as a

25:28

ghostwriter, whether out of professional courtesy

25:30

or out of fear of the syndicate's lawyers.

25:33

She was a professional, and she had

25:35

her newspaper career to think of. The result,

25:37

her identity remained a secret.

25:40

That is save for in the Ohio

25:42

area, where local newspapers often proudly

25:45

cited Mildred as the author and ghostwriter of

25:47

the Nancy Drew books. So Mildred's

25:49

neighbors they may have known the secret

25:51

of the Stratamyer Syndicate, but most

25:53

folks, even those in the publishing industry

25:56

itself, had no idea. However,

25:58

Mildred was still human, and slowly,

26:01

over time and after numerous visits,

26:03

she warmed to Jeff and she trusted

26:05

him with her secret.

26:07

It eventually got to the point

26:09

where there were quite a few Thanksgivings

26:11

when I would drive over and

26:14

have Thanksgiving dinner with her at the Toledo

26:16

Club, and after that we would go back

26:18

to her house and just sit and talk

26:20

and talk.

26:21

During these long conversations,

26:23

Mildred opened up about her secret life

26:25

as Carolyn Keene. For one, it

26:28

wasn't super glamorous. When Mildred was

26:30

writing the books, she had to make time to write.

26:32

She paid serious costs to get

26:34

those words down on paper. Her

26:36

routine was this, She'd return home

26:39

from work at the newspaper. Her mother would

26:41

be there taking care of Mildred's kids. Her

26:43

husband, Asa worked was sickly

26:45

in bedridden, so there at his bedside,

26:48

she'd set up a little table, situate

26:50

her typewriter and write her Nancy

26:52

Drew stories.

26:54

Lots of people think that Nancy Drew just came,

26:56

but I paid for that with blood, with

26:59

real blood. I sweat when

27:01

I wrote the books, and I worked hard, unbelievably

27:03

hard. I don't think very many people

27:05

would ever work as hard as I worked during the most

27:08

active years of my life. I would

27:10

never do it again.

27:12

Over the course of their friendship, Mildred expressed

27:14

the same sentiment to Jeff. She

27:16

shared the cost of bringing Nancy Drew

27:19

to life, and she spoke of the

27:21

time that she lost.

27:22

From her own.

27:24

There were certain things that I felt

27:27

I needed to steer clear of with her her

27:29

first husband Asa, when he was

27:31

ill, and she just set up her typewriter

27:33

next to his bed, and I remember

27:36

asking her a question and she said, oh, there, don't

27:38

go digging up all his memories again.

27:41

And she just didn't want to deal with it, so I

27:43

would never press her for details

27:46

about anything in her personal life.

27:48

At the time, back when she spent all those sleepless

27:50

nights tending to her ill husband as she breathed

27:53

life into a teen detective. There

27:55

was a very understandable reason why

27:57

Mildred did it, as she told Harriet

28:00

in a thank you note.

28:01

During the past four and a half years, while

28:03

my husband has steadily gone downhill

28:06

following a series of seven strokes,

28:09

there have been times when I seriously considered

28:11

giving up writing. Some of the copy

28:13

I turned out a year or so ago probably

28:16

was not my best. But you are very

28:18

patient, and I feel now that I am

28:20

over the hump, so to speak. The

28:23

syndicate gift of one thousand dollars is

28:25

more than generous, and to say I'm

28:27

appreciative expresses it mildly. I

28:30

trust Nancy will go on for many years, and

28:32

that she will vie with the Rover Boys

28:35

in carving a lasting name for herself in popular

28:37

fiction.

28:38

Which Nancy Drew certainly did, but

28:41

Mildred did not seek to make a name for herself

28:43

as the writer of the beloved Teen Girl Detective,

28:46

and thus no one could ever know

28:48

about what she'd sacrificed to give

28:50

them. Nancy Drew, that was the deal,

28:53

and she knew it. She accepted it. So then

28:55

why did she open up to Jeff. Maybe

28:59

it's because, at that very human

29:01

level, it must have been nice to have someone

29:03

know what she'd done, what she'd given,

29:06

to have someone come and thank her and tell

29:08

her what she and her work meant to him.

29:10

It must have felt like a small but meaningful

29:12

reward for her labors. She

29:15

got to see and feel for herself the impact

29:17

her writing had on her readers. While

29:19

Jeff was slowly uncovering the details

29:22

of the woman behind Nancy Drew, the

29:24

rest of the world was hearing a much

29:26

different story. Back to that Saturday

29:28

Review story that Jeff mentioned in

29:30

the January twenty fifth, nineteen sixty

29:33

nine issue of Saturday Review, and a story

29:35

with the title The Secret of Nancy Drew,

29:37

the writer purported that the quote grandmotherly

29:40

lady end quote who penned the Nancy

29:43

Drew mystery stories was Harriet

29:45

Strathemier, and that she with the

29:47

lightly mentioned help before ghostwriters,

29:49

but mainly she had written the series

29:51

dating back to nineteen thirty. That same

29:54

story claim that in nineteen sixty nine,

29:56

Harriet was about to complete her forty

29:58

third Nancy Drew book. That was not

30:00

exactly true. The number was true, but

30:02

not the part about her completing the work.

30:05

But who could question her version of events? The ghostwriter

30:07

contracts made that near impossible.

30:10

Meanwhile, at this same time, the end

30:12

of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies marked

30:14

a renaissance for the teen girl detective.

30:16

In the culture, Nancy Drew was highlighted

30:19

as an early feminist icon and heroin

30:22

for multiple generations of girls and women.

30:24

And while the articles of the day did credit

30:27

Harriet as the writer, there was some growing

30:29

skepticism. For example, an article

30:31

in the Chicago Tribune. It praised

30:33

Harriet, but it also included this line

30:35

that Harriet's secretary quote said

30:38

she prefers not to answer the questions of whether

30:40

her boss had written every book in the series

30:43

end quote. The answer to that all

30:45

important question was about to be revealed

30:47

in a very public place, specifically

30:50

in a courtroom.

30:51

In New York.

30:58

There had been early attempts to get at

31:00

the truth of who is the real Caroline

31:02

Keene In the first decade of Nancy

31:04

Drew's existence. The trade publication Blusher's

31:07

Weekly did the legwork. The subsequent

31:09

story revealed the actual inner workings

31:12

of the Stratmeier syndicate under

31:14

Harriet's leadership. There was mention

31:16

of ghostwriters. There was another

31:18

article by Fortune magazine, and it was

31:20

more of an expose, laying out in detail

31:23

how Edward used uncredited writers to

31:25

churn out book after book. The

31:27

expose by Fortune provided the undeniable

31:30

proof that no real Carolyn

31:32

Keene existed, that Nancy Drew,

31:35

The Hardy Boys and all the other book series

31:37

were the product of a small cabal

31:39

of ghostwriters, and Mildred

31:42

was but one. This is another

31:44

important fact. Mildred was not the

31:46

only ghostwriter who penned Nancy Drew

31:48

books, but she wrote the vast

31:51

majority of them. Yet, in nineteen thirty

31:53

seven, for reasons we perhaps

31:55

can only assume, the Library

31:57

of Congress credited another ghostwriter

32:00

as the sole author behind the pseudonym

32:02

Carolyn Keene, a man by the name

32:04

of Walter Kerrig. He'd written

32:07

just three Nancy Drew Mysteries. For

32:09

many years after, this error was

32:11

often repeated in the press. This

32:14

confusion was particularly irritating

32:16

to Harriet's Stratamire, and consequently

32:18

it motivated her to erect barriers

32:21

around the Stratamire Syndicate and

32:23

its operations. As well, she

32:26

labored to correct the record in

32:28

her favor. Whenever she had the opportunity

32:30

with the press, Harriet worked to construct

32:33

a new narrative. The story she

32:35

spun was that, despite any talk of

32:37

ghostwriters, she was the real

32:39

author of Nancy Drew stories. As

32:43

the years marched on, newspapers and magazines

32:45

began to exclusively tell Harriet's

32:48

carefully curated story, the one

32:50

where she was the real Carolyn

32:52

Keene, and through it all, Mildred

32:55

remained quiet. She didn't come forward

32:57

to dispute the narrative at first,

32:59

and for many years decades even things

33:02

were good. The Nancy Drew books allowed

33:04

the syndicate to survive the Depression, to thrive

33:06

after, and to grow into

33:08

the home of one of the most beloved American

33:11

characters. As thanks for her

33:13

hard work and her loyalty, Harriet

33:15

was often generous with Mildred. For

33:17

instance, she'd sent Mildred the extra

33:19

money while her husband was ill, but gestures

33:22

like that bonus were infrequent, and

33:25

over time tensions crept

33:27

into their relationship. The two women

33:29

had developed vastly differing ideas

33:31

of who Nancy Drew was, and as

33:33

the years wore on, the tastes of the day

33:35

changed, the styles and politics

33:38

followed suit that divide between

33:40

the women and their view of Nancy Drew

33:42

only grew more obvious. Eventually

33:45

it was as if they were talking about two different

33:47

girls. In the end, it was Harriet

33:49

who decided to cut ties. She and

33:51

her sister Edna felt that Mildred had

33:54

become argumentative and difficult.

33:56

The sisters preferred to replace Mildred

33:58

with someone who'd gladly accept the assignment

34:00

and do as instructed and contracted without

34:02

so much hassle, someone who'd likely do it

34:05

for less money, and, as Harry it

34:07

saw it, with far less headaches.

34:10

Finally, in the nineteen fifties, she made it official.

34:12

After two decades of working together and

34:15

twenty three books, Harriet

34:17

and her sister Edna decided to sever

34:19

their professional relationship with Mildred

34:21

when they replaced her. They never even

34:24

wrote to tell her. Instead, they

34:26

ghosted her. The irony

34:28

is almost comical. Mildred

34:32

turned her back on the Stratamire Syndicate. She

34:34

went on with her life as a newspaper writer. There

34:37

would be no more Nancy Drew for her.

34:39

Yet, that small indignity and

34:41

the bitter pill of Harriet taking credit

34:43

for Mildred's work, those weren't

34:46

the only insults that she had to endure.

34:48

Around that same time. In the nineteen fifties, the Stratamire

34:51

Syndicate began a series of revisions

34:53

of the original Nancy Drew books. Times

34:56

had changed, technologies had changed,

34:58

Television was disrupting everything. Nancy

35:01

Drew books needed to be updated to reflect

35:03

this. One example, her age

35:06

was up to eight team. Why

35:08

because it allowed Nancy Drew to drive in

35:10

all fifty states. This was just

35:12

one of the many changes made

35:14

to reflect the real world of the readers.

35:18

They did need to make the books

35:20

shorter.

35:20

They were like these books now, you know, children

35:23

are like watching television

35:25

and a kind of like precursor

35:28

to our current era, Like everything started

35:31

moving faster and kids had less attention,

35:33

and so the action has to happen

35:35

much faster, Like we can't have these sort of wandering

35:39

byways down.

35:40

The dark road with the.

35:42

Large spooky trees overhanging it as the rain

35:45

begins, you know, and all that stuff, that atmospheric

35:47

stuff that made the book so great.

35:50

There were also the vast social changes developing

35:52

in the nineteen fifties, namely the civil

35:55

rights movement and the sprouting seeds

35:57

of feminism. These social changes

35:59

also pushed the Stratumier Syndicate's

36:02

revisions of some characters and scenes

36:04

in the Nancy Drew books, especially

36:06

the carecharacters, who were rendered as rather racist

36:09

stereotypes of the times. Harriet

36:11

had labored diligently to make Nancy

36:13

Drew less independent

36:16

and more like the new nineteen

36:18

fifties ideas of femininity. It

36:20

was Nancy Drew as a young

36:22

June Cleaver.

36:24

She made Nancy much

36:26

more wishy, washy and like

36:29

toned down because the readers

36:31

could identify with a more

36:34

wishy washy person and they could

36:36

you know, make themselves, you know, fitting into

36:39

that role.

36:40

Harriet rewrote the series to her taste.

36:42

Doing those revisions gave Harriet Stratemeyer

36:44

the rare opportunity to try her hand

36:47

at writing, while she also erased

36:49

and forever changed the work of Mildred. This

36:52

gave her more of a feeling that she'd actually

36:54

written the books, since now technically

36:56

she had, even if it was just a rewrite

36:58

of the ghostwriter's words.

37:00

First of all, she said that, well,

37:03

her father had written the first three Nancy Drew

37:05

books, and when he died, she had

37:07

found them all and she revised

37:10

them and sold them to the publisher.

37:12

But then she changed the stories. Eventually

37:15

she took credit for having written them all

37:17

herself.

37:19

If Harriet wanted to claim credit for the ghostwriter's

37:21

work, there was little they could do to stop her.

37:23

All Mildred could do was watch wordlessly

37:26

as her beloved creation morphed into

37:28

someone unrecognizable to her. But

37:31

while Mildred couldn't say anything publicly,

37:34

that certainly didn't stop Jeff. Harriet's

37:36

claims on Mildred's legacy bothered him.

37:38

He decided he'd do something about it. He

37:40

wanted the rest of the world to know about his friend

37:42

Mildred. To Jeff, this was an

37:45

act of justice, just like

37:47

something Nancy Drew would do.

37:49

It just wasn't fair that somebody

37:51

else was taking credit for somebody

37:54

else's work. I just thought

37:56

that, well, I have a mission,

37:59

and I can do this.

38:01

Jeff wrote articles, He wrote a

38:03

journal paper. He pushed newspapers

38:05

to dig into the story and discover the truth.

38:08

By the nineteen seventies, the public

38:10

narrative began to shift. One newspaper

38:13

story carried the title quote the

38:15

Artful ways of Millie Nancy Drew

38:17

was her brainchild end quote. That

38:20

story detailed how Mildred was quote afraid

38:23

any publicity will get her in touch with Stradamerson.

38:26

Close.

38:26

Quote in that same article, Mildred

38:28

confided.

38:29

You say anything that hurts sales,

38:32

and they'll be right on my neck.

38:35

This ongoing correcting of the record

38:37

was a similar motivation for Melanie Rayhack

38:39

to write her book Girl Sleuth,

38:42

Nancy Drew and the women who created

38:44

her. She also wanted to put facts

38:46

down on paper for all to see, so that they

38:49

could make up their minds about who is the real

38:51

Carolyn Keene. Eventually, as

38:53

with all things, the truth would

38:55

went out. Back when Melanie Rayhack

38:58

first stepped inside the University of Iowa's library

39:00

to pore over the archive of Mildred's

39:02

papers, she'd come to track down

39:04

a pioneering woman. What she disa discovered

39:07

was not a mystery, but confirmation that Mildred

39:10

was a badass of mid century America.

39:13

All of Nancy's sort of intrepid

39:16

intelligence comes from Mildred, and

39:19

I think that's why Edward had her picked

39:21

out to write the series.

39:22

I mean he knew. He was like, this is

39:24

what this.

39:24

Character is supposed to be, and this is

39:26

a person who is naturally

39:29

going to be able to put that quality

39:31

into her, you know, and all this sort of athletic.

39:33

Stuff and the physical stuff.

39:35

So Mildred was a diver, I

39:37

mean, she was athletic, so she put

39:40

all that stuff into Nancy too. You know, there's all

39:42

kinds of like scrape where she's dumped out of a boat

39:44

in the middle of the lake and she's swimming.

39:47

They were thrilling for readers at the time.

39:49

To see this teenage girl

39:51

performing also these physical acts

39:54

which now we think of as like, oh yeah, sure, swimming

39:56

whatever, but you know, kind of a big deal.

39:59

So Mildred brought all of that to

40:01

Nancy.

40:02

She had put her heart and soul into

40:04

Nancy. And so over time,

40:07

Harriet's rewrites would come to bother Mildred

40:10

to Melanie. That tension between Harriet and

40:12

Mildred's conceptions of Nancy Drew. It

40:14

wasn't so easy to sort.

40:15

Out I saw from both women's

40:18

standpoints at that point, right. I mean, I think it's

40:20

indisputable that Mildred really helped

40:24

create her as the sort of iconic character

40:26

that we all remember, and

40:28

really put a lot of herself into the character. I

40:31

think where I had a lot more sympathy

40:34

for Harriet than I originally thought I would

40:37

was that, you know, without her, we wouldn't have had Nancy

40:39

Drew, like if they had not taken over the company,

40:41

if they had just let it fall apart.

40:43

Eventually, life did offer up a way

40:46

to parse the two women's contributions and

40:48

to determine who was responsible for

40:50

the enduring popularity of Nancy

40:52

Drew. In nineteen eighty,

40:54

the Stratamier Syndicate decided to part

40:57

ways with their long term publisher, across

40:59

It and Dunlap. This action would

41:01

drag the truth into the light of a courtroom

41:04

for all to see. After

41:06

Harry announced her plans to switch publishers

41:08

to Simon and Schuster, Grossid and Dunlap

41:11

came forward to protest the sale and sued

41:13

them both for one hundred and fifty million

41:16

dollars. Grossid and Dunlap did

41:18

not want to lose their golden goose, and they

41:20

were willing to fight in court to prevent the sale.

41:23

Their lawyers alleged that there were

41:25

financial improprieties, for instance

41:27

the royalties that should have been paid to the firm's

41:30

many ghostwriters. To

41:32

help make their case, Grosset and Dunlap

41:34

flew in a very special witness,

41:37

Mildred. She was set to testify

41:39

about how she'd not received proper

41:41

royalties from the syndicate, which ultimately

41:44

was the sole credit she did receive for

41:46

her work the money. The stage

41:48

was now set. The two women would

41:50

finally be face to face with

41:53

a judge and jury to weigh the truth

41:55

and decide their fates. At

41:57

the time, Harriet was eighty seven years

41:59

old and not in good health. Mildred

42:02

was seventy four and still in fighting

42:04

shape. Jeff was there too to support

42:07

his friend.

42:07

She was wearing a powder blue pantsuit

42:10

and had a black shoulder bag. She had

42:12

her handler with her, you know, somebody driving

42:14

her around, whose name was Dick

42:16

Molina. He was an attorney. And

42:19

when we arrived, Harriet

42:21

was already there and Dick Molina

42:24

introduced Millie to Harriet.

42:27

As Melanie Rayhak recorded in her book,

42:29

when Harriet saw Mildred, she said

42:31

to her, just one.

42:32

Thing, Arthorn, you were dead.

42:35

That's ice cold. That's cinema

42:38

in fact. A moment like that is why fact

42:40

will always beat fiction. Inside

42:43

that New York courtroom, the two women met and

42:45

through sworn testimony, they battled

42:48

slyly, fighting over the legacy

42:50

of Nancy Drew. Both women rose

42:52

to the occasion.

42:54

It's like they both have total transference.

42:57

They both basically speak as though they

42:59

are Nancy Drew, like I created

43:01

Nancy.

43:01

She is me.

43:02

I mean, they're elderly by this point, and

43:05

they're in this courtroom defending

43:08

their rights to

43:10

this character that they

43:12

became involved with as young women.

43:14

Mildred showed up at court dressed

43:17

in Nancy Drew's iconic powder

43:19

blue color. She attempted to make

43:21

her points clear as she distinguished

43:23

the two Nancys. And when she says, missus

43:26

Adams, this is, of course, Harriet Strathmier

43:28

Adams.

43:29

My Nancy would not be Missus Adams.

43:32

Nancy, Missus Adams, was an entirely

43:34

different person. She was more cultured,

43:37

and she was more refined. I

43:39

was probably a rough and tumble newspaper

43:41

person who had to earn a living, and I was out

43:44

in the world. That was my

43:46

type of Nancy. Nancy was making

43:48

her way in life and trying to compete and

43:50

have fun. We just had two

43:52

different kinds of Nancies.

43:55

Mildred took her a moment on the stand to claim

43:57

her credit for herself.

43:59

Now, I'm not angry at them. I don't resent

44:01

anything. I think if there are

44:03

misstatements of fact, they should be corrected,

44:06

because when a statement is made wrong and is

44:09

repeated over and over

44:11

and over again, it becomes

44:14

firmly entrenched in the mind of

44:16

the reading public as truth.

44:19

Mildred didn't come to court to fight over money

44:21

from the sale of the company. Nope.

44:24

She just wanted the world to know she

44:26

had given them Nancy Drew. Mildred

44:28

wanted the truth to be known. When

44:31

Harriet Stratamier took the witness stand in the trial,

44:33

she made quite a scene. She testified

44:36

for five days. At one point

44:38

she got so worked up she even fell

44:40

out of her chair and out of the witness.

44:42

Stand order

44:45

in the court.

44:46

But through it all she stuck to

44:48

her story.

44:49

A friend of mine who was the head of Juvenile

44:51

Literature division at the Library of Congress.

44:54

At one point she said of Harriet, she's gone

44:56

off with the fairies. I mean, she was believing

44:58

her own hype that she had written all

45:01

these books herself.

45:02

Hearing the account of the courtroom scenes, it

45:05

feels like poetic justice from Mildred

45:07

and the other ghostwriters. The enduring

45:10

mystery was finally revealed and confirmed

45:12

in a courtroom. Nancy Drew had

45:14

been written by Mildred and other ghostwriters

45:17

based off of outlines supplied first by

45:19

Edward Stratemeyer and later his daughter

45:22

Harriet, who'd also revised the books

45:24

after they'd been published. Outside

45:27

the courtroom, it felt like Mildred had won.

45:29

The truth was now on the public record.

45:31

People would know Mildred

45:33

had written the books that first made them fall

45:35

in love with Nancy Drew, while Harriet

45:38

had merely rewritten them. However,

45:41

inside the courtroom it was Harriet

45:43

and Simon and Schuster who won the lawsuit.

45:46

The sale of the book rights could go forward,

45:48

and the publisher did not have to pay Grosset

45:50

and Dunlap for any of the ghostwriters

45:52

any additional money. Sometimes

45:55

justice and truth are not the same thing

45:57

as any good mystery writer will tell you.

46:00

So what was it like for Jeff to witness

46:02

his friend Mildred finally be acknowledged.

46:07

Well, let's just say I'm

46:09

very proud, because

46:11

it was so important for her to get, you

46:13

know, the fair credits that

46:16

she deserved for so much. We were,

46:18

you know, without being related, We were really family

46:21

and we had the most gotten Going

46:23

to start cheering up, we

46:25

had the most wonderful, loving relationship

46:28

that was unlike any that I had

46:30

had with anybody.

46:32

For Melanie Rayhak, she also got to come

46:34

full circle emotionally as well.

46:36

In writing her book on Nancy and the women

46:38

who created her. She got to live as

46:40

an amateur literary detective inspired

46:43

by her girlhood hero as she chased

46:45

down a real life mystery. It made

46:48

her feel more connected to

46:50

the women at the heart of this story, both

46:52

women.

46:53

Writing this book gave me

46:56

really a new appreciation

46:59

of what all the generations

47:02

of women who came before me.

47:04

Had gone through.

47:07

That I can do what I do

47:09

in all kinds of ways as a parent and as

47:11

a writer just

47:13

made me very It made me very grateful in a

47:15

way that I had not been. There's

47:17

a lot of warring in the Nancy

47:20

Drew world, and people tend to take a side

47:22

are you. Are you on the Mildred side

47:24

or the Harriet side? And

47:26

I think where I tried to land

47:28

and my book is in the middle.

47:30

That it's important to recognize

47:34

what each of them did, which was not the same

47:36

thing, but equally valuable

47:39

or equally necessary, because

47:42

without them we wouldn't have her.

47:46

Eventually, even Mildred grew a little

47:48

sick of all the attention on her and the teen girl

47:50

detective. As The New York Times quoted

47:52

in her obituary, she'd once told a Times

47:54

report her quote.

47:56

I'm so sick of Nancy

47:58

Drew i could vomit.

48:00

Which this seems sensible considering all

48:02

that she'd been through over the decades. In

48:04

the end, though, we'll give Mildred the final

48:07

word on Nancy Drew a kinder

48:09

word. Mildred once told the

48:11

San Francisco newspaper that while Nancy Drew

48:13

may have seemed a lot like Mildred,

48:16

it was actually the reverse quote.

48:19

I didn't consciously make her like myself.

48:21

I made her good looking, smart and

48:23

a perfectionist. I made her a

48:26

concept of the girl I'd like

48:28

to be.

48:33

So, Zaren Dana.

48:35

There were certain book series that

48:37

I was introduced to as a kid that

48:40

now I know we're part of the Stratameier syndicate.

48:42

The Bobbsey Twins.

48:44

The Happy Hollisters, Pardy

48:46

Boys, Yeah, the Hardy Boys, and Nancy

48:48

Drew though, have somehow remained in the

48:50

zeitgeist far.

48:52

Longer than all these other ones.

48:54

What do you think is it about Nancy Drew that people

48:56

keep coming back to?

48:57

Well, I mean, having just you know, done

49:00

all this research about her and her appeal and

49:02

listening to a lot of people have like formed their opinions about

49:04

it. There is this irresistible qualit

49:07

about a girl who is defying,

49:10

not you know, like in an aggressive way, but just defying

49:12

all of the expectations of her

49:14

time period, in particular of girlhood.

49:17

And so she's just out there being adventurous. She's

49:19

carrying guns, she's driving her own car. She's

49:21

just like downright cool, but not

49:23

in an attitude per se, but in her actions,

49:25

you know, and everybody was just so impressed with her. You're

49:27

just like, I want to be like that girl.

49:29

I love a mystery book.

49:31

I read a lot of mystery which is why it's

49:34

so baffling that I skipped over Nancy

49:36

Dry For some reason, I loved when I was a kid,

49:38

cam Jansen, did you ever read those books?

49:41

This is like our generational divide. It was

49:43

a girl, like a very plucky girl, solving mysteries

49:45

because she had a photographic memory. Ooh,

49:48

I love it, which I'm like, give us that you

49:50

know network for ce Durrel.

49:53

I can remember being in fifth grade.

49:55

We had something called the book chain, where

49:57

anytime you read a book you got to write the name of the

49:59

book and the author, make

50:02

a little construction paper.

50:04

Ring and put it on the chain.

50:07

And we came back from from probably

50:09

Christmas break, and I'd read nine Nancy

50:11

Drew and Nancy Drew Slash

50:14

Hardy Boys and Hardy Boys books

50:16

like this was my wheelhouse for a while. I

50:19

was so proud, like I was going to walk

50:21

in here with so much construction paper.

50:23

It was going to be like an art class me cutting

50:26

this up.

50:27

And I made all my nine rings

50:29

and I went to put them on the chain. My teacher

50:32

said, Jason, you really need

50:34

to diversify your reading. She

50:36

was a spot on, totally right, but

50:39

that stuck with me. Like, all right, don't get

50:41

too cocky walking into these reading

50:44

competitions.

50:45

Oh my god, this summer reading competition. If

50:48

you read so much, I'm sure you guys are both readers

50:50

like I was, where you would come back to people

50:52

like the teacher, the librarian and they would not believe

50:54

your list. They're like, come on, did you really read

50:56

all these books?

50:59

I was one of those kids. I was like the annoying

51:01

kid. He threw off the reading curve totally.

51:04

It worked. Look where it got you today.

51:07

Casting, No, you don't know if

51:09

this could be a movie's Aaron, what do you got?

51:11

Okay? I thought about this one right, and I

51:13

did it two ways. I thought modern casting

51:15

and then timeless casting. Right, So

51:18

modern casting, imagine Mildred

51:20

wort Is played by Kathy Bates and

51:22

Harriet Stratamyer Adams She's played

51:24

by Jane Fonda, and then you have

51:26

Edward Stratamyer played by Paul Giamatti.

51:30

Now timeless casting.

51:32

Right, Paul Giamatti, As.

51:35

I know, I struggled on that one. I'll freely

51:37

admit it. I was like, I don't know, but I just

51:40

kind of liked he had like an honesty and

51:42

like when he played John Adams. He has this decency

51:44

that just emotes from him. But either way,

51:47

I may not be spot on in that call. But say,

51:49

for timeless one Mildred Wort, how

51:51

about Shirley Maclain,

51:54

Harriet Stratamyer Adams as Catherine

51:56

Hepburn, and Edward Stratimyer

51:58

as Claude Rains.

52:00

Oh

52:02

how's that?

52:02

I mean, you're really good at this.

52:04

This is just your segment from now because

52:07

no one can compete with this.

52:08

I love the Giamati.

52:10

You could have a big, big name actor

52:13

there who dies in the

52:15

first ten minutes and then.

52:17

Yeah it is you gotta have someone with integrity,

52:19

someone with some real gravitas.

52:21

Right, Yeah, it's because it feels like he's a decent

52:23

guy. You don't want him to seem like just like a businessman,

52:25

you know. So, yeah, did you guys

52:27

have a very special character from this one? Did

52:29

anyone jump out for you?

52:31

Oh?

52:31

I like Jeff Lapan, the amateur detective.

52:34

You know?

52:34

Oh yeah, yeah, I love an amateur detective

52:37

showing up in a Nancy Jerry story

52:39

the right.

52:40

How about also as writers, I want

52:42

for every writer for them to have a like,

52:44

basically a champion, like Jeff who just goes

52:46

out there and defends them, defends their work, fights

52:49

the publishing industry. I think, especially

52:51

women writers in particular, I think they all

52:53

deserve at least one Jeffrey Laypan.

52:55

One of the things that keeps coming

52:57

up again and again on these episodes, even

52:59

episodes that have very little to do

53:01

with each other topics, is

53:04

the idea of people's motivations, like why

53:07

what was so important for Jeff

53:09

to get involved in this story? And we

53:11

see this in earlier episodes with the

53:14

people trying to recapture the

53:16

moon rocks and the people trying to prove

53:18

the Pledge of Allegiance is not

53:20

written by who you think it is.

53:22

Yeah, I mean that's just what life

53:24

is. Find your thing, go be

53:27

obsessed with something.

53:28

I don't know what it's going to be for

53:30

the three of us, but we will find it by the

53:32

end of the series and let those enrich us.

53:35

So I mentioned it at the start of the show, but the

53:37

team here at Very Special Episodes is celebrating

53:40

International Women's Day this week, and so

53:42

if you're looking for more programming honoring

53:44

the incredible women at the network and worldwide,

53:48

head over to iHeart Podcasts. International

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We're featured along shows like The Psychology

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any of those sound good, that's Women take

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or wherever you get your podcasts.

54:13

Very Special Episodes is made by some

54:15

very special people. This episode

54:17

was written by Zarn Burnett. Our

54:20

producer, editor and sound designer

54:22

is Josh Fisher. Our

54:24

story editor is Marissa Brown.

54:27

Additional editing and sound design

54:30

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54:32

and mastering by Beheid Fraser. Original

54:36

music by Elise McCoy. Research

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54:49

Special Episodes is hosted by Danish

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Jason English. I am your

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