 Hi, welcome to virtual playhouse on behalf of the bed for playhouse. My name is Dan. I'm the director of development programming and I want to thank you for tuning in for what is going to be a great conversation between two people were very appreciative towards for their time today. Just want to remind you to please check out our website bedforplayhouse.org for a lot of great programming that's coming up and hopefully some news about reopening that will be coming up in April or May. We're looking forward to that and welcoming everyone back as circumstances permit. So we're going to have a talk today about a great film about Laura Ingalls Wilder, and to kick it off I'm going to introduce you to our moderator Nancy Steiner, who will then introduce our special guest and they're going to talk a little bit about the film. Hi Nancy. Hi Dan. Thank you for doing this and I will see you in a little bit. No worries. Happy to help. So I have the great distinction of introducing Mary Murphy a prize winning filmmaker extraordinaire she's done everything from the best of network news, and the best of network entertainment television she's probably our nation's leading in all things Harper Lee, having created not one but two amazing films about Harper Lee and her work. It makes sense that she's such a wonderful storyteller, she would be drawn to Laura Ingalls Wilder, another remarkable storyteller so welcome Mary. Thanks Nancy. Thank you for the full disclosure a dear friend of mine whose work I completely adore. So, and the feeling is very mutual so now that we've established our love best. I am wondering, what made you decide to make this film. Well, I, they asked me, so that's a very different situation and the way I did Harper Lee that was just a massive love project and I kept and I just had to keep knowing more American masters on the strength of the Harper Lee stuff came to me and said, would you write an NEH grant for this, would you write the NEH grant and then you can direct the film and I thought, sure, great, why not. And, but what was interesting to me about the entire process of completely different from Harper Lee. I wasn't drawn to the books as a child, I mean I, and I didn't come to Laura Ingalls Wilder until I was about 12 which was actually too late, I mean I, my Aunt Marilyn from Scarsdale gave me golden years for for Christmas. When I was 12 years old, loved it it was about teaching and courtship of then I went back and started reading the other stuff but I was 12 and I'm like, sorry, these are chores, these are about chores. I, and I didn't read, I didn't learn to read on those books, I mean many many young girls have this experience, including my sister Martha Murphy, who can't believe I got to do this movie and she didn't because this is exact she grew each year, she was five, she was six she was seven when Laura grew Martha grew that's how a lot of people read those books so I, you know I considered this huge challenge and then as I began to read the books, sometimes for the first time, although Plum Creek was a favorite even when I was younger. I began to think what's really where I'm glad I'm telling her life story because her life is incredible like set apart the books for a second like her life's incredible and what she overcame. How did she turn herself into a bestselling children's other I mean, you know books are not know I was like, I'm in Laura's, you know and of course I had to do this during coven. So it was a total test of my pioneer spirit. And I kept saying if Laura can get you know and she's a great example to me if someone who had a horrible life, who made something like incredible out of it. You've tapped on so many of the questions that I have for you. I, I, I love the fact that you didn't know anything sort of about her really the way you did know about Harper Lee, I shared that experience coming to this film, I was never a little house girl, but my daughter was. I was a little familiar, I cannot believe how much more interesting. She is and it, the film does a wonderful job of bringing home, not just the value and importance of the books, and what they teach us historically and about all different kinds of things and pioneer life, but the gap. I don't tell us about the gap between the reality of her life and what's in the books. And I'm fascinated by that because I think people always thought the books were autobiographical and in fact they're not and in fact, double in fact. She insisted everything in the books was true. So can you speak to some of that. Yeah, I mean that was that was very fascinating for me to and and you know there's a lot of myth about this and all. I mean I learned this with Harper Lee, all lovers of books and you know devoted readers really do want to know what's real what really happened but but with these books the assumption always was that it all happened and this was her true life true story and some of it's true ish. I mean there were some very dark chapters in her life that are not there and I and I remember really early on in my research I met a woman who's an NYU sociologist teacher, and she was reading them to her children she's like oh my god pause crazy. I had no idea. And I mean when you do, when you do sort of look at it he kept driving them it I mean the pot of the books is the guy with the wandering foot and the fiddle and the stories and all of that, I'm sure was absolutely true and but he kept taking them farther and farther and farther into deepening poverty, I mean until they got all the way to dismiss so you know I began to kind of explore that aspect of it and then again you know you have to give any writer of any book, especially children's books there do I mean you don't, you're not going to put in a children's book that she was nearly raped in a hotel in Iowa that's not for your audience you know so everybody's allowed to take any writer is of course allowed to take what they want and do what they want with it, but there and then there's some, I think obvious thing she left out because of her audience. When you think about her as a human, you know, and creating this incredible volume of work at a later age I mean she didn't do this until 65. Yeah, amazing. Talk about reinventing yourself. I mean, and having a career late in life and it was really sort of her daughter I think that propelled her forward her daughter's role in all of this is huge. Yeah, it's and well and also she, you know she didn't just jump off her rocking chair on her porch and become a best selling author I mean she was a newspaper person, you know she was writing a column about chicken farming and other things for the Missouri socialist and like a lot of great American novels of the time, you know, Twain, Dreyzer Hemingway they were all newspaper people so she did. I mean, she didn't toil the way they did at but but she did have a writing career before this, her daughter rose fascinating creature. She ran off to see the world she rejected farm life and it's kind of amazing they both lived at the same time because rose was very, very modern and and Laura was, you know, didn't wasn't and rose goes off to San Francisco right for these yellow her purse newspapers gets, you know, very dramatic with her prose and basically when her mother comes out to see her in 1915 to go to the World's Fair. Part of their plan is to try to make Laura a more commercial writer because you know they were always scrambling for money. She and her husband, Almanzo they did, they had their own firm they did three and four jobs at a time to kind of keep everything going so financial was a big motive here and then I'm sorry wasn't making a lot of money by the way she was a writer in her own right. Oh yeah. And she also became her mother's editor. Yes, it was a real collaboration and and and before coven I when I began to read the letters back and forth between the two of them. Before COVID shut us down I had this dream that we were going to do a reading, you know, a night a reading with fiddle and all the actors playing the parts in a place like the Bedford playhouse or the Jacob Burns or you know that that it would be this, and I had everybody up and you know COVID shut us down but I was glad that we were in, even in COVID that we did what we did because seeing two women read those letters back and forth really brings the relationship to life and roses been, you know, a lot of people have cast a lot said a lot of stuff about roses involvement I mean her tone to her mother is sometimes hard to listen to but as I say any, any mother who's had their daughter roll their eyes at them knows what this is about I mean but it's a great act of love I think between the two of them, you know they collaborated, they produce this best selling eight you know eight volume series. Why was their collaboration a secret. I think they both want I think I think for rose rose was in the big big deal world like children's books then there was no Harry Potter or you know I mean that children adolescent literature wasn't being in a children's book author, unless you were, I don't know who you had to be from that time but it wasn't as desirable as what rose was doing rose was writing big deal biography she was a magazine writer and Saturday she didn't want she didn't really associate it with what her mother was up to. I, you know, it was, I don't know why they felt they had to do this because the record was all there for the taking once once everybody was gone but you know I mean they wanted to sell books I'm sure. And so, right, you know why not leave well enough alone. Right. So I think you, you say in the film or the point comes across that writing was Laura's way of processing her life, including disaster and starvation and ruin. What sort of catharsis do you think writing offered her. She Laura herself. I don't know if it was a catharsis for starters, I mean, I think it was a way to memorialize her parents who were very, very important to her. And you know in those days, you leave home and you move to the middle of Missouri you don't really see your parents ever again, you know because it's just too hard to travel and life is the way it is so I think. I think when her parents died she began to gravitate in this way. She's a very hard. I found her maddening actually in a lot of ways because, unlike Harper Lee where there's enough, although she didn't give a lot of interviews there's stuff you can draw and I found real friends who spent time with her and Laura's Lord didn't keep a very personal diary and you have to kind of read between the lines with her anyway but I think it was. I think it was very important to her to memorialize her parents and I don't know if it was an unburdening that you know I mean like as I think about catharsis, you know, but but I you know she would and also she had tremendous work ethic. So, you know, when she started something she just kept at it. There's a quote from somebody in the film that half of the quote is that that memories is memories are perhaps the consuming fires of torment. Wow. Caroline Frazier wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of her but that was a quote from Laura Ingalls Wilder. Exactly what she wrote the day. And she was shortly after her mother died and Caroline Frazier says, it was a way of, you know, reckoning with both the good and the bad that it happened to her and there was quite a lot of horrifying stuff that happened. Right. Along the way. So the books were massive bestsellers. Not right away. Okay. Out of the gate, you know, they did pretty well, the little house in the big woods did pretty well it was the depression. Right. But, but, but they had just tremendous staying power and then I have to say rose early marketing genius it was her idea to package them in a little box, together and to begin to promote them as a series, which had not really happened that much. And are they still popular today. I don't think they're nearly as popular as they were say when we were girls. I could not my, I have a daughter who was not a bit interested. I think a lot of their popularity, which is not to say there's not a big audience for them right now if you go to any of these Laura Palooza events at any of the home sites. You'll see all these people who are completely drawn to finding out more so there's still a huge reservoir of interest and people reading but I think what's happened since is they used to be taught in schools, and they used to be part of the way to learn to read and a way to learn about pioneer history and, you know, all of that is gone by the wayside for, for, well for obvious reasons because the history of the West is completely different than how it was told when she first told it. And you know there's much more diversity about what kids are reading in school and they're learning differently now to so. What do you think the material in the books. What is most sustaining. What do you think carries through still today. I think I mean I think it's the story tell I mean I think it's pot and the story tell I mean, and the happy family you know everybody wants a happy family and, in fact, rich white who was my dp on this we were but we both had this argument he's come to school and watch little house on the prairie and I said no I was much more of a Waltons girl but it's the same idea which is the happy family at the end of the day no matter how horrendous, no matter how hard life has been. It's cozy you're all together and you know it's it's it's her it's her story to tell and it's about loving your family, I think I mean, how would you describe her relationship with her own father. I think she was a classic. It was one of those classic Tom boy, you know, the pot had no sons, and she was the daughter who liked to do the stuff that I did, you know, and she, and, and I, and I think it was just kind of a classic father daughter, you know, Tom boy daughter, the Tom boy daughter, and the father who are intensely close. So. So, somebody else describes the material on the book as being lasting sustaining because it's emotional comfort food. Yeah that's, I mean, yeah well it's that's sort of what I said to which is it's cozy it's happy it's about love and I thought that was a very good description. Me too. Yeah, we're bringing up. Food you know the food and it is amazing to and in fact I, I if she hadn't been so in firm Barbara Walker who wrote the little house cookbook and cooked all the you know crow pies dinner. Basically, when I checked her she's about 93, but she said to me you know why food was so important. They were starving, you know, so. Yeah, that makes sense and you can see and you can completely see the difference in farmer boy because Almanzo was raised in better, better economic circumstances and the food was more plentiful and better, you know, yeah. You know, it's interesting, you know, we talk about emotional comfort food and the Waltons versus little house and we know about it. And I can't think of another series of books that have been turned into a television series. Right, that were based on, you know, children's stories this way that had such universal appeal. So there's got to be some special sauce in there there's something really rich I think you know she had something very different than anybody else had because nobody else's series you know Dr Doolittle was never a television series. And yet, there were 100 you know there were those were series books to at the same time actually, in the 30s so she did have a way of touching people that no one else have. Right. And I don't know if you can speak to that or define it. It's hard. It's hard. I think, again, it's kind of what we've already been talking about you know, and the TV show is different from the pot of the books and the TV show as Melissa Gilbert will joke eventually is it kind of got a little soap opera as time went on because they didn't completely huge of the butts but I think it is these strong family relationships and the overcoming a kind of hardship that I can't imagine any modern person can even understand you know to live with your your your going to bed when it gets dark you're listening to the Panthers and the bears outside you're, you know, you're you're wondering when pause going to make it home in the snow I mean there's, and I think a lot of that stuff really really. It just really appeals and it's a kind of stoicism and moralism. That people want to hold on to. Do you think that there's a yearning today for material that offers emotional comfort food. Well I think. Um, yeah, I mean coven hello I mean I also think there's a, especially in coven and she and Laura came back big time and coven there were a lot of little house query references and, and people kept saying this is like the long winter I mean, I think, I think when people are going through things and this is why, you know, Helen Keller's essay about what she most wanted to see, you know when it hit during the depression, and then these books during the depression, I think, I mean, when times are really, really awful, finding out the people that came before you with stood something potentially much worse. Yes, and we're still standing and still here to tell you about all the important bonds and ties and things that happen. I mean I think that really means something to people when they're facing their own adversity. So I think we're at time I want to know what's okay what's next for my film. I'm working on a, I'm working for NBC I worked on their coven anniversary special and doing something I think about bringing Broadway back which is going to be really hard but good to do and and I'm helping American masters that they've got this really great Helen Keller film that they're having to get to the finish line very quickly it's really rich, and I'm just helping a little so that's enough of a plate for the moment. Yeah, fabulous. Okay, well thank you so so fast. We're pretty good to go here I think.