An Interview with Viña Delmar, Author of Bad Girl (1928)
By Nava Atlas | On January 3, 2025 | Comments (0)
At the age of twenty-three, Viña Delmar (born Alvina Louise Croter, 1903 – 1990) became an overnight sensation with her bestselling “Banned in Boston” novel, Bad Girl. Reprinted here is an interview with the young author from 1928, the year of its publication
The controversy over her novel, whose heroine, Dottie, was far from being a “bad girl,” didn’t hurt Viña’s reputation, but served to sell the book, which became a bestseller, and not long after, a well-received early “talkie” film.
Viña would go on to be a playwright and screenwriter active until the 1970s though she has been all but forgotten. No stranger to the entertainment business, she traveled around the U.S. with her parents, Ike and Jennie Croter, Jewish vaudeville and Yiddish theater performers. After dropping out of school at an early age, she found herself more suited to writing than being in the limelight.
The name Viña was evidently a shortening of Alvina, with the tilde made it more exotic. Her surname was taken from her husband Gene Delmar. When her first (and ultimately most successful) novel, Bad Girl, was published, Viña was already a wife, and a mother of a four-year-old son.
More of a cautionary tale than a racy story
Bad Girl was more of a cautionary tale than a racy story as the title (and some of the later pulp paperback covers) would imply. It doesn’t possess the precocious observations of a later twenty-three-year-old first novelist, Carson Mccullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The narrative and dialog might kindly be described as clunky, and feels dated in a way that even many 19th-century classics do not. It’s a story very much of its time and place
But it was bold for its time in its discussion of premarital sex (implied rather than described), pregnancy, and childbirth. Dottie, already married, considers (though ultimately decided against) abortion, which was both highly illegal as well as dangerous at the time.
Considering that many great novels came out in the 1920s, Bad Girl not being one of them, it was reviewed fairly kindly, treated as a “slice of life” kind of story. The press seemed to like its young author, and she was usually covered graciously as well. Here’s an interview with Viña Delmar that ran soon after the novel was published.
. . . . . . . . . . .
The middle caption reads: Viña Delmar with her husband and 4-year-old son in their home. Mrs. Delmar believes marriage is the ideal state for persons desirous of having children and leading a normal life, but she thinks marriage is not necessary from a moral point of view.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Youth Emancipated With Big “E” Says Viña Delmar
The Sacramento Union, September 30, 1928
By James M. Neville
Economically, Spiritually and Socially Independent of Conventional Shackles and With Ideals Based on Generosity, Courage and Loyalty, Says Young Writer, Who Sprang to Fame Overnight With Her First Novel
Viña Delmar is thoroughly in sympathy with modern “flaming youth,” which has the courage to mold circumstances to its needs instead of being controlled by Puritanical rules of conduct.
THE amazingly frank conduct and manners of the modern girl, which has been a recurrent source of discussion, denunciation, sympathy and controversy since the beginning of the jazz age, 13 enthusiastically supported by Viña Delmar, the 23-year-old authoress, who recently startled the literary world by producing a book—her very first novel—that speedily joined the “best-seller” class.
“The young girl of today is not only emancipated from the moldy virtues of a decade ago but is economically, spiritually and socially independent of conventional shackles,” said Mrs. Delmar. “She is frank, aboveboard and rather admirable. Her ideals are based on generosity, courage and loyalty rather than on old-time virtue.
“Because the girl of today is free, she does not marry for protection and security the first man who asks her. I have known girls to play around with men for a year or more with no intention of getting married. They knew they couldn’t make the man happy, or the man wouldn’t make them happy. So why get married?
“Quite a step forward for the modern miss over her sister of a decade ago, who shrieked if ‘hell’ were said before her and would go off in a swoon if she listened to the frank talk of the so-called younger generation.”
Mrs. Viña Delmar, an attractive little dark-headed girl, sat on the porch of her cottage along the lake drive at Belmar, N. J. Within a few hundred feet the roar of surf in the Atlantic could be heard. On the lawn was her 4-year-old son, Gray, playing with Mr. Delmar. Down the street came an automobile crowded with young people in bathing suits on their way to the ocean. Several of the girls, just a few years younger than the authoress, called to Mrs. Delmar.
“There goes some of the so-called younger generation,” she said, her dark eyes very bright. “I think they’re wonderful!
“Speaking of the old days before emancipation, just compare the demeanor on the beaches of the young people. They are a pleasing and candid contrast to that of the beach-dolls of yesterday. These girls really go in the water. They can actually swim. And they go down to the ocean to do just that—not to sit around!
“The changed economic position of woman has altered the whole social life in this country,” she said. “And most of all, the morals. The young people of today have the courage and initiative to mold circumstances to fit their needs instead of being controlled by Puritanical rules of conduct.”
In her opinion, it is more immoral to marry a man you do not love and live with him for protection and security than it is openly to live with a man you love—unmarried. “And I am certain that every economically independent girl would agree with me,” she concluded.
Marriage is convenient and satisfying
For herself, however, Mrs. Delmar finds marriage convenient and satisfying. “Marriage,” she said, “evolved as the ideal state for people desirous of having children and leading a normal life. It is only natural that one man should find one woman that suits him as a companion, lover’ or mother of his children without bringing in the morals of the question. I don’t see much difference between marrying a man and merely living with him. From a purely social and legal aspect, however, marriage is the best thing—but not necessarily from a moral point of view.”
Considering the background of Mrs. Delmar, her comments on manners, morals and customs are rather interesting. Denied the advantages of a formal education and restricted home life—she was born almost on the stage, never finished the grade schools, was married at 16 and a mother at 19.
Her marriage itself reflected the speed at which the modern generation lives. Viña left for Philadelphia from Newark, where she was playing, to meet Gene Delmar and be married. At 8 o’clock, one hour after she had arrived and three-quarters of an hour after she met the happy man, she was on the train, bound again for Newark, where she was to resume her act at 10 P.M.
A hitch in the plans nearly occurred when Gene did not meet her at Broad Street Station, Philadelphia, promptly at 7 because his train was late from St Louis. When he did arrive fifteen minutes late they took a flying trip around Philadelphia in a taxicab to secure the marriage license and find a minister.
The latter proved difficult, as it was prayer-meeting night. Eventually a minister was found who was disengaged and Gene and his bride reached Newark in time for her act.
Her philosophy of life
Her philosophy of life has been entirely evolved out of the life about her. She takes the world just as she finds it. Her lack of education is counterbalanced by a keen Insight into the heart of struggling humanity. Like Aristotle, the Greek philosopher and scientist, who was a realist almost in the modern sense, Mrs. Delmar concerns herself with the objective present. Aristotle preached a return to things, “to the unwithered face of nature” and reality; he had a lusty preference for the concrete particular, for the flesh-and-blood individual.
Yet, as is the humor of mankind, this young girl writer, wise in the ways of the world, embraced quite unknowingly much of the Greek’s robust attitude—and she never even heard of Aristotle until very recently. She never studied the classics and knows no more of history than a seventh-grade pupil.
When she started to write her best-selling novel four years ago, she was equipped with an average English vocabulary and an Intense feeling for people and things that are considered commonplace. She was living in a tediously conventional section of uptown New York, which extended from 198th street to 210th and across town from the Hudson to the East River. There she wrote “Bad Girl.”
Possessed of no self-consciousness and burning up to tell the story of the people she had known all her life, she started out on the long, hard job of writing the book.
But she had known poverty, hunger, suffering and dreams. She had lived intensely in those twenty years, enough to write a realistic novel that in six weeks’ time after publication reached the eminence which many gifted men and women have aspired to all of their lives. And out of it she has formulated her own code of conduct that might prove shocking to the inhibited ladies of a forgotten generation.
“In my experience,” she said, “every mature woman who prided herself on her faultless virtue was a dull, stupid, and rather boring sort of person I’ve tried to keep away from the goody-good woman. There is something hothouse and unhealthy about them. Sex to them is a form of obsession cropping out in their continued amazement and surprise at the talk, manners and actions of young people. I like people who sing and dance to the song of life; who have personality and color and vitality. They are seldom the goody-good people as judged by Puritanical standards.”
In America, where certain hidebound traditions prevailed until the emancipation of women, a clandestine love affair, if discovered, meant that the man must marry the woman to save her honor. She was ruined. Of course, a man might sow his wild oats even after marriage, so long as it was kept under cover, but the married woman was rendered declasse if she was unfaithful. If a woman were unhappily married she was expected to abide by her lot and suffer in silence And woman complied, largely through lack of courage, fear of exposure and the censure of society.
“Today all that is changed,” said Mrs. Delmar. “With marriage a convenience rather than a mark of respectability, women are putting down their foot on the philanderings of wandering husbands. There are more divorces, it is true, but the general happiness of women is on the increase. They are no longer the under dog; they have rights and they are, going to see that they are respected. If the men don’t play the game fairly the women get out, take a position and live their own lives.
“A new type of girl has developed since the economic emancipation of woman. She is the capable, efficient, good-looking girl who makes a comfortable living in some profession or business, plays around with men, has affairs, sometimes falls in love and, if hit hard enough, finally marries the man she really loves. But such cases are rare. This type of woman generally likes her ‘freedom,’ finding it more advantageous, financially, socially and otherwise, to flit from one affair to another and making them incidental to her career.”
. . . . . . . . . .
Bad Girl by Viña Delmar, a 1928 review
. . . . . . . . . .
Viña’s writing process
When asked if she preferred a career to married life, Mrs. Delmar hesitated, smiled and turned to her husband. “Not now! We get along great, Gene and I. And it isn’t a fair question, because 1 married when I never dreamed of a career, Yet I don’t think I’d have had one if Gene and I hadn’t been married. When he was a radio announcer he was away three and four nights a week. I used to sit by the window waiting for him to come home, Then I started to write stories.”
Mrs. Delmar has written more than 200 short stories which have appeared in leading magazines. An outgrowth of the habit formed while waiting for her husband to come home, with her baby asleep, Mrs. Delmar writes four nights a week, from 8 until 12. She simply sits down on the sofa with plenty of paper and pencils and goes to work. No temperament, no moods. no fighting for words.
She writes so swiftly in longhand that she leaves out propositions, articles and so forth which are supplied by her husband, Gene. He types out the stories, makes all sorts of grammatical corrections, keeps people away from her while she works, offers suggestions for changes and not infrequently argues with her about the merits of a plot, situation or character.
Mrs. Delmar averages from one to two thousand words at a sitting. She never rewrites. If she does it spoils the story Before she puts pencil to paper, however, she has the entire story blocked out in her mind, visualizes every scene as though it were being acted on the stage. Perhaps this accounts for the dramatic quality in her work. Her book, “Bad Girl,” is to be dramatized this coming winter and put on the New York stage. The movies are after the screen rights.
To this young authoress, who has been compared to O. Henry, the ordinary is rich, strange, dramatic. If she reads a story in a magazine and then retells it to one of her friends, who in turn reads the same yarn, they are amazed at her warping of facts. She dramatizes everything. colors and enriches mere facts with the glow of life. She is a born story-teller.
Her characters, stories and plots are drawn from the immediate circle of her friends and her own experience. She has been hard up. She has been married. She has lived on less than $50 a week in a Harlem flat, with bricklayers, clerks, motormen and taxicab drivers and their families.
Out of this seemingly prosaic existence of commonplace people she has succeeded in portraying a large section of American life. Saving money for doctor’s bills, doing the family washing, the care of a baby. The laments, whinings, little joys of the neighbors—all caught in the spirit of her writings. This workaday world is her world and she loves it.
“I don’t give myself any airs about belonging to the intelligentsia,” she said. “It’s only a few years since I thought George Bernard Shaw was a movie actor. And to me, Jimmy Walker, the Mayor of New York, is the most attractive man in the land. I simply adore his nonchalance, his mannerisms and chatter.
“And I’m not literary. Before I published my book I knew one author and was almost finished with Bad Girl when I read the works of Dreiser. Then I heard the word ‘realism’ for the first time. So 1 decided that I must be a realist, too.”
The technique of Bad Girl is no happy accident. Mrs. Delmar has been writing for five years. For the last two years her work has appeared in leading American magazines. She claims that she has no imagination, but simply writes about the things close at hand.
“I think it’s stupid to try to write about something you’ve never seen, felt or experienced,” she said. “I know I can’t do it—and I have no intention of trying. People have told me about Paris, but I couldn’t write about it simply because I’ve never been there.”
Because she is so close to the heartthrob of humanity, because her mind is not muddled with theories, philosophies and contrary points of view regarding standards, morals and conventions, the work of Viña Delmar reflects the vital, raw and earthy quality associated with the mad whirl of metropolitan life where the wolf of necessity is forever at the door of the troubled poor. These people are blunt and frank concerning the facts of existence. So is Viña Delmar. So is her writing.
Yet she often wonders about the future. Sitting on the porch, discussing the altered code of the younger generation, of which she is a member, the present lack of religion, of a conventional code by which the young may pattern their lives is a matter of concern to her.
Her little son, Gray, just 4 years old. came up on the porch, climbed up on her knee. Mrs. Delmar is a tiny thing, weighing less than a hundred pounds and standing five feet two. This red-lipped girl laughed like a child at the antics of her little son. Then the mood was quickly dispelled.
“I wonder what kind of a world my little boy will grow up into. Sometimes 1 hate to think of it. What will conditions be like twenty-five years from now?”
So the cycle of life goes on, endlessly, Flaming youth subsiding into cautious motherhood, the younger generation concerned about the morals of the youngest generation.
Leave a Reply