Typewriter Beach – 1950s Hollywood Story

Apr 10, 2025 by Two Sues On the Aisle

By Two Sues on the Aisle, Susie Rosenbluth and Sue Weston

An unexpected meeting in Carmel-by-the-Sea becomes a lifelong connection between a blacklisted playwright and an aspiring young actress. Trapped by 1950s McCarthy-era politics he was the only one from his family to escape Nazi Germany. She was in an impossible situation, pregnant out-of-wedlock, desperate to maintain an image of purity. Typewriter Beach, a novel by Meg Waite Clayton, captures a moment in time, then moves it forward, connecting three generations through secrets.

His Secret

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Leo Chazan was a German-Jew whose family moved from Germany to a villa in France when he was seven. In 1939, his father was sent to a French internment camp, leaving Leo as the man of the house. At age 16, he joined the Resistance, delivering newspapers. He was out when the Nazis captured and deported his family to a German camp leaving Leo alone.

Leo was spirited out of the country by a woman, who gave him a passport of Leon Chazan, her son, who was two years older than him. She led him through the Pyrenees to the Spanish border. She was caught and killed after smuggling him over the border.

Her Secret

After Isabella Giori signed the standard 7-year contract with the studio, they changed her name and image to become ‘sixteen and innocent and somewhat elegant’ in every role. Her dream was to be cast in a Hitchcock film. She auditioned for him in 1957, but her career was put on hold when she discovered she was pregnant.

In 1950s Hollywood, becoming pregnant would have been career-ending. The studio sent her away to Carmel-by-the-Sea, where she would be secluded until the problem could be resolved satisfactorily.

Their Connection

1950s Hollywood was fueled by suspicion. McCarthyism blacklisted communists and homosexuals. It was career-ending; disobedience could be fatal.

Society demanded that actresses display a moral image and condoned the predatory behavior of producers, allowing them to take liberties with aspiring actresses. This was before the #MeToo movement, before women’s rights, and when abortions were illegal and dangerous. It predated computerized records and cell phones, which allowed people to disappear or change identities.

The unlikely pair, a screenwriter and a young actress, were in seclusion in Carmel-by-the-Sea. She is awoken by the clack and ding of a typewriter at the cottage next door, he becomes her connection to the outside world, friends with secretes.

Present Day 2018

When twenty-six-year-old screenwriter Gemma Chazan came to Carmel to sell her grandfather’s cottage, she found a hidden safe with a World War II-era French passport, an old camera with film in it, two movie scripts, and an Oscar that is not in her grandfather’s name.

She was raised believing that her grandmother died in childbirth. Her mother and grandfather were her only relatives, and now they were both deceased. What secrets had her grandfather been keeping?

A Great Read

Clayton presents a different perspective of the Jewish post-Holocaust experience. A boy born in Germany who was forced to flee and saved by a righteous gentile. He assumed the name of a French boy, Leo Chazan, and created a new life alone in New York, having lost his entire family and identity. He is left with memories, a watch from his father, a coin from his mother, and regrets. Fate provides him with redemption, a family, and a fulfilling life.

Typewriter Beach is a wonderfully woven story with unexpected twists and connections. Written from alternating perspectives, it redefines family.

Two Sues on the Aisle bases its ratings on how many challahs (1-5) it pays to buy (rather than make) to see the play, show, film, book, or exhibit being reviewed.

Typewriter Beach received a 5 Challah rating