Silvia Moreno-Garcia says Hollywood’s dark side inspired ‘Seventh Veil of Salome’

Silvia Moreno-Garcia has long been enchanted with the world of cinema.

The author, who was born and raised in Mexico and now lives in Canada, wrote a novel, “Silver Nitrate,” about a cursed horror movie, and her other novels, including “Mexican Gothic,” “Velvet Was the Night,” and “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau,” are cinematic in scope and pacing. 

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So it’s no surprise that she’s turned to the Golden Age of Hollywood for her latest one, “The Seventh Veil of Salome.” The novel, which “Good Morning America” selected for its book club, is set in 1955 and follows Vera, a young Mexican actress who is cast in a Biblical epic film about Salome, the princess mentioned (although not by name) in the Gospel of Mark.

Vera’s casting upsets Nancy, a striving actress who had her eyes on the role — and who also carries a flame for Jay, a jazz musician who is courting Vera. Nancy smolders as Vera shoots the movie, and eventually, something terrible happens.

Moreno-Garcia answered questions about “The Seventh Veil of Salome” via telephone from Dallas, where she was on a book tour. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Q: How did you decide you wanted to write a novel set in the Golden Age of Hollywood?

I have a huge love for older movies, so I knew about the time period. When I was thinking about writing about Salome, one of the questions that popped up was how to tackle her. I ended up figuring out that I should do Hollywood because Salome is a mythical woman that reappears throughout art, and Hollywood is the place where women in that time period were made into myths: Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth. Hollywood just embodied those aspects of the myth that I wanted.

Q: How familiar were you with Salome, the historical and biblical figure, before you wrote the book?

Somewhat, but when I started, I spent a lot more time going through different representations of her. And music, for me, was one of the key elements. I read Oscar Wilde’s play “Salome,” and then I went to see Richard Strauss’ opera “Salome” on the stage as I was working on this novel. When I saw it, I became intrigued with what Strauss is doing musically. When “Salome” premiered, it was a bit of a scandalous production, both because it was based on a play by Oscar Wilde, and also because of the musical choices that he made. Strauss uses something called polytonality, which is when you have different tones playing at the same time. If you want to imagine what that sounds like, it’s a little bit like the “Twilight Zone” intro theme, which creates a sense of anxiety.

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It’s not like the smooth melodious thing that we always think about when we think of classical music. There are clashes there, and it does make you a little bit anxious about what’s going to happen. I became intrigued with that idea of tonality of two or more tones or keys competing at the same time, and I wanted to replicate that on the page. That’s why I have a lot of different points of view in the novel. I also became really captured with the idea of what opera does with emotion on the stage, how everything is really big.

Q: What kind of research did you do into the historical and biblical Salome?

We don’t even know if she was called Salome in the Bible. She doesn’t have a name. It’s just a couple of lines in the Bible. It’s a really minor figure. There was a Salome historically who was the daughter of Herodias, but we know very little about her. So there’s not a ton of material that you are going to draw about a minor figure, but there are a lot of artistic representations. Salome is unlike other women of the Bible who might get a lot more screen time, and you know if they’re good or bad. For example, Judith is a heroine because she cuts off the head of Holofernes and defeats the bad guys in the Bible, and so she’s a good guy.

We know that Delilah is evil because she chops off the hair of Samson and takes away his strength. So we know how to navigate those women. Salome is an opaque figure because we don’t know what the deal with her is, because there’s so little of her in the Bible. For that reason, representations of Salome vary widely through time, and you get the innocent Salome sometimes, depending on who’s writing or painting her or doing the movie. Rita Hayworth in the 1950s played the innocent Salome, but you also get kind of the bad, sexy, destructive Salome when you look at other representations. There’s a multiplicity of Salome, all coexisting through art and time. That’s what I found interesting about the figure, that she exists in a space where she can be anything and everything at the same time.

Q: Was Vera inspired by any particular actors from the Golden Age?

I read a bunch of biographies of different people all over the map, and I really liked an autobiography by Rita Moreno where she talked about her experiences in Hollywood and how hard it had been to be a Latina woman at that time. And I also read a biography about Dorothy Dandridge, who was an African American actress. These were very talented women who got Oscar nominations. They could sing, they could dance, they could act, they were triple threats. They were beautiful. And because of the studio system at the time and the racism inherent in the industry, they didn’t get the chances that they should have gotten. 

People like Natalie Wood, they go on to have long and successful careers, but Rita Moreno, they didn’t know where to stick her. And the same thing happens with Dorothy Dandridge. “Carmen Jones” does great. It’s a box office hit, and then they don’t know where to put her because she’s Black. They can’t put her with a White leading man, because then that’s going to be censored in the South if they kiss or anything like that. And there’s not that many African American productions that are being made where she can be the lead, so she got caught in a downward spiral. These are people who should have been as big as Marilyn Monroe. They should have had the same chances as Marilyn, as Grace Kelly, but they really didn’t.