Janet Dailey: Part One
Show Notes
In 1997, a scandal rocked the world of romance: Janet Dailey, one of the most successful and prolific romance authors of all time, got caught plagiarizing the work of Nora Roberts, one of the other most successful and prolific romance authors of all time. Before the scandal, Janet Dailey was the queen of American romance. Born in small-town Iowa, married in Omaha, and settled in Ozarks, she was a down-to-earth, blue-jeaned rebuttal to the only romance author that outsold her in the 70s and 80s: Barbara Cartland. In 1997 the Internet was in its infancy, so public memory of this scandal is fragmented. This is going to be a two-part episode, and in part one we are covering Dailey’s life before she fell from grace for plagiarism. Make no mistake, this is not just boring backstory: this episode is about fame, country music, violence, and one very controversial husband. Step into your boots and get out your fiddle, we’re going to Branson.
Source Timeline
Nov. 12, 1971 - “Work starts within week on I-29 Western Village” – Art Johnson, Omaha World-Herald
Apr. 10, 1972 - “Iowa Village to Boost Tourism” – Art Johnson, Omaha World-Herald
Jul. 15, 1977 - “Team Creates Lasting Romance – On Paper” – Diane Eicher, Scotts Bluff Star-Herald
Nov. 8, 1977 - “Romance is alive and well” – Joan O’Sullivan, Associated Press
Oct. 25, 1977 - “She writes books in 16 days” – Michael Kernan, Washington Post
Jul. 26, 1978 - “‘Queen of romance’ writes of love ‘under the big sky’” – Victoria Peterson, The Billings Gazette
Apr. 7, 1980 - “She’s queen of fantasy romances” - Frank Rasky, Toronto Star
Aug. 1, 1980 - “Writers 60 books ‘no route to fame’” – Beverly Vorphal, Spokane Chronicle
Mar. 8, 1981 - “Readers want a Dailey fix” – Margaria Fichtner, The Miami Herald
June 21, 1981 - “Paperback Talk” - Ray Walters, New York Times
Aug. 23, 1981 - “Romance writer’s wealth exceeds fame” –Tad Bartimus, Associated Press
1982 - Love’s Leading Ladies – Kathryn Falk
Aug. 3, 1982 - “Branson, romance to come alive in ‘Foxfire Light’” — Mike Penprase, Springfield News-Leader
1983 - Ted Koppel interviews Janet Dailey, Vivian Stephens, and Patricia Frazer Lamb
Sep. 26, 1983 - “Dailey’s movie opening gets red-carpet treatment” — Peggy Soric, Springfield News-Leader
Feb. 10, 1984 - “Foxfire Light ‘corny but still adequate’” – Dale Stevens, The Cincinnati Post
1985 - Female difficulties : sorority sisters, rodeo queens, frigid women, smut stars, and other modern girls – E. Jean Carroll
Jul. 22, 1985 - “A Tale of Love” — Betsy Kline, The Kansas City Star (Page One, Page Two)
Oct. 27, 1985 - “Branson’s Best Seller” – Joe Haberstroh, Columbia Daily Tribune
Jan. 24, 1986 - “Branson businessman Dailey’s arraignment set on shooting charge” — Mike Penprese, Springfield News-Leader
Apr. 17, 1986 - “Wounded man says Dailey fired in self-defense” — Mike Penprase, Springfield News-Leader
Apr. 19, 1986 - “Springfield lawyer accuses Dailey of paying off defendant” – Mike Penprase, Springfield News-Leader
Jun. 13, 1986 - “Assault charge dropped on businessman Dailey” – Mike Penprase, Springfield News-Leader
Mar. 26, 1987 - “Crowder to hold country music show” — Staff, The Wheaton Journal
May 10, 1987 - “Nashville folk sing Branson’s praises” — Mike Penprase, Springfield News-Leader
Sep. 19, 1987 - “Prisoner makes bid to father child through artificial insemination” – AP Staff, Associated Press
1987 - Janet Dailey, Best Selling Author.. Warm, friendly and so talented! She is missed by so many.
1987 - Where the Heart Roams directed by George Cscicery
Jul. 26, 1987 - “Maverick entrepreneur Bill Dailey says he molded wife Janet; he still cuts her hair and tells her when to begin writing a new book” – Evelyn Renold, New York Daily News
April/May 1988 - “Hall of Fame” - Kathryn Falk, The Romantic Times (via Romantic Times Index)
Jan. 1, 1988 - “Inmate to resist delay in artificial insemination suit” — Barbara Clauser, Springfield News-Leader
Sep. 11, 1988 - “Happy ending for KC man who sued Missouri novelist” — Joe Lambe, The Kansas City Star
Sep. 12, 1988 - “Daileys ordered to pay man $805,000” — AP Staff, Associated Press
1989 - Author Janet Daily [sic] Feature Story
1990 - Goodwin v. Turner
1990 - How to write a romance and get it published : with intimate advice from the world's most popular romantic writers – Kathryn Falk
Aug. 21, 1991 - “The Write Stuff” – Tony Butz. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Oct. 24, 1992 - “Branson group gets Cash Country” — Kathy Oechsie, Springfield News-Leader
Nov. 7, 1992 - “Unfinished theater in Branson is sold” — AP Staff, Associated Press
Apr. 9, 1993 - “Johnny gets some cash in theater claim” – Patty Cantrell, Springfield News-Leader
Dec. 3, 1993 - “Singer’s popularity rises with some ‘Dailey’ help” — Roy Sylvester, Springfield News-Leader
Jul. 27, 1994 - “Building of a Best-seller” – Jerry Nachtigal, Associated Press
Oct. 25, 1994 - “Bandy sells theater, but show will go on” — Ron Sylvester, Springfield News-Leader
1996 - The Merchants of Venus: Inside Harlequin and the Empire of Romance – Paul Grescoe
1996 - The Janet Dailey Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to Her Life and Her Novels - Dailey, Janet; Greenberg, Martin Harry; Massie, Sonja
Jun. 25, 1999 - “Jennifer Charms Audiences” – Mark Marymont, The Springfield News-Leader
Dec. 30, 1999 - Love Finds a Way - Donald Liebenson, Chicago Tribune
Jul. 18, 2009 - “Johnny Cash and his ‘impersonator’ meet Branson” – Steve Pond, The Wrap
Apr. 22, 2021 - “Towards an Accurate History” — Steve Ammidown, Romance Fiction Has a History
Transcript
Chels
Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance podcast that would make a killing in Branson, Missouri. My name is Chels. I'm the writer of the romance newsletter The Loose Cravat, and a BookToker under the username chels_ebooks.
Beth
I'm Beth, and I'm a grad student, and on Book Talk under the name bethhaymondreads.
Emma
I'm Emma, a law librarian writing about justice and romance as a Substack, Restorative Romance
Chels
In 1997, a scandal rocked the world of romance. Janet Dailey, one of the most successful and prolific romance authors of all time, got caught plagiarizing the work of Nora Roberts, one of the other most successful and prolific romance authors of all time. Before the scandal, Janet Dailey was the Queen of American romance. Born in small town, Iowa, married in Omaha, and settled in the Ozarks, she was a down-to-earth, blue-jeaned rebuttal to the only romance author that outsold her in the '70s and '80s, Barbara Cartland. The high maintenance and very English Cartland had a romance formula that was profitable, but not innovative, maintaining a strict code of what some would call morality and others prudery. Dailey's career trajectory was more unconventional, changing with societal mores and even branching out of romance entirely. She was seemingly on top of the world until she confessed to her plagiarism in a press release, and the resulting coverage put her, as well as her husband Bill, under a microscope. In 1997, the Internet was in its infancy, so public memory of the scandal is fragmented. After researching the story, I think I can give you a clearer picture of who Janet Dailey was building up to the scandal, as well as what happened in 1997.
Chels
This is going to be a two-part episode, and in part one, we are covering Dailey's life before she fell from grace for plagiarism. Make no mistake, this is not just boring backstory. This episode is about Fame, country music, violence, and one very controversial husband. Step into your boots and get out your fiddle. We're going to Branson. Chels from the Future here. First, this is a research-heavy episode, and you can check out our source timeline on ReformedRakes.com, which will be linked in the show notes. And a note on the episode: there is a part where we read and talk about a headline that uses racist and antisemitic language. This happens around the nine minute mark, and it's very jarring, so I did want to give a heads up on that. Now, back to the episode. Okay, so I guess the elephant in the room, why am I talking about Dailey? Why Dailey? Why now? And I think, as you all will remember, When we were recording our Barbara Cartland episode, there's this section that she has on plagiarism. She was... Georgette Heyer accused her of plagiarism, and it was something that came out after both of them died.
Chels
And so we I addressed that and compared it to other plagiarism cases in romance that were maybe a little bit more clear-cut. And Janet Dailey versus Nora Roberts is definitely one of them, partially because it's something that is within public memory. It was in the early days of the Internet. We have a lot more records of it, but also because it's something that Janet Dailey confessed to. So I just got lost in the story a little bit, and the more I found out, the more I was surprised. And I think that's just something that I need to put out here in the world. So yeah, so Janet Dailey was once one of the most famous authors in the world. So I'm curious, Beth and Emma, if you knew anything about her before I started researching this episode.
Beth
I didn't know. Anything about Janet Dailey. Even this plagiarism scandal, I had never heard about it before.
Emma
Yeah, I think I remember it coming up when we were talking about Barbara Cartland. It was like, Chels sent us things that were like, Oh, here's people's reaction to another plagiarism incident that where both authors are romance authors that people still talk about. But I don't think I had heard of her before then. But also my history on contemporary romance in general is just significantly smaller than historical romance. I don't recognize a lot of the big names, so I had no scale of how big Janet Dailey was, even when you started researching.
Chels
Got you. Yeah, well, we have a lot to cover today, so you'll probably know more than you ever wanted to. But yeah, so I guess going back to the beginning, a lot of the early backstory I'm pulling from here is from the Janet Dailey companion. This was published by Harper Collins in 1996. It's a biography that is very bizarrely formatted. The beginning is almost like a yearbook, highlights, wins, and select quotations about her career. And the rest of the book is entirely in interview format. Sonia Massey interviewed Janet Dailey in Dailey's mansion for five straight days. They both had the same agent, Richard Curtis, and this book is the result of Massey's conversations with Dailey. And there are shorter interviews with her husband, Bill, Richard Curtis, and even Janet's mom. Janet Dailey was born Janet Haradon in May of 1944 in Storm Lake, Iowa. She was raised in a town called Early in Iowa, which has a very small population, about 726. Her father, Boyd, died when she was five years old. Dailey said that she didn't have strong memories of her father. She mostly learned about him through her three older sisters. She seemed to have a very rural working-class upbringing.
Chels
She spoke a lot about how she and her mother would grow and can their own food. Having a relationship with the land was something that came up in this interview a lot. It was apparently very important to her. When she was 13, her mother, Louise, married a man named Glenn Rutherford, who had four sons of his own, and moved her to another small town called Independence. Janet called Independence the big city because it had 5,000 people. In this bigger town, she became a bit of a social butterfly. She was a cheerleader. She edited the school newspaper and yearbook. Her mom worked in a general store, and her sisters and stepbrothers were much older than her, and they'd already left the house, and her stepdad worked nights, so she said that she was frequently the only one at home. Janet has this story. She tells about how she got in trouble for cruising when she was a teen. The town had a strict curfew after 10:00 PM, and you can only drive through the town twice before you get stopped by the police. So she and her boyfriend had been on a double date. And so when they went to drop off the other couple separately, they exceeded the limit of the amount of times that they were allowed to drive through, which I can't think of, what are the logistics of this?
Chels
How are you watching someone drive and counting?
Beth
There's probably one cop sitting here.
Emma
You're getting over time. You're sitting You're getting there with your coffee and you're getting... Yeah, you're just counting. That's what they're doing.
Chels
Oh, my God.
Emma
In a town of 5,000 people, you probably know all the cars.
Chels
Oh, my God. Well, this is a story that she's telling about her small town and also a father motherly conflict she has about her stepdad, where he was just really worried about the cruising going on her record, and she was very cool, teen, nonchalant about it. Get over it, dad.
Emma
Sorry, I have a permanent record that says that I had a boyfriend, dad. You were being too cool with your boyfriend just going about town. That's the coolest thing to get in trouble for, is being in a car with a boy.
Chels
Yeah, you're probably right. So Dailey also noted that after she moved from early to independence, it was unacceptable to be overly enthusiastic about schoolwork. So she frames it as a change of culture from moving away from a small town. But she's really talking about a tiny town where she had 25 people in her class versus a regular small town because independence was still very small. I grew up in a town that was half the size of independence, and I had a very similar experience where my mom very clearly communicated to me when I was in middle school. Just keep your hand down and don't be annoying and don't draw attention to yourself. I don't know if this is because we were both uncool. She sounded cool, though. So maybe it's a small town thing.
Beth
That's fascinating. I never even considered that. My high school is huge. Huge. When we graduated, I was like, I don't know most of these people.
Emma
I don't think my mom... I think she knew I never had a chance to be cool, so I never received this advice. But I also was from a bigger town than Janet Dailey. So maybe it is a small town thing. Who knows?
Chels
Despite getting this same feedback, Dana Dailey was still very involved in school. She had all these other extracurriculars, like your book and cheerleading. And she spoke to Massey about being moved by her journalism history and creative writing teachers. So this weird side note about this book. So the Massey interview is divided into chapters, and it's just straight interview text, right? It's not Massey taking what Dailey has said and rewriting it. It's just like, Massey says this, Janet Dailey says this. So it is really literally what she's saying, but a weird part is that it's divided into chapters, and then subsections have headlines for what's to come, like those early years and the pleasures of a yarn well-spun. And one of them makes it seem like you're in for some really old-school bigotry. It's very shocking. It's called Catholics, Blacks, and Those Wandering Jews. I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to call it that. It's very jarring, and it's not really an accurate depiction of what Janet Dailey said in the section below. I guess as a side note for this part. So this is 1996, and this is released by Harper Collins.
Chels
So we'll responsible people had to be involved in this going out in the world. And so where romance publishing is with people of color right now is not good, but it wasn't great in 1996 either. In 1994, there was an uptick in Black authors being published because of like, Kensington had their arabesque line. There were new lines specifically for Black authors and contemporary. But also some of the White establishment people were still We're treating that as a trend. And so they're not taking these other authors seriously. They're still being racist, even though they're not thinking they're racist. And I think this is a part of that. So that's the headline, went through multiple stages, made it in here. Still made it past a bunch of people in 1996. As I mentioned earlier, though, what's even the most bizarre is that it's not really an a accurate reflection of the section underneath it. So what Dailey said in the interview is that growing up in the Midwest in the 1950s, Dailey is talking about how ignorant she was because of her isolation. She said that she thought All Jewish people died in the Old Testament, and she didn't find out otherwise until her older sister, Mary Ellen, went to secretarial school and presumably met someone who was Jewish.
Chels
She also said the only prejudice she noted in her high school was anti-catholic. But then she mentioned that her town had only one Black student who moved there her junior year, and she's like, I'm sure he felt differently. And then Massey, who was interviewing her, brings up the context of the time to be like, Yeah, he probably did feel very different. This was the late 1950s or early '60s, so this is during the mid-civil rights movement.
Emma
Yeah, I think this just emphasizes how small of a town she was from, because I think that's sometimes hard to conceptualize if you're not from that small town. It's not just that she's from a small town. It's that at any given moment in her life, she could only have met at maximum 5,000 people, and probably not that many were the people she was actually interacting with. But it was that isolated. I think we also have this tendency to forget what it was like before the internet, of exposure to things outside of your area, especially as a child, that you're not leaving home without your parents. You're not speaking to people who your parents don't know. And so if you were raised by people who don't know anyone who's not their race or not their religion, you're not going to meet those people until you're an adult. I think it's telling that her older sister going to get a job and a professional degree is the thing that exposes her to other people. That's where she realizes that Jewish people are still around. But yeah, that's one of those things that exposes you to new things is going to a professional school, leaving your small town.
Emma
It's a very common experience. I think we have a short memory for what the world was like before the Internet. We're losing people who have conversations who remember what it was like before the internet. Also, I think it's telling the framing of the article or the framing of the chapter is like, Oh, wasn't my hometown so backwards? Then the chapter is also framed in this backwards way, that we look at it and we're like, This is a weird racist way to talk about this or to frame this. And it's like, I think acknowledging that that can happen is important.
Chels
Right. And romance publishing was and continues to be a hostile space for a lot of people. And I do think that's something that it's important not to gloss over in any retelling. So the next thing that comes up in the Janet Dailey companion. Janet decided not to go to college. She says, In a small town, you have to rely on your imagination. None of my teachers could convince me that I could go to college. At 18, I knew it all. I didn't want to write news stories. I I didn't want to teach, and I didn't want anyone telling me what to write. So with my nose out of joint, I said, If I can't go to college and become a novelist, I won't go and I won't write ever. Also, as a side note, in the book, there's a part where it says that Dailey was voted most likely to get married and have five kids in high school. And I'm like, That can't have been good for your ambition.
Beth
What decade is this right now? She's born in '44.
Chels
Yeah, she's born in '44. So this is the '60s. This would have been the early '60s, I believe.
Beth
Yeah, right at the start of the '60s.
Emma
I think that's as telling a vision of her hometown as anything. It's like, Oh, wow. Also, I think probably high schools had that category much later than we realized. My high school didn't have a category like that, but I feel like it's feasible to believe that some high schools in 2009 did have a category like that still, which is wild. But also, I just can't imagine how hard were her teachers trying to convince her to go to high school if that's how people saw her in high school. Even that you can speak about someone that way, it's like, This is your ambition, and we're going to put it in your book.
Chels
Yeah. I related to, not that anybody said I was most likely I have five kids in high school, but I did... When you're young, it's very easy to have this all or nothing mindset. If someone doesn't communicate the direct path that I need to take things to happen, then I can't see myself getting there, and I'm not even going to try. I feel like that was a reaction that I had a lot when I was in high school.
Beth
Well, I feel like she has these writing ambitions. It's like someone could say that they want to be a writer now, and I still feel like a parent's instinct would be like, Are you sure about that? So I feel like that times a thousand in the '60s.
Chels
Right. Yeah.
Emma
This is like you're thinking about it's like that early '60s, and I think probably a lot of authors, I don't know what she was reading, but probably a lot of authors had gone to college or had come from independent wealth. This hustle culture that she seems to have and seems to be part of her DNA of how she gets by, and I think we see that in another and it goes from her. It's like there's no model for like, Oh, I'm going to hustle. Especially if She's probably never been to New York at this point. It's publishings all in New York. I mean, the same issues that people have now, like Beth said, it's like that times a thousand. Yeah.
Chels
So she ends up not going to college and instead Dailey enrolls in secretarial school in Omaha because her older sister, Shirley, went there, and it seemed like it was going to be a safe path. So here is where Massey says, Back to secretarial school. Is this where you met Bill? And then Janet says, Secretarial school is Bill. So Janet met Bill, her future husband, when she was 18, some sources say 19, and he was 15 years older, so early to mid-30s. I'm going to have you all read some descriptions of Bill. The first one is from The Merchants of Venus: Inside Harlequin in the Empire of Romance, which is a book by Paul Gresco. So yeah, Emma, if you can read this one.
Emma
Bill was no romance novel hunk, well below 6 feet, weighing in at about [laughter] weighing in at about 130 with glasses and a well-lined face. He had been a carnival barker and fire-eater and still had hearts and snakes inscribed on his arms from his time as a circus tattoo artist.
Chels
Okay, this one.
Emma
I had not read this description before Chels made me read it. Every word that came after the last word, I was like, This is new information I'm taking in.
Beth
This reminds me of that episode of Community when... I can't remember her name, the blonde one. She was in love with a guy from the carnival, and they cannot figure out why she still hung up on him. I'm like, This is Bill. Just like, no one can understand the draw.
Emma
That carnival charm.
Chels
So, Beth, you're going to read one from the Toronto Star in 1980.
Beth
But is he a tall, handsome, blatantly viral sun god? Hardly. At 5'7 and weighing 130 pounds, he looks like a bespeckled, sandy-haired wimp.
Chels
Oh my God.
Beth
And far from being arrogant, bearing the hint of a caged anger, characteristic of his wife's fictional heroes. He's endowed with a very garriless gift of gab, a trait you'd expect from a former carny barker, fire-eater, sword-swallower, and tattoo artist.
Chels
Okay, I have two questions. First of all, how does everybody know that he's 130 pounds?
Emma
Why is this common knowledge? Does he lead with that? Like, 130 pounds, it's very slim. For even 5'7, that's very slim. Yeah, that's very. I think.
Beth
No, that is slim for 5'7.
Chels
The way that they say Carnival Barker, it's a bad word.
Emma
Right. Also, like, R. I. P. Janet Dailey, you would have loved Substitute Bride for a Prize fighter.
Beth
Right. I want her to be able to read that book. If this is her dream man, it's like, get her the carny barker series. But this is...sandy-haired wimp.
Beth
Yeah. People don't like Bill. I feel like they really come for him.
Chels
These descriptions, I think, are very telling. I think we'll get into this repeatedly throughout the episodes, but the way that Janet sees Bill and the world sees Bill don't really align perfectly. And it's not just the physical descriptors. There are other things, too. And so something also that's funny is that Janet repeatedly and emphatically says that she bases her heroes off of Bill. Emma, I've got a quote from Scott's Bluff Star Harold in 1977. This is Dailey describing Bill's hero traits, if you could read that.
Emma
Dominating. Adventurous. A lover of wide open spaces. Possessive. A borderline chauvinist who expects a woman be essentially feminine while capable of dealing with any and all aspects of the business world. A romantic beneath a hard exterior. A keen sense of humor, a lightning quick temper, too rugged to be handsome in the accepted sense of the word.
Beth
Sure.
Emma
It does sound like her heroes.
Beth
Too rugged to be handsome.
Emma
On the Daileys that I've read, I was like, That does sound like... That's her vision of Bill. That is the character that she writes.
Chels
I see it. When she describes him, I'm like, Okay, I see where you're getting the character But when everybody else is like, Oh, this sandy-haired wimp. And I'm like, Well, he's just small. I don't know if I'd call him a wimp.
Emma
Excepting the chauvinism, I do see where there's a Venn diagram of where there's overlap. If she wasn't describing her husband as a borderline chauvinist, which I think I have a hard time getting behind as romantic characteristic, in a person, maybe in a 1970s romance novel, I can handle it. But I do It's sweet in a way that the world sees him one way and it's like, She's like, This is my romantic ideal. I'm like, y'all have to deal with it. That's cute. Sometimes when you get to the detail, you're like, Is this cute? But on the surface, that's sweet, I think. Yeah. When wives describe their husbands and you're like, I don't see it because I'm not married to them, but they seem happy. Sure. But whether the Dailey is their happiness level and their marriage, we don't know the inner workings of it. But on the surface, this can be a cute dynamic. Yeah.
Chels
So some backstory on Bill, our carnival Barker. He was born in New Orleans. He was a son of showbiz parents that did work in carnivals, circuses, and even the Grand Ole Opry. His father was business partners with country musician Tex Ritter for a while. They owned some clubs on Bourbon Street. Do you all know who Tex Ritter is?
Beth
No.
Emma
Yeah. Just general 20th century music knowledge that he is a person.
Chels
Yeah. So he's probably best known for The Ballad of High Noon from the 1952 movie. I can play some of it for you.
Emma
I love a Western that starts with a movie that tells you the plot of the movie.
Chels
Oh, that's one of my favorites.
Emma
It's so good. I love High Noon. That's It slaps. It's like a good country story song. Tex Ritter, thank you.
Chels
And you can add that to something that you can play during this episode is 6 Degrees from Janet Dailey. Also, something that I didn't know is that Tex Ritter is Jason Ritter's grandfather.
Beth
Why am I not surprised? I feel like anyone, they've got... If you look at anyone's Wikipedia page, they've all got blue.
Chels
They're all blue checks. So Bill was technically a carnival barker, but more accurately, he was a carnival's Jack of all trades. He said he took tickets, did pretty much whatever was needed, including swallowing swords, if you need that. His family moved around a lot, but he was always assertive and restless. He said that he joined the Merchant Marines when he was only 14 years old, eventually getting stationed in the Philippines. So when he returns to the United States, he joins the carnival again. He calls himself in the Massey interview, "dimwit and dumb nothing." And he eventually got tired of traveling, so he settled in Omaha. Bill told Massey in his own interview that he feels the need to start projects and see them to fruition before moving on. So he started a commercial painting business first, and by the time Janet met him, he was a very successful businessman with a construction company. He was on his third marriage with a woman named Judy. He had five kids, but he said that three of them didn't really count because they were from an earlier marriage and he didn't help raise them.
Beth
Okay.
Chels
Sure.
Emma
Okay, Bill.
Chels
His youngest two kids that he had with Judy, Jim and Linda, were very, very young, four and six, respectively. In secretarial school, Janet had two roommates from Minnesota who were Catholic. They would go to Mass every week, and Janet would meet up with them afterwards. One day, they were walking to their dormitory, which was a renovated hotel, and Bill was standing outside the building. He looked at the Bibles they were carrying around and said, Looks like you've been to church. Did you say a prayer for me? And then Janet's roommate ignored him, but she responded by saying, Yes, you look like you need one.
Beth
Nice.
Emma
That's a good line.
Chels
That is actually... That is pretty good, Janet. So a few days later, he saw her at a drug store and recognized her. She told him that she was in secretarial school, and he let her know that one of his secretaries quit and persuaded her to drop out of school and then apply for the job. She said that she wasn't too keen on going to school anyway, so she did just that and got the job. Jaina told Massey that she was always interested in Bill, but she didn't think it was mutual because he was so much older. She said that Bill gave her the nickname Sam, so he could think of her as just one of the guys, but it didn't work out, and he fell in love anyway. I feel like giving someone a nickname is flirting.
Beth
Yes, always.
Emma
I do love a nickname that has nothing to do with the person's name. I'm just going to call you this thing. I think it's so cute. And I'm like, Yeah, he's flirting with her. It's like, That's not going to help you not fall for her, Bill. That's a lie. That's hard eyes around your head.
Beth
Yeah, it's like a special thing. That's only between the two of them. Of course, it's romantic.
Chels
Yeah. So Bill takes her to an Italian restaurant for their first date, and within a year, Janet marries the boss. So Janet becomes a stepmother of Bill's two young kids, Linda and Jim. Janet says Bill and Judy, his wife, were already separated. And when they started dating, so it wasn't like he left Judy for her. I have no reason not to believe this, as by all accounts, it was an amicable divorce, and Bill and Janet remained friends with Judy for decades. Janet worked for Bill for 13 years, but it would not be accurate to say she was a secretary for the entire time. She told the Associated Press in 1981 that she ran the office, and then Bill moved the company away from construction into real estate, and then finally, oil speculation. So they sold the business when they had about 200 employees, and Bill Dailey was confident that they could have lived off the money they made in perpetuity if they wanted to. So they decided to take their Airstream trailer. Have you seen those before? I remember those are the big...
Emma
It look like a- My parents always threatened to get one of these. They're like, This is what we're going to do. I'm like, Okay. But yes, I'm intimately familiar with... Yeah, well, maybe it doesn't... Well, I guess you have to have interstates for them to be viable. It's just like a brand.
Beth
Okay.
Chels
It's what it looks like.
Emma
It looks like a- But they have a kitschy '50s look.
Chels
It looks like a bullet, almost. It's like a big silver cylindrical trailer. So anyways, they have this Airstream trailer, and they're like, We're going to travel the country. After a year of doing that, Janet said that it got boring, and she was reading herliquid romances a lot and thought that she could write a better one. So Bill told her to try. The way that Janet described Bill to Massey is that he is the blueprint of her heroes in her novels. He's this hard, old-school type of man with a secret generosity. She says that Bill's word is law. If you tell him you're going to do something, he expects you to do it. So there's no let's get lunch if Bill doesn't want to get lunch. And this seems like Janet's heroes to me. When she's reading it, I'm like, I see it. I will bring up this documentary throughout the episode because Janet and Bill feature heavily in it. But there's this documentary called Where the Heart Rooms, directed by George Chichery, that is about romance writers and fans taking a cross country Amtrak train. They called it the Love Train. They were taking it to the 1983 Romantic Times Book Lovers Convention in New York.
Chels
Janet Dailey wasn't on the Love Train, but she's a guest of honor at the convention. And there's this point where she's being interviewed by E. Jean Carroll. So Carroll was writing for Playgirl at the time, and she and the Daileys are sequestered in this small room. So, yeah, I'll show you a clip from that.
Interview
Name the qualities in Bill that you most admire, your husband.
Janet Dailey
You would almost use a hero trait in the book because he is ambitious. He is an individualist. He has got a quick temper, and he's got eyes that are not really blue and they're not really green. These are hero traits. These are hero traits.
Interview
Is he brooding?
Chels
Oh, yes.
Beth
Maybe it's the haircut that everyone keeps coming after.
Chels
Okay, yeah. Can you guys describe what... Can you describe what you were seeing in that scene?
Emma
It is a very young haircut for a man his age. He looks like a middle school hockey player. He's more than a beetle to me. He looks like he should be wearing a helmet of sorts.
Chels
Yeah, I thought it was a Beatle's haircut.
Beth
He's leaning against the door, like chuckling at Janet's description of him. He's huge glasses on. She's playing with her turtle neck.
Emma
But yeah, I He has a little smirk when she's like... He has hero traits, and he smugs about it. It's cute. You can tell she compliments him a lot, and it always delights him. It's like, My wife is doting on me. Also, they say, Is he brooding? And it's a cut of him leaning against the door. A little bit. He's brooding right now.
Chels
We can't get him to stop. Okay.
Beth
I just appreciate a good lean, like against the door. It's good. Classic pose.
Chels
Yeah. That's why everybody says they want. The Daileys are delivering. Right. Yeah.
Beth
They want a guy to lean, like in the Sandra Bullock, Bill Pullman, While You're Sleeping, Ruby. Looks like he was leaning a little bit.
Chels
So I guess we'll back up a little bit, and we're going to talk about Janet's writing career. Janet, of course, had interest in writing from her school days. So in interviews, she cited Edna Furber and James Michner as authors who inspired her. So I think this is very interesting. These are two American authors who wrote sweeping epics. Michner wrote Family Sagas, too, and this is something that Daileys is quite interested in and is going to start to write later. So the story goes that Janet wanted to write, talked about writing for forever, and then Bill got frustrated with her and said, Write that book or shut up. I've found this anecdote in eight interviews, although she changes the verbiage depending on who she's talking to. In the Jane It Dailey companion, she says this, I began to talk nonstop until Bill, who had no patience with words that aren't backed by action, finally said, Okay, get off your duff and do it. So now let's watch a clip from From Where the Heart Roam
Janet Dailey
But in all seriousness, I am...when Barbara asked me to come, I said, What topic do you want me to talk about? And she said, Well, talk about how you became successful.
Janet Dailey
And I got off the phone and I turned to Bill and I said, This is going to the shortest speech on record. It's three little words, Mary Bill Dailey. But Bill, as you all know, he's a big factor in my career, and he's to blame for me ever starting writing because he's the one that told me to get up off my rear and write the book or shut up.
Chels
And I have one more. So this is from the show Good It's an interview with Eileen Prose.
Interview
And it was your husband, Bill, who said, Write that book.
Janet Dailey
Yes. Well, he didn't put it quite that way. He said, Get up off your rear and write that book or shut up. I'm tired hearing you talk about it.
Interview
Because you talked about it a long time?
Janet Dailey
A lot. I was like, Thousands Thousands of people always wanted to write a book someday.
Chels
Okay, so what do you think about that?
Beth
The shut up does feel a little jarring. I feel like if that wasn't part of the anecdote, it would be maybe a little bit more palatable for people.
Emma
Yeah, I know this is often framed as like, Oh, this is insight into this dynamic. Like, Oh, maybe we should be suspect of it.
Beth
I don't think it's suspicious. I think that she gives credit to her husband. It seems like pretty normal. And I feel like in a gender flip dynamic, it would be a lot more expected and sweet. But yeah, I think it just does speak, and we'll talk more about this later, and you hinted at it, Chels, that he is a big factor in her writing career and big motivator for her.
Emma
I think about the anecdote where it was like, no teacher could convince me to go to college. Janet has characterized herself at these junctures of ambition as incredibly hard-headed. And about always hard-headed about her inability to do something that is unpredictable. But she's like, If I can't be a novelist out of college, why would I go to college? I could imagine her being like, If I'm not going to be a best seller, or if I'm not going to finish the book, why would I try writing the book? Bill does what her teachers couldn't do. It's like, We'll just do it and see what happens. And so it's like, yeah, the way that he says it is something that I were butt against. I'm like, Oh, that's a weird way to speak to your wife. But again, I think it's like you have to take Janet for her word. It's like, this seems of value to her. Also, we have anecdotes of other parts of her life where it's like other methods maybe wouldn't have worked to get her to go forward with some ambition.
Beth
That's what I think it is helpful to have someone supporting you. Writing is a pretty solitary activity. It is hard to find the motivation to do it. I think I can see why she credits him so much.
Chels
Yeah. And so there's also another interview where someone's talking to Dailey, and she's like, Yeah, other husbands, if you tell them you want to write, they would be like, Oh, sure, sweetie. And then you wouldn't do it. But Bill is like, Well, do it. Just stop talking and do it. And I think that it is jarring. You can see, too, especially in that clip from where the Heart Rooms, where she's telling the story, and the giggles seem nervous. People don't really know how to react to this. I don't think I would know how to react to that if she was just telling me this story. I think I would be very uncomfortable. So to be fair, that is a natural response to this. If you don't know Janet, if you don't know Bill. So this is And how people are seeing the Daileys as this very, slightly off-putting, but very successful couple, because they've been working together for a long time. They ran multiple businesses in both Omaha and then, as we'll see later, and Branson. So they're each other's dream team in that aspect. But it's just like, it's hard for me to grasp because this is not a relationship that I would be in.
Emma
Yeah. People seem to talk to Janet. They know something about her marriage that she doesn't know. I think people talk about her that way now sometimes. It's like, Oh, we all know that Bill is sinister and Janet hasn't figured it out yet. That is a very paternalistic way to talk about a woman who only ever said doting things about her husband. It's like, you're not in the marriage, especially if you don't know her personally. It's a very parasocial paternalism, almost, to speak about the marriage that way.
Chels
Yeah, I agree. Janet took six to eight months to write No Quarter Asked. It depends on which interview you read, share your different answers. And that was her first book. So No Quarter Asked is about Stacey, a city girl whose father had recently died, so she goes to Texas to reset. And then she falls in love with a rancher named Cord, who has been burned by love before and is prickly about outsiders. Bill told Janet to send No Quarter Asked to Harlequin because he said they were the best and the biggest. This is a romance novel podcast, so I probably don't need to tell most people who Harlequin is, but I do want to highlight something. When you talk to someone who doesn't read romance novels, have you noticed that they call them Harlequins?
Emma
I've heard that as a noun before. Yeah. Yeah.
Chels
They're the name with the biggest recognition, so much so that they're synonymous with the romance novels to outsiders in North America. Here in the UK, people will be like, Oh, you read Mills and Boones? Harlequin is North America. Harlequin is known for their category romances. And if you aren't familiar, category romances are short, around 200 pages or so, and they have to fit the formula of the line that they're in. The marketing for category romance emphasizes the publishing line over the author. So the books have the same layout and logo. They're numbered sometimes, but they're often a starting point for authors that will later break out into mass market. Authors like Janet Dailey, Nora Roberts, Jane Anne Crence, they all got their start in Category Romance. So according to Dailey, she sent her book to Harlequin, and Harlequin told her at the time that they're only reprint Mills & Boon category romance. So Mills and Boon are, of course, a publisher in the UK, and their early books were like precursors to their eventual category romance lines. They would be hardbacks that had a brown cover and logo. So people would go to lending libraries because they primarily sold to lending libraries.
Chels
They would go to there and ask for the books in Brown, meaning that they wanted a Mills and Boon. So it's like the same idea of a category where you recognize it, you know you're going to like it, you're going to keep buying it. In the early days of Harlequin, who are Canada-based, they made their money mass reprinting Mills and Boom novels in paperback format for a North American audience. So after years of this, Harlequin bought Mills and Boon in 1971. In the book The Emergence of Venus, Gresco has a very funny aside about this. It's a Harlequin takeover, but the Boon's preferred to call it a merger.
Emma
Like a merger, it's like, Oh, you're taking 10% and putting it into the 90%. We're merging. Right.
Chels
So in the early 1970s, both Mills and Boon and Harlequin are primarily publishing authors from the UK. But if they did publish Americans, they would follow what Paul Gresco called The Romance Recipe that was created in England. So when Dailey comes along, it's the start of a huge shift towards American romance writers and category romance writing about American characters in American settings. So I just As an aside, historical romance at this point is in a completely different place like the historical Bodice Rippers. It's already dominated by Americans like Kathleen Woodewis in Minnesota, Rosemary Rogers, who was born in Sri Lanka at the time British Ceylon, but had made a home in California, Laurie McBane, also California, and Jennifer Wild, the pen name of Tom Huff, who's a Texan. Those are the biggest names of the genre in historicals, like historical mass market, the bodice rippers. But category is not anywhere near that space. I've seen different sources claim that Dailey's first book was printed anywhere from 1972 to 1978. Dailey, for the most part, claims 1976, and that's the date that has stuck in people's minds and is repeated as truth.
Chels
Steve Ammidwon, who writes at romancehistory.com and runs the @RomanceHistory Instagram, says that No Quarter Asked was printed by Mills and Boon in 1974, and then later reprint by Harlequin in '76. He has a really interesting article about this called 'Towards an Accurate History' about Daileys' first book. The Daileys claimed that she was Harlequin's first American author, which isn't true. I think it's possible that they might have believed this. I don't know where they got the information from, but it could be that they thought it was true, and it just isn't. But also, I've noticed the Daileys aren't very consistent with dates in general. They don't remember what year Bill and Janet married, and then they refuse to check because they said marriage longevity isn't a competition. So there's all these scatter shots of dates and information and stuff. But one of the consequences of that is that people repeatedly say Janet Dailey's first book, 1976, Harlequin, when her first book was 1974, Mills and Boon.
Emma
Yeah, I have sympathy for anyone who's mixing up dates. The fact that I said I graduated from high school in 2009 on this episode of the podcast is outstanding to me. I never remember dates. That is correct, but I very I really could have gotten that wrong. I say 2013 all the time. I take off four years from my age. I feel like it's easy to look at that and be like, Oh, why didn't they just say it correctly? But they didn't have Google at And also you say something repeatedly and then you're like, Oh, that sounds right. I think.
Chels
And then also the thing, too, is why say Harlequin when you really were with Mills and Boon? Amadou has this theory that this mythos is a lot sexier when it's tied to Harlequin, because Americans, by and large, don't really know what Mills and Boon is the way that they know what Harlequin is. But just to throw another wrench into this, in the 1988's April-May edition of Romantic Times, there's a profile of select authors. And Dailey's description does say that she was the first American to break into the select circle of Mills and Boon. But then it gives the year of her Harlequin release of '76. So you're confused, I'm confused, everyone's confused, this is all getting muddled. But '74.
Emma
It seems that the conflation of Mills and Boon and Harlequin is very intuitive post-merger. They're like, Yeah, this is the same... It's the same upper people, whether it's whatever company we're under. It's like, yeah. Also, it's like you wouldn't have... I don't know. I think it makes sense that they're being conflated because if you're not fact-checking it constantly, like which one's which, it's like they're the same-ish post-merger. It's not like rival companies anymore. They are connected financially. Yeah.
Beth
I feel like also if you're trying to clarify for an American audience, they know Harlequin. So it might just be, even though it's not technically Harlequin at the time, it might just be easier to be like, Well, yeah, Harlequin. That was right. I was the first American author for Harlequin. Yeah.
Chels
Well, so they're both publishing at the same time. It just depends on who goes where. I think in the early days, Harlequin was only, even in the '70s, after the merger Like Harlequin was saying, we're only reprinting Mills and Boon books. So first you would go through Mills and Boon, and then they would reprint them later, which is what happened with Dailey. But yeah, I can't stress this enough. Like, Americana is the Janet Dailey brand. So Bill, who had an intuition for personal branding, came up with the idea that Janet would write a romance in every state. So they had already been living in their trailer and traveling extensively. So while it is gimmicky, it feels like a natural thing for them to do. This became Dailey's Americana series with Harlequin. Bill would work on the research, handle contracts, speak to agents, and Janet would sit at her typewriter and do the rest. They did a lot of press as they moved from state to state, and the press was always fascinated by the fact that Janet wore blue jeans. I think this is so funny because nowadays authors are like, I don't wear pants.
Chels
But for Dailey, they were like, Oh, she wears jeans. I think this is because in their mind, a romance writer looks like Barbara Cartland, absolutely draped in costume, jewelry, and chiffon. But Dailey is like...
Beth
Like the down to earth, like the.
Chels
She's the cool Cool. Yeah. She's the cool.
Emma
It's like a cool lady is writing romance novels. I thought they were all weirdos, like Barbara Cartland.
Chels
So according to the Associated Press, Janet Dailey was already making six figures by 1977. So At the low end of that six figures, if she was making $100,000, that would be over half a million dollars in 2024 money. She had only been writing for a few years, and she was already making that much money annually. By the end of that year, she had written and published 27 books.
Beth
Honestly, shout out to Janet Dailey for finishing that series. She did do the 50 books, right?
Chels
Yeah, she did do the 50 books.
Beth
So many authors do not finish their series. I don't know. T
Emma
They can't finish four. They're like, Oh, I'm I'm going on to something else. Those side characters who got set up will never get a romance. They're like, Okay, I guess.
Beth
Yeah, I'm amazed by this. I don't know. I think it's great.
Chels
Yeah, she's definitely prolific. So a turning point, too, is in 1979, Dailey published Touch the Wind, which was her breakout of category romance. So this was her first mass market. She published it with pocketbooks. And she said the idea was cooked up by her editor at pocketbooks because they thought that she could be the next Edna Furb Ripper, who was one of her idols. Touch of the Wind is very interesting because it's set in modern day, well, modern day '70s, but it's a captive captor, bodice ripper. This is like, what does a bodice ripper look like through the eyes of someone who cut their teeth right in category? And the result is the prose is less laborious than some of the early bodice rippers. I'm thinking of you, Woodiwiss. But on the scale of cheese to anguish, we're tipping a little bit into cheese.
Emma
We rag on Woodrowis' Purple Prose, but a lot of earnestness is hidden within the Purple Prose. She gets away with a lot because of all those adverbs. But I could see what we come across is more awkward in everyday language of Janet Dailey.
Chels
Yeah, I think that was for me. I'm like, This is very readable, but I'm like, there's an anguish in a lot of the early bodice rippers that was not really present in Touch the Wind. So that was my takeaway. I was like, This is interesting. I don't think it's good, but I can see why it was very popular. So in the late '70s, Daileys told the Billings Gazette, The heroines and a harlequin are girls usually between the ages of 18 to 24. She's wholesome, attractive, independent, and usually liberated. So Touch the Wind isn't a harlequin. It's more of a scape. There's cursing and ravishment. There's violence. And it's also a huge hit. By 1980, it's a New York Times best seller with an estimated seven million copies sold globally. Her follow-up, The Rogue, does even better with an estimated 10 million in global sales.
Emma
That's insane. It's like, even if those numbers, those estimates are off by an order of operation, if those numbers are inflated by 10 % or 10 times more, that's still an insane number of books. For one title, that's insane.
Chels
It's The scale of what romance used to be for some authors is just wild to me. Yeah. Dailey is still, to this day, if you look at best-selling American authors, she's still at the top. She's one of the top, maybe 10. Her sales were unbelievable to think about.
Emma
That's like an album, like a CD you sell that much. That's just wild.
Chels
Yeah, it's pretty crazy. So by this time, Dailey is one of the most recognizable names in romance and one of the best selling. Her output is very prolific. She's getting close to finishing the 50 States project. She's reached the apex of popularity. The only romance author who writes more and makes more money at this point is Barbara Cartland. Janet's hit that lightning strike of success that everybody dreams of. She was also the guest of honor at the very first Romance Writers of America or RWA Convention in 1981. She's also this huge name for other American authors who are trying to break through and are looking for a contemporary to emulate. According to Nora Roberts, she actually pitched her first book to Harlequin in the 1970s, and they rejected her, saying that they already had an American author who was Janet Dailey. Harlequin definitely starts changing their tune in the following years, but they missed out on being Robert's first publisher, which was a huge mistake. So in 1988, Simon & Schuster launched Silhouette, which is a category romance line that was supposed to compete Harlequin, and they published Nora Roberts' first book, Irish Thoroughbred, in 1981.
Beth
And they were focused on American authors, too, right? That was why Nora Roberts could get her start through them, is because they were specifically looking for American authors?
Chels
Yes. And you could actually do an episode on Silhouette versus Harlequin alone. It's very dramatic. But the extremely simplified version of it is that in the '70s, Harlequin and Simon & Schuster had a symbiotic relationship with pocketbooks, which Harlequin then severed. So Simon & Schuster, who own pocketbooks, have plenty of time to anticipate this relationship getting tanked, and they already have a contract with Janet Dailey for her mass markets that are published under pocketbooks, as you'll recall. In addition to that, they're aware of all these rejected American manuscripts from Harlequin, which they then pull from to launch Silhouette Books. So they're focusing on American authors way before Harlequin decides to follow suit, but they're also making their category romance line looks so much like Harlequin that they get sued. There's a lot more to it, and Harlequin does eventually buy Silhouette. One of the things that I find that people sometimes don't really, or sometimes struggle with is just a time where American authors didn't dominate the romance space.
Beth
That's why I wanted to bring it up. I'm like, it was so dominated by English authors at this time. American authors are just trickling in at this point.
Chels
Yes. One thing that we're always doing in romance is making great statements about where we now and where we've come from. And I think this is boring in 2024 because a lot of times people are maybe not as tuned in to romance history, so they subsequently don't know that what they're saying is inaccurate. So we were talking earlier about how there's a shift into more Americans writing category romance. But there's also another shift in the accepted levels of sexuality in contemporary category romance, and also the main woman character having a career. So there's a notable turning point that people are commenting on in the early '80s. So here's a quote from the Billings Gazette. So the interviewer is asking Dailey about if there are printed guidelines about degrees of sensuality. So, Beth, I'll have you read her answer.
Beth
Okay. So Janet says, No, not at all. With those early harlequins, if you kissed at the end of the book, it was a miracle. And I don't think you could even use the word passion. We didn't go below the We didn't go below the neck. So if you think about the level of tension you had to create to maintain, by the time I got done writing them, we were way below the belt. Okay. I love that.
Chels
And then here's one from the Janet Dailey companion. Emma, if you can read this, hopefully you can read it.
Emma
I write about women's lives, and women are involved in more things now than ever before. I can't stand writing about weak women. In the first Harlequin novel I wrote, The heroine didn't have a career. It wasn't even considered that she might have a career. The hero was very dominating. In the last romance I wrote for Silhouette, the hero was ugly, and the woman was a reporter searching for her natural parents. My heroines say no to men. They have careers. Women read my books and see an unhappy character become better off because she is willing to change. The two genders of male romance heroes, dominating and ugly.
Chels
She's a reporter and he's It was ugly. It was just like, That was good. How will they make it work? News at 10.
Emma
I do like the quote from Beth about the categories, though, because I've been reading more historical categories lately. I do think we use category sometimes as shorthand for clean. I'm like, Oh, it's like a Signet. It's like a category. It's closed door or it's not as spicy, which I think it's a sweeping statement where it's like there is range within categories. But I do think something I've noticed in categories Or is it because all those authors maybe cut their teeth on something where they were not allowed or not expected to write sex scenes that were remotely explicit, the tension, is so palpable because you can't write it in a sex scene. So it's going to happen through dialog. It's going to happen through interactions. And it's like, yeah, if you're going to sell a romance novel without a sex scene, something has to replace the sex. And it's like, yeah, chemistry and tension is going to be there. I think, Dan, It's on the news with that, that that tension is going to be there. When I was like, she's like eventually, we're going to write sex scenes.
Beth
No, I was just agreeing. I almost brought up that you've been reading a ton of category because I'm like, this seems like Emma's experience where they have to- They're so fun.
Emma
I'm enjoying them so much because they're short and they're fun, and the tension is there. It's like that. That's what I feel like is missing through a lot of current romance models being published.
Beth
Too much reliance on the chemistry or just the fact that they're having sex. I know it's a bad book if I'm skipping the sex scenes because they just don't care. There's no build up. There's no release of tension. I'm like, Oh, now you're having sex. Okay, well, whatever, I guess.
Chels
And that's too, some of our most famous authors cut their teeth in category. They pick up these skills that they can take with them. If you're a regular romance reader, you know, but if you're not, they're a little bit undervalued.
Emma
I mean, the best romance novel I've ever read, it's where I don't remember how spicy the sex scenes were. People will ask me about it and they're like, How spicy was it? I'm like, I literally don't remember because the sex scenes and the romance are so intertwined that it's like, what I remember is the characters being at odds or having tension between them. I felt the tension, and it doesn't matter whether it was in a sex scene that was really explicit or in a parlor room dialog. Especially the further I get away from the book, I'm like, I don't remember what the explicit levelness of this book is remotely.
Chels
Yeah. So something like, you remember we watched that documentary Where the Heart Rooms by George Chichery, and I referenced it earlier. It's wonderful for dozens of reasons, but it's also amazing for tracking the rise of the American romance novel. So it was released in 1987, but it was filmed in 1983. And most of the featured authors are Americans who got their start writing after Dailey. So Vivian Stevens, who's the founder of the RWA, and also edited Dell's Candlelight Extasy Line before moving to Harlequin to start their very first American line. So they start their American Line in the mid '80s with Stevens. She's also heavily interviewed in the documentary. Following Dailey, there was a growing recognition of American readership and category romance. American readers wanted to read stories set at home with people like them, and so they're this huge market base. And Stevens was moving with the times, so she had stipulations that heroine should be older than 27, that they should be gainfully employed, and that they shouldn't give it all up to be with a man. And this is funny because this is something that I hear people talking about for now, whenever people do stories about romance has big changes in 2020, it's be like, Oh, the women are independent now.
Chels
And it's like, Do you not remember the '80s? So I think that's something that I can get a little bit frustrated by. But the point of this section is it's a new era of romance in the '80s. No matter if you think Daileys' novels are progressive or not, she has a significant place in ushering in the American romance novels. And while I don't think she was necessarily known as being a pioneer for sensuality, she was moving with the times. She was moving with the other authors and what they were doing in the '80s as well. The Calder series is what I associate Janet Daileys with, I think a lot of other people do as well. These are romances, but they're also family sagas. It starts with this Calder Sky, with Chase Calder, the son of a wealthy tyrannical Montana rancher. And then this series actually dips back and forth in time. So the next book in the series is actually going to be Chase's Grandfather in this Calder Range. In an interview about this Calder Sky in Miami Herald, Janet said, "I wanted to start with this one because it's set in contemporary times. I was afraid if I started at the beginning, my readers would say, My God, she's gone historical."
Chels
So we have all actually read one book in the Calder series, and so together, we've all read the first three. Were you all surprised?
Beth
She goes there. I read this Calder Range, which is the story about Chase's grandfather. His name is Ben Tee. They start in Texas. They go to Montana. I didn't know what to expect. I don't know. I guess I knew something unexpected might happen because Chels was dropping hints when they read their Calder book. But you read This Calder Sky, right?
Chels
Yeah, I read This Calder Sky.
Beth
But yeah. And then I feel like I looked at it like such a marketer. I'm like, this feels like Yellowstone. And then I think that's how they're pitching it now, the show Yellowstone. They're like, It's like Yellowstone, but it is. It's violent. The men are violent. They're not nice people.
Emma
It's so weird. But good. It's good. The writing is good. It's unlike anything else I've ever read.
Beth
I could see why people are really compelled by this series.
Chels
I also was interested, too, because I don't feel like people asterisk the Calder series as like, these aren't really romances. But I feel like In 2024, if you released one of those books, people would come for your throat. They would be like, This is not a genre romance. Yeah.
Emma
Mine would not be considered a romance. People would riot for two main reasons. There are two deaths in the book that would just disqualify it from being a romance. Beth's hero dies on page in my book. She does St. Vincent fan service and brings him back, and then he dies. But it's also so moving. It's one of the best scenes in the book. It's like, Oh, this person who's the patriarch of this family dies, and we're all sad about it. I can imagine being a reader who at that point had read three books with this family. It would be very moving. But also, yeah, he's an older man. He does die very violently, but it's shocking.
Chels
Yeah. There's also some pretty violent main character death in my book that I read. I was surprised Yeah, I was surprised by how dark it was. I didn't think I thought of Dailey as that type of author, but I definitely had to recategorize how I viewed her, even after Touch the Wind, which Touch the Wind starts with a pretty violent scene, but it doesn't have the anguish that the Calder series has, which I feel like I can see why it's so popular. Early '80s. In 1982, Janet and Bill put out Foxfire Light, which is a movie based on Janet's book of the same name. So Janet wrote the screenplay and Bill executive-produced. So Foxfire Light stars Faye Grant as a rich girl who runs away from Beverly Hills to the Ozarks and falls in love with a cowboy played by Barry Van Dyke. Tippi Hedren is barely in it as Faye Grant's mean mom, and then Leslie Nielsen is her uncle who owns the house in the Ozarks that she ends up staying up at. I did watch it, and I was embracing myself for the worst, but I did find it enjoyable. Faye Grant is so, so, so beautiful, and she's perfect in this.
Chels
Barry Van Dyke was also there. So the movie was shot in only 15 days in the Branson area, and it cost a little over a million dollars. It was entirely funded by the Daileys and a few of their friends. The idea was that they'd take the finished product to the TV networks who would then bid on it. Then hopefully they could continue to make adaptations out of Daileys novels. It was going to be a thing that they continued doing. In 1984, it actually goes out to theaters, which results in this headline that's very funny from the Cincinnati Post, Foxfire Light, Corny, but adequate.
Beth
I don't know what to think of that. You're having a good time, I guess.
Chels
It was adequate. I feel like that was my experience, too. The Ozarks looked so pretty in the movie, though. I think the movie's very pretty.
Emma
Yeah, filming it on location, I feel like you're going to... It's like there's going to be something to get out of that movie if you film anything in the Ozarks.
Chels
Absolutely. In 1982, Janet was also very wildly popular in Japan. So she and Bill went on a book tour there, and Janet actually has a pretty severe health scare in Kyoto. She had appendicitis, and after she eventually gets flown back to the United States, it took her months to recover. The New York Dailey News quotes Bill as saying, I told God that if she would die, I'd kill myself. And then God said, Don't worry about it. I don't want you here screwing things up. And then Bill later added, I cleaned that up a little.
Emma
God is cursing at Bill Dailey, but not the way you think.
Chels
So Janet does recover, and not only is she still at the top of her game, she's slowing down her publishing pace and writing books that aren't strictly genre romance. So what they're calling in the romance industry is going mainstream. She publishes books like Silver Wing, Santiago Blue, which is about four women army service pilots or WASPs in World War II. It's set at a training camp in Texas as the women try to earn their Silver Wings. I thought this might have been Top Gun inspired, but it actually came out before Top Gun. I was like, This sounds like Top Gun to me.
Emma
Ridley Scott, or not Ridley Scott...Maybe Tony Scott was inspired by Janet Dailey. Yeah. Maybe the other way. Tony Scott was like what if there were men pilots?
Beth
Do you know men who could fly these things?
Chels
Janet also published a 716-page hardback door stopper called The Great Alone in 1986, which she called a historical epic saga of Alaska a la Michner. So Michner is, of course, her idol. He was also coincidentally working on a historical epic about Alaska. It was just called Alaska, but Dailey beat him to the punch. The Great Alone has a pretty big scope. The book spans over two centuries, from 1745 to 1958, when Alaska is on the brink of becoming a state. So Dailey is, of course, very famous for her rapid pace, but The Great Alone took her nine months to write. So for any other author, that would be 10 years. The reviews I read for The Great Alone were mostly positive, but they weren't glowing. I think the general consensus seems to be that it's got moments that are very thrilling, but it's uneven. So we've spoken a lot about Janet's rise to Fame and how successful she was before the plagiarism scandal. But before we go further, I need to circle back to Bill again because Bill is a huge part of the story. So if you'll remember, Bill was Janet's manager, but he was super well known amongst romance readers and writers for as long as Janet was famous.
Chels
In the Where the Heart Rooms documentary, there's this clip of Melody Adams talking about how she flew to Branson to speak with Bill to get writing advice, and then she ends up dedicating her first book, a silhouette romance called All Fly the Flags. She dedicates it to Bill. But Bill's decision to take on this managerial role over Janet took on a sinister implication in people's minds. A Chicago Tribune article about where the heart roams called Bill Hearst's Svengali Husband. This is actually something that people would call Bill a lot. Here's something I'll have you read Emma. It's from the New York Dailey News. They call Bill a scrawny, scrappy-looking man, and then this is what they write about him.
Emma
Today, he presides over an empire consisting of a land development firm, a country music theater, a restaurant/nightclub, a record label, and a music publishing arm. He also manages two country acts. Born in New Orleans, Bill Dailey grew up in carnivals and services and was married three times before he met Janet, who came to work for him as a secretary when she was 18. Without embarrassment, Bill will tell you he only went to the fifth grade. Questioned about the Sfengali label, he asked what the word means. But if you doubt his truandess or his skill in promoting his number one commodity, wife Janet. Bill talks in an awe-shucks manner, notes Richard Curtis, Janet's pie-powered literary agent. And people have a tendency to underestimate him, but they only do it once.
Chels
And so here's another clip in that same vein from where the heart roams.
Bill Dailey
After Jan wrote her third book, basically, I asked Janet one I said, Do you want to become the number one author in the world? And she said, Yes, if that's what I wanted. And so I started laying out plans. And of course, one of those plans was that We would travel around the country. We'd do a book in each state for to give us a book of records.
Beth
Okay. I guess they got the record.
Chels
Yeah. So then one more quote. So this is from Columbia Dailey Tribune in 1985. So, Beth, if you want to read this.
Beth
Bill often speaks in the plural, attesting to the partnership the couple agrees is the key to Janet's success. When talk turns to the latest product, Bill refers to it as the book we're writing. He travels widely to aid her research effort. He videotapes and reviews with Janet her television appearances. With a fifth-grade education, he edits her output day by day. He dressed her in a slightly more sophisticated fashion when she switched from romance paperbacks to mainstream her backs. He even cuts her hair.
Chels
So, yeah, what do you notice about these quotes?
Beth
They really come in for his education. It's suspect that he's so helpful because he only has a fifth-grade education, which is bugging me a little bit.
Emma
This person who had to start working when they were a small child has hustle?
Beth
Yeah.
Emma
Surprise? Come on, guys. He has a business acumen? That would actually make sense.
Beth
I was just going to say it feels like Janet's literary agent thinks highly of him. People don't underestimate him twice. Janet's not the only one, I think, coming to bat for him.
Chels
Something that I've thought about, too, is about the Daileys is points of view. So you get into the first New York Daily News quote where they're saying, Without embarrassment, Bill will tell you that he only went to the fifth grade. So this is information he's offering up about himself. It's like, This is what I've done with only this, But then when you get to the Columbia Daily Tribune quote, where it's like, he's trying to edit her books, but he only has a fifth grade education. That same information changes from tone to tone. And I think this is Janet Dailey's main problem, is that when she says things, she means them and she hears one thing, and then everybody else is hearing something different.
Emma
So many things, I think this comes up again and again with Janet and Bill, is that the thing in isolation could be framed as a husband supporting his wife. Even the thing where it's like he cuts her hair, it's like that's the thing I could see people fawning over. It's like, Oh, this is sweet. He's making sure that she doesn't have to worry about her appearance because she's so busy writing. It's like this is the dream supportive husband. It's like she's the breadwinner. He is doing everything in his power to give her space to write. He's created the Virginia Woolf room of one's own space in his life for Janet to write. It's like that's the dream of a woman writer who is like... The opposite is so often true. It's like that you're furtively looking for time to write because you're not supported by your partner. And then it's like, now we have this example of a husband who is like, his entire life revolves around supporting this woman. And even the sympathetic, more sympathetic framing of it is like, but we should be suspect of this. We should be worried about his control over her.
Emma
And it's like, I don't know. It's like, Janet, yeah, there was a big age difference, but she's an adult by the time she's famous. I don't know, she's telling you that this is the way that is helpful to her The constant suspicion of them is so weird. Not weird, I understand where it's coming from, but it's also not... We're not in this marriage. I keep reminding myself as I see these things.
Beth
Yeah, I think that's a good thing, remember. We just... We don't know. But also something I thought about is it's common enough that these great men who've written throughout history have had Leo Tolstoy. His wife edited quite a bit. There's labor that's happening that is not being credited. And I just see Janet doing the opposite, where she's just giving credit to Bill for the things that he does. Yes, I write these books, but here's all the things that my partner is doing behind the scenes. I would rather that model, I guess, rather than the, No, I did everything. I'm great. Not giving credit to your partner on what they've done to help you with your work.
Emma
A lady novelist only counts if she does it completely without the support of her husband because it's like she had to fight for it. And otherwise, he's the man behind the curtain. It's like, she's the one writing Yeah, she's still writing them.
Beth
I don't know. It's frustrating.
Chels
I'm glad that you mentioned that because we do actually know what Janet has to say about this. So, Beth, if you want to read, this is from the Janet Dailey companion. This is being asked about her relationship with Bill and these rumors that he's controlling her.
Beth
I've had more than one person in the course of my career, people usually involved in business, who meet Bill and me together, and they believe that he totally controls me. And I'm totally dominated by him. Occasionally, they will tell me, Well, can't you think for yourself? Or, Can't you make a decision for yourself? But what they fail to understand is that it's this working thing. I am well aware, and Bill is well aware, that I'm good at what I do, and he is good at what he does. I'm not about to tell him how to negotiate a contract or how to promote or what's good or what's bad. I will give input, but usually when he asks, and he gives input when I ask. To me, real liberation is recognizing where your true skills and your true talents are and not trying to be what you aren't. That's stupidity to go over here and say, I know better than he does. Most people in my position would hire somebody like Bill. I married him, and I was lucky that I was married to him before the career ever happened, but he doesn't dominate. Now, he can't stand disorganization, but as he said, he can't make me sit at a typewriter and he can't make me write the words.
Beth
It doesn't work that way, and it won't work that way for anybody, not for long. So there's nothing he could make me do, and he knows that, and there's nothing I can make him do, and I know that. So yeah, I guess we should just trust what she says.
Chels
Yeah, she's pretty clear about this. And I think that people have discomfort with Bill himself because he is all of those things that even Janet Dailey describing him, she is saying that he's a chauvinist. Something we'll get into a little bit later is Bill smokes a lot. He cusses all the time. He's garrulous. People are looking at him like, We don't like you in polite society. And there are even anecdotes we'll get to, I think maybe in the next episode about how Bill is with these publishing big wings, and they're like, Oh, my God, get us away from him. And I think people are maybe really heavily leaning into a narrative around that. But also, on the other hand, too, I do think I see where it's coming from, because Bill does say a lot of really upsetting things, or he says things in a way that I'm like, Oh, can you not do that? That's terrible. So I think getting back to what we were talking about earlier, points of view. So here's one scenario described in two very different ways. The first is from The Merchants of Venus by Paul Gresco, and the second is Dailey talking about the same thing herself.
Chels
So in The Merchants of Venus, Gresco says this, The Dailey's working relationship may not have been a feminist dream. Janet would begin writing at 4:00 AM and served Bill coffee and juice in bed when he woke at 7:00 AM. And so now I'm going to have you all read from the Janet Dailey companion, Beth, You Can Be Janet, and Emma, You Can Be Massey.
Beth
I remember once when Bill and I first got together, I thought to myself, I'm not going to do anything that I'm not prepared to do for the rest of my life. Now, he gets coffee and orange juice in bed every morning. Every morning, I bring him his coffee and orange juice, and I asked myself the first time I did it, Are you ready to do this for the rest of your life? If you're not, stop right now. Bring it to a halt. Making coffee has become in our own private lives a way of saying, Yeah, honey, I love you.
Emma
Do you think he knows that?
Beth
Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
Emma
Yeah. Dailey's working relationship may not be a feminist dream. It's like, What This is this feminist dream that he's bringing her orange juice and coffee? It's such a small anecdote to be like, This is so clearly not feminist. The only information we're dealing with is a gesture. It's a total projection on, Oh, she's bringing him coffee, so it's not feminist because he gets to sleep in. We don't know, When does she go to bed? What is he doing for her throughout the day? It's very bizarre.
Chels
Yeah. It just all comes down to who's framing it. A lot of things about Janet Dailey, I think you would have to not be listening to what she was saying in order to spin it. If you're listening and you're wondering why we're talking about the framing of Janet and Bill's relationship so much, this is going to be extremely relevant in the next episode. So this is all good to know about how the media is looking at them, how other people in romance, how publishing. They're at this weird thing where they're too big to ignore, but they're also making people uncomfortable. Moving on.
Chels
What do you all know about Branson?
Beth
It's in Missouri, right?
Chels
Yeah.
Emma
It's like concerts happen there? Like lots of events happen there. People will go on vacation there.
Chels
Yeah, I think that's a pretty good description. So it's this huge country music hub. It's littered with theaters and live shows. It's the Vegas of the Ozarks, except that they definitely Bill themselves as more family-friendly, Billy. No cussing, no nudity. So in the late 1970s, Janet and Bill settled in Branson. And after years of traveling the country, Missouri is going to be their permanent home. Janet's already ultra-successful and a celebrity, and Bill has this entrepreneurial drive and starts investing in building properties. So they become public figures in Branson. They're all over the newspaper papers in the '80s and '90s. So this is a quote from Branson's best seller in the Columbia Dailey Tribune. It's easy to find Dailey enterprises in Branson. As you drive the shady Ozark pavement, wood carved signs bearing curly QDs beckon from the road's shoulder. The Daileys own several hundred acres of these mountains. Bill is carving a housing development, a hotel/convention center, and a theme park, Wildwood USA, from the scrub brush closer to town. Roads will be named after Janet Daileys' book titles, Calder Street, for example. He also operates a 600-seat restaurant in a 950-seat theater, Country Music World in Branson.
Chels
Wildwood USA, that theme park, never came to fruition. It just stops getting mentioned in the paper sometime, around 1986 or so. It was supposed to be a Disney-like theme park, but for Janet's books, they were supposed to have a ride called... They were like, Imagine a ride called Touch the Wind. Branson-
Emma
That's crazy but also it doesn't speak to how big she is. That that's even on the table.
Chels
Yeah, I think that is- I feel like only Dolly Parton can pull off a theme park based off of- Your output?
Beth
Yeah, what you're like. That's not like Disney.
Chels
I feel like I would go to an ABBA theme park, but I just really like Abba. That actually could work in my life. Yeah. No, I love ABBA. Wildwood never came to fruition, but the Daileys were unequivocally embedded in the country music scene. Janet and Bill started Rambling Entertainment, which produced the Stan Hitchcock Country Music Show.
Video Clip
I said, Baby, I'm the man in the ticket stand So Stan Hitchcock was already well known in country music at the time.
Chels
He had performed at Grand Ole Opry, and then he later actually went on to be one of the founders of CMT or country music television. So it It was a huge deal. So yeah, they ran that show for a little while. Janet and Bill, of course, love country music. But according to Kansas City Star, Janet and Bill became involved in the theater business after they threw a combination Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday party in their backyard. Bill hired this group called the Tennessee Valley Boys to perform, and both Janet and Bill loved them so much that they decided to buy a theater so that the Tennessee Valley Boys could be their star attraction. They started a management group called Jan Bill Productions, which also managed Janet as an author and a singer named Kate Landers. Do you know what hee-haw was?
Beth
It feels yodeling adjacent.
Chels
It was a very popular country music TV variety show. Started in 1969. And apparently, Elvis was a huge fan. They would get really big stars on there, like Roy Orbison, like yada yada. It was a very, very popular show for a long time. The The Heeha Theater in Branson was this venue where the TV stars would perform a live show. It was only Heeha for a few years in the early '80s, and Bill Dailey actually bought it in 1985 and converted it to Country Music World. Roy Clark, one of the Heeha hosts from that clip, later bought his own theater that he would headline at. He ended up staying in Branson. So then Bill had the Tennessee Valley Boys, who later changed their name to Branson exclamation Mark, which is so frustrating. Why would you do that?
Emma
Hard to Google.
Chels
So hard to Google. Well, Branson, exclamation mark performed there frequently with Kate Landers and Shoji Tabuchi. Shoji Tabuchi would later go on to be one of the most recognizable acts in Branson, and the Springfield newsletter gives Bill Dailey the credit for that by giving him a prime spot at Country Music World. So Shoji Tabuchi was a fiddler. He was part of an ensemble, and then he became a headliner in one of Branson's big billboard acts. Here's a clip of him from 60 Minutes in 1991.
Video Clip
These are [unclear] people. They want to be surprised, but only by the familiar. Yet they'll take to their hearts a country fiddler Like Shoji Tabuchi. He's among the hottest acts in Branson, with, of course, his own theater. Not bad for a Japanese Shōji's kid who turned up in the '60s with 500 bucks, fractured English, and a fiddle. Soji Naraji.
Chels
Just as a side note, his English is not fractured. They were just being racist. Oh, what? But yeah, so Shoji is this huge Branson act, very, very talented. He's famous for decades in Branson. He's also a close friend with Bill, and also Bill technically helped Shoji get a start in Branson. But did you see clips of the Branson? I think one thing that's funny about that clip is seeing what Branson audiences looked like. Did you notice anything?
Beth
They want to be surprised by the familar. So it's a fiddler who is Japanese!
Emma
And they're surprisingly less racist than you think they might be.
Chels
There's also a clip. The clip ends with them singing God bless America at the end of the show. So I think that was a thing that happened a lot in Branson. So, yeah, just to give you a feel for Branson. It's in the mid '80s, in 1985, at the Wildwood Flower, which is a supper club that the Daileys owned. Bill Dailey shot a man named Steve Goodwin.
Beth
Oh, right. Is he alive? Yeah, he's It looks like he is, according to-Yeah.
Chels
According to Goodwin's initial statement, he spent two hours at the Wildwood Flower, then left. He later returned with his employer, a man named Mike Summers, so that Summers could make a phone call and Goodwin could use the restroom. He saw Bill Dailey and some companions standing outside the front door, and Bill is holding a gun. And Goodwin is like, Why are you holding a gun on me? And then Bill tells him that he's a deputy sheriff. I was about to say that didn't give him the right to pull a gun on me when he shot me, Goodwin said.
Emma
I'm glad this guy lived, so my laugh is not as damning.
Beth
Why? Why is he shooting him?
Chels
What is the motivation? So this is the interesting thing. So first of all, is Bill a sheriff? The Springfield Leader in Press fact-checked this by calling the Taney County Sheriff's Department. They were like, Yeah, he He has Honorary Deputy Commission, which includes the power of arrest. It doesn't seem like he was trying to arrest him, though. It seems like he just shot him. Just shot him. Yeah, just shot him.
Emma
Is he very Dwight Schrute-coated? Yeah. It's like he's a volunteer Sheriff who's a little too drunk on his power.
Chels
Yeah. Right. So Bill is arrested and charged with felonious assault, and then he's released on a $75,000 bond. So his lawyer argued that Dailey was acting in self-defense. Like, apparently Goodwin had prior arrests, and they use that to say that Bill was justified in fearing for his safety.
Emma
Oof. Yeah. Did Bill have his arrest record in front of him?
Chels
Yeah. It's like, what? It seems like he was just being crazy Deputy Sheriff. Like, I don't know why you would do that. Yeah. Before he goes to trial, Goodwin actually changes his story. He said, At the time of the altercation, he was drunk and high. This is a quote in the Springfield Newsletter. I recall lunging for the gun, attacking and threatening as Mr. Dailey backed up, ordered me to stop to keep back with my size, with my condition, my conduct. Mr. Dailey would have been almost stupid to let me get my hands on his weapon. He had no choice but to defend himself as I am beginning to remember the events. He later added, We must have seemed to be the head of Hell's Angels in Tanney County.
Beth
Did they pay him off or something? If you back me up, I'm going to give you lots of money.
Chels
That is a very good question, Beth. Because he's saying that all of a sudden he doesn't remember how scary he was, but now he remembers that he was like, Oh, yeah, I was actually very scary. I looked at you. I was very threatening. I was a Hell's Angel in Taney County. It's all settled, right? But no, it's not. Even after Goodwin asked for the charges to be dropped, the prosecutor, a man named Jim Justice.
Beth
This is like, Arrested Development levels of Bob Loblaw and Jim Justice.
Chels
His name is Jim Justice. I'm trying... I feel for that man. I feel like that has to come up a lot. But Jim Justice is still searching for justice, and he's like, This is still a felony. I still want to charge Bill Dailey. So Dailey's lawyers are quoted in the papers as saying that Dailey is being made an example out of. The charges would have been dropped already if he was a good old boy and not a local celebrity. So outside of the criminal court, Goodwin was suing Dailey for two million in a civil court, and Dailey was counter-suing for one million. They dropped the civil suits, but then they both get sued by Goodwin's lawyer, a man named Kerry Montgomery. Montgomery said he was promised a third of the expected payout for the two million civil suit, and then said that Goodwin essentially cut him out by making the settlement directly with Dailey. He also said that And he also accused Bill Dailey of paying off not just Steve Goodwin, but other witnesses. And because Steve Goodwin and these other witnesses refuse to testify, he's basically saying that they were paid off. Bill Dailey's lawyer, Peter Ray, is quoted as saying, There will be those in the community who always say, no matter what result might occur, that it is Bill Dailey's prominent celebrity and money that got him off.
Chels
It is most unlikely that substantial numbers people will ever believe that he got off because justice under the law required it. My one annoying loose thread for this episode is that I don't know what happened with Montgomery's civil suit against Steve Goodwin and Bill Dailey. Like, Green County, where he had his practice, does not have a record of this. And I also checked with Taney County to see if they do. And I'm not really making headway there either. But I do think the fact that it disappeared from the papers entirely means that Montgomery probably didn't get a substantial amount of money on the books, if any. That said, I just don't know. And this is speculation here. So this is the big violent act that we've got Bill on the record for, which is very bizarre and has several different lawsuits flying in every direction. I wonder what you all think about this.
Emma
Yeah. I'm of the mind where it's like, yeah, Bill shouldn't have shot somebody. But also it does seem like people... He was maybe being targeted by the prosecutor, the complaining witness has said that they're not interested in charging. And generally, I think prosecutors should drop charges if the complaining witness says they're not cooperating. So it's like, Yeah, the prosecutor looks foolish because he doesn't have a case anymore. And I'm always pro prosecutors looking foolish. So I don't know. I am surprised that this is something that had to... Because this is before the documentary. And maybe it's not relevant to the documentary, but it's a big...the fact that he shot somebody is a thing. Are people talking about this in romance spaces? Or like, Oh, yeah, Janet's husband shot somebody.
Beth
I was just going to ask, is it just because it only happens... Because it's in Missouri? I don't know how far out this information reaches. Does that make sense?
Chels
Those are both good questions. So to the documentary, the documentary came out in 1987, but it was filmed in 1983. So it was actually filmed before this happened. This is something that people know about, and we're going to get to this in the next episode, but they don't know about it in this detail, and they know about it from Newsweek. And it's something that... It might be something that people in the romance industry know. It's hard to say who had what knowledge, because what I know of this being covered in is going to be primarily in the local Missouri papers. Their references to Bill Dailey shooting someone is not something that I've personally seen in the Romantic Times or on message boards until post plagiarism scandal, where people are trying to talk about Janet's relationship with Bill, contextualizing everything at that time. But yeah, it's pretty wild. And so an interesting side note. So Steve Goodwin actually crops up in the news a few years later in 1987. He gets arrested on a federal drug charge, but he sews the facilities because he and his wife want to have a baby. Conjugal visits are a no-go, but Steve and his wife are like, Why is artificial insemination against the rules?
Chels
So Steve had the book thrown at him with a 14-year sentence because this is only a year after Reagan signs the extremely punitive anti-drug abuse Act. So Goodwin is 31, and his wife is 28. So by the time he gets out, it would be much more difficult to conceive a child together. The prison is like, We won't let you have a kid because prison is supposed to punish you. And then his wife, Sabrina, is quoted in the papers as saying, Well, what about my rights? Steve committed a crime, and now he's paying for it. And I'm supposed to pay for it, too? I mean, team Steve and Sabrina. But unfortunately, it didn't really end well for them. The prison successfully argues that if they have to give Steve the right to have a child in prison, they'd also have to do it for women inmates, which is apparently unconscionable.
Emma
Never mind that women are in prison pregnant. That seems like the unconscionable thing, isn't it? You're imprisoning pregnant women who are before they enter prison. Not that someone in prison might have the right to like, reproduction.
Chels
It's just totally, totally wild. Side note, I hope Steve is doing okay. It just seems like the '80s were a rough time. So the Wildwood flowers shooting is not the only time Bill gets into hot water in the '80s. In 1987, Dailey is ordered to pay $805,000 to a man named Lawrence Winters by a Kansas City Court. So you remember Foxfire Light, the movie that's based on Janet's book of the same name? Right. Yeah. Apparently, Bill Dailey approached Winters to direct the movie in the early '80s, saying that he wanted to use local Missouri talent. It was supposed to be the first in a series of movies based on Dailey's books, but Bill changes his mind and then decides to go Hollywood with Foxfire Light. Winters sued, and Bill Dailey loses the civil case in 1987, and he has to page this huge huge sum of money in punitive damage for fraud and breach of contract. Again, Bill's name is imbroiled in scandal in 1987. So Kate Landers, if you remember, he was managing two acts. He was a singer, right? Yeah. Kate Landers, a singer, and the Tennessee Valley Boys who later become Branson exclamation mark.
Chels
So Kate Landers, the singer that he managed, she had recently divorced, and her husband was trying to overturn the child custody ruling. So her ex-husband's lawyer filed a petition to get the custody case retried. And the reasonings that they provided were, I feel like, pretty misogynistic, if I'm being honest. Her ex-husband took issue with the fact that Kate was so career-oriented and fame-seeking, and And mentions details that I feel like are irrelevant, like Kate's past work as a playboy bunny and the fact that she had a breast augmentation. Janet and Bill Dailey are also mentioned because Kate was managed by Jan Bill, Inc. And was allegedly expected to give 50 % of her earnings over to management. They also said this about Bill. Beth, I'm going to have you read this.
Beth
Okay. Bill Dailey has had a varied career, including being a pitchman for freak and hoot shows in carnivals, a stint in the merchant marines, and various business enterprises, including the management of Janet's career. He uses obscene language, such as the words fucks, teets, and ass part of his ordinary conversation, and at the present time spends a good part of his time in the promotion and management of young females who are seeking famous writers and entertainers. That last sentence is doing a lot of work there.
Chels
I'm just like, the charge of him using obscene language like, Fuck, teets, and ass is one of the most wild things I've ever read.
Beth
Yes, that's funny.
Chels
It's very Branson. We're family friendly, and this guy is just cussing way too much. Yeah.
Beth
Yeah.
Chels
So Kate's ex-husband also accused Kate of having an affair with Bill Dailey. The ex said that he had a vasectomy, but that he would find contraceptives in her luggage when she came back from a business trip with Bill. I don't know what happened, but I do have this thought that if someone damns you for having breast implants and for modeling for Playboy as evidence that you're an unfit mother, I'm not really they're inclined to take the rest of what they have to say seriously. Her ex-husband's petition gets denied, so Kate gets to have primary custody. But the sad thing is her name also disappears from the Branson newspapers in 1987. It seems like she and Bill split. She stopped working for him. So Bill keeps being Bill, and he finds someone else. In the '90s, he starts managing the career of a woman named Jennifer Wilson, who had a very popular show called Jennifer in the Morning.
Video Clip
[singing 01:35:40] And you can call me secret love and break the news But far the greatest honor in my career has been becoming a part of this show that none of it could have happened. None of it would have been possible without the help of some wonderful people. First and foremost, I want to thank the best manager and the best producer in the whole wide world. His name is Mr. Bill Dailey. Give him a big round of applause, please.
Beth
Very old audience again.
Chels
Every time it cuts to the audience, I'm like, There's a girl It's more of a golf clap. Just like, very... The Branson... I mean, it is a morning show. I guess that... But it's also Branson.
Emma
She's dressed She's dressed like it's not the morning. I will say that. She's dressed like it's 10:00 PM on a Friday night. It's glitter, glam. I can't imagine looking like that in the morning.
Chels
I've watched the whole thing. It's like two hours. She has maybe 8 or 10 outfit changes. She changes her outfit and her hair. At one point, she gets a really long ponytail. But yeah, so she's very pretty. She's blonde, very bubbly. At some point, she has a cheerleader type thing. So the Springfield newsletter called Jennifer "a sexy granddaughter" because she had what they called obvious sex appeal. But then she would also pull an old man from the audience during her show that she could sing the Judd's grandpa Tell Me About the good old days to him.
Chels
There's actually a recording of this. Do you want to watch it?
Emma
Sure. It looks like super upsetting. I mean, I'm sure it's fine.
Chels
It's weird.
Video Clip
Now, I love both of my grandpa's very much, but they're both gone now. And I find myself often wanting to talk to them, just ask them a question about the family or the way things used to be, and they're just not there. Now, I'm wondering this morning, do we have any grandpas here? If you're a grandpa, raise up your hand and wave at me. I want to, boy, look at him springing up. Now, you see, some people are good at this, some people are good at that, but I am really good at picking grandpas. I got me one chosen. I like you. Come here. Stand up so they can see you. Isn't he perfect? Come on there. I want to take you right down here to the run and turn you around in the a lot late, and that way everybody can see your pretty face. Good morning. Good morning. What's your name? Ray. Where are you from? We're in Colorado. Oh, good. I used to vacation in Colorado every summer when I was a little kid. Colorado Springs and Bayes and Steampod. All righty, how many It is beautiful. How many grandkids do you have?
Video Clip
Two. Two of them? Can you name them? Nathan and Adam. All right. He's doing good. I got one more question. I would love to be your granddaughter this morning and sing you the rest of this song. May I do that? Now, can you sing? Not really. Okay. I got a job for you. I want you to listen to all the words to this song. When I get all done singing it, I want you to tell us if the meaning to this song is right or if it's wrong. Will you do that for me? You ready? Okay, here we go. You listen close. You're all so sweet. I'm glad I got you. Here we go. You listen. When you love him, everything is changing in fast. They call it progress.
Emma
I did think sexy granddaughter was an insane thing [for the newspaper] to say, but also, what else do you call that?
Chels
Yeah, that's what I thought, too.
Emma
She is doing that. I thought someone at the newspaper was being weird. I was like, The act was weird. The act was weird. That was a weird thing to do.
Chels
She does pull an old man up onto the stage, asks him to be her grandpa, and then sings to him with her face four inches away from his face while her arm is around his neck. So the vibes are a bit weird, I will say that. Later on in the show, she She brings this old man back up the stage so that she can give him a gift certificate to a pasta house so that he can take grandma on a date. And she keeps calling him her grandpa.
Beth
I'm not a fan of that. When I take my kids to some medical things, sometimes they'll refer to me as Mom. They call me mom. And I'm like, Please stop.
Chels
I'm not I'm not your mom. No. I also don't like the thing that... I mean, she's doing... I mean, obviously this is her audience and they're very much enjoying it. But I don't like the thing where people talk to old people like they're stupid. And she's definitely... Wait, it's for me. Yeah, she's definitely doing that. And I'm just like, okay, all right. But yeah. So Jennifer Wilson, everybody.
Emma
I can't believe I just watched it. I was excited. I'm still excited for this episode, but I did not know that was coming. And now I feel like I'm scarred.
Beth
I feel like I'm easily get second-hand embarrassment very easy. And I was just like, oh.
Chels
I feel like, you all, when I was showing you earlier clips from Branson, you were just taking it on the chin. I was like, okay, I mean, I guess you guys think it's normal. But this was the one- I mean, Branson didn't seem that different than Grand Old Opry, which I've been to.
Emma
And it's like, oh, yeah. Old people deserve variety shows as much as all of us. But that was someone, maybe Bill Dailey, should have been like, This is weird. Let's not do this one. Let's skip this number.
Chels
So there's also this article called Singer's Popularity Rises with Some Dailey Help, and it describes what is a very familiar dynamic. It says, The secret behind Wilson's Rise. She was one of the few new talents with her own organization. Dailey keeps a tight rein on her plans. She won't even tell her age without his permission. And he's provided a big budget that produced the billboards and print advertising. So yeah, that seems like a very similar way that they talk about Janet and Bill.
Beth
Right.
Emma
Yeah. It was I feel like Jennifer does look like Pageant Janet a little bit. They have a similar facial quality to them, I think. It's like if you gave Janet a big dolly Parton wig, she might be Jennifer. So I'm like, I see Bill's... I don't know what Kate Landers looks like, but it's like, Oh, the Bill has this affection for women who are in this type.
Beth
Does Bill just not have enough money to be behind the scenes? Because I feel like this dynamic is just... Isn't this every dynamic between a person and their producer, just how tired of a reign a producer has on that person is probably kept under wraps much more. I don't know. I feel like it's weird that people keep...
Beth
I don't know if Bill's maybe not the most likable person, and he's maybe a little off-putting at times.He did shoot someone, but I don't know. It feels weird to me. I can't quite put my finger on it.
Chels
Yeah, I've been thinking about this because it doesn't seem that weird for your manager to tell you what to do, because that's what a manager is supposed to do in Jennifer Wilson's case. But I think Thinking about Bill, Bill is a local celebrity. We're thinking of him in... And that's why I thought this episode was going to be important, is we're used to thinking of him in connection to Janet, but on his own, he was a country music celebrity. He was involved in all of these big acts in Branson, launching them, buying theaters. He's a very well-known local name. I don't know if you know Boxcar Willy. He's also a pretty well-known musician, not just in Branson. He's beyond Branson, but he's also friends with the Daileys. He knows Shoji Tabuchi. He bought all these big theaters that people are going to all the time. And he also, on top of that, he's not very humble. He talks all the time. He cusses a lot. He's the carnival Barker. In Branson, that isn't really something that you would ignore. He sticks out a sword thumb a little bit. So I can see where it's coming from, but it's also...
Chels
I mean, that article, too, is patronizing to Jennifer, right? And it's also another thing that happens with Jennifer. It's like, Oh, Jennifer, your manager tells you what to do. And it's like, Well, everybody's manager tells them what to do.
Emma
Knowing that they'll manage multiple other acts, I think does change. I think romance perspective, it's like you characterize Janet and Bill as this symbiotic codependent relationship where it's like Bill is so fixated on Janet. Well, it's like, actually, he's just a manager. He manages multiple things. One of them is Janet, and sometimes he has these music acts that he's managing. That breaks apart some of the framing that we get from romance places because they're ignoring the non-romance managerial stuff that he's doing. It's like, it's Probably he doesn't take up other people. That codependency doesn't really work if it's like, Oh, yeah, this is just Bill's job, and one of his acts is Janet.
Chels
Yeah, and you'll see it, too, with all the theaters that he buys in his move from Omaha to Branson. In Omaha, he would start a business. He would start another business. He'd start another business. He did it again in Branson. Buy a theater, buy this, buy this. He's working with Janet. He's working with other authors. He He said this to Massey in his interview. He has to keep working. He can't sit still. He gets bored of a project. He's working on it. It's done. He's going to move on. He's not going to buy a theater and then run that theater for 20 years. That's just not the type of person that he is. But yeah, so Branson in the early '90s is really popping off both as a tourist destination and for country music. Johnny Cash was supposed to have his own theater in Branson called Cash Country Theater, where he would have a residency. Former rock critic Steve Pond wrote in the rap about this time in Cash's life. He said, It was a very difficult time for Cash, who decided that his future lay not in the music charts, on the radio, or even on the road, but in the strange, unnervingly wholesome Ozarks=s resort of Branson.
Chels
To the people of Branson's dismay, the funding for Cash Country Theater fell through. Cash didn't put any of his own money, but his investor, David Green, ran out of money and ended up in federal bankruptcy court. Two very interesting things came of this. At the time, Johnny Cash seemed ready to settle into something rustic and a little bit more low-key because you Branson. This is like the home of the old people. But because that fell through, he was available when mega producer Rick Rubin called, and the album that they made together, 1994's American Recordings, is regarded as Cash's big comeback album. The second thing that came of this is that Cash Country Theater is now sitting empty, and the bankruptcy court approves the sale of the unfinished theater to Jim Thomas and his business partner, Bill Dailey, for 4.1 million at auction. They then change Cash Country's name to Five Star Theater. They can't use cash for the name anymore. Bill Dailey also purchases another Branson Theater, The Americana, from Mickey Gilly, who's another big Branson act. So as you can see, I can't really keep up with the investment has his investments in Branson.
Chels
He and Janet have bought motels, restaurants, and venues. Bill manages Janet. He's managing Jennifer Wilson. He's offering consulting work to aspiring authors. And then Janet is simultaneously churning out books. So they are both incredibly, insanely busy. So this is where I'm going to end the episode. I know it's shocking to stop before the big plagiarism scandal that everybody is probably tuning in for, but I think all this backstory is 100 % necessary to contextualize what's to come. On our next episode, we're picking up where we left off, so please stay tuned. And thank you so much for listening to Reformed Rakes. If you'd like bonus content, you can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon. Com/reformedrakes. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram for show updates. The username for both is at reformedrakes, or email us at reformedrakes@gmail. Com. We love to hear from our listeners. Please rate and review us on Apple and Spotify. It helps a lot. Again, and we'll see you next time.
