From KCRW, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is a program of true stories, personal documentaries, and radio movies, and always interested to find new ways of telling stories. documentaries and

on radio movies, on this episode you can add something different.

It's a musical documentary,

written by Mary Lorsen.

I say that I'm a writer who makes music and

stories. Also I was an English teacher for a very long time and it's an excellent job

for a writer because there are so many different types of

stories and ways to deliver a story. If I were given one word I'd say I'm a writer.

Which is interesting because what I knew of you was as a musician.

You were in bands that I had known.

Mary's been recording music for a long time in bands like Matter Rose, St. Lo, and the Sobrets, and under her own name.

Yeah, I was a writer long before the music thing. I loved playing music and always did, but I never thought that I could really do it professionally. That just sort of happened in my 20s. but at the same time music is just one of the possibilities, it seems.

A new possibility for something Mary could try, a personal memoir set to music. It came to her mind while she was writing a screenplay.

It was a historical screenplay about a famous vaudevilia named Eva Tangui. She was incredibly famous in her day, but her fame didn't last. She was right on the cusp of electronic media. So Vaudeville was her medium and she was like larger than life but she was also like a sex addict and she was like your classic kind of over indulgent kind of crazy

hypomananic pop star.

Now everybody,

it's the best thing, I'm crazy,

and I'm saying, but I'm going to turn down.

She did not make the transfer into talkies very well. She made one movie. It only exists now in parts.

I got interested in her because my great-grandmother worked for her, out and toured with her and I loved the idea

that in my band I played in a lot of those old vaudeville houses.

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