Yelin, Tellin’ Her Story
Story by MARY ELLEN THOMPSON
Photography by PAUL NURNBERG
It’s not a word she would use to describe herself – but Haden Yelin is one gutsy woman.
Haden embodies that wonderful combination of being terribly practical and forthright, tempered with the fact that she is a dreamer. Words Haden likes are: infinite, possibilities, and courageous, some of the words she uses in her recently published book, The Conjurer.
Words are Haden’s stock in trade. Many of us, when we go to work have actual tools that we can touch, use to get the job done, tangible things that come with a set of instructions. Haden’s tools are all in her head, there are no brushes, no hammers, no loud or noisy machinery; just a quiet buzz that propels her to create, one thing after another, with just pen and paper.
Haden and her beloved husband of twenty-three years, Ed, came from Los Angeles, California, to Beaufort in 2008, by accident. According to Haden, “I loved L.A. but I was done with it! Ed had retired, we sold our place in 2007. We took planes, trains and automobiles across the USA to Pawley’s Island, where my sister Mary Ann lives. I thought we’d live in Charleston, but I didn’t really like it. We were on our way to see Savannah when we stopped in Beaufort; that was it, we never left.”
What do they love about Beaufort? “Everything!” Haden says. “The thing that knocked me out was the physical beauty of the place – the live oaks, Spanish moss, and so much water – I love the water! And everyone was so friendly – I just lapped that up. After ten days here, we rented a house and decided to stay.”
Haden hails from Ava, Missouri which is a small village in the Ozark Mountains. From there, she says, “I went to law school, I didn’t want to go but my mother wanted me to and I was an obedient child in those days.” She had big shoes to fill. Haden’s father was the youngest prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials before becoming a judge. Her mother had wanted to be a lawyer but raised her family instead. “I went to Tulsa, Oklahoma where I was the first woman hired by a real ‘silk stocking’ law firm. I practiced law for eight years and became a partner at 31. Although I didn’t like the confrontation in practicing law, I did like the perks. I went to New York City on business trips and got to stay in great hotels, see wonderful shows, etc. I became much more sophisticated than the girl who grew up on a farm. I realized I couldn’t practice law any more when I was in the middle of doing an enormous SEC registration (at that time, the statements actually had to be cast in hot lead!) in Dallas where I had to stay for weeks and months at a time. When I went back to Tulsa in February, I knew I’d had enough. I called a travel agent. I went to Jamaica all by myself with my mink coat, it was February after all! I stayed in an all inclusive resort for ten days, during which time I had an epiphany at Negril Beach.
“Rick’s Cafe overlooked a grotto. People dove from the cliffs into the water. I have a debilitating fear of heights; as I was sitting there drinking coffee, I realized I had done almost everything out of fear. I also realized that I was sick of being afraid. That promontory was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen, so I decided to jump. I was so terrified that I was shaking. I jumped, 35 feet down. Instead of some sort of graceful swan dive, I hit the water back first! Then I had to climb back up on a steel ladder; on the way by someone said ‘That had to hurt!’ It did. But I took six aspirin, drank a double scotch and felt great. It was a huge turning point for me.
“I went back to Tulsa and made a list of what I liked and what I didn’t like. I wanted a bed, a desk and a chair. I knew I wanted to get out and see the world and meet people. I wanted the freedom that comes with very little responsibility. I decided the only job like that would be on a cruise ship – I’d never even seen a cruise ship! I called a friend, flew to Miami and interviewed with Norwegian Cruise Lines. They said they needed an extra children’s coordinator on the Easter cruise, I accepted. They paid me $200 a week and lent me uniforms; the airfare to get there had cost me $600! After that cruise, I went back to Tulsa, packed up, and on July 4 I went to work as Social Director for Norwegian. It was so fabulous and so good for me! I spent two and a half years with them – I wish everyone could do that! It was like looking into a mirror that you had to keep polishing because you get to see how people reflect yourself back to you.
“On the ship, I started doing a little tiny teeny weeny stand up act. I met Ben Vereen on the ship and he gave me his manager’s information in Beverly Hills, CA. I had been to New York, I knew I didn’t want to freeze to death while starving to death so I went to Los Angeles. But once I got there, the fear kicked in and I was afraid to make contact with Hillard Elkins who was his manager, so I didn’t call. I did, however, take a class and performed in a few places.”
Then Haden met Ed Yelin who had been a Vice President of Artists and Repertoire at Capitol Records. He told her, “You’re not tough enough for stand-up.” Haden says. “He was right!” “But” he said, “you can write!” “Ed,” Haden pauses, “there is no kinder, sweeter, more gentle person in the world! Ed was the kind of person who brought people up to new levels; he opened me up. I took a writing class from Neil Simon’s brother, Danny. I bought a book, How to Write a Screen Play in Twenty-One Days, which I did and sold it at auction! I wrote six or seven more before I had the idea to not write on speculation anymore since they weren’t selling. I decided to learn how to pitch a story, which is an art in and of itself.”
Fast forward through a series of events until Haden came up with a story – one in which, during the Depression, a little white boy is taken in by a black farmer, both are the victims of racism. Haden pitched the story to Lou Gossett, Jr. When Haden went to meet him at his managers house, in a moment of serendipity the home belonged to Hillard Elkins; the manager she had been afraid to call! They loved the story and took it to CBS. CBS made the movie, Haden wrote the script, and High Lonesome (also titled A Father for Charlie by CBS) starring Lou Gossett, Jr. and Joe Mazzello, was nominated as the best long form screenplay by the Writers Guild.
High Lonesome was Haden’s first produced film. For her, one of the best parts of the process was seeing the art director “make the stuff in my mind appear real. You see your concept appear in someone else’s reality – what had been in my mind vanished; the fantasy and imagination disappeared and the reality of what was happening on the set took over.” She further explains that making one of those movies took one hundred people three months, and it felt wonderful to realize that what she had created turned into jobs for all those people.
In addition to writing the screenplays for three movies starring Lou Gossett, Jr., High Lonesome, For Love of Olivia, and To Dance with Olivia, Haden was also the Producer and thus was on the set constantly. “It was very hard work for long hours, it was also a lot of fun, but three was enough!” She recalls that watching the “dailies” which are the unedited footage of the days shooting, was not fun. She explains, “The movie has to be put together before the music is added, watching a movie without music is like ‘dead on arrival.’” Haden also wrote the screenplays for six other movies that were produced, and several that weren’t. At the end of the day, however, when her name came up on the movie screen, she thought, “Wow, never in my wildest dreams…!”
Over the years, Haden’s circle of life has pulsed into ever widening arcs as she has struck out and changed, literally and figuratively, the climate in which she has evolved. Dreams alter, Los Angeles got left behind, and Haden and Ed came East. “We came here, life was changing, my career was changing and I had time to re-examine what life was all about.”
Somehow in the move, all of Haden’s screenplays were lost except High Lonesome. “My computer died but I had everything backed up on an external device. When we got to Pawley’s Island I bought a new computer but the files wouldn’t transfer. I had hard copies packed in a box, but the box was gone. My agent had copies but I had fired him, so those copies were gone, the Screen Writers Guild had copies, but they were gone. So much for that idea! I had been going to use those screenplays as a basis for writing books. I did lots of reading about spirituality and metaphysics, Florence Scovell Shinn is one writer I like. But you can only read so much, then you have to write. The old fears came back. I wrote a book a couple of years ago that could have been published, but it was just wrong. I read an interview with Nora Roberts where she said what you do has to be fun, but it wasn’t fun for me.”
Threads of serendipity continue to weave through Haden’s life. “I saw the book The Law and the Promise, written by Neville Goddard on Amazon. Although I didn’t order the book, it came in the mail; I left it on the table to return but then one day I needed something to read so I picked it up. A compilation of experiences of people who applied his premises and got answers to their prayers, it was the culmination of everything I’d been reading and studying.”
Haden decided to write another book – a story about actualization. She had to think about what she really wanted and decided that it was to write a book that would change things for the better. With her tongue-in-cheek humor, she adds “I thought to myself – when this book comes out I’ll have so many friends and get to go to really swell parties!”
Under the pen name E. V. MacQuint, Haden sat down to write The Conjurer on July 3, 2012, and 40,000 words later, was finished on August 12, 2012. Wonderful, enlightening and heartwarming, it is a story about a boy’s journey through life, overcoming his adversity and finding not only himself, but what he was looking for all along. The book has received rave reviews on Amazon. While still waiting for invitations to all the “swell parties,” Haden has another book, and perhaps a series of them, up her sleeve.
Bright, funny, and brave, Haden Yelin has a laugh that comes straight from her center – straightforward and strong, yet somehow surrounded by an aura that makes you want to hear it go on and on so you can bask in it, roll in it, drink it in, and hear it again and again. It had to be a long journey from lawyer to cruise ship director, to stand-up comic, to screenwriter, to mystical author, but that’s Haden – rational, reasonable, and still – a magical enchantress.
