 |
| Babette Rosmond |
Bronze Shadows was a fanzine published in the 1960's dedicated to the study of two of the biggest hero pulps ever published, Doc Savage and The Shadow. Created by the late Fred Cook, the 'zine ran from 1965 to 1968 for a total of 15 issues. Like most fanzines of the era, it was homemade, printed on a mimeograph machine and stapled together. It was only one of several such journals centered on Doc Savage and The Shadow.
But it was, apparently, the only one to ever end up in the hands of John D MacDonald, whose early pulp stories filled the pages of these two magazines from 1946 to 1948 when he was just starting out as a writer. This was thanks to the then-editor of both of these pulps, Babette Rosemond, who I have discussed many times in this blog. Here is a paragraph I wrote in 2018 on the subject:
"When writing about the early fiction of John D MacDonald, that period when he was just starting out and learning his craft, enough words cannot be said about the support and guiding influence of pulp editor Babette Rosmond. At that time she was an editor at Street and Smith, managing two of the publisher’s premier titles, Doc Savage and The Shadow magazines, crediting herself as B. Rosmond, probably because of her gender. Like every other editor MacDonald submitted stories to in the that six-month time frame between October 1945 and March 1946 when he couldn’t sell anything to save his life, she was among those who rejected many of his submissions, but her rejections were personal and encouraging. In one rejection letter she wrote, “I, too, am an admirer of atmosphere, but too much atmosphere and too unconvincing a plot make [your story] a weak yarn... However, I am extremely fond of the way you write -- so dry your tears and send me something else very soon." She was an early coach, mentor and -- eventually -- friend who not only helped him in getting a literary agent but counseled him to expand the scope of his stories’ locales.
"To put it in real perspective, of the 57 stories MacDonald had published in his first two years as a writer, 30 of them, or 53%, were purchased by Babette Rosmond."
The second issue of Bronze Shadows was published in December 1965 and one of its contributors made the suggestion to Cook to send a copy to MacDonald. The author responded with the following letter, recalling his time with the magazines, his relationship with Rosmond, and his early pulp career. Below is a transcription of that letter, prefaced and postscripted by Cook:
(John Keasler, whose article appears elsewhere in this issue, suggested that John D. MacDonald might be interested in receiving a copy of Bronze Shadows. Mr. MacDonald, the highly successful author of countless best-selling mystery novels, was sent a copy of #2, and reciprocated by sending along the following article, telling of his early pulp days and his brief association with Doc Savage.
I feel flattered and deeply appreciate the time and effort of such a busy and talented person as Mr. MacDonald, to pause and reminisce with a total stranger.)
JOHN D. MacDONALD vs. DOC SAVAGE
by JOHN D. MacDONALD
I'm glad John Keasler suggested that I receive a copy of Bronze Shadows. I had no idea that a Doc Savage cult was in existence,
You have my permission to use this small and peripheral memory of my association with Doc Savage, though it might give some of the more devoted members of the Savage Coterie an aching desire to take a trip to Sarasota to hit me in the mouth.
I began writing full time when I was sprung after six years in the Army in late 1945. My first attempt at fiction, written while overseas, was sold to Whit Burnett of the old Story Magazine, Consequently my initial efforts - some 800,000 words of unsaleable crud, all in short story form, all completed within a 4 month period, were full of dying blind musicians, incredibly sensitive and oblique dialogue, and everything from imitation Maugham to imitation Tolstoi. I was keeping at least 30 stories in the mails at all times, papered one small room with form rejection slips lost 25 pounds, worked up to 100 hours a week, and acquired a considerable reputation around Utica, New York as a prime case of readjustment problems. No one could understand why I did not put my perfectly good master's degree from Harvard Business to work.
Eight hundred thousand words accomplished in 4 months is in essence a crash training program. It is equivalent to 10 full length novels. No writer of reasonably serious intent can write a single page without learning something of value and improving his control. I sold my second story to Mike Tilden - God rest him - of Popular Publications for Dime Detective in February of 1946. The third one I sold was to one of the Standard Magazines pulps, and the fourth - which was the beginning of a lasting and valued association - was bought by Babette Rosmond of Street and Smith, then editing Doc Savage and The Shadow.
I would estimate that Babs bought forty to fifty short stories of varying lengths from me in 1946, 1947 and a portion of 1948. The first eight or ten were all based on a very personal knowledge of India, Burma, China and Malaysia. She wrote bright, charming letters, but in my mind's eye she was a meaty type in her middle years with a shamelessly evident mustache. From my letters she knew I was a Colonel and she later confessed she had me pictured as middleaged, erect, slight British accent, bulging blue eyes, guardsman's mustache and carrying the inevitable swagger stick.
After those eight or ten based upon the same locale, she wrote to me, saying, “Isn't it about time you took off your pith helmet?”
At about that time I went down to New York to meet the people I'd been dealing with - Mike Tilden, Harry Widmer, Alden Norton. And Babette, who turned out to be a slight, dark, spry gal in her twenties, a very wry and pyrotechnic conversationalist.
Also about that time I was beginning to realize that there were two basic approaches to pulp writing, hence but two kinds of writers. One was the dogged chap who reads and analyzes pulp stories, makes little charts and graphs, develops a clumsy and reasonably direct style and he [...] the stories like a carpenter making different sizes of tables for a furniture mart. The other breed was the group I belonged to, the ones who have no interest in formula or pattern or specific editorial requirements, who want to tell stories, and who, once they accept the minor limitations of the pulp market, take their tongues out of their cheeks and do the best job they can do, and worry later about who might want to buy it. The ratio of work to sales is not as efficient as in the case of the table-makers, because it is a variety of risk-taking, but you can generate considerably more pride in your work, and have more satisfaction in doing it. Working in this manner made the boundary line in those days between pulp and slick very vague. A novelette I thought had its best chance at Cosmopolitan ended up in Dime Detective, A novel I thought might hit Argosy, then a pulp, was diverted to Colliers by my agent, and purchased as a serial.
Insofar as reading pulp magazines, I discovered I could read only those stories by people who were working in the same manner I was. In 1947, Babs Rosmond asked me, very cautiously and tentatively, if I would like to try a Doc Savage. I have the vague memory that Lester Dent was ill at that time. I do remember that I certainly had need of the money. I told her that I would let her know. I got out some of the back copies of the magazine which I had saved because they had contained stories by me. (Some contained two or three by me, the additional ones under the house names Babs and I had devised: Scott O'Hara, Peter Reed, John Farrell.) For the first time I read two Doc Savages all the way through. I did some fretting and some pacing and finally phoned Babs at her office at Street and Smith and said that I could not fault them on the basis of action, or moving the people around, but I just could not bring myself to imitate a prose style so wooden, so clumsy, so labored, so inadvertently hilarious that it was like a parody of the style you might term Early Comic Book. I said that Doc seemed to me to be a truly great comic figure, and I was sorry to let her down, but....
She said she hadn't really believed that I would do it, and that in fact she would have been a little disappointed if I had given it a try, disappointed in me.
I hope the Bronze Cult will understand that I put the knock on the Hero on the basis that any cult has the historical responsibility of assembling the con as well as the pro. I had my chance. I've done some mighty wooden writing under my own name, but at least I never did it on purpose,
(Oboy! How about that? I was introduced to Mr. MacDonald in the pages of Doc Savage and The Shadow along with Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories. Personally, I have enjoyed his novels more than his short stories because he uses the broader framework to thoroughly develop ideas and characters. I particularly enjoyed The Girl, The Gold Watch And Everything better than most because of the deft development of a most fascinating idea, the complete stoppage of time.
I'm sure we all forgive Mr. MacDonald for this one foolish mistake in his then beginning career.... but then - who are we to argue with success?
Thank you, John, for sharing your start with us. At least for me, you've become a real person in place of just a name on a cover.)
As one might imagine, MacDonald’s comments on the literary quality of the Doc Savage stories elicited several responses, which were printed in issues #4 and 5. JDM again received copies and responded to the objections, which you can read here: Pulp Perspective Plus.
Bronze Shadows issue courtesy of the John D. MacDonald Collection, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
This is the last installment of From the Top of the Hill, John D MacDonald’s 1947-48 Clinton (NY) Courier newspaper column. Unfortunately I am missing the full text of the final few paragraphs, but you’ll get an idea of what he is talking about from the initial sentences.
It had been a difficult 1948 in the MacDonald home. Earlier that winter Dorothy’s mother Rita, who had been diagnosed with cancer a year earlier, suffered a relapse and was forced to leave her home in Poland (NY) and move in with the family. The MacDonalds set up a hospital bed in their living room and Dorothy tended to her care, administering shots every four hours, day and night. A month after this column was published, on June 24, she passed away. (Not in April, as is claimed by Hugh Merrill in The Red Hot Typewriter, an error I regret not correcting for the Stark House reprint.)
With Dorothy in need of a change of scene, and with JDM’s writing income just keeping them afloat financially, and with no savings needed to begin construction on their Piesco lakefront property, the couple decided to move to Mexico. Enticed by Malcom Lowry’s novel Under the Volcano, the couple reasoned that they could live more cheaply there and could also benefit by renting out their Clinton home. So, on October 30, the family began driving south, destination Cuernavaca and the American artist colony there.
Thus ends John D MacDonald’s first career as a newspaper columnists. His second (and last) wouldn’t occur until 1959 when he began writing for a Sarasota monthly titled The Lookout under the pseudonym T Carrington Burns.
Good Piano:
In New York last weekend we dropped in to see a good friend and a very fine gentleman, Gene Rodgers, who, at the moment has his remarkable piano-playing featured in what the New Yorker calls "a triphammer show" at Cafe Society Downtown -- appearing on the bill with the Edmund Hall band and Kay Starr.
Gene advised us that he is opening in New Hartford on the night of the seventh of June. If editorial policy doesn't delete the name of the spot -- you can find him at the New Hartford Grill.
We rashly promised him that we would wave a flag for him, so, on the night of the seventh, if we look around and fail to see you and you and you -- we will request an explanation when we meet again.
Gene is not one of those stylists who zoom to the top, cling there for a year or two, and then fade away. Gene's jazz piano has more depth than the piano of the stylists; he is a musician who has been around for a long time, and will be around for many more years. He will fade if, as, and when public taste for a little subtlety in jazz piano fades. But it is only fair to add that when he switches from Debussy to boogie, some of the numbers are as subtle as a clenched fist. We like variety in our piano. Gene has it.
* * *
Highway Neurotics:
This time we drove to New York. The Parkway from Poughkeepsie down was cleverly designed to bring out the worst aspects of human nature. With dense traffic in one direction restricted to two lanes, and with passing on right or left permitted, the drivers expend every ounce of trickery to keep anyone from passing them. The game is played by using the slower vehicles as blocking backs. Your are in the left lane, going fifty, and someone whom you instinctively hate is slowly passing you on the right. Ahead you see, in your land, a car going about forty. Never, never wait until the guy on your right passes you. Give your crate a burst of speed and cut into the right land ahead of him. Then you can cut your speed to forty-five, thus blocking both lanes and bottling the one who was passing you.
Standard procedure while performing this maneuver is to draw your lips back from your teeth into a fiendish grin which is part snarl. But you do not rest on your laurels. No, you look ahead to see if there is some other opportunity of bottling up the enemy.
Of course the purpose of all this is to so infuriate the man you have bottled up that he will either swing onto the wrong side of the drive or go too fast. Then you can look in your rear vision mirror and watch him trying to talk his way out of a ticket.
* * *
Adios, Amigos:
This is the thirty-second and last edition of From the Top of the Hill.
You have been a fine and understanding audience. Without that chorus, in a minor key, of cheers and jeers, writing this thing would have been very dull indeed.
By now you must have us pretty well pegged.
Yes, we think Clinton is just about the finest spot we have ever seen in which to live and bring up kids. There are a few little things we’d like to see changed, but even the most important of them is minor compared to what we have here.
We also think that Clinton exists as a tiny segment of a world which, even with the utmost charity, must be considered psychoneurotic. On a national scale we are being continually captured by political pygmies, nauseated by radio rhetoric, embittered by B movies, battered by advertising based on fear, mentally impoverished by production-line methods in "higher" education, and possibly condemned through television to what Philip Wylie has called a long future of "swooning in the gloom". Medical science, having gained the upper hand over infectious diseases, is faced with a demoralizing increase in functional disorders.
Our disease of gadgetitis is symptomatic of Veblen's conspicuous consumption. We are racing madly to keep up with the Jones without ever stopping to wonder where the Jones are going. We insist on two strips of chrome where before there was one. Yet the modern industrial plastics empire will never devise a plastic human -- the ideal type of organism if our world is to be a .... [missing three or four paragraphs]...
This is the first time we have been entirely serious in the column and we do it now only because it is the last column.
It's been fun for these thirty-two weeks. Thank you and fare thee well.
 |
| Edward J. “Tim” Seibert |
On August 7, 1999 the Florida chapter of the American Institute of Architects awarded the firm Seibert Architects of Sarasota their 25-year “Test of Time” award for the design and construction of a particular building within the state. The building in question was John and Dorothy MacDonald’s last home on Siesta Key, built on a private and relatively remote (at the time) waterfront site at the end of Ocean Place near Big Pass.
In 1966 when the planning process began for this new home, the MacDonalds had been living in a home near the end of Point Crisp Road, two and a half miles down the key on a small spit of land jutting out into Little Sarasota Bay. Built for the MacDonald’s in 1951-52 the house was located at the end of what was supposedly a private road that ran the length of the peninsula. But the road wasn’t gated or guarded, and anyone who wanted to could drive down the road and park in front of the house and bang on the door -- which, apparently, happened frequently.
“The road and the right of way go right past the front of the house,” MacDonald wrote in 1966. “People we do not know have an increasing lack of respect for the privacy we need in order to work.”
The design and work on the new house took three years, with John and Dorothy moving in in July 1969, and it couldn’t have been more different from where they had been living for the past 17 years. With vast, open spaces and lots of light, the house looked like no other and provided the MacDonald’s with their much-sought privacy.
On the morning of the awards ceremony the Tampa Bay Times published a reminiscence by Edward J. “Tim” Seibert, the designer of the home and owner of the architectural firm. It’s an illuminating piece with (for me) one big surprise, which I’ll address at the end. The article was preceded by a short intro written by Times “Homes Editor” Judy Stark.
A glimpse into the design process
For some people, the image of Florida is shaped not by theme parks and palm trees but by the fiction of John D. MacDonald, longtime resident of Siesta Key. His rough-diamond hero, Travis McGee, is the ultimate beach bum, man-about-the-waterfront and solver of mysteries.
McGee served as his creator's mouthpiece, speaking out in behalf of the state's ruined beauty: the poisoned Everglades, overdevelopment, building on the beaches. MacDonald crafted "strong statements about what man's greed has done and is doing to despoil our state's natural resources - statements that are just as relevant today" as they were in the mid-'60s, writes critic Ed Hirshberg.
Tonight in Naples, the Florida chapter of the American Institute of Architects recognizes Seibert Architects of Sarasota with its 25-year “Test of Time" award for the home where MacDonald and his wife, Dorothy, lived for years.
The award honors works that, by the timelessness of their design, have influenced a particular building type. The MacDonald house, designed in 1966, draws on characteristics of Florida Cracker houses, and through the use of natural materials and compatible forms becomes one with its site, preserving existing mangroves and palm and oak trees.
In this essay, architect Edward J. “Tim” Seibert reflects on the design process and his relationship with John D. and Dorothy MacDonald during what he calls “a golden time" on the west coast of Florida.
- JUDY STARK
Architecture as Art
By Edward J. “Tim” Seibert
If one is going to feel romantic about a house, the John D. MacDonald residence on Siesta Key is a good choice. It stands on Big Pass, and one can look southwest to the Gulf of Mexico and northwest to the end of Lido Key, with pines filtering the view of resort hotels and condominiums. To the north and northeast, the sparkling city of Sarasota is a nighttime jewel of lights.
A little inlet called Fiddlers' Bayou curves in around the house, giving it water on three sides and making it potentially as vulnerable to tidal fluctuations and prevailing winds as the surrounding mangroves, oaks, palms and wild grasses. It is a structure specially built to withstand storm tides and high winds, as it has done for a third of a century now.
Approached from a boat on the gulf side, the great pyramidal, metal roof shining in the brilliant sunshine reflects the plan of the house, a powerful form that speaks eloquently of shelter to the sailor passing by. At night, the lighted underside makes the form more delicate, showing the poles and beams that hold up the 62-foot-square shape.
From the very beginning this house has been a magnet, attracting imaginative and historic interpretations: "a beautiful South Seas home," "reminiscent of the old fish houses on Florida's eastern coast," "shares many characteristics of the early Florida Cracker cottage," "a classic achievement in contemporary architecture" and on and on. It caught editorial attention in architectural and shelter publications in the United States, Europe and Japan.
For me, its designer, the form and function of the MacDonald house exists to offer its owners the joy of a close, secure relationship with its pristine coastal site. I was seeking clarity of form rather than style, with minimum intrusion into the site.
John D. MacDonald was one of America's most prolific and admired writers, completing 67 novels, five collections of stories and 500 magazine stories before he died, unexpectedly, in Sarasota in 1986. He was exceptionally quick to grasp new ideas. But until we began our work together to create the very private utopia John and his wife, Dorothy, had dreamed about for many years, they hadn't given the architecture of their new home much thought. Dorothy was a painter of abstract canvases and had studied with the acclaimed Syd Solomon, also a Siesta Key resident. My didactic nature welcomed their desire, as clients, to collaborate with me, their architect. In fact, Dorothy drew up the first floor plans.
We worked for several years on designs, beginning in 1966. The first house we designed was to be built on Manasota Key. My father, E.C. Seibert, who worked with me then as a structural engineer, got so far as building a fine boat basin at that Manatee site. John then decided he did not want to leave Siesta Key, where he had lived on Point Crisp for many years. So the project was moved to the present Big Pass site, and I designed quite a large house of heavy timber and stone, as John and Dorothy then wanted.
But as I worked along, my feeling grew that such a house would be much too massive and heavy-handed for its open, waterfront location. I was able to convince the MacDonalds that their residence should be more concise and elegant, designed from a clear geometric concept. It might also be less expensive, I advised, if it were smaller and designed in the contemporary manner. This is the concept of the house we finally built.
After my draftsman, Tom Walston, and I completed working drawings, another associate, architect Buddy Richmond, convinced me that he could make a final version that was more polished and spare, and with less expensive detailing. This final concept was drawn at office expense. John and Dorothy were such good clients, I felt they should have my very best effort. Besides, they understood and appreciated the design. Ours was the best relationship an architect can have with a client.
John and Dorothy moved into the house in 1969. For some time, as the house took shape, they had come to feel at one with the space. As the years went by, the house became more and more theirs, for both worked at home and spent the greater part of their time there. One corner of the house was Dorothy's studio, the other was filled with John's office machinery and files. Furnishings and art were not "designed" but were very much a part of the MacDonalds' lives, giving the space an authenticity that no designer can really accomplish. The only complaint I ever heard from John was that his house was so beautiful, it attracted gawkers.
My father did all the structural work for this building, which was unlike any other, at least any other built in these parts. One of the great problems to be solved was how to fasten together the uneven pine tree trunks that support the house, for they are rather like asparagus waving in the wind until you can capture them at the top. My father designed a series of specially fabricated steel connectors, which, being exposed and a design feature, were galvanized after fabrication. This was not inexpensive, and at times of such decisions, one comes to respect and enjoy an understanding and enthusiastic client.
The first selection for the poles was greenheart timber, imported from Central America, carefully specified for straightness. When the trees arrived, they did not meet specs. We sent them back. This was a hassle, and again we appreciated having a client like John D. My father and I then went up to Central Florida to choose growing pines. They were harvested, barked and treated for the house. All of this, added to our "courtesy" redraw of the final plans, was not conducive to profit. But then, the idea was “architecture as art.”
It was a golden time then. We were doing something good for the sake of doing it and giving it our very best. We were happy. Frank Thyne, our builder, joined us for lunch frequently at Sarasota's old Plaza Restaurant, the favorite watering hole of resident artists and writers, many internationally known. Frank gave me a two-martini education in literature and philosophy. In return, my father and I educated him about sailboats. Frank had attended the University of Grenoble and the Sorbonne in France and had earned a doctorate in philosophy. He came to Florida in 1956 to teach himself to be a developer and house builder.
The Thyne construction crew were Mennonites, the very best craftsmen, who were proud they “could build anything an architect could draw.” Frank worried because they had an occasional habit of fasting. He made sure they ate regularly because “they tended to slow down when hungry."
The house is a strong one. As it was designed to do, it has weathered several hurricanes and a tidal wave. Each of the great Florida pine columns rests on a strong connector fitting of galvanized steel, set into a cubic yard of poured concrete, which in turn is supported by a piling that goes 12 feet down into Siesta Key's shell sand. My father also designed a breakwater in front of the seawall, made of stone riprap to absorb the force of the waves. The main structure of the house is 9 feet above the grade. John and Dorothy were the kind of people who could handle ideas like 49 trees going up through their living space. This stormproof house was built a good 10 years before the federal government made up all the building codes of today. The concept of a house that could withstand natural beachfront forces was a new idea then.
The 50-foot-square living space and the 12-foot surrounding porch have a constant roof slope that starts at 8 feet on the porch perimeter. The porch has a 4-foot overhang for tropical downpours. At the glass walls, 12 feet in from the porch edge, the roof is 12 feet high. It rises to some 22 feet at the center. It's a grand space, as only one bedroom and bath and the entry foyer have walls that touch the ceiling. The ceiling is structural deck, consisting of two layers of pine for strength and one layer of cedar. On top is a triple layer of insulation, over which is the galvanized roof.
Cut into the pyramid of the roof was a sun deck. I mention this to show what an understanding client John was. Perhaps people who write books understand the problems of composition with which others must struggle, for John was fair of skin and didn't sunbathe. However, he agreed that the deck was a place for a monumental stair to be built from the main floor hallway below. The hallway, a tall, triangular space, needed a sculptured form, the stairway, to fill it. Later we roofed over the sun deck, and John serendipitously had a rooftop writing room. Problems like this were solved in laughter and understanding friendship. John was a man of quick wit and high humor, and I miss him.
For me, this glass pavilion provides the ultimate visual extension, the architect's art of using the transparency of glass to extend the interior experience outward while bringing the surrounding landscape inside, making it a part of the interior landscape. From this strong, safe glass shelter, one becomes part of a soft, starlit, tropical night, the clash and flash of a thunderstorm, the wonderful serenity and soft dawn light of early morning.
Edward J. "Tim" Seibert's firm Seibert Architects is in Sarasota.
Edward J. “Tim” Seibert began his professional career in the Sarasota office of Paul Rudolph, premier conceptualist of the Sarasota School of Architecture. The Seibert firm is the longest continuously operating architectural practice in the area. The Sarasota School won recognition for the city in the 1950s and 1960s as the home of some of America's most innovative architects. In 1995, Tim Seibert received the Florida AIA Award of Honor for Design and last year was elected to the Jury of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects.
To Seibert, the John D. MacDonald residence entirely represents the Sarasota School's philosophy. He does not believe in the validity of designing in "styles" but rather that building form should spring from the site, the owner's feelings and design program, and the traditions of the place where the structure will be built. A building, Seibert says, must express its own time and place, and so today, a contemporary form is the only logical way to build. “Without this basic logic, there is no architecture as art," he said.
Siebert writes “The first house we designed was to be built on Manasota Key. My father, E.C. Seibert, who worked with me then as a structural engineer, got so far as building a fine boat basin at that Manatee site. John then decided he did not want to leave Siesta Key…” In 1969 JDM’s friend Dan Rowan was building his own house on Manasota Key and was unhappy with some of the building restrictions preventing him from having “our own boats docked at the back of our property.” (Notice that “boats” is plural.) He wrote a letter a State Senator complaining about “curious restrictions” on dredge and fill. MacDonald heard about this and wrote Rowan a letter bringing him to task about this action. (Rowan wrote in response, “When you ream someone, I can see that old Army background shining through… you do a fine job of it.”)
Were the MacDonalds guilty of doing the exact same thing three years beforehand? In the same place?
For a nice color version of the house photo above check out Siebert's website here.
The next installment of John D MacDonald's weekly newspaper column for the Clinton (NY) Courier back in 1947-1948. I presented this three and a half years ago on The Trap of Solid Gold.
Cinemantics:
A boy in his last year of Syracuse U. was up the other day to talk about this odd business of writing. His yen is to write for the movies.
There is a funny thing about writing for the movies. Any shooting script or plot outline sent to any major studio is returned unopened. And they have a good reason.
Suppose you send in a script, they read it and reject it, and four years later you see a movie which contains a scene startlingly reminiscent of your effort.
The odds are that it is a coincidence -- based on the very paucity of available plots. But the courts are inclined to discount coincidence, and any suit you might bring would have a high nuisance value.
So how do you arrange to write for the movies?
One -- write a novel that sells well. Despite popular superstition, the vast majority of sales to the movies are in the one to five thousand dollar range. Suppose they want to give you five thousand. You say, "No. Give me twenty-five hundred outright, and a ten week contract at two-fifty a week to work on the movie treatment."
That is your 'in'. Whether or not they pick your option at the end of the ten week period depends on whether you are able to produce for them.
Two -- make a name in the smooth paper magazines. Sooner or later a studio will see movie possibilities in one of your stories. Every story published in national magazines, both slick and pulp, is read by people in the major studios whose job is to do nothing else.
Three -- and this is the new way -- graduate from the University of Chicago out of that Hutchens 'best books' course, or go to the Graduate School of the Cinema at the University of Southern California. Maybe you will be hired on graduation as a sort of apprentice. Dore Schary of RKO is a writer-producer. He feels that the hope of the industry is to develop specific movie talent in the writer-director-producer field, rather than acquiring people from other lines of endeavor.
And those are the three ways to cut yourself a hunk of those fabulous salaries out there. The fourth way is to be a nephew of one of the studio heads.
While with the OSS during the war, we got to know a few of the Hollywood names.
Gene Markey was one of them. When his navy promotion came through, elevating him to the rank of Captain, a certain Major Willis Bird and I went to see him. Bird said, "If you're real good, maybe they'll make you a major one of these days."
Birdie is now a bone buyer in Bangkok. In addition to importing 25¢ books. Every month he has to ship so many tons of ground bones to a chemical company in the US.
Gene Markey baffled me a little. He seemed, at first glance, to be such an unimpressive guy to have been married to all that beauty. [Markey's wives, up to this point in his life, included Joan Bennett, Hedy Lamar and, at the time this column was written, Myrna Loy.] But he has that charming knack of making any acquaintance feel that he, Gene, has been languishing around for years without ever having met as unique and marvelous a person as yourself. It is a wonderful knack to have.
Melvin Douglas was in the same headquarters as we were for a time. He was a fine, hard-working, reticent guy, forever backing out of the limelight with almost obvious annoyance. He organized an entertainment outfit and took them all over the theatre, with the one provision that he would work behind the scenes, never taking a bow.
[John] Ford, the director, was around for a time. He was a vast, moody, unpredictable man, hard to meet and harder to know.
In addition to the 'regulars,' some of the other Hollywoodians made flying trips through our malarial sector. We were in hospital when [Joe E.] Brown came through. The man with the mouth. He chatted with everybody. His son had but recently been killed in a plane crash in the states. Above that wide grin of his was a pair of the saddest, warmest eyes we have ever seen. No talent ever worked harder in our theatre.
Maybe the fates sorted out a few of the best for us, but those we did meet gave us the idea that the screen colony contains a batch of very fine people.
* * *
Art Note:
If you are a mature person of not more than three feet six inches in height, there is a promising career waiting for you as a model for the artists who illustrate the automobile and appliance advertisements.
Naturally, drawing automobiles with normal sized people in the front seat would make the cars look far too small. Thus the ads contain models who can barely reach the steering wheel and peer out over the bottom sill of the window.
This is also desirable with drawings of prefabricated houses. When the tiny models, who would have difficulty in reaching the knob on the front door, are posed in front of the prefab, it looks truly enormous.
Refrigerator ads utilize tiny women not more than three feet tall. If one of the models ever opened the door to the refrigerator, standing on tiptoe, a quart of milk falling out would smash her flat.
Some cynics affirm that this use of tiny models is to make the products look so huge that the public is enticed into buying.
We have a different theory. We feel that in the beginning the models and the appliances were in scale. And the artists have merely changed the scale to keep abreast of the rise in prices.
If the trend continues, we can expect to see refrigerator ads where the female model stands beside the product, a happy smile on her face, a scaling ladder in her hand and climbing irons on her dainty feet.
* * *
See you next week.
The brief article below was written by an unnamed reporter for the Associated Press and was published -- in this instance -- in the May 3, 1992 issue of the Tampa Bay Times. There’s absolutely nothing new here, even for the most casual fan of John D MacDonald, with the exception of the last two paragraphs. It confirms something I’ve long suspected about several latter day short stories. More on that after the article, which was titled (in the Times, at least) “JFK Shooting Altered Character Name”.
GAINESVILLE – John D. MacDonald's famous hard-boiled detective, Travis McGee, originally was called Dallas McGee, but the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy led the author to change the name.
That and other revelations have come from papers MacDonald and his estate left to the University of Florida.
MacDonald, Florida's most successful writer, was finishing The Deep Blue Good-by when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963.
Until then, the mythical Fort Lauderdale detective, complete with his houseboat The Busted Flush, a high-powered sex drive and a brooding social conscience, was to be called Dallas McGee — "Dall” to his friends.
"John D. didn't like the connotations,” explained Carmen Hurff, literary manuscripts curator for the UF libraries. MacDonald decided to change the name and began looking for a substitute.
"He was talking to a friend of his who said Air Force bases have good names, so he started looking down a list of Air Force bases," Hurff said. Eventually, he came to Travis Air Force Base — and hence, Travis McGee.
Travis worked out pretty well.
Twenty more Travis McGee novels followed The Deep Blue Goodby, ending with The Lonely Silver Rain in 1984, two years before MacDonald's death.
Travis accounts for the bulk of the more than 70-million copies of MacDonald's works, in 18 languages, that have been sold.
MacDonald started sending materials to the UF collections in the 1960s. Now the library has acquired the remnants of his office from the writer's estate.
The extensive MacDonald manuscripts, books, correspondence, photographs and other effects in the UF library special collections would fill seven shelves the length of a football field.
Most archive users so far have been students of pop culture or simply John D. MacDonald fans.
The manuscripts include a rejected first ending to The Deep Blue Good-by. There are false starts and endings to books. Sometimes MacDonald wrote 50 pages before deciding he was at a dead end.
The letters show his impact on modern popular fiction, including homage from many of today's generation of writers who use the mystery and suspense format as a springboard for other themes.
MacDonald grew up in the Northeast, earned a master's in business administration from Harvard and decided he wanted to be a professional writer. He tried it in Texas and Mexico a few years before moving to Florida in 1949. eventually settling in Sarasota and developing into a passionate Floridian.
MacDonald suffered, by his estimate, 1,000 rejection slips before finally breaking into pulp magazines with names like Shocking Stories with detective stories and science fiction.
MacDonald always knew writing was only part of the business of being a writer, and that marketing was part of it.
The Travis color scheme - every title had a different color in it — baffles many readers, Hurff said.
According to his notes, the books always were intended to be a series, and the colors were simply intended to make it easier for readers to remember which stories they already had read.
He also believed in protecting his investments. The manuscripts include stories magazines rejected early in his career.
“Bimini Kill” was published in the July 1987 Yacht magazine. A letter to his agent submitting the piece said, “I went through my Dud Drawer and found this one, circa 1961. ... It doesn't seem too bad."
John D MacDonald had almost 400 original short stories and novellas published during his lifetime, almost all in the popular magazines of the era. His output prior to 1950 -- the year he wrote his first novel The Brass Cupcake -- was nothing short of phenomenal, with almost half of his output appearing in the four short years before he hooked up with Fawcett Gold Medal. The remainder was spread out over three and a half decades, and that final decade-and-a-half saw a mere 14 short stories published, five of which were collected in his 1971 anthology S*E*V*E*N.
Part of the reason for this drop off had to do with the general reduction in fiction being published in popular magazines, especially beginning in the 1960’s. Another was the fact that MacDonald’s focus changed to producing novels rather than short stories, a trend that accelerated with the introduction of Travis McGee in 1964. But a third factor had to be the fact that JDM was simply worn out with the short form: there are only two big bursts of creativity after the 1950’s. The first was a series of works done for This Week Magazine, a periodical he had first worked with in 1950. From 1963 to 1966 he wrote 12 stories for this Sunday newspaper supplement, the most for any other title during that decade. The second began in 1967 and ended in 1971 with the publication of S*E*V*E*N, which contained three original stories, with the balance being stories that had been published in Playboy.
But beginning in 1968, and perhaps earlier, some of his stories began appearing that had a different, earlier style and tone to them, certainly different than the S*E*V*E*N tales. I’ve reviewed most of these here on the blog and have often mused that perhaps MacDonald had taken an old story out of the reject pile and submitted it again for publication. “The Reference Room,” which was originally (and only) published in a Mystery Writers of America anthology titled With Malice Toward All read like something the author had written years before. The same was true of “Wedding Present” in 1977, “The Accomplice” in 1980 and “Eyewitness” in 1979. In fact, “Eyewitness” was a rewrite of a 1964 short story that had been published in Argosy.
I haven’t written about “Bimini Kill” yet -- it’s the last original story of MacDonald’s ever published, but the author’s admission that it was an older story from the “dud drawer” confirms that this was indeed a practice he used.
Here's the next installment of John D MacDonald's weekly newspaper column, from the early years of his writing career.
War Surplus:
Two years ago the tub was being thumped to call attention to all of the vast wonderful stocks of super-thermal gimmicks and double-reversing whatchits being offered to the public out of the collapsing grab-bag of our military might.
But the stuff wasn't all dragged out of the warehouses in time to meet the peak of interest -- and thus, right now, weird and wonderful items are being offered for sale without much attention being attracted. Check with your New York paper, last or next Sunday's edition.
Did you know that you can buy:
One ten-man balsa wood raft for only $12.95, a 1000 gallon portable fuel-oil tank for $24.50, one brand-new parachute for only $5.40, two used field desks, with filing cabinets for $11.00?
Or, if you have a terrific desire for one M-3 Medium Tank, with riveted hull and turret, you ought to be able to swing a deal for less than a hundred dollars. This, for a village, makes a most inexpensive and yet durable type of war memorial. Beyond chalking couplets on the outside of it, vandals are relatively powerless.
In fact, some small villages have been bright enough to run a campaign, buy a surplus tank as a visual memorial, and use the surplus to either endow a memorial scholarship for bright youngsters, or buy books for the local library.
Such goings-on are generally considered a bit more creative than an ungovernable yen for statuary.
And there is a venerable precedent. In Jackson Square in New Orleans there is a Civil War Memorial in the form of a Confederate submarine. Yes, we said submarine.
The corroded steel hull, shaped like a fat cigar, is probably twenty feet long. It was propelled by two men pedaling madly, as on a bicycle. This mutual effort turned a stern screw. The fellow in charge steered and, when they muzzled up to a warship below the water line, he manipulated levers which detached explosives fastened to the bow and transferred them to the hull of the warship.
In its day, that little tin cigar was considered a horrible weapon of war, deadly and not quite cricket.
The measure of its success is that it had to be dredged up off the bottom to be put in the park.
Now it is a pathetic and quaint little toy, seeming, like a sea shell, to echo faintly with the shrill yip of the rebel which was heard from Manassas to Gettysburg.
Beyond a doubt those tanks placed on village greens across this country will one day be looked at in the same way that we look at the Confederate submarine. As plaintive and fragile relics of a disastrous war fought in the almost forgotten past, when the technology of warfare was in its infancy.
* * *
Conspiracy:
Here is a subject that needs airing. Adequately aired, it may mean death to a large segment of American industry.
How many millions of dollars worth of lawn mowers are sold each year? And grass seed, and weed killer and strange tools for trimming borders and such?
And for what? After all the purchases are made, and all the energy is expended, the net result is a smooth green expanse of little grass blades. Somehow we have all been deluded into thinking that grass is the only thing to have around a house. Grass is a frail and stubborn organism. An incredible amount of effort is expended to get it to grow, and then to crop it off to the required shortness. Industry could certainly devise a plastic substitute. Once installed, there would be no seeding, rolling, clipping, cutting and cursing.
Evidently the manufactures of gimmicks for the lawn subsidise the magazines which show pictures of impossibly beautiful lawns. They keep the myth going. After a full season of enormous labor, all the homeowner has to show for his efforts is an expanse of snow and the prospect of starting all over again in the Spring.
The ultimate insanity is encouraging the grass to grow, and then cutting it down before it can grow tall enough to seed itself.
It's time for revolt. All that is necessary is to have brave men in the community allow their lawns to grow into the lush, untamed beauty of a vacant lot. Pleasant little flagstone paths can wander through the tall grasses.
Once the movement is started, those who follow the leaders will see the natural beauty of wild lawns, and soon the lawn mower manufactures will feel the crimp in sales and realize at last that this incredible conspiracy they have nurtured throughout the years is at an end. They can turn to the manufacture of something practical.
Like hedge clippers.
* * *
See you next week.
The following article was published in Florida Accent, the Sunday supplement to the Tampa Tribune, on February 28, 1965, written by reporter Jack McClintock and titled “No Credit Cards for Travis McGee.” It was the same month that the fifth McGee novel -- A Deadly Shade of Gold -- was published (not April, as McClintock reports) and JDM obviously agreed to do the interview to push the book. There’s not much new here for the dedicated MacDonald fan, but there is an interesting bit of conversation about Ian Fleming, which amplifies JDM’s opinion of him expressed elsewhere. There’s also a photo -- taken at the old Point Crisp house -- that I’ve never seen before.
When John D. MacDonald decided to do a series after writing some 50 novels and hundreds of short fiction pieces - he knew he needed a hero he could "live with."
So he wrote two more novels, trying out two heroes, and scrapped them both. On the third try he came up with Travis McGee: boat bum, skeptic, retriever, for a price, of ill-gotten gains.
"McGee is essentially an iconoclast who feels displaced in this highly-structured society," MacDonald says of his livable protagonist, "and he's aware there probably won't be room for him in 20 years.
"At first his name was Dallas McGee, but the semantics of that name went sour."
MacDonald says that for a long time he resisted pressures to write a series. But the book market was changing and the pattern of pressures changed and MacDonald changed his mind and has published four novels built around Travis McGee. A fifth is due in April.
"I have letters in my files stating explicitly why I would never write a series,” he declares wryly. "And here I am with Travis."
McGee titles are colorful: The Deep Blue Good-by, Nightmare in Pink, A Purple Place for Dying, The Quick Red Fox.
"That was a cold and arbitrary decision," MacDonald confesses cheerfully. "Bookrack displays are a visual thing, and people will remember the colors and know which ones they've read."
The writer has prematurely silver hair and talks with humor and vitality. His previous novels are read all over the world — a fan club in France numbered Albert Camus and Francois Sagan among its members.
"And a lady at the University of Nice is doing her Ph.D. on MacDonald," says MacDonald.
He got into writing almost by default. After graduating from the Harvard School of Business with an M.A. degree in 1939, MacDonald, as people are expected to do, went to work.
"Then I was fired from my first four jobs," he admits without a trace of regret. "It was a case of 'bigmouth.' It wasn't that I wasn't diligent, I just kept saying the wrong things to the wrong people.
"I'm essentially inner-directed. I dislike phoniness and people who cannot evaluate themselves," he says. And he told them so.
The army beckoned in 1940 "just as I was beginning to think there was no place for me," he chuckles. "So I asked what it paid and it sounded pretty good so I went."
He wrote short stories home from overseas instead of letters, and when his wife sold one he decided to write for a living. He makes a good living at it, and cannot be fired for baiting phonies.
MacDonald has opinions and doesn't care who knows it. They're in his conversation and in his books. And sometimes in his letters.
When a critic claimed Travis McGee was an "undisguised imitation" of Ian Fleming's James Bond, MacDonald wrote him:
"Fleming was kind enough to state his admiration of my work on several occasions, and I must risk appearing tasteless and say that perhaps the most serious flaw in the Bond books is that Fleming really could not write very well."
He caught some errors in the critic's article and wrote: "I must forgive you for making the charge of imitation, as it was made without having read the books.
"May I be so forward as to commend them to you?” MacDonald added slyly.
One who has read the McGee books sees some of MacDonald in them - his ironic wit, his vitality – and, no doubt, his opinions. Travis McGee, however, is mostly just Travis McGee.
The hero says earnestly of himself, "I am wary of a lot of things, such as plastic credit cards, payroll deductions, insurance programs, retirement benefits, savings accounts, Green Stamps, time clocks, newspapers, mortgages, political parties, lending libraries, television, actresses, junior chambers of commerce, pageants, progress and manifest destiny.
"I'm also wary of all earnestness," he adds with deadly aim at his own.
McGee lives on a plush houseboat called the Busted Flush -- which refers to the way McGee came to own her and not to her lavatory facilities which include a seven-foot-long sunken bathtub in excellent working order.
He does base acts for nearly-noble motives, nearly-noble acts for greed's sake -- and talks of himself with clear-eyed and conscious irony. He's fallible, sometimes weak, sometimes strong, often ridiculous. He can be vaguely puritanical, or outstandingly vicious. He's complex, contradictory, human.
At his best, he's an ironic inspector of his own interior who laughs loudest when he's taking himself most seriously.
In the spring of 1948 British mystery author John Creasey made his first ever trip to the United States, arriving in New York on the Queen Elizabeth on April 13th. He was embarking on a multi-state speaking tour that included many chapters of the Rotary Club, of which he himself was a member. His travels took him as far as Arizona and, in early May, visited Utica, New York, where he met and spent an afternoon with rookie writer John D MacDonald.
We MacDonald fans stand in awe of the sheer quantity of JDM's output: 66 novels, 6 anthologies, 5 works of non-fiction, and nearly 400 original short stories published during his lifetime. He was a piker compared to Creasey, who, by the time he died in 1973, had written over 600 novels under 28 different pseudonyms, including crime, westerns, romance, and science fiction. He created many different series characters, the most popular of which was George Gideon of Scotland Yard, who appeared in 21 separate novels and who made it to both the big screen (John Ford’s 1958 film Gideon’s Day) and the small (the British television series Gideon’s Way).
When Creasey toured America he had written “only” 230 books, according to JDM, who took him to a minor league baseball game in Utica. He wrote about it in his weekly Clinton Courier column.
Visitor:
Last week-end we became most pleasantly involved with a visiting British gentleman making his first trip to the States. He is John Creasey, a writer of mystery novels that are published in England.
From the viewpoint of sheer productivity, he has left us with a feeling of awe and concern. He has published two hundred and thirty books, and has sold four million copies in Great Britain.
Mr. Creasey is a quiet and pleasant fellow, thirty-nine years old. And he is one of those rare people who have not lost the ability to be enthusiastic.
His constant companion is a small black notebook which is whipped out frequently and into which goes even bits and pieces of casual conversation.
In Utica he saw his first baseball game -- Blue Sox versus Binghamton -- and, as an ardent cricket fan, he said that he could see how it could become most exciting. We got all tangled up explaining the intricacies of the "hit and run” and the rule which says that the third foul is not called a strike.
We were explaining that a home run occurred when a fair ball was hit outside the playing area, and thereupon the batter hit a double into the left field stands, and the local ground rules made a liar out of us.
He seemed very dubious about the statement that the pitched ball actually does curve in the air, breaks sharply in front of the plate. And he failed to see the necessity of leather gloves to protect the hands. He said that the cricket ball is of the same construction, is thrown and hit equally hard, and the players merely get used to catching it barehanded. Hmmm!
* * *
Change of Heart:
During the past years the New York Central Railroad has seemed to consider the passengers as a highly objectionable sort of freight that must be taught humility as it is shunted from place to place. Deluxe service has been available on extra-fare trains.
But last week we treked down to New York, paid coach fare and got on something called the Upstate Special which is made up at Syracuse.
To our somewhat enormous astonishment we ended up in a luxurious observation car, sitting in a deep chair, listening to soft music, holding a tall cool glass and watching the Hudson Valley unroll.
The astonishing train, where you are not clipped for luxury service, leaves Utica every day at 9:25 a.m. and takes five hours and twenty minutes to get to New York. Since it is made up at Syracuse, there are seats available, and there will always be room.
Ed Stanley tried to talk us out of taking the train, saying that it is a local and that it makes six stops between Utica and Albany. Ed is right. It does. But on that train, it’s even pleasant to stop. It makes the trip last longer. Five hours and twenty minutes seemed hardly long enough. For the first time we began to feel that the NYC is beginning to cooperate with us in our perpetual ambition of getting something for nothing.
* * *
Hotel Service:
On this trip we obtained, for the first time, a "televised" room in a New York hotel. And, for the first time, we are anxious to have a coaxial cable to come into Utica so that television, in clear and distant image, can be available here.
As a practicing skeptic, we were not convinced by the ardent claims or the television boys. We had to be shown.
In baseball parks they don't sell the sort of seat that you get when you watch a game on the screen. To get the same view, you would have to sit on the shoulders of the umpire. Watching a boxing match, you begin to worry about whether a wild left hook will knock you off your chair. In the wrestling matches, they throw large gentlemen into your lap.
Maybe one day a television crew will focus the cameras on a scene of combat. And everybody sitting in their parlors watching the screen will get a slightly different slant on warfare. A slant that may help this battered old world find some better answers.
