Grushenka: The Story Behind A Rare Classic Erotic Book

by Stephen J. Gertz

 

It is an anonymously written erotic novel privately printed in 1933 in Dijon, France but it's not Fifty Shades of Grey Poupon.

It is “the story of a Russian serf girl compiled from contemporary documents in the Russian Police files and private archives of Russian Libraries” (title page) translated from the original Russian but it's not Serfer Girl by The Boyar Boys.

It is Grushenka - Three Times A Woman.

A promotional insert teasing the book is sometimes found in copies of this scarce volume in its first edition. It tells quite a story. It's a doozy:

"'A Russian Woman is Three Times A Woman' - Old Russian Proverb

   Announcing the arrival from Paris of the
                                     Second and Final Shipment of 150 Copies
                                                  
                                                                    of

                                           Three Times A Woman -

                                                        'Grushenka'

Publication: Published in Paris in January 1933. Printed in Dijon, France. Discovered in Russia and sponsored by a well-to-do American literary man residing in Paris.

Format: A beautiful example of modern European book making. A large book, 7x9 inches (more than 80,000 words). A type page of finest proportions and clarity. Cover completely decorated in bold modernistic mode.

Illustrations: Seven full page wash drawings in half-tone reproduction, which, in the modern manner, "bleed" off the page. The drawings are the work of a young Parisian Russian and no higher praise can be said of them than that they do justice to the text.

The Book: At last a book which answers the complaint that erotic books "are all alike." A unique contribution in that its literary qualities are of the first order, while its material and the stark truthfulness of its presentation, is beyond any book of its kind now available. (See excerpt from sponsor's foreword following).

Ordinary erotic literature, as we know it in Europe and America, finds no place in the Soviet scheme of things. Such pornographia as 'The Memoirs of Fanny Hill,' 'The Scented Garden,' 'The Autobiography of a Flea,' mere Sunday school tracts as compared with 'Grushenka,' are vigorously forbidden. Yet 'Grushenka,' than which I know nothing more pornographically obscene, while not officially sponsored by the Soviet authorities, is not seriously frowned upon. The reason for this, of course, is Grushenka's indubitable propaganda value. So authentic an exposé if the unspeakable abuses, the utter licentiousness of Czarist Russia cannot be ignored.

Nor can 'Grushenka' be ignored from a literary view point. Unlike any other book of its kind, we find here a genuine sense of character and its development. Not only is the serf girl Grushenka's mental-emotional growth recorded, but changes in her body from year to year are described with minute care. Sexual experiences and abuses are related as we know they must have happened, not as we might with they had happened, This astounding truthfulness, this sincerity, this non-romanticism is devastating. Add to it a narrative gift which never lets down and a rich background of the social mores of the time and we find ourselves face to face with literature.

'Grushenka' was called to my attention in Moscow among a small group of artist-intellectuals who took it upon themselves to provide me with those conveniences and convivialities which a man of my temperament finds necessary to matter what the political philosophy of the state in which he finds himself. My knowledge of Russian is rudimentary and it was not until I met Tania that I was able to get any real inking of the work. So intrigued was I by this taste that forthwith Tania and I joined in a labour of love to set 'Grushenka' into English. The experience was highly educational for both of us, I flatter myself. Six months later I returned to my Paris apartment with the English manuscript of 'Grushenka.'

My decision to publish 'Grushenka' was made when one of my old friends, a seafaring man of literary inclinations, undertook the delicate task of transporting the printed volumes into England and America. My professional publishing connections in both countries put me in contact with reliable sub-rosa channels of distribution.

What financial gain results from this venture I shall send on to Tania. Being who she is, an emancipated woman of Red Russia, she will give the money to a communal nursery or to a research worker in birth control. Both worthy causes.

Go forth then 'Grushenka' to your English speaking readers. May you be a brief for the U.S.S.R., an explanatory voice for Tania, in addition to literature. May your new audience find you as vivid and thrilling as I did in your translation.

                                                                                                   J.D.
Paris, January 2nd, 1933."

Grushenka wasn't printed in Dijon; the closest the printer got to Dijon was when he went to d'bathroom. It is certainly not based upon secret Russian police files, and it was definitely not translated from a 19th century Russian erotic novel.

Grushenka is, in fact, an American original-in-English pastishe published in New York City, and the anonymous writer and publisher are fascinating characters.

 According to the rumors, Grushenka was written by the famed B-movie producer-writer of the 1940’s classic films, Cat People, Curse of the Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, and The Body Snatcher.


An enormous amount has been written regarding the “Russian” origins of this erotic classic chock-a-block with prostitution, sadism and the knout, written, all agree, by someone  familiar with Russia but with with lapses in knowledge of Russian customs and folklore. The rumors are true; Val Lewton wrote it. How do we know for sure?

Lewton was born Vladimir Ivan Leventon in 1904 in the Russian port city of Yalta on the Crimea.  The family moved to Berlin to be close to his widowed mother’s sister, the silent screen actress, Alla Nazimova. To the U.S. in 1909. He spoke and wrote Russian. He began his career as writer of very low-paying detective, exotic adventure, sultry-woman-on-the-skids Depression pulp fiction, one of his eight books being The Sword of the Cossack (London: John Hamilton, 1932), a historical novel set in Russia. During this time he was desperate for money to support his wife and children, an ideal motivation to write quick-buck porn. He admits to writing anything that would exploit his writing talent. He knew Russia but left at an early age; the book is filled with utter nonsense regarding Russian mores and customs and many historical inaccuracies, much like The Sword of the Cossack, but possesses enough verisimilitude to suggest authenticity. Grushenka fits within Lewton's chosen theme for his novels; it's a sultry-serf-girl-on-the-skids tale. 


The circumstantial evidence for Lewton's authorship is very strong. The direct evidence nails it, a self-written list of credits compiled by Lewton in 1937 that appears at the end of Joel E. Siegal’s definitive biography, The Reality of Terror (NY: Viking, 1973). Under the subtitle, Pornographic Novels, he lists as his own one Yasmine (“this is said to be one of the most beautifully illustrated books ever published and retails for $75.”). There are, apparently, no copies of Yasmine extant; nobody seems to have ever seen one. All copies appear to have been destroyed by the police.

And there on Lewton's list, under Yasmine, is Grushenka.  Lewton wrote, “I edited the translation from the Russian. I have a beautiful picture of this book taken from the N.Y. Daily Mirror showing it being shoveled into the Police Department furnace.” Given Lewton's background and the fact that Grushenka is not a translation, this smacks of pride of authorship. There is no doubt. Lewton wrote it.

Who published it? According to sexual folklorist, G. Legman, who was intimately involved in the trade in clandestine erotica during the 1930s and 1940s, and the Kinsey Library, Percy Shostac was the publisher. Who he?

Percy Shostac (1892-1968) was a New York City actor, stage manager, poet, playwright, and novelist originally from the Mid-West.  "Percy Shostac could have lived in Chicago or San Francisco, and the content of his novel would have been much the same. But he lived in the vicinity of Tammany Hall and the benches of Union Square, New York, and therefore entitled his volume "14th Street." It is impossible to call it a novel and yet it is endowed with the imaginative richness associated with the novel form; neither is it completely an autobiography, except that the author has made unmistakable references to his own life. The conflict is represented by the clash between his Jewishness and his  outer  surroundings" (Review of 14th Street by Percy Shostac, Simon and Schuster, 1930, in the Jewish Criterion July 18, 1930).

"Poet Shostac has less to say about Manhattan's 14th St. than about himself. He writes this segment of autobiography in unrhymed, uneven lines that read well and easily. Not particularly quotable, never reaching a high poetic plane, never distinguishing between the vocabulary of poetry & prose, his novel in verse has considerable cumulative effect" (Time, July 7, 1930).

Shostac also wrote The World's Illusion, a dramatization of Jacob Wasserman's novel, a manuscript without date; Abelard and Heloise, a one-act play (1915), and The Strength of the Weak, a psychological melodrama in three acts (1919).

Active as a stage manager beginning in 1917, he managed The Captive (1926), a play that critics felt was a corrupting influence on feminine morals and thus won the attention of the authorities. Yet "by January 1927 The Captive was being praised for its enormous 'social value,' its effectiveness in 'educating' sexually impressionable young women. Far from glamorizing lesbian attachments, the play's defenders now argued, The Captive vividly warned against them… Stage manager Percy Shostac explained to the press that many girls in the audience has been sent in detachments from boarding schools and all-female colleges, and that Helen Menken [the star] had 'received several notes from women educators in the audience, deans of women's colleges and finishing schools, who said were already concerned with the necessity of impressing the girls in their charge with the dangers of a reprehensible attachment between two women.' The play, he argued, filled exactly that need" (Hamilton, When I'm Bad, I'm Better: Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment, p. 99).

Stage and screen actor Basil Rathbone was a friend of Shostac's. They performed together in the romantic comedy, Love Is Like That by S.N. Behrman and Kenyon Nicholson, which ran for twenty-seven performances on Broadway in 1927. Rathbone played Prince Vladimir Dubriski, and exiled Russian who is actually a valet with social ambitions. Shostac portrayed Grigori, who, it seems, was Prince Vladimir's valet.

Rathbone performed in the aforementioned The Captive, a drama in three acts adapted by Arthur Hornblow, Jr., from "La Prisonnière" by Edouard Bourdet which opened at the Empire Theatre, New York City, September 29, 1926, and ran for 160 performances. In his autobiography, In and Out of Character (1962), he wrote of The Captive and Shostac:

"And now to share with you the last act of this hideous betrayal, this most infamous example of the imposition of political censorship on a democratic society ever known in the history of responsible creative theater; this cold-blooded unscrupulous sabotage of an important contemporary work of art; this cheap political expedient to gain votes by humiliating and despoiling the right of public opinion to express and act upon its considered judgment as respected and respectable citizens.

"A few days after the closing of the play we were ordered to appear at a downtown court…Our predicament has now become a case célèbre. We were headline news in every newspaper…"

After recalling the heart-rending testimony of the play's ingenue, Ann Trevor, Rathbone continues:

"His honor was obviously touched by this genuine and most appealing outburst, which was followed immediately by a cold and most incisive statement of his case by our stage manager, Percy Shostac. 'Your honor,' he said, in effect, 'I will not betray the principles by which I endeavor ro live. This is not an evil play, it is not even a harmful play. It is a great play which is saying something extremely important to our present-day society.. Something they need to know about, recognize and act upon. I will under no circumstances desert this production of Monseiur Bourdet's The Captive, even if it should mean that I spend the rest of my life in prison!'

"Ann Trevor and Percy Shostac - two gallant 'little people' unafraid to stand up in defense of their considered judgments and convictions - worthy descendants of the forefathers of this great country."

(Rathbone, a fine actor, was strictly ham on paper, projecting to readers in the balcony).

Shostac had experience with sexually-themed drama and censorship. Why he began to clandestinely publish erotica is likely due to his sympathies and the same reason Lewton wrote Grushenka. It was the depths of the Depression and a man did what he had to do to earn a buck. If he seemed hypocritical, condemning a variety of female sexual behavior then later publishing illegal erotica celebrating female licentousness, he wasn't. He was merely offering an early version of "redeeming social value" to offset the titillation on stage. Sex sells, he knew how to spin, and, as the promo sheet for Grushenka proves, he was a gifted huckster and publicist.

Shostac drifted out of poetry, novels, the theater, and publishing. What next for the man who, after stage managing The Captive, in addition to Grushenka also clandestinely published the erotic novels The Abduction of Edith Martin (1930); The Imitation of Sappho (1930); Crimson Hairs (1934); The Prodigal Virgin (1935), and quite likely (but not certainly) any erotic novel in English from the 1930s with the false imprint, "Dijon, France"?

In 1939 Percy Shostac was a member of the WPA Federal Writer's Project. During the 1940s he was a consultant, publicist, and author for the American Social Hygiene Association of New York and Chicago, in 1944 writing Industry vs. VD.  His next appearance on the radar screen is in a story found in the Village Voice, Oct. 17, 1956. He has turned his hobby of fashioning "weird, gnarled tree roots" into lamp stands into a business with a shop on Grove Street in Greenwich Village.

The first edition of Grushenka was graced with seven illustrations by "Kyu," an artist who was not "a young Parisian Russian." The Kinsey Library surmises that "Kyu" was an alternate pseudonym for the better-known pseudonymous artist, Jacques Merde (!), né William Bernhardt, who illustrated some of Shostac's other sub-rosa publications. Stylistic comparison strongly suggests that Kyu and Jacques Merde/William Bernhardt were one and the same person.

Val Lewton, after his exploits into erotica, became David O. Selznick’s story editor in Hollywood.  In an interesting, little known aside, he wrote (uncredited) the renowned Richmond train station scene in Gone With The Wind where the extent of Confederate wounded and dead is dramatically revealed via an expensive crane-shot pull-back.

In a sequence in Vincent Minnelli’s film The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), the lead character, Jonathan, is depicted producing horror movies so low budget that suggestion, shadow, sound and suspense must be used in lieu of special make-up and film effects. That sequence in Jonathan's career is based upon Lewton’s experience and unlikely success at RKO from 1942-1946 with The Cat People, etc. The bad and the beautiful in bondage succinctly sums up Grushenka. 

"A Russian Woman is Three Times A Woman"  is a non-existent "Old Russian Proverb." However, "She's once, twice, three times a lady" is an old American proverb firmly attributed to Lionel Richie of The Commodores.

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Gershwin Ain't Got Rhythm At Auction

by Stephen J. Gertz

They're selling lots of books, but not for me 

A lucky star's above but not for me 

With fame to lead the way 

I found more clouds of gray 

Than any auction play could guarantee...to flee.

Pantheon lyricist Ira Gershwin got rhythm, he got music, he got his gal, and when an important archive of his letters was offered at PBA Galleries on November 15, 2012 who could ask for anything more?

He could. Estimated at $80,000-$120,000 the archive did not sell. Who could ask for anything less? Collectors, who apparently, were just bidin' their time and not biddin' their dime. What should have been S'Wonderful and S'Marvelous sighed a collective Let's call the whole thing off.

That the archive did not sell is not a reflection of the quality of the material or its significance. "They can't take that away from me," as Ira wrote for Fred Astaire in Shall We Dance? (1937).

The archive comprises a rare assemblage of unpublished correspondence by Gershwin (1896-1983) and is crucial to understanding the music and entertainment industry om the U.S. during the 1920s-1950s from one of its giants, a song lyricist with a gift equaled only by his contemporaries Oscar Hammerstein II and Cole Porter.

It's an extraordinary archive of letters, offering rare insights into the mind and method of his brother and collaborator, composer George Gershwin (1898-1937), and the production of George’s masterpiece Porgy and Bess.

On May 26th, 1961, in perhaps the most significant letter in the collection, Ira writes about Porgy and Bess and George Gershwin’s perception of the production: “As for ‘opera’ or even ‘grand opera; - of course. ‘Folk opera’ was a compromise arrived at so as to not scare the general public – or, rather – the average theatre-goer, away. I’m sure that somewhere I’ve written or told that the Met was eager to produce the work and that Otto Kahn offered George a bonus of $5,000 if the Met could have it. (George was flattered but realizing that at best the work could get a guarantee of 4, possibly 6, performances he turned it down for Broadway)…”

The letters, a huge trove of 1-4 pages each, were written to Edward Jablonski, who later became an important  historiographer of musicians, publishing numerous works including a major biography of George Gershwin, begin in 1941 when Jablonski was still in high school and an adoring fan. In 1952, Jablonksi founded Walden Records, releasing many rare compositions by Gershwin and other musicians of the day.

The correspondence not only provides a remarkable record of Ira and George Gershwin but also gives a vivid picture of the world of music and show business in the 1940s and 1950s, the period when nearly 90% of the letters were written. Gershwin writes much on his brother and his legacy (a good deal of his time was spent in managing the estate), his own ongoing projects in Hollywood and New York, his opinions of actors, actresses and singers, criticism of composers and lyricists, reviews of movies and dramatic productions, and his thoughts on new records being released, through Jablonski’s Walden as well as Columbia and other major record labels.

Other highlights:

• June 18, 1941: “…Now as to those questions. ‘Short Story’ was a piece that might have been included in the ‘Preludes’. George wrote this at a very early age. Samuel Duskin heard it and asked if he couldn’t arrange it for the violin. George agreed to it… There is an actual 4th prelude, however – unpublished. Since it is in 32 bar song form I’m going to put a lyric to it some day…”

• September 22, 1941, on the lookout for copyright infringement: “Never heard of the Haynes-Griffin Co. and their album of excepts from ‘P. & B’ and ‘American in Paris’ etc. I imagine what they are offering are records of broadcasts like the one at the Hollywood Bowl of which I sent you a program. If it’s something else, I’d appreciate your letting me know. And thanks for the tip on records issued by the Commodore Music Shop. I’ll write them…” 

• April 6, 1942: “…Regarding ‘135th Street’ I feel that George wouldn’t have cared particularly about recording it because it was written in such a hurry and because ‘Porgy and Bess’ said in a much more mature way anything ‘135th Street’ had to say.”

• Sept. 1, 1943, about the upcoming film biography of his brother: “I went over to the Warner lot the other day and saw a couple of sequences from ‘Rhapsody in Blue’. I though they weren’t bad at all and that the unknown playing my brother captures a good deal of the spirit. It is of course too early to know how it’s all going to turn out but it is obvious that both Mr. Lasky the producer and Mr. Rapper, the director, were trying hard to make a worthy film…” 

• Oct. 30, 1943, “Sorry you missed ‘Girl Crazy’… I haven’t seen it either… I hear the story isn’t too original but that all the numbers are well done and it’s really a tribute to the vitality of George’s music that no interpolations have been made in the score and as for the lyrics I had to change only a couple of lines…”

George and Ira Gershwin

• July 5, 1945: “…I was a groom once but never had been a best man. Vincente Minnelli asked me to be his b.m. when he married Judy Garland so it was I who handed over the ring and now nobody can say I’ve never been a best man. Saw ‘Junior Miss’ and ‘The Lost Week-End’ in projection rooms. Both excellent movies – Don’t miss them when they get around…” 

• September 17th 1945, protective of his brother’s musical legacy: “I didn’t see that article in ‘Metronome’ but I did see a digest of it in ‘Newsweek’ a couple of weeks ago. I found what I read a malicious outpouring rather than an analytical criticism and therefore too special to be much concerned about. Generally, any unfavorable notice of my brother’s music doesn’t bother me too much. So someone doesn’t like ‘Rhapsody’ or ‘American in Paris’ or whatever it is. So someone is entitled to his opinion. So all right. What does bother me is when I see phrases like ‘naïve orchestration’ or ‘structural ignorance’ as though my brother were just a terribly talented fellow (which they grant) who somehow stumbled into the concert hall, was impudent enough to take advantage of it, put on a high pressure sales talk – and got away with it. With these critics there is an utter disregard of the facts that George from the age of 13 or 14 never let up in his studies of so-called classical foundations …” 

• On March 11, 1948, Ira runs afoul of the red-baiters: “As for being investigated by the Thomas Committee should you go to an institution Thomas doesn’t approve of – you ought to feel you don’t belong if you aren’t subpoenaed. As you may or may not know I was recently summoned by the Tenney Committee (our local Un-American seekers) because a meeting of the Committee for the First Amendment was held at my home. It turned out to be nothing, but it’s pretty bad that these committees have the power to drag you to them just because someone’s uncle said he thought you were wearing what seemed to him a red tie at a football game last fall…”

•  September 28, 1951, after congratulating Jablonski on his marriage: “Glad you agree that Columbia did a remarkable job with ‘Porgy and Bess.’ Those who questioned he recitatives will now, if they’re at all musical, understand and appreciate that it wasn’t composer’s indulgence but powerful and authentic musical setting in the plot lines…” 

• May 18, 1954: “Saw rough cut of ‘Star is Born’ last night. Fine acting and singing beautiful production. Has to be cut considerably though as it ran three hours and eleven minutes and a musical specialty of five to seven popular songs has yet to be added (‘Melancholy Baby’ ‘Peanut Vendor’ ‘I’ll Get By’ ‘Swanee’ and one or two others) which will take, I imagine, twelve to fifteen minutes. This is the spot that’s to close the first half of the picture and it was decided that any one new number wouldn’t be socky enough…”

1959.

Why didn't this significant archive sell? It sure ain't plenty of nothin'. It's difficult to say with certainty beyond the obvious: too rich for collectors' blood. How many collectors of American Music History, specifically that of the Gershwin Brothers incalculable contribution to popular music, are there with deep pockets? Perhaps it ought to have been offered to Ira Gershwin's torch- and standaard-bearer, singer, pianist, and historian of the Great American Songbook, Michael Feinstein, who worked for him as assistant and archivist

I suspect that the next step in the quest to find it a  home will be institutional offers. This is an ideal archive for any library with an American music Special Collection.  It's   a perfect fit for The Ransom Center's Ira Gershwin Collection.

Great song lyrics stand alone from the music that carries them. Ira Gershwin continued to flourish after his brother's premature death. In 1953, for the movie A Star Is Born, he wrote (with music by Harold Arlen) the greatest song yet written to capture the heavy yearning, emptiness, sorrow, regret, mourning, wan hope and melancholy of the heart in throbbing agony when deep love is lost forever. It's the torch-song to end all torch-songs, and though written for a woman is not  an experience exclusive to females; gut-wrench gone love does not discriminate.

The night is bitter,
The stars have lost their glitter,
The winds grow colder
And suddenly you're older,
And all because of the man that got away.

No more his eager call,
The writing's on the wall,
The dreams you dreamed have all
Gone astray.

The man that won you
Has gone off and undone you.
That great beginning
Has seen the final inning.
Don't know what happened.

It's all a crazy game!
No more that all-time thrill,
For you've been through the mill,
And never a new love will
Be the same.

Good riddance, good-bye!
Ev'ry trick of his you're on to.
But, fools will be fools,
And where's he gone to?

The road gets rougher,
It's lonelier and tougher.
With hope you burn up,
Tomorrow he may turn up.
There's just no letup the live-long night and day!

Ever since this world began
There is nothing sadder than
A one-man woman looking for
The man that got away,

You don't need Judy Garland opening her veins to hear the ache pouring out of those lines.
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Images courtesy of PBA Galleries, with our thanks.
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Richard M. Nixon, Thespian Interpreter Of Ayn Rand

By Stephen J. Gertz

Ronald Reagan was not the only President of the United States who was an actor before entering politics.

On the evening of October 20, 1938, Richard M. Nixon, a year after being admitted to the  bar  and thirty years prior to his election as POTUS, trod the boards as District Attorney Flint for the first of a two night run of the Whittier Community Players' production, staged at the Whittier Woman's Club House, of Night of January 16th, Ayn Rand's courtroom drama,  her first play and a hit on Broadway during the 1935-36 season.

This was the amateur Master Thespian's first bite at potential stage stardom. Later in the year, he co-starred with Thelma "Pat" Ryan as the leads in the Whittier Community Players' production of George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woolcott's mystery-melodrama, The Dark Tower. Following the standard script, the two actors fell in love.

On this night (October 20, not January 16th), however, Nixon limned the role that he would wear as a political mantle, that of a D.A. whose traditional values drive him to prosecute the alluring, independent, atheistic flouter of social standards, Karen Andre (Rand's stand-in), for murder as much for her offense to the social order as her guilt.

The spokesman for the future Silent Majority found his voice in the character, his acting experience preparing him for the second of his six crises (the first as snake pursuing Alger Hiss), his 1952 role as  Vice-Presidential Candidate up against the wall to face dastardly charges of corruption. It was a heart-rending portrayal capped by the schmaltz-shmeared Shakespearean  monologue known as "the Checkers speech" in which he wept havoc and let slip the pooch of war to vanquish his enemies, succeeded, and definitively proved that in politics a honey-baked ham can make it to the big time. In politics, as well as strip-tease, you gotta have a gimmick.

And in dramaturgy, too. Rand's contrivance in Night of January 16th was to have the play's jury chosen from each performance's audience and let them decide the play's ending, "guilty" or "not guilty." Further, Rand left the ultimate truths ambiguous, leaving it up to the actors to decide whether their characters were lying or being honest. - another nod to politicians who often don't know whether they're  honestly lying, lying about being honest, are actually honest, or honestly don't know the difference.

The reviews for this production of Rand's Night of the 16th are lost to history; we don't know whether Nixon laid an egg or, as Ruby Keeler in 42d Street, went out a youngster and came back a star.

"Nixon, you're going out a youngster but you've got to come back a star!"

"Now, take off the dress and lose the hat. You look ridiculous."

Whatever the critics may have thought the footlights agreed with him. 

"One day in 1938, Mrs. Lilly Baldwin, the director of the local amateur theatre group, telephoned me to ask if I would like to play the part of a prosecuting attorney in their upcoming production of Ayn Rand’s courtroom drama, The Night of January 16th. I took the part and thoroughly enjoyed this experience in amateur dramatics" (RN, interview cited by Nixon Foundation).

This choice little piece of ephemera is being offered by Between the Covers as "The PERFECT gift for conservative objectivists." Liberal subjectivists may conscientiously object; it's the perfect gift for the Leftie in your life who needs a good laugh.

We leave you with Our Man Flint's bravura turn as Man On The Ropes; afterward, he was in like Flynn, without the sexual connotation, of course.

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[NIXON, Richard M.]. [RAND, Ayn]. Whittier Comunity Players Present "Night of January 16th" by Ayn Rand. Woman's Club House, October 20 and 21, 1938. Seventeenth Season, First Production. Whittier [California]: Whittier Community Players, 1938. Program for the play.

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Program images courtesy of Between The Covers, with our thanks.
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An Illustrious Anonymous Author Unmasked

by Stephen J. Gertz

Preview

Anonymous is a perennially busy writer, with a list of books that could span the Equator with enough left over to tie a  sash knot with long tassels. Anonymous writers toil, of course, in anonymity, a sere environment sorely lacking in amity; it's a lonely place. Some authors prefer to write anonymously to protect their reputation in another genre of literature, or because their subject matter is too delicate to risk open attribution.

At this point you may be asking yourself, How can an author be illustrious and anonymous at the same time? I hadn't a clue, so I asked the Rare Book Guy (the Carnac the Magnificent of rare bookmen, Shell's Answer Man to the antiquarian book set), for insight. He held the question, inside an envelope formerly secured within a mayonnaise jar, to his forehead and, after communing with the occult, revealed the answer:

"In a sea of anonymity how can one anonymous author be distinguished from another anonymous author? By gilding the anonymous lily! After all, there's Anonymous and then there's ANONYMOUS. Thus, Anonymous becomes 'Illustrious Anonymous,' 'Best-Selling Anonymous,' 'Critically Acclaimed Anonymous,' etc. That way, the potential reader knows that this Anonymous ain't just another Anonymous from the neighborhood, and the publisher can sleep soundly knowing that sleight-of-hand  will tempt the gullible; Anonymous as sales ploy."

All well and good, RBG, but what about an author so obscure, so beyond recognition that when they look in the mirror even they don't know who they are? Why should a publisher risk money on a complete unknown when Anonymous has such a great track record? Pamela was anonymously published in its first edition of 1740 (dated 1741) and it did wonders for Samuel Richardson's career.

And so I imagine that, faced with Dark Masquerade - a potboiler about a "prominent criminal attorney, well versed in the art of fixing juries," who falls for a debutante that "daring young news photographer" Jimmy Cronin also has eyes for but when Butch and Larry McCabe, fraternal gangsters and disgruntled clients of our prominent criminal attorney, threaten the love triangle, and "an avalanche of masterfully portrayed incidents including a jail-break and the appearance of a mysterious nun on an ocean voyage" ensues - the editor and publisher of New York's Green Circle Books had to make an important decision.

(Your attention has likely been arrested by the sudden appearance of a seafaring nun of mystery and intrigue, and, presumably, a great set of sea-legs. Angel of Death or Angie Dickinson in bride of Christ drag? Or, a character out of Pirandello who accidentally walked into this plot in search of an author named Anonymous but, because the author  was anonymous and not in the phone book, she tramped the earth and sailed the seas an eternal vagabond).

Editor: It's a smash but for a story like this "by Mrs. H. H. Harris and Edward Doherty" doesn't grab. Too polite.

Publisher: Tell me about it. Who are they? Sound like high society yokels to me. "Mrs. H.H. Harris and Mr. Edward Doherty Are Pleased To Announce the Publication of Their New Novel. Tea and Scones Will Be Served Afterward at the Waldorf." I'm thinking pseudonym.

Editor: Whad'ya have in mind?

Publisher: Something punchy, urban, sharp, gritty. "Brick Wall." "Lance Boil." "Duke Street." "Dick Gunn." "Cotton Gin." No, forget "Cotton Gin." Too rural for this caper.

Editor: How 'bout, "Anonymous." 

Publisher: It's been done. 

Editor: I've got it. "Illustrious Anonymous!" 

Publisher: Hmmm. Mystery, prestige, strange oxymoron. It's magic! Could be Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dreiser, the man in the moon! This is why I pay you the big bucks.

And so Mrs. H.H. Harris and Edward Doherty became the "Illustrious Anonymous Author" of Dark Masquerade.

Half of "Illustrious Anonymous Author" actually was somewhat illustrious.

Edward "Eddie" J.  Doherty (1890-1975) was a journalist ("The Star Reporter of America"), novelist (The Broadway Murders: A Night Club Mystery, NY: New York Crime Club/Doubleday, 1929),  and Hollywood writer best known for his screenplay, The Sullivans, which was nominated for 1944's Best Original Story Oscar™Academy Award. A Catholic, he became an ordained priest at age seventy-eight. It is unknown whether a mysterious nun on an ocean voyage was his muse.

Eddie Doherty.

My guess is that he - "a competitive professional, passionate lover, cosmopolitan traveller, enjoyer of the good things in life [who] left the Church in fury and pain but returned later in tears of joy" (Madonna House blurb for his autobiography) - was the pro that helped amateur Mrs. H.H. Harris write Dark Masquerade.

Virginia Stallard Harris was the wife of successful Fifth Avenue perfumer and Broadway investor, Herbert H. Harris (1898-1949), whose main claim to theater fame was that Arthur Miller's All My Sons (1947) was "Produced in Association With Herbert H. Harris," i.e. he was the play's financial angel. Dark Masquerade was, apparently, Mrs. Harris' one and only writing credit; I've found no records for her under her name or in variations. She is, however, to the best of my research, the only writer in the English language to ever be formally credited as "An Illustrious Anonymous Author," and so enters literary history as an illustrious anonymous footnote.

• • •

Apologies to the scions of Mrs. H.H. Harris, and Edward Doherty for ripping the veil of anonymity off their illustriously anonymous ancestors. It was a job no one cared about and didn't need to be done. As such, I'm a sap, gulled by the publisher's baloney. It's another bent feather in Booktryst's cap, in cahoots with the U.S. Catalog of Copyright Entries.

A few more words on Eddie Doherty, a very interesting character.

According to his New York Times obit (May 5, 1975), which described him as  "the star reporter straight out of the raffish, fast-talking 'Front Page' set that thrived on scandal...a chronicler of the Jazz Age," the Chicago Mirror declared him "America's Highest Paid Reporter." He earned his reputation as "an ace general assignment reporter" with his coverage of  Hollywood's Wallace Reid and Fatty Arbuckle scandals for the Chicago Tribune. He later moved to New York to join the staff of Liberty magazine. It is during this period that he likely collaborated with Mrs. Harris.  I suspect that Mr. Harris may have invested in his wife's ambition by hiring Doherty for the project.

The Times obit quotes one of his former editors: "'When he's good, he's very, very good. When he's bad, he's lousy.'"

He had studied for the priesthood but the death of his first wife in the flu epidemic of 1918 estranged him from the Church and God. He became a reporter. He ran wild. When his second wife died, c. 1939, he returned to the Roman Catholic faith.

At the time he became a Catholic priest he was married. He was ordained in Israel as a member of the Melkites, a Byzantine order (not tied to the Eastern Church) that recognizes the Pope in Rome as its sovereign but allows married men into the priesthood.

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[HARRIS, Mrs. H.H. and Edward Doherty]. An Illustrious Anonymous Author. Dark Masquerade. New York: Green Circle Books, 1936. First (only) edition. Octavo. 312 pages. Cloth, with dust jacket.

I've found little about Green Circle Books beyond that it was, apparently, an imprint of  former Macaulay executive and New York publisher, Lee Furman, who filed the copyright for Dark Masquerade on August 11, 1936. OCLC notes records for titles published by Green Circle 1936-1937, at which point it seems that the imprint dropped off Earth.

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Dark Masquerade image courtesy of ReadInk, currently offering this volume, with our thanks. Image of Eddie Doherty courtesy of Madonna House.

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