Clarence Darrow Writes About A Publisher And Prohibition

by Stephen J. Gertz

On October 24, 1931, legendary American lawyer and social reformer Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) wrote to American attorney, civil rights pioneer and president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Arthur Spingarn, about his as yet to be published autobiography.

"The book will be finished this month. As I have said, no contract has been made with any one, but several publishers seem anxious to get it. I do not feel like giving it to Liveright & Co. I have said that I will show it to them, which I will do; still, that is superfluous, if they are not in the running. I presume I could ask each publisher to make an offer, and I could safely give it to the one that makes the best offer; still there are other things to consider. Had I better send a copy of manuscript to you to deliver to them when I send out any others? Have you any idea of the best way to handle the situation? I do not like to make any pretense that I feel is not true, but I think I should put it where I want to, and, of course, since I have given them $1,000.00 and you got me a clean release, I have the right to do it. One of these days I will be in New York, but on account of the other fellow rushing his book out in a hurry – after promising to wait! – I felt that I had better get mine done. With thanks, and best wishes, [signed] Clarence Darrow."

A postscript in holograph reads: "I have a story in this coming Nov. number of Vanity Fair on what one can and can not do to get rid of prohibition. We can not repeal the 18th Amendment. I think my plan has never been published."

Clarence Darrow, the son of pro-suffrage and abolitionist parents, began his celebrated law career in Ohio. He soon found himself defending anarchists, union leaders and murderers. His slow, shambling demeanor belied a brilliant mind, evident in his spectacular defense in the 1924 Leopold-Loeb murder trial and the famous Scopes trial of 1925, the latter upholding the right to teach the theory of evolution. Among Darrow’s high-profile defenses were such racially charged cases as the Sweet Case, in which a black family used deadly force to defend itself against an attack while attempting to move into an all-white Detroit neighborhood. The NAACP (with the support of Spingarn, the letter’s recipient) also offered Darrow’s services to the Scottsboro Boys, nine black teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Alabama in 1931 and convicted by an all-white jury. A pacifist and civil libertarian, Darrow was knowledgeable, shrewd and deeply committed to justice.

After the 1919 passage of the 18th Amendment, which banned the production and sale of alcohol in the United States, Darrow became an outspoken opponent. He published such articles as “The Ordeal of Prohibition” in the August 1924 issue of American Mercury, and the same year he debated the issue with prominent Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes. He co-authored a book entitled The Prohibition Mania (1927), and he published several articles in Vanity Fair including “Why the 18th Amendment Cannot Be Repealed” in the November 1931 issue, referred to in this letter. Darrow lived to see the repeal of prohibition with the passage of the 21st Amendment in 1933.

The letter also discusses Darrow’s autobiography, The Story of My Life, which Charles Scribner’s Sons published in 1932. Darrow had defended New York publisher Liveright & Co. against charges of obscenity alleged by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and Boston's Watch and Ward Society, but he apparently did not want to use the publisher for his own work.

Arthur Spingarn (1878-1971), the son of an affluent Jewish family, earned a law degree at Columbia and, along with his brother Joel, dedicated his life to racial justice for blacks. He headed the legal committee of the NAACP and, in 1940, succeeded his brother as president of the civil rights organization, holding the position until 1965. He also became known for his vast collection of books, manuscripts and ephemera related to American blacks, most of which are now at Howard University.

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Image courtesy of Lion Heart Autographs, with our thanks, and a tip o' the hat to its cataloger.
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Nixon To Ehrlichman: Miss You and Haldeman, Love You, We Were RIght

by Stephen J. Gertz

Two letters from President Richard M. Nixon to John Ehrlichman, his counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, are coming to auction at Christie's-NY in its Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts Including Americana sale, December 9, 2013. One, a typed letter signed, is estimated to sell for $10,000-$15,000, the other, an autograph letter signed, for $30,000-$50,000

Both composed during the Watergate scandal and sent less than a month apart in May and June of 1973, the first is Nixon's formal acceptance of Ehrlichman's resignation, the second a hand-delivered follow-up note from Nixon's pen of a more personal nature. In both, Nixon gives thanks for Ehrlichman's service, expresses his regrets and, in the first letter, confidence in the final outcome, and,  with a tip o' the hat to Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., in the second letter advises him to "keep the faith" (without the controversial Congressman's signature  tag, "baby!") and assures him that "all will be OK because we are right."

He was wrong. All would not turn out okay. It was a disaster for the President, all who closely worked with him and pledged their personal loyalty, and the country.

On April 30, 1973, President Nixon made a televised address to the nation announcing the "resignation" of three top aides, John D. Ehrlichman, H. R. Haldeman and John Dean, arguably the most powerful figures in the administration after the President.  Eighteen days later, Nixon wrote  the  Dear John letter to Ehrlichman:

May 18, 1973

Dear John:

It is with the deepest regret that I write to acknowledge your letter of resignation.

This letter will be brief, though my heart is full. I believe you know, better than I could say, just how much your loyal assistance has meant to me in the crucible of the Presidency, how deeply I respect the courage and self-sacrifice that now prompt your leaving, and how sorely missed you will be.

Since the days that I first came to the White House, you have been close adviser, companion, and friend. These have been critical years for our country -- years when decisions were made that will benefit America and the world for the rest of this century.

When our children look back on these times, they will know, just as I do now, that your contribution to building a better America has been enormous. Few men have done so much good in so short a time. And no President has ever been more grateful for that service.

Pat joins me in saying, from our hearts, that we wish only the best for you and Jeanne and your family in the time ahead -- as  you so well deserve.

Sincerely,

[signed] RN

[post-script in holograph]:

I have every confidence in the final outcome - love you

John Erlichman.

The second letter is one of the great rarities of presidential autograph material, a Nixon autograph letter signed while President. Here, less than four weeks after accepting Ehrlichman's forced resignation, a wounded Nixon tries to be encouraging:

6-12-73

Dear John -

Your letter was honest, candid and direct in the Erlichman style! I appreciated it very much + will look into every item you raised.

I'm sure you know how much I miss Bob and you. No President ever had two more able + loyal advisers. I feel for you both in this difficult time. And I feel for your families - for your lovely wife for example and your fine family.

I only wish I could help.

Keep the faith - ! After reading the material you sent me I'm inclined to join up! I see and know how Bob + you have been sustained in this difficult time. All will come out OK because we are right.

We will pass over Nixon's wish; of course he couldn't help, he'd have to confess his culpability in the Watergate cover-up. I do not know what material Ehrlichman sent the President or what group Nixon was then inclined to join but, given the circumstances, his enlistment in the French Foreign Legion would have satisfied all concerned except, perhaps, for the French general staff who prefer that enlistees without a soupçon of élan working K.P. duty in the middle of the desert not be ex-U.S. Presidents. Tellement embarrassant! A stain on esprit de corps and all that.

The firing of Ehrlichman, Haldeman and Dean was intended by Nixon to staunch the political bleeding of the Watergate scandal, and to sell the idea that culpability stopped with those three aides. Neither Congress nor the public believed it, and throughout the summer of 1973 a Senate investigative committee under Senator Sam Ervin revealed an ongoing pattern of corruption and law breaking within the administration, dating from its earliest years, i.e.  the so-called “Plumbers” group under Ehrlichman, designed to plug press leaks; the compilation of an “enemy’s list” to harass political opponents with IRS audits and other such “dirty tricks.” The break-in at the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972 proved to be only one example in a pattern of lawlessness. The House Judiciary Committee, using the Oval office tapes that were disclosed by the Ervin committee, voted articles of impeachment against Nixon. With conviction in the Senate and removal from office a near certainty, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974 - the only U.S. President ever to do so.

In January 1975 a jury convicted Ehrlichman of perjury, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. He served eighteen months in Federal prison in Arizona.

Near the end of his sentence, on April 12, 1978, Ehrlichman wrote a letter (included here with Nixon's hand-written note) to William Frates, his lawyer in his criminal trial. Ehrlichman was trying to find evidence of Nixon’s involvement in the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist,  Lewis J. Fielding:

Doubtless you noted the passage in Haldeman’s book...that...Nixon said he ‘might have’ personally authorized the Fielding break-in...Yesterday I was able able to establish beyond doubt that he (Nixon) said that not only to Haldeman but to others...” 

Ehrlichman remained bitter towards Nixon for not granting him a pardon before (he also petitioned Ronald Reagan for a pardon). But he came to understand the profound mistake he made by blindly following Nixon’s orders to implement break-ins and other “dirty tricks.” At around the same time Erlichman wrote this letter to Frates, he admitted to the judge in his trial that “I abdicated my moral judgments and turned them over to somebody else. And if I had any advice for my kids, it would be never - to never, ever defer your moral judgments to anybody."

Nixon did not have that advice in mind when he wrote to Ehrlichman, "When our children look back on these times, they will know, just as I do now, that your contribution to building a better America has been enormous" but Ehrlichman's advice to his kids - and by extension to all of us - is his true lasting and enormous contribution to building a better America - or anyplace else, for that matter.

I am reminded of the late Senator Bob Dole's delightfully sardonic remark characterizing a meeting among ex-Presidents Carter, Ford, and Nixon:"See no evil, hear no evil - and evil!"

Only one other Nixon autograph letter as president has appeared at auction, a polite thank-you note to Gen. and Mrs. Aldrich dated December 14, 1971 which sold at Christie’s-New York Dec 19, 2002 for $24,000.

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Letter images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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Raymond Chandler Hated This TV Private Eye

by Stephen J. Gertz

“Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man's nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a television set” (Raymond Chandler).

A one-page, signed typed letter from Raymond Chandler on his personal letterhead to his Hollywood literary agent, H.N. Swanson, is coming to auction at Bonham's Fine Books and Manuscripts sale December 11, 2013. Dated August 8, 1952, and sent from Chandler's home in La Jolla, CA, within he scorns TV private eyes and a particular detective show. It is estimated to sell for $1,500-$2,500.

Here, Chandler, his prose always a fine rustic wine with acidic finish, allows the vino to turn into pure vinegar as he discusses a TV private-eye series that he considers the worst show ever, dips its lead actor into carbolic acid without the sweet smell, excoriates the crass commercialization of the show's sponsor, and denigrates the sponsor's product, apparently the worst of its kind to have ever been foisted upon the public.

TV is so bad he wants a job writing for it.

The letter's a doozy and grand fun. It reads in full:

August 8, 1952

Mr. H.N. Swanson
8525 Sunset Blvd.
Hollywood 46, Calif.

Dear Swanie:

Thanks for your wire and good wishes, etc. What's with the TV situation nowadays? Don't' we ever get any offers? There isn't a decent private eye show on the air. I read in the paper where Lee Tracy had made Martin Kane over into something fresh and beautiful, so I tuned it in last night, if that's the correct expression for TV, and if television has done anything worse, I am so happy to have missed it. Between the commercials I tried to study Mr. Tracy's approach to his art but was handicapped by having to look at his face, which on television seems to consist of some doughy substance or perhaps a soft white wax. His talent as an actor is considerable in the right time and place and would have dwarfed the rest of the cast, esthetically speaking, had they not already been dwarfs. He lights a pipe full of Dill's Best with enough enthusiasm to make you think the stuff is tobacco which, if my recollection serves me, it is not. One of these days they ought to try playing the whole program at the tobacconist's counter. I wouldn't be a damned bit surprised if they did, since the obvious destiny of this sort of cheap program is to be one long continuous commercial.

Yours ever,

Ray

 

Martin Kane, Private Eye was television's first detective series. Its roots in radio, it ran from 1949 through 1954.

"Private detective Martin Kane worked in New York solving crimes. Depending on the year, Kane was either smooth and suave or hard bitten and the cooperation he received from the police depended on the year. The only constant was Happy McMann's tobacco shop where Kane hung out" (IMDb).

This was the era in TV when sponsors owned the programs and called the shots. Product placement was the norm and overt promotion of the product within the program was standard. What a coincidence that Happy McMann always has plenty of smoking products from United States Tobacco Co. in stock and that Martin Kane asks for its Dill's Best pipe tobacco by name while he and Happy shoot the breeze and exposition between plot points. Might as well call the show Happy Hour with Dill's, Martin Kane and the story thrown in to fill time between pipe-fulls.

Hollywood Golden age actor Lee Tracy, who, along with William Gargan, Mark Stevens, and Lloyd Nolan, portrayed Martin Kane on radio and TV, took over the role on television in 1952. If his face looked like a  "doughy substance or perhaps a soft white wax," it was likely due to early television's poor lighting highlighting a visage aged in booze; Tracy was an "unapologetic bad boy, notorious for drinking, missing work, and being flippant to interviewers" (Bright Lights).

Early in his film career he perfected the manic man-on-the-make with moxie character that Hollywood and audiences loved during the 1930s. "Tracy was the definitive brash, wily, fast-talking, stop-at-nothing operator. He skated around in perpetual overdrive, jabbing the air with his fingers, spitting out his lines like a machine-gun, wheedling and needling and swearing you can take out his appendix without ether if he's lying (he's got you there — he had it out already.) He was homely and scrawny with a strident nasal voice, but you can't help rooting for his brazen, devious hucksters and reveling in his shameless moxie. He's a jolt of pure caffeine; watching him in action is like gulping a couple of double espressos. Audiences in the early thirties loved his snappy style and irrepressible irreverence; they loved him because he was nobody's fool" (Ibid.).

Dill's Best shag was, apparently, at best strictly from rugs and Raymond Chandler wanted to ream Martin Kane, Private Eye with one of Dill's Best Pipe Cleaners to clear out the gunk. But at this point in Chandler's career his career had gone into hiding. The year before writing this letter, his final screenplay, for Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, was produced.  He and Hitch fell-out during the production and Hollywood never called again. Chandler wasn't getting any offers, was in the midst of writing The Long Goodbye (1953), and, strapped, needed green shag in his pipe to keep pests away from his door.

It's interesting to contemplate Chandler writing a detective series for TV. Never an ace with plotting - his novels are almost incoherent in that department - he wished to write for a medium that, at least in its early years, was plot-driven. And then the sponsors: he would, without a doubt, have been subject to their whims and interference. I think it safe to say that if Chandler had ever actually written for television it would have been a personal and professional disaster.

MARLOWE, Episode 3, The Case of the Bottle Blonde

INTERIOR: Happy McMann's Beauty Supplies

 MARLOWE

Happy, from thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away. She was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket. I'm running out of quotes from my novels here, can you help me out, Hap?

HAPPY

You sure it was a real blonde, Phil?

MARLOWE

Only her hairdresser knows for sure. 

I'm going over there and put her on the grill.

CUT TO:

ESTABLISHING SHOT: EXTERIOR: Irma's Salon de Beauté on Hollywood Boulevard.

MARLOWE (Voice-Over)

It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in...

CUT TO:

INTERIOR: Irma's Salon de Beauté. 

Irma is sitting on a grill.

MARLOWE (voice-over)

...I had her in the hot seat. 

I'd brought a bottle along for spiritual purposes 

and poured her a drink.

IRMA

Scotch?

MARLOWE

Only my bartender knows for sure.

IRMA
(after downing a long gulp)

It's like butterscotch. Goes down nice n' easy.

MARLOWE

It should.
 It's Clairol Nice N' Easy Natural Butterscotch Blonde, 

permanent with 100% gray coverage. 

Tones and highlights in one easy step.

IRMA

You got me, gumshoe.
 I thought I could cover it up.

MARLOWE

Not in this town.
The streets are dark with something more then night.
But not that dark.

Now, spill. And don't leave any highlights out.

IRMA 

(Panicked, shaking her hair)

I can't. They're permanent!

MARLOWE
(Grabbing her by the shoulders)

Take it easy!

CUT TO: C/U on Marlowe

MARLOWE

 Nice N' Easy. From Clairol.

And now, an episode (alas, not the one with dwarfs) from the show Chandler scorned, Martin Kane, Private Eye starring Lee Tracy. Kane doesn't show-up until 5:42 into the program. He is lighting his pipe, full, of course, with Dill's, the better to solve this pickle.

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Letter image courtesy of Bonham's, with our thanks.
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A Gravity's Rainbow Archive Screams Across The Sky

by Stephen J. Gertz

A screaming comes across the sky.
- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow.

The most demanding novel anyone has ever written… [and] the most important work of fiction yet produced by any living writer - Bruce Allen, Library Journal, March 1, 1973.

A small archive of correspondence between novelist Thomas Pynchon and Bruce Allen, whose review of Gravity's Rainbow in the March 1, 1973 issue of Library Journal emitted the sparks to Pynchon's genius that would ignite an incandescent shower of praise, has come to market.

The archive includes a 200-word signed typed letter (carbon) from Allen to Pynchon effusively praising Gravity's Rainbow and referring him to Allen's review.

Two additional carbons of letters to Pynchon from Allen, dated late 1975 and mid- 1976 are included, as well as Allen's heavily annotated proof copy of Gravity's Rainbow used for his review and his copy of the book's first edition.

The centerpiece of the archive is Pynchon's 260-word response to Allen's initial letter on the author’s trademark graph paper, dated March 25, 1973, along with its envelope.

Pynchon acknowledges Allen’s praise gratefully (“Thank you for that really extravagant review of Gravity’s Rainbow. It was a good ego trip for me, and I guess it must’ve cheered up Viking’s advertising people too”). He goes on to agree, in principle, with Allen’s point that at $15 the hardcover is expensive (“...my feeling was that the whole fucking thing ought to be paperback”) and suggests Allen take it up with Viking, although he feels that Viking wasn’t as able to subsidize a project like Gravity’s Rainbow, as easily as say, Random House would have (“...to be fair, Viking is trying to survive as a smaller independent publisher...and it costs them more to put out a book than the biggies like Random House...Thanks for caring enough to write to Viking, anyhow”).

Then, forty years before the publishing world would be fractured by the rise of digital technology, Pynchon writes of the current state of publishing and the writer's place at the shallow end of the income stream.

"But till writers get their own publishing and distribution operation together, this 19th century dispensation wherein the Man gets to make off with 85-95% of the writer's earnings will go on prevailing, and all the talk is sort of academic.

The letter also provides a glimpse of the author’s thoughts on his place in the literary continuum at a critical juncture in his career and in the publishing industry. "If the book sells lousy they'll call it Viking's Folly, and if it sells good it will be a great enlightened Watershed In Publishing History or something…if anybody can predict…"

Pynchon manuscript and autograph material is legendarily scarce. According to ABPC, the only such Pynchon material to yet come to auction was a one-page signed letter dated 1981 refusing permission to write about and anthologize some of his early stories. It sold at Swann Galleries for $12,000 on April 23, 2009. The cache under notice, however, is a much more important and significant catch, offered by Glenn Horowitz Bookseller.

V., Pynchon's 1963 debut novel, showed things to come. George Plimpton, reviewing it in the New York Times declared Pynchon "a young writer of staggering promise."  The Crying of Lot 49, his 1966 short novel, received decent notices but was, as far as Pynchon was concerned, a failure. Ten years after V., Gravity's Rainbow delivered on the promise, elevating Pynchon to the modern pantheon of novelists.

Above, something you scarcely, if ever, see: the highly private and reclusive Pynchon's autograph signature, the earliest dated yet to appear in the market, as far as I've been able to determine. It closes his last paragraph, which ends with a four-word summary that is almost cosmically amusing in retrospect:

“We’ll see what happens.”

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All images courtesy of Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, with our thanks.
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Arthur Miller On Marilyn Monroe's Sense Of Humor, Etc.

by Stephen J. Gertz

By Richard Avedon, 1958.

 "I am quite conceivably prejudiced, but I think this collection is a wonder of Marilyn’s wittiness. As Lillian Russell, Marilyn sits [on] the solid gold bicycle just inexpertly enough to indicate that she is, after all, a lady… Her hands lace around the bike handles so much more femininely than they grasp the fan as Clara Bow. And here again is the difference between imitation and interpretation, between making an affect and rendering a spirit."

The above quotation was partially cut from Arthur Miller's feature article, My Wife Marilyn, which appeared in Life magazine, December 22, 1958, in its Christmas issue to accompany photographer Richard Avedon's spread, Marilyn Monroe: Fabled Enchantresses. Within, Avedon shot Monroe  as Lillian Russell, Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, and Jean Harlow. Miller’s essay describes Monroe’s “miraculous sense of sheer play” in channeling these celebrated sex symbols of the stage and screen and her role as their successor.

Miller's signed typescript draft of the article's final published version, with holograph corrections, revisions, and indicated cuts (almost a third of its final length), has come to market along with a signed typed letter by Miller to Life editor, Ralph Graves, dated October 31, 1958, that the playwright sent along with this final draft. They are being offered for $28,500.

 "Here is the article. The only stuff I have added is at the end, with the exception of one or two words in the body of the text. It reads like a precis of the original, I’m afraid, much of the feeling having been removed. But it will do, I guess. If you’ve got something better to use please do so. I’m sorry, again, that the wires got crossed and I conceived it for a much greater length. In any case, the photos are still miraculous."

The "feeling" remains within pages six through eleven of the eleven recto-only leaves of graph paper, which have been almost entirely struck through by Miller, who, once again, writes about Marilyn's sense of humor as evidenced in the photos. She possessed a keen sense of herself, completely self-aware and not only in on the joke but a collaborator in its creation. Though unschooled, this was a very smart woman; only the highly intelligent can play "dumb" with aplomb.

"As in life so in these pictures --- she salutes fantasy from the shore of the real until there comes a moment when she carries us, reality and all, into the dream with her, and we are grateful. Her wit here consists of her absolute commitment to two ordinarily irreconcilable opposites --- the real feminine and the man's fantasy of femininity. We know she knows the difference in these pictures, but is refusing to concede that there is any contradiction, and it is serious and funny at the same time."

The typescript, with its mounting revisions, examines in detail the nuances behind each pose and each portrait, exploring at length Monroe’s approach to portraying these prior stars and the cultural milieu from which they emerged.

Though a few lines and one longer passage from the original manuscript were salvaged for the published version, most were cut. These excisions, found here, include a comparison of Monroe’s face to “a lake under a changing sky” and Miller’s conviction that she is “the living proof that Boticelli was only painting the literal truth.” Where the published essay is a polished description of the electricity of Avedon’s set and Monroe’s ability to capture the “spirit of an age” and document “a kind of history of our mass fantasy, as far as seductresses are concerned,” this typescript reveals an unedited account of not only an inspired collaboration, but Miller’s beguilement over his wife’s many talents.

In Monroe's last interview before her death, appearing in Life on August 3, 1962, she discussed fame in general and hers in particular and pleaded to writer Richard Meryman, "Please don't make me a joke."

"The often bizarrely explained circumstances of her death and her image as a sex goddess/dumb blonde have at times prevented Monroe from being perceived as more than a caricature. She was, however, much more, and even in those 'dumb' roles she displayed an elegance worthy of respect. Her director in The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder, recognized this quality and called her 'an absolute genius as a comic actress.' Monroe never lost her desire for life or her sense of humor despite her tribulations, and she treated with humor and insight the depersonalization that came with her status and that often tormented her life and career" (American National Biography).

Once, in a throwaway quip employing a homonym to lampoon that dumb blonde sex-goddess image she, perhaps unconsciously, suggested a subtext that seriously addressed the inner conflict between what she represented to others and her true self:

"I thought symbols were something you clash."

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Typescript and letter images courtesy of Royal Books, currently offering these items, with our thanks.

Marilyn Monroe photographs from Avedon's Fabled Enchantresses series can be viewed here.
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Of Related Interest:

Marilyn Monroe: Avid Reader, Writer & Book Collector.

Heartbreaking Marilyn Monroe Letter Estimated at $30,000 - $50,000. 

The Most Significant Marilyn Monroe Autograph Document Comes To Auction.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald's Earliest Writing Influences

by Stephen J. Gertz

A fascinating and insightful F. Scott Fitzgerald letter has come into the marketplace as part of a current online auction from Nate D. Sanders ending Thursday, June 27th, at 5PM, Pacific.

Addressed to Egbert S. Oliver (1902-1989), Professor of American Literature at Williamette University (and later Portland State University, as well as Fulbright lecturer in India) in Oregon, and author, the letter briefly discusses Fitzgerald's earliest influences on his writing.

It reads, in full:

1307 Park Avenue,
Baltimore, Maryland,
January 7, 1934.

Mr. Egbert S. Oliver
Williamette University,
Salem, Oregon

Dear Mr. Oliver:

The first help I ever had in writing in my life was from my father who read an utterly imitative Sherlock Holmes story of mine and pretended to like it.

But after that I received the most invaluable aid from one Mr. C.N. B. Wheeler then headmaster of the St. Paul Academy now the St. Paul Country Day School in St. Paul, Minnesota. 2. From Mr. Hume, then co-headmaster of the Newman School and now headmaster of the Canterbury School. 3. From Courtland Van Winkle in freshman year at Princeton -- now professor of literature at Yale (he gave us the book of Job to read and I don't think any of our preceptorial group ever quite recovered from it.) After that comes a lapse. Most of the professors seemed to me old and uninspired, or perhaps it was just that I was getting underway in my own field.

I think this answers your question. This is also my permission to make full use of it with or without my name. Sorry I am unable from circumstances of time and pressure to go into it further.

Sincerely,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

In  1932,  Fitzgerald  moved to  Baltimore with  Zelda  and their  daughter, Francis Scott ("Scottie"), renting a  house on the estate of architect  Bayard Turnbull; Zelda's mental health  was declining and Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins was considered  the best place for  her to receive therapy. She was later treated at Baltimore's Sheppard Pratt Hospital.

After a fire on the Turnbull estate - which some attributed to Zelda - Fitzgerald moved the household to 1307 Park Avenue, near Baltimore's monument to Fitzgerald's ancestor, Francis Scott Key.

It was in Baltimore that Fitzgerald finished Tender Is The Night. He had been working on it for years and had high hopes for its success and literary acclaim; it had been nine years since The Great Gatsby appeared. Tender Is The Night was published on April 12, 1934, four months after this letter was written. Fitzgerald's mention of "time and pressure" precluding further detail surely refers to the crushing weight of beating the novel into final shape and the anxiety he felt about the novel's reception, all while coping with Zelda's problems and trying to raise a child.

Though the reviews were, for the most part, favorable, Tender Is The Night was "assassinated" (Bruccoli) in the marketplace.

"People who lament the failure of Tender Is The Night generally ignore the fact that Fitzgerald had not had a best-seller since This Side Of Paradise, and even it was not one of the top ten in 1920. Fitzgerald was a popular figure, but he was never really a popular novelist in his lifetime. The Great Gatsby, surely one of the great novels written in this country, was a comparative flop in 1925, selling only about 25,000 copies. Yet one never hears laments about the popular failure of this novel. Between the serialization in Scribner's Magazine and and the 13,000 copies of Tender Is The Night sold in 1934-35, it probably reached as many readers as did The Great Gatsby" (Matthew J. Bruccoli, The Composition of Tender Is The Night, p. 4).

"It is true that Fitzgerald's most ambitious novel was a failure in its own time; and it is true that its reception hurt and puzzled Fitzgerald, and doubtlessly contributed to his crack-up" (ibid).

Here we glimpse Fitzgerald on the cusp of the publication of that book, one he desperately hoped would recapture his literary reputation and secure his finances, a life-saving, do-or-die effort complicated by his wife and marriage falling apart and responsibilities of child-rearing. He takes a moment to recall from dark nights this side of hell how it began for him, when the support of his father and the encouragement of his teachers promised tender nights this side of paradise.

As of this writing the bid is $6,134.

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Images courtesy of Nate D. Sanders Auctions, with our thanks.
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Of Related Interest:

Original F. Scott Fitzgerald Manuscript Poems Discovered.

F. Scott Fitzgerald at Princeton.

Original F. Scott Fitzgerald Manuscript Poems Discovered.
  
In Paris With Scott, Zelda, Kiki, Ernest, Gertrude, Etc.

The $175,000 Dust Jacket Comes to Auction.

A Not-So-Great Gatsby.
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Raymond Chandler Gripes To His Agent About Agents

by Stephen J. Gertz

In a letter dated July 11, 1952, Raymond Chandler wrote his agent, H.N. Swanson ("Swanie") mentioning, among other things, that he is "still fussing around with the end of a book, a draft of which I unwisely sent East to Carl Brandt and Bernice Baumgarten [of Brandt & Brandt of New York, Baumgarten an associate and wife of novelist James Gould Cozzens] and received in return a lot of picayunish criticism which annoyed me without being in the least helpful."

Chandler goes on to muse about not being the sort of writer who publishes in the Saturday Evening Post, and reflects on the relationship between writers and agents. "During my fairly long association with poor old Sydney Sanders, I did learn exactly how to benefit by the advice of New York literary agents. Thank them politely, and then do something else." Brandt and Baumgarten were Chandler's former agent and editor, respectively; the manuscript they had criticized was The Long Goodbye. (See Selected Letters, p 315n.)

In another typically colorful and direct letter by Chandler to Swanson, dated December 5, 1952 and three pages in length, Chandler explains why he wants to handle matters concerning his book rights himself. Chandler begins by "remarking in passing that you (including Eddie) are the only agent that I have been able to like," then goes on to once again air his grievances with former agents Baumgarten and Brandt, alluding to their criticism of his draft of The Long Goodbye.

He then launches into a page and a half critique of the ineffectualness and superfluousness of literary agents in general. "The English agent and the American agent can't even write a contract; they don't know when royalty statements are due; they don't know if they are paid when they should be paid; they don't even know when the books are published unless they get author's copies, and they don't always get author's copies. The whole thing is just a bluff." Elsewhere he declares, "I will never again submit a book manuscript to an agent unless a publisher has first approved it. If I have to get kicked in the teeth, okay, but I won't take it from anybody but the head man." 

Chandler provides several other reasons for wanting to handle his book rights himself, and offers to let Swanson continue to handle matters related to motion picture, television, radio, and serial rights.

I was acquainted with Swanie (1899-1991), who was still active when I was a story editor in Hollywood during the early 1980s; I spoke to him a few times. The dominant literary agent in his heyday he was still respected as one of the greats by those in the know; his client list was awe-inspiring. He began as a writer and editor; he knew the writers soul and how to deal with those who would rob it and then pick their pockets. He was of the old-school and by the 1980s was sort of a fossil in the new Hollywood to those who didn't know any better.

"Harold Norling Swanson, known as Swanie, was a native of Centerville, Iowa, and a graduate of Grinnell College. He began his career as a writer and was a founder and the editor for eight years of College Humor, a Chicago-based monthly that became a showcase for new talent. In 1931, he moved to California and became a producer, making about a dozen films for RKO.

"Three years later, Mr. Swanson rented a building on Sunset Boulevard and became a pioneering literary agent. By 1939, when 110 screen writers were under contract to 20th Century Fox, he represented 80 of them.

"Among his early clients for screenplays were William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pearl Buck and Raymond Chandler. More recently, he represented the Hollywood efforts of writers like Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Theroux and Joseph Wambaugh. Among the scripts he sold were the 1946 version of "The Postman Always Rings Twice," "The Big Sleep" (1946), "Old Yeller" (1957), "Butterfield 8" (1960) and "The Mosquito Coast" (1986)" (NY Times obit).

These letters are being offered by Bonham's in their Fine Books & Manuscripts sale, February 17, 2013.

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Images courtesy of Bonham's, with our thanks.
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