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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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.

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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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The Writer Who Acquitted a King

by Linda Hedrick

Elizabeth Mackintosh, aka Gordon Daviot,
aka Josephine Tey

She’s a mystery.  She’s also a writer of mysteries.  She’s known as a mystery writer read by people who don’t like mysteries.  Significantly, she solved a five-hundred-year-old mystery.

Few people have heard of Elizabeth Mackintosh, even those familiar with her work. Playwright and author, she died in 1952 at the age of fifty-five.  Born and raised in Iverness, Scotland, Mackintosh was trained as a physical training instructress, and taught for eight years at various schools in Scotland and England.  When her mother died she quit to stay and take care of her invalid father.  She started to write while tending him and began to sell some stories.  She also began to seriously study playwriting and theater.

Her most successful play was Richard of Bordeaux, which she wrote using the pen name Gordon Daviot.  It was first performed in 1932, and was so successful that it established her name as a dramatist, and made a name for the young leading actor and director, John Gielgud.

Her interests informed her writing.  An amateur psychologist, she studied people and tried to ferret out their personal mysteries – who they really were and what they kept hidden from the world. She prided herself on reading faces and facial expressions and even studied their penmanship.  All of these skills she aptly applied to her most famous mystery, Daughter of Time, which she wrote under the nom de plume Josephine Tey.

Richard III
Artist unknown, Late 15th Century
National Portrait Gallery, London

The protagonist of five of her mysteries (and a minor character in another) is Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard.  In Daughter of Time, Inspector Grant is laid up in a hospital.  Like Tey herself, Grant studies faces.  Given a portrait of Richard III, he finds him to be quite honorable, but ill at ease.  He is horrified to find out the man’s villainous reputation, and sets out to prove his initial instincts correct.  From his hospital bed, with the help of friends and a young researcher, he comes to the conclusion that Richard III was not the heinous murderer he was thought to be, and offers another answer as to who killed the princes in the tower, Richard III’s nephews.

Earliest known portrait of Richard III, 1520s
Society of Antiquaries

Without revealing the entire book, some of the salient facts presented by Tey are compelling.  For one thing, Richard was never formally accused of either kidnapping nor murdering his nephews.  One would think this would be an issue at a time when his reign was being challenged.  Secondly, their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, remained on good terms with Richard, which makes her the bigger monster if she had thought him guilty of the murders of her sons.  Finally, there wasn’t any political advantage to get rid of them.  They were more in the way of Henry Tudor (Henry II).

Frontispage of 1st Quarto
Shakespeare's Richard III

That history is written by the victors has never been more true than in the case of Richard III.  Sir Thomas More was the author of the unfinished History of King Richard the Third (1513), and he served Henry VIII, son of Henry Tudor who vanquished Richard.  To say that he toed the party line is an understatement.  Also, More was eight years old when Richard died, so what he wrote was hearsay with a Tudor bent.  Shakespeare has been known to tweak historical facts for the sake of his art, and unfortunately his play, Richard III, has been taken all these centuries to be a history rather than a tragedy.  However, his play may be the reason that Richard III has remained in popular memory, whereas other British monarchs have not been of much interest.   One also has to consider that at the time of these writings history was not even a genre of its own – it was considered a subset of literature, so historical accuracy was not necessarily a focus or consideration.

Sir Thomas More, 1527, by Hans Holbein the Younger
National Portrait Gallery, London

A recurring theme in Tey’s work is injustice, and in Daughter of Time she successfully demonstrates that once an idea becomes a part of culture it is hard to correct even with contrary evidence.  Her keen detection, centuries after the fact, has been so impressive that the various Richard III societies that have sprung up internationally have made her their poster child. This book was called by American crime writer and literary critic Dorothy B. Hughes “not only one of the most important mysteries of the year, but of all years of mystery.”

True First Edition

And Elizabeth Mackintosh remained a mystery until the day she died. John Gielgud wrote, "Her sudden death...was a great surprise and shock to all her friends in London. I learned afterward that she had known herself to be mortally ill for nearly a year, and had resolutely avoided seeing anyone she knew. This gallant behaviour was typical of her and curiously touching, if a little inhuman, too.”

If you are interested in the mystery of history, Daughter of Time is the mystery for you. Think CSI without the gadgets; only a sharp mind as a tool. A bit inhuman, perhaps, but remaining aloof from humanity while investigating it is the fictional detective’s stock in trade. Recall Sherlock Holmes and  Hercule Poirot. And then remember that Josephine Tey, née Elizabeth Mackintosh, the mysterious mystery writer, was not a detective in a novel. She was the real thing.

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TEY, Josephine [pseud. of Elizabeth Mackintosh]. Daughter of Time. London: Peter Davies, 1951. True first edition. Octavo. 221 pp. Red cloth, dust jacket. 

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