Harold Ward (1879-1950)-The First Tale of the South Seas

Aka H.W. Starr, Ward Sterling, Zorro
Songwriter, Press Agent/Publicist, Postmaster, City Clerk, National Guardsman, Newspaper Reporter & Editor, Author
Born January 5, 1879, Coleta, Illinois
Died March 1, 1950, Sterling, Illinois

Harold Emmons Ward was born on January 5, 1879, in Coleta, Illinois, a small town located west of Chicago. His parents were Milton and Sarah Ward. The Ward family moved to Mitchell, South Dakota, when Ward was a child. They returned to Sterling, Illinois, which is close to Coleta. Both places are in Whiteside County. Fantasy author Terry Brooks (b. 1944) is also from Sterling.

In his schooling, Harold Ward went only so far as the eighth grade, but he accomplished much and was active all of his adult life. He teamed up with Arthur Gillespie (1860-1914) in writing songs, sketches, and plays. He also traveled as a press agent for theatrical producers Sam (1878-1905) and Lee Shubert (1871-1953). Ward worked for William A. Brady (1863-1950) as a publicist for boxer, actor, and performer James J. "Gentleman Jim" Corbett (1866-1933). He spent much of his career, however, in the newspaper business.

In 1900, Ward was working as a newspaper reporter in Sterling. He was with the Sterling Standard until 1904, when he took a job with Rural Life, a weekly farm paper published in Sterling. In 1906 he was city editor of the Dixon Sun, and at some point editor of the Freeport Standard, both in Illinois. At the time of the 1910 census, Ward was living in Chicago and working as a theatrical press agent. By 1918, he was back in Sterling and employed as that city's first city clerk.

Not many authors in Weird Tales were involved in their hometowns the way Harold Ward was. In addition to being city clerk, he served as postmaster from 1924 to 1930 or after, and he served two terms as president of the Sterling chamber of commerce. Ward spent twenty years with the Illinois National Guard and retired as a major.

Ward returned to the newspaper business in 1934, when he began working for the Sterling Daily Gazette. He was an editor and writer for that paper. On March 1, 1950, he died at his desk, probably from a heart ailment. He had been in poor health for some time. Ward was married twice and had children. Here's an interesting detail for those of us with redheads in the family: Harold Ward had red hair.

Harold Ward had stories in pulp magazines and story magazines beginning with "Ethics" in Snappy Stories, September 2, 1917, and ending with "Bride of the Ape" in Mystery Novels and Short Stories, September 1939. Coincidentally or not, his career as a pulp writer was bracketed by war. He had nearly four dozen stories in The Black Mask from the first issue in April 1920 to April 15, 1923, writing sometimes as himself and sometimes under his pseudonyms Ward Sterling and H.W. Starr. Among other magazines that published his stories were The Argosy, Breezy Stories, Double-Action Gang Magazine, The Dragnet Magazine, Mystery Adventure Magazine, Saucy Stories, Snappy Stories, Spy Stories, Telling Tales, and 10 Story Book. There were more than one hundred in all.

Ward wrote most of his stories on his own, but he also collaborated with John Irving Pearce, Jr. (1860-1941), Ralph Milne Farley (1887-1963), and Otis Adelbert Kline (1891-1946). (Pearce also collaborated with Joseph Faus, about whom I wrote earlier in this series.) Ward's story with Kline was "The Yellow Killer" in The Detective Magazine #47, August 29, 1924.

Although Otis Adelbert Kline was born in Chicago, he grew up on a farm in Whiteside County, Illinois, the same county in which Coleta and Sterling are located. Like Ward, Kline was a songwriter early in his career. He was also a newspaperman. I don't know when or for how long, but he worked as an advertising man with the Sterling Standard. Kline was twelve years younger than Ward, but they knew each other, possibly well before they worked together on their story "The Yellow Killer." Then or later, Kline worked as Ward's literary agent.

In February 1935, Dell Magazines put out a magazine called Doctor Death, a continuation under a new title of All Detective Magazine. The title character is a villain. His goal, to quote from Wikipedia, is to "restore the earth 'to its original state. Man will dwell upon it again in primitive simplicity. And I [. . .] will be hailed as the savior of mankind'." In other words, a return to Utopia. Doctor Death ran for just three issues, from February to April 1935. Each issue had a full-length novel from a pseudonymous author who called himself Zorro. The illustrator for those three novels was Jay McCardle (1899-1960). To fill out each issue, there were stories by other authors, including one by Arthur J. Burks (1898-1974), who also contributed to Weird Tales. Zorro by the way was Harold Ward. His Doctor Death stories:

• "12 Must Die" in Doctor Death (Feb. 1935)
• "The Gray Creatures" in Doctor Death (Mar. 1935)
• "The Shriveling Murders" in Doctor Death (Apr. 1935)
• "Waves of Madness," which was not published until 2009
• "The Red Mist of Death" in Pulp Vault #5 (1989)

Ward wrote fifteen stories for Weird Tales, beginning with "The Skull" in the first issue, March 1923, and ending with "The Life-Eater" in June 1937. In fact, he and Julian Kilman (1878-1954) were the only writers to have stories in the first issues of both The Black Mask and Weird Tales. There were three stories in a row with the word "house" in their titles. I wonder if they could be in a series. Ward also had four stories in Detective Tales, including one with a variant of "The Man Who . . ." type title, "The Detective Who Never Failed" in July/August 1923.

Harold Ward's Stories in Weird Tales and Detective Tales

Weird Tales

• "The Skull" (Mar. 1923)
• "The Bodymaster" (Apr. 1923)
• "The Killer" (Feb. 1924)
• "The House in the Forest" (Mar. 1924)
• "The House of the Living Dead" (Mar. 1932)
• "House of the Lizard" (July 1932)
• "The Ravening Monster" (Sept. 1932)
• "Germs of Death" (Mar. 1933)
• "The Thing from the Grave" (July 1933)
• "Dead Men Walk" (Aug. 1933)
• "The Closed Door" (Dec. 1933)
• "The Master of Souls" (July 1934)
• "Clutching Hands of Death" (Mar. 1935)
• "The Man with the Blue Beard" (Dec. 1935)
• "The Life-Eater" (June 1937)

Detective Tales

• "Who Killed 'Spot' Bohnett?" (Oct. 16, 1922)
• "Fragments of the Sun" (May/June 1923)
• "The Detective Who Never Failed" (July/Aug. 1923)
• "Secret Service" (Mar. 1924)

I don't think there can be any doubt that H.W., who wrote a letter printed in the second issue of Weird Tales (Apr. 1923), was Harold Ward.

Harold Ward's Story:

"The Skull" is a short story in four parts. It is set on an unnamed island in an unnamed chain of islands. Indications are that this is in the South Seas, and so we have the first South Sea adventure in Weird Tales. As with other stories in the first issue, this one deals with murder and with vengeance delivered from beyond the grave. As in "The Return of Paul Slavsky," there is a case of decapitation.

"The Skull" is a pretty harsh and unpleasant story. It's the second to have the n-word in it. Two white characters speak it, but it's also in the narration, though perhaps in the thoughts of one of those men, thoughts which are of course known to an omniscient narrator. Like I said, "The Skull" is a pretty unpleasant story, but it is probably accurate in its description of relationships between the races in some remote places of the world in the 1920s. (The story is set on a plantation of some kind.) Those wishing to cancel Ward's story will find all of the reason they need in his use of the n-word and the following sentence: "For the supremacy of the white man must be maintained for the common good of all." On the other hand, they should know that the white men, one more horrible than the other, both die by poison in a weird case of murder-accidental suicide. In other words, they both get their comeuppance.

The term beche-de-mer, referring to a type of pidgin English, comes up in the story. That would seem to place it in the area of New Guinea and nearby islands. Bêche-de-mer more commonly refers to the sea cucumber, which figures in a far more well-known story, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe (1838).

Harold Ward worked with Arthur Gillespie. Here is the sheet music for their song "It Makes a Lot of Difference When You Are with the Girl You Love" (1909). Charlotte Blake (1885-1979) wrote the music.

Writing as Zorro, Arthur Ward penned five novels of the pulp character Doctor Death. Three of these appeared in the pulp magazine Doctor Death in 1935. They were reprinted by Corinth Publications in 1966 with cover art by Robert Bonfils (1922-2018).

An article from the Sterling Daily Gazette, September 7, 1929, page 5, regarding two men who at one time or other called both Chicago and Whiteside County, Illinois, home.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley