Summer Reading List No. 8-Secret of the Lost Race by Andre Norton

I began reading Secret of the Lost Race by Andre Norton (1959; Ace Books, 1972) late in summer and finished it the day after the equinox. It was originally published as half of an Ace Double with a great cover by Ed Valigursky (1926-2009). The cover artist for my edition is unknown. That's unfortunate, because it's a great and evocative image: colorful, mysterious, inviting to the reader, a depiction of a truly alien landscape. The artist should have received credit, just as every artist should. I'm an artist and so may be biased, but artists have very often given us better, more evocative, more fully realized science-fictional worlds than have authors. We often read science fiction and fantasy based on cover art and illustration versus anything else. Sometimes the story is a disappointment by comparison. Maybe that's more common with visually oriented people versus those who are verbally oriented.

* * *

Andre Norton (1912-2005) can always be counted on to set up a good and intriguing situation. She was also good with sequences of action and adventure. Secret of the Lost Race starts out well by thrusting a young city-dweller into a precarious life on a harsh and distant planet. After a while, though, the story gets bogged down in talk and politics. There is also the introduction of complex physical environments, which can be a problem in any story. I remember a Travis McGee novel in which the story hinges on action taking place within such an environment. I became nearly lost, and because of that, the story was nearly lost to me. I guess a piece of advice for any writer is not to force your story into situations like that. Let it unfold easily instead of with too much complexity. Your readers may not be able to follow you very well through the folds of your own brain.

* * *

The title Secret of the Lost Race may seem a little misleading, but maybe only because we think we already know what is a lost race: lost races are found in lost cities or villages or hamlets situated in lost valleys or lost lands or on lost islands or lost continents. They aren't out there in the great galaxy. Andre Norton didn't commit any literary offense by placing her lost race among the stars, nor by invoking any preconceived notions the reader may have of what is a lost race. I don't feel cheated or misled by her title. I enjoyed Secret of the Lost Race.

Andre's hero is a young man with special, secret, latent powers. He's like Luke Skywalker who doesn't know that he's the son of a Jedi (in one version of the Star Wars story anyway) and can control the Force. But her hero is also like the Superior Man of science fiction tradition (or cliché). He's not ordinary. He's not human. He's a member of a powerful lost race. (Judging from their language, I think they're Welsh.) Only in the end does he find this out. So again we have the Superior Man plot, this time combined with the Lost Race/Lost Worlds plot. Andre Norton wrote for young people. Maybe the Superior Man plot appeals to young people, especially the socially awkward, bookish, or lonely among them: maybe someday their great and special and secret powers will out and the world will recognize them for what they truly are.

* * *

Speaking of Star Wars, there are interesting and innovative weapons in Secret of the Lost Race. They are blades of pure energy, and I think they emerge from a solid handle or haft. There's a force axe and a force blade--a knife, I think. I recognized them right away as light sabers. Maybe the next weapon in the Star Wars galaxy should be a light axe.

* * *

I wanted to write about this book because it steers me back towards my previous series on Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lost Worlds, and Utopia. Those terms--Lost Worlds and Lost Race--can mean more than one thing. Andre Norton showed as much in her book. I have at least six meanings.

A Lost World or Lost Race can be:

1. Lost as in secret; not easily discoverable nor re-found after first being found. Brigadoon might be an example. This type of world is lost because somebody wants it that way.
2. Lost, stranded, or frozen in time, i.e., in the past or in a historical phase through which the rest of the world has passed, leaving the Lost World behind. Dian of the Lost Land by Edison Marshall (1935) is an example. Geographic isolation is usually the explanation for this type of Lost World.
3. Lost as in invoking feelings of longing or nostalgia for something that was greater, happier, and more pleasant than what we have today but has since become lost, i.e., Eden or Paradise or a lost Golden Age. (The lost Golden Age may be the author's own youth, as I suggested in my previous entries on Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein.)
4. Lost as in previously unknown; newly discovered, as in Utopia by Thomas More (1516).
5. Lost as in once known but then lost to the outside world, only to be rediscovered later, like the real-life Viking colonies on Greenland, if they had in fact survived rather than perished, if they had continued developing naturally, and if they had been rediscovered after a couple of centuries of isolation. This kind of Lost World might be lost only accidentally.
6. Lost as in bewildered, whether it be in time or space, or philosophically, spiritually, psychologically, existentially, etc. The TV show Lost is a good example.

It's important to remember that Lost Worlds can exist not only in space but also in time: a Lost World can be of the future--a future Earth--newly discovered by the Time Traveler, who can be a character but who might also be the author or the reader. Through science fiction and fantasy, we as readers may make our extraordinary voyages and encounter these new and perhaps previously Lost Worlds, all in the comfort of our own rooms. Other planets can be Lost Worlds, too, equivalent to the previously undiscovered lands of the still geographically open earth of our historical past. Lost Worlds can exist in the past, too. Robert E. Howard's stories of Conan and his Hyborian Age are good examples of that. Remember that those stories first appeared in Weird Tales, and so Utopia, by way of the Lost Worlds story, found its way into the pages of "The Unique Magazine." And so I give away half of my thesis in this series.

* * *

If my taxonomy of Lost Worlds is accurate, then maybe Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars--the Barsoom of John Carter--falls into the third and/or fourth categories, with elements of the second category, too. The idea put forth is that Barsoom is a conservative Utopia, just as Lost Worlds that came before it in literature--worlds created by H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling for example--were conservative. The conservative Utopia, then, is imperfect. Men must struggle against each other and against the elements and the forces of nature. They must be tested and they must prove themselves. The conservative Utopia of Lost Worlds allows the author and the reader to put himself or herself in the shoes of the protagonist, and so he or she is tested and proves himself or herself. Lost Worlds is wish-fulfillment. That seems pretty plain to me. It seems pretty plain to me, too, that the sixth category of Lost Worlds described above is unlikely to appear in the conservative Utopia, for the Conservative is by definition not a modern man, nor is he tormented by the dilemmas of modernity. (A questioning, seeking, self-aware protagonist in a Lost Worlds setting might make for a good story, though.)

* * *

I'm not saying that I agree with that interpretation exactly, that the Lost Worlds story is the conservative version of Utopia. I would like to read more about it first. Unfortunately, more than one paper on the subject is locked up behind a paywall. (I thought walls were bad.) Anyway, the progressive Utopia is, in contrast, perfect. There is no struggle, only peace. All needs and desires are met by the State, which is coterminous in the progressive imagination with Society. At long last, here is Utopia: a perfect gray sludge of a thoroughly homogenized and dehumanized humanity, living together in perfect happiness, peace, material comfort--and stasis. (You might be able to detect my bias here.) The progressive Utopia is a fantasy, too, not only on the part of the author (Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy [1888] is an example) but also of the reader. The problem with the progressive Utopia is that as a literary work, it's usually pretty dull (just like its subjects, their minds, and their lives). The place for the progressive Utopia is actually in the real world; the real-life Progressive prefers to bring his or her fantasy of Utopia to real life. And as we all know, that involves a lot of death. And I mean a lot of death.

* * *

As I've said before, every Utopia is also a Dystopia, because the subjects of Utopia must always be stripped of their humanity. We are not perfect, but in order for Utopia to be brought about, we must be harried into perfection. We are by our very nature free, but in order for there to be Utopia, we must submit to slavery. This is Dystopia, and this is the progressive goal.

* * *

I have three books (or four, depending on how you count) remaining in this series on my summer reading. Next comes Edgar Rice Burroughs and his own description of Dystopia.

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Edison Marshall in Rensselaer

In doing research on Edison Marshall (1894-1967), I contacted the Jasper County Public Library in Rensselaer, Indiana. The librarian sent me some information on one of the county's most famous sons and I returned the gesture by sending some information I had found at the Indiana State Library in Indianapolis. Now the library has written about Edison Marshall on its own blog in an article called "A Boy Called Tess: Rensselaer writer Edison Marshall." (1) Rensselaer has remembered Edison Marshall and two other writers, Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson (1863-1942) and James F. Hanley (1892-1942) (2), with stone markers at Milroy Park. You'll find a photograph of those markers on the library's website. Thanks to the Jasper County Public Library for further information on Edison Marshall and thanks to all librarians everywhere for their invaluable effort.

Notes

(1) The name "Tess" refers to Marshall's middle name, Tesla, which was abbreviated in his youth. Evidently his parents weren't taking any chances when they named him: whether AC or DC won out, they were covered. 

(2) No relation to me. Incidentally, Milroy Park is named in honor of General Robert H. Milroy (1816-1890), a Civil War general. Incidentally again, Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson was the mother of mystery writer Eleanor Frances Atkinson Cox Pratt, better known as Eleanor Blake (1899?-?), and grandmother of Wally Cox (1924-1973). Finally, Wally Cox and Marlon Brando were close friends, so close in fact that, according to Wikipedia, Brando kept Cox's ashes in his bedroom and talked to them every night. Now that's a weird tale.

Copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Edison Marshall (1894-1967)

Author, Adventurer
Born August 28, 1894, Rensselaer, Indiana (1)
Died October 29, 1967, Augusta, Georgia

I have been writing about authors whose stories were reprinted in Weird Tales of the 1970s, after they had died. Edison Marshall is chronologically the last, as he was born on August 28, 1894, in Rensselaer, Indiana. If you're drawing up a list of writers who were also adventurers, you can include Edison Marshall along with E. Hoffman Price, Gordon MacCreagh, and George Griffith. In any case, Edison Tesla Marshall, named for the two combatants in the "War of Currents," came from a family of adventurers, at least in their own small ways. His father studied law but settled in Rensselaer, bought the local newspaper, and married the schoolmarm, who bore the singular name of Lilly Bartoo. Lilly was an artist and a poet. Her sister Jessie was one of the first women in Indiana to operate a photographic studio. Marshall's Aunt Minnie gave up teaching at age sixty to become the operator of a linotype machine.

As a boy, Marshall hunted and fished around his northern Indiana home. In 1907, he moved to Medford, Oregon, when his father retired from the newspaper business to become a orchardist. Marshall attended the University of Oregon from 1913 to 1915 or 1916 and began writing fiction as a student. He sold his first story, "When the Fire Dies," (2) to The Argosy when he was a freshman and another to The Saturday Evening Post at age twenty-one. Adventure stories, historical novels, and pulp fiction poured out of his typewriter after that. Except for one year in the U.S. Army during World War I, Marshall made his living solely as a writer.

By his early twenties, Edison Marshall had lost his left thumb, but that didn't stop him from becoming a hunter and adventurer the world over. After the war, with literary success in hand (or four-fifths of a hand), Marshall set off on trips to the Arctic, Africa, French Indo-China, and Burma, where he hunted grizzly bears, leopards, tigers, and the great sladang, the wild ox of Malaya. His hunting trophies couldn't match his accomplishments as a writer however. Marshall twice had stories placed in the annual O. Henry collection. These included "The Heart of Little Shikara," selected the best American short story of 1921. He followed that with scores of stories and articles for The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Field and Stream, Good Housekeeping, Liberty, and many other magazines. In 1939, Marshall turned to writing novels of history and adventure. Nine of his books were adapted to the movies. Strength of the Pines (published in 1921, filmed for release in 1922) was the first. Others included Benjamin Blake (1941), which became Son of Fury (1942) starring Tyrone Power; Yankee Pasha: The Adventures of Jason Starbuck (1947), which had its title shortened to Yankee Pasha (1954); and The Viking (1951), the title of which was pluralized for the 1958 classic starring Kirk Douglas. Also worth noting are Marshall's lost worlds romance, Dian of the Lost Land (1935), and The Lost Colony (1964), a historical novel of the Roanoke settlement and Virginia Dare.

Married to a Southerner during his year in the army, Edison Marshall returned to Georgia (where he had been stationed) in 1926. Over the course of his long career, he wrote from a home he called Breetholm, a place name he used in his novel Benjamin Blake. Author of forty-nine novels in all, Marshall became one of the most successful of popular writers. Like so many in that category, however, he saw his popularity and sales go into decline in later years. The New York Times observed his passing, which took place on October 29, 1967, at his Georgia home, with a photograph and a very brief obituary. The man who had written millions of words in his lifetime received only a few with the notice of his death.

Edison Marshall's Stories in Weird Tales

"The Serpent City" (Summer 1973, originally in The Blue Book Magazine, Nov. 1919)

"The Son of the Wild Things" (Summer 1974, originally in The Blue Book Magazine)

Notes

(1) I have seen birth dates of August 28 and August 29, each apparently asserted with confidence. Edison Marshall's World War I draft card, however, gives the date as August 28. Unless someone can come up with a better source, I'll stick with that.

(2) Sam Moskowitz gave the title as "The Sacred Fire."

Edison Marshall wrote historical novels of every era, but here is one set in a place close to home for him: South Carolina. This cover for an abridged version of Castle in the Swamp (1951) is one of Dell's renowned map backs. The front cover artist was George Mayers. Coincidentally, I wrote about Perley Poore Sheehan the other day. His story "Monsieur De Guise" is also set in a large house in a swamp.

You should never pass up an opportunity to show covers like this one for Gypsy Sixpence. The original edition was from 1949. Here's a later paperback edition with a cover from an unknown artist. 

Another historical period, another map back, this time for The Upstart (1950).

It's only fitting that a man named Marshall would write Westerns. The cover artist's signature is in the lower left, but I can't read it.

Here's a fuzzy scan of the cover of Earth Giant, a novel from the early 1960s when Biblical epics and sword-and-sandal movies were all the rage. The artist's signature is as fuzzy as the rest of the image.

I like to show foreign-language editions of American novels and stories. The cover artist on this Spanish edition was Armengol Terre.

The figures on this Spanish-language edition look very Nordic. The artist's name begins with a "P" I think, but that's all I can read.

Here's a French edition with a sketchy cover drawing.

In addition to writing adventure stories and historical novels, Edison Marshall wrote fantasy and science fiction. Dian of the Lost Land, from 1935, was one of his more sustained works in those genres. It has been reprinted repeatedly, including in this issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries from April 1949. The cover artist was Lawrence Sterne Stevens, aka Lawrence (1884-1960).

Here's the cover of the first edition, published in 1935. The artist's signature is in the lower right, but it's too small and illegible for me to read. 

Here's a Spanish-language edition of the same book. The artist was Juan Pablo Bocquet (1904-1966), a native of Barcelona. Thanks to "A Spaniard" for the information.

Chilton reprinted Dian of the Lost Land in 1966. Curtis Books reissued it with a new title, The Lost Land, in 1972. The book concerns an air expedition to Antarctica and a search for a secret valley. According to the blurb on the back cover, two explorers discover "a lost world ruled by a race of creatures from the darkest depths of time." That same description might also be applied to "At the Mountains of Madness" by H.P. Lovecraft, which was written in 1931 but not published until 1936, when it was serialized in Astounding Stories. Without a doubt, Marshall's novel owes something to stories of lost worlds from the past. (She by H. Rider Haggard comes to mind.) In any case, we can add Dian of the Lost Land to the list of Arctic and Antarctic fantasy and science fiction. The cover art doesn't appear to be signed and there is no credit on the inside of the book, but this looks like the work of the Spanish artist Gervasio Gallardo, who was very active in creating fantasy book covers during the early 1970s.

The Viking, published in 1951, was one of Edison Marshall's most popular books . . .

In 1958, it was made into a movie called The Vikings, starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, and Janet Leigh. (Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh were married at the time.) That looks like Ernest Borgnine bringing up the rear in this poster. Borgnine, a navy veteran of World War II, died earlier this year. After sailing around on a longboat in The Vikings, he hopped onto a PT boat for his starring role in McHale's Navy. That show made its debut fifty years ago in October and ran for four seasons on ABC-TV. Unlike so many stage and movie actors who acted in television, he didn't become typecast and went on to play serious roles--and not-so-serious roles, such as the voice of Mermaid Man on SpongeBob SquarePants. In any case, we have lost another irreplaceable actor.

Finally, a publicity photo from The Vikings with Kirk Douglas and Janet Leigh, a woman of unquestionable beauty and extraordinary pulchritude. She made two of the very best American movies within two years of each other, Psycho in 1960 and The Manchurian Candidate in 1962.

Now, four "by the ways": First, Psycho was of course based on the book by Robert Bloch, a contributor to Weird Tales. Second: Janet Leigh appeared in The Manchurian Candidate and Three on a Couch with the actress Leslie Parrish. I call that an odd combination, not of actresses but of movies. Third, in Psycho, Janet Leigh was the woman killed by the creepy male lead. In The Manchurian Candidate, Leslie Parrish suffered that fate. Finally, have the children of Kirk Douglas and Janet Leigh ever acted together?

Text and captions copyright 2012, 2023 Terence E. Hanley 

Jack L. Thurston (1919-2017)

Artist, Illustrator, Sculptor, Movie Poster Artist

Born August 5, 1919, St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada

Died April 27, 2017, New York State

The last issue of Sam Moskowitz's four-issue revival of Weird Tales bears an unsigned cover illustration from an uncredited artist. Jaffery and Cook, in their index of Weird Tales, list the cover artist as "unknown." Earlier today, I posted the image with the same credit: "unknown." Now the mystery is solved and the artist is known. We can thank John at Monster Magazine World for that. Thanks, John!

As John points out in his comment, the cover illustration for Weird Tales, Volume 47, Number 4 (Summer 1974), is a reworked and flipped version of the cover of Satan's Disciples by Robert Goldston from 1962. As an artist, I can see that there's something wrong in the reproduction of the Weird Tales cover. Now I know why. Here's the cover:

Now here's the original:

Now here they are side by side:

As you can see, the whole image has been darkened and recolored, and the background and the other figures have been removed. In addition, the rocks have been replaced with a table, a cup, a skull, and a couple of standing braziers, suggesting a scene of human sacrifice or a black mass. I wonder if another artist or even the engraver reworked the original image somehow. The illustration seems too poor in quality to have been a reworked version of the original art, suggesting that Mr. Thurston was not responsible. It looks to me like a swipe. In any case, the artist's signature is clearly legible in the lower right corner of the cover of Satan's Disciples. It reads "Thurston" and thereby reveals the rest of the mystery.

Jack LeRoy Thurston was born on August 5, 1919, in St. Catherines, Ontario. He's a hard man to track in public records. Although there is record of his crossing over into the United States as early as 1923, I haven't found Mr. Thurston in the 1920, 1930, or 1940 census. The earliest mention of him I have found is in an article on men in the service from The Niagara Falls Gazette, December 26, 1944, page nine. That article mentions his mother (Mrs. Harry L. Thurston of that city), his wife (Mrs. Barbara Fisher Thurston, also of Niagara Falls), his rank in the U.S. Navy (petty officer, third class), and the places where he was stationed (Naval Training Center, Sampson, New York; and Naval Training Station, Norfolk, Virginia). The article also includes a photograph of the artist. Jack Thurston enlisted in the Navy in 1943 and earned his citizenship in January 1946.

In the article, Mr. Thurston was described as a former employee in the art department of Gilman Fanfold Corporation. From what I can gather, Gilman Fanfold manufactured office supplies or forms and had a facility in Niagara Falls. According to AskArt, Mr. Thurston "served during World War II as a sculptor to scale of enemy terrain." His schooling came at the Buffalo Art Institute, Jepson's Fine Arts School, and the Art Center of Design in Hollywood. He was the author and illustrator of The Adventures of Skoot Skeeter from 1948. I don't know when he began illustrating book covers and movie posters, but I suspect it was in the 1950s and no later than the early 1960s. Unfortunately, Mr. Thurston is not included in Walt Reed's otherwise very fine editions of The Illustrator in America or in Vincent Di Fate's Infinite Worlds.

I don't know whether Mr. Thurston is still living. If so, he would be ninety-three years old. I would like to think he's still out there somewhere, drawing and painting, for he created some truly beautiful works of art.

Update: Two commenters below, one anonymous, the other named Christy Kalan, have alerted us that Jack L. Thurston, a longtime resident of New Rochelle, New York, died on April 27, 2017, at age ninety-seven. Ms. Kalan urges readers to pass on to Mr. Thurston's colleagues word of his death. On behalf of the world of science fiction, fantasy, and other genre fiction and art, I would like to offer to the Thurston family our condolences.

Above: A gallery of book covers by Jack L. Thurston. An accomplished draftsman, a fine colorist, and a painterly artist who was good with the human figure, Mr. Thurston was comfortable in every genre. By the way, the last two authors--Edison Marshall and Day Keene--were also tellers of weird tales.

Second Update (Dec. 7, 2018): I have found a few newspaper articles on Jack Thurston and more of his illustrations. First, Thurston lived and worked in Rochester, New York, for many years. He was, in addition to being an illustrator, a writer, advertising artist, and teacher of drawing and oil painting at East Evening High School in Rochester. He was also a member of the Rochester Art Association and exhibited his work in the Rochester area. He illustrated his own children's book, The Adventures of Skoot Skeeter (1948), as well as two books by Karl H. Bratton, Tales of the Magic Mirror (1949) and Tales of Once Upon a Time (1960). (See the comment below.) Thurston's work for these books is charming, maybe a little old fashioned. Then, sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s, Thurston began creating paperback book covers and movie posters and his style changed, becoming dramatic, forceful, energetic. A good example of this style is shown in his poster for One Million Years B.C., from 1966, that high point of pop culture in America. Finally, I have found that Jack Thurston did two back covers for Mad, from October 1971 and March 1972.

The Adventures of Skoot Skeeter by Jack Thurston (1948).

Tales of the Magic Mirror by Karl H. Bratton, illustrated by Jack Thurston (1949).

Movie poster for One Million Years B.C. (1966) by Jack L. Thurston.

Back cover design for Mad #146, October 1971, by Jack L. Thurston.

Back cover design for Mad #149, March 1972, by Jack L. Thurston.

Updated in 2017 and on December 7, 2018. Updated again on April 2, 2023.
Thanks to all who have commented and provided more information on Jack L. Thurston. Thanks also to Doug Gilford's Mad Cover Site for images and information.
Text and captions copyright 2012, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

O. Henry (1862-1910)

Pseudonym of William Sydney Porter

Né William Sidney Porter

Pharmacist, Artist, Laborer, Draftsman, Bank Teller, Journalist, Author

Born September 11, 1862, Greensboro, North Carolina

Died June 5, 1910, New York, New York

Like Marco Polo, Cervantes, and Henry David Thoreau, O. Henry was a writer who served time behind bars. His crime was embezzlement and he spent three years in the slammer. The writer known for his twist endings was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina, making this year the sesquicentennial of his birth. He loved reading as a child and after graduating high school in his hometown, Porter went to work as a pharmacist. Over the years, he also worked as a ranch hand, shepherd, cook, draftsman, bank teller, and journalist. His work in a bank is what got him in trouble and separated him from his family for three years. O. Henry began writing stories under his pen name while in prison in Columbus, Ohio. He lived in Texas, New Orleans, Honduras, Pittsburgh, and finally New York, where he spent the last eight years of his life penning 381 short stories. Among them were "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Ransom of Red Chief," two perennial favorites. Weird Tales reprinted just one of those stories, "The Furnished Room" (Sept. 1925).

O. Henry died on June 5, 1910, in New York City. Less than a decade after his death, his name was attached to a collection entitled Prize Stories 1919: The O. Henry Memorial Awards. Every year since then (except in 2004), twenty prize stories have been collected in book form as part of the O. Henry Awards. The editor of the first collection, Blanche Colton Williams, was a teacher at Columbia University. Among her students were Genevieve Larsson and Theda Kenyon. One of the first winners of the top prize was Edison Marshall for his story "The Heart of Little Shikara” (from Everybody's Magazine, Jan. 1921). Marshall, an adventurer and a prolific writer, was also a posthumous contributor to Weird Tales. You'll find museums devoted to O. Henry in Austin and San Antonio, Texas.

O. Henry's Story in Weird Tales

"The Furnished Room" (Sept. 1925)

Further Reading

There is plenty of reading on O. Henry online and at the library. If you don't find it, you're not looking hard enough.

The U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp this year to observe the sesquicentennial of O. Henry's birth.

Just two years after his death, the New York World gave him a full-page spread in its magazine section. (The date was May 24, 1912.) The Rolling Stone by the way was a humorous journal founded by O. Henry during his years in Texas. I surmise the occasion was the semicentennial of his birth.

One of O. Henry's most famous stories is "The Ransom of Red Chief," included in this collection.  

Even long after his death, O. Henry's tales appeared in book form. Here's a British edition. Visually, the gag on the cover is an old one. Juxtaposed with the image, the title becomes very suggestive.

In 1952, 20th Century Fox adapted five of O. Henry's stories to a movie anthology called O. Henry's Full House. 

Here's a collection of lobby cards for the film. It looks like Richard Widmark was still playing the gangster years after his debut in movies.

O. Henry is also famous for creating The Cisco Kid. Originally an outlaw, The Cisco Kid first appeared in a story called "The Caballero's Way," published in 1907. The Kid showed up in movies a scant seven years later. Here's a poster from 1946 and the film Beauty and the Bandit.

Gilbert Roland first played The Cisco Kid in The Gay Cavalier from 1946. I wonder if The Kid and his sidekick, Pancho, could have been modeled in any way after Don Quixote and his own sidekick, Sancho Panza. If so, it would have been necessary of course to convert Don Quixote into a more heroic character, while Sancho Panza could remain the comedy relief as the similarly named Pancho.

Before Gilbert Roland, there was Cesar Romero. Here he is in Ride on Vaquero from 1941. 

The Cisco Kid was also in comic books, on the radio, in newspaper comic strips, and on television. Merchandising included trading cards, bread labels, View-Master reels, and toys. Isn't it long past time for someone to assemble a Cisco Kid scrapbook?

Text and captions copyright 2012, 2023 Terence E. Hanley