The Death of Alanson Skinner

The December 1925 issue closed out the first full year of Farnsworth Wright's tenure as editor of Weird Tales. It was also the first full year for the magazine itself, with twelve monthly issues published in all. Nineteen twenty-five was also the last full year during which the editorial offices of Weird Tales were based in Indianapolis. The magazine moved to Chicago in late 1926. I have already written about many of the authors who were in that December issue. A couple of others--James Cocks, Douglas Oliver--might prove a challenge.

There was sad news to report in "The Eyrie" that month. Alanson Skinner (1886-1925), who had had a story in the October issue, was reported killed in an automobile accident. That had happened on August 17, 1925, and so Skinner's first story in Weird Tales was published posthumously. I can't say that this was the first tribute to a deceased author to appear in Weird Tales, but it must have been one of the first. I'll reprint it here in it entirety so that we can remember again an author who died a century ago this past summer.

Those of you who read Alanson Skinner's story of Indian witchcraft, Bad Medicine, in the October issue, will be saddened to learn of the author's tragic death in an automobile accident near Tokio, North Dakota, on August 17. The car skidded on a slippery road and crashed over an embankment. A moment later, the Rev. Amos Oneroad, a Sioux Indian, dazed and bruised, crawled from the wreck, calling a name, listening for an answer. Then he struggled manfully, but in vain, to lift the mass of steel and release his dearest friend, who lay pinioned and silent beneath it. At length help was found, the car was raised, but it was too late. Alanson Skinner was dead--Alanson Skinner, sympathetic and appreciative friend of the Indian race, learned student of ancient America, prolific author of scientific works on Indian subjects, lecturer, fiction writer, poet. Gone forever was that wonderful memory, that bubbling humor, that active mind, that radiant, cheerful personality. He was only thirty-nine years old, just getting into his full stride, at the threshold of what promised to be the most brilliant and valuable part of his career. One of his last acts, before he left on the mission that cost him his life, was to send to WEIRD TALES The Tsantsa of Professor Von Rothapfel, an eery [sic] story of a South American Indian tribe that preserves and shrinks the heads of its dead enemies. This story will be published soon.

"Soon" was August 1926, a year after Alanson's death.

Reverend Amos Oneroad (1884-1937) was a Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota, an artist, a public speaker and performer, and a writer, as well as a Presbyterian minister. In 2005, the Minnesota Historical Society Press published his book, co-authored with Alanson Skinner, called Being Dakota: Tales and Traditions of the Sisseton and Wahpeton.

Although winter begins and the sun and the day reach their nadir in December, it is--or should be--a happy month. I wish there could have been happier news in Weird Tales in December 1925. But this was as it will ever be.

From the Trenton, New Jersey, Times, March 23, 1917, page 15.

In this series I have gone month by month through 1925, now a century past. I have left out a lot of writers, but these I can still cover in the future.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

From Irvington to the Stars

We lived and grew up in Irvington. Once its own town, Irvington was annexed by the city of Indianapolis in 1902. Irvington is and was a cultured place. Its streets were named for prominent authors and artists of the nineteenth century, including Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier, Hoosier poetess Sarah Bolton, and John James Audubon. Butler University got its start in Irvington before moving to the north side of Indianapolis. The Disciples of Christ had a prominent place in our neighborhood for decades. We walked past the Christian Church on our way to school. As much as anything, Irvington is now known for its annual Halloween Festival.

The painter William Forsyth lived in Irvington, as did caricaturist Kin Hubbard, creator of Abe Martin. Bill Shirley, the original Prince Charming, was from Irvington. Marjorie Main--Ma Kettle--lived there for a time. So did C.L. Moore (1911-1987). One of the homes in which she and her family lived was around the corner from that of the Cornelius family, who saved Weird Tales from extinction in the 1920s. On the opposite end of the social order, H.H. Holmes murdered and hid the remains of young Howard Pitezel in a house in Irvington in October 1894. Holmes poisoned Pitezel with drugs he had purchased at a local pharmacy. That small fact will come into play shortly. We never heard of Holmes and knew nothing about those events from the distant past. Holmes and everything he did seems to have been forgotten after his execution in 1896.

When we were kids, we walked to a lot of local businesses, many of which were in a Tudor-style block of buildings on the north side of the National Road, U.S. Highway 40, which, in Indianapolis, is called Washington Street. One of those businesses was Peacher Drugs, located at the northwest corner of Washington Street and North Audubon Road.* The pharmacist was Rex Peacher (1913-1983). Only today did I learn his name or anything about him. Peacher started his business in 1956 after having worked for Haag Drugs and probably in other places. He seems to have been destined to become a pharmacist, for if you take away the 'e' from his Christian name, you're left with Rx. Peacher sold everything at auction in September 1975 and retired in 1976. Like Howard Pitezel, he died in October.

Rex Peacher attended Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis. One of his classmates was Robert Padgett Moore (1913-1973), who also became a businessman. If you look back two paragraphs, you will see again the surname Moore. In this world of strange coincidences, Rex Peacher's high school classmate was first C.L. Moore's younger brother. Peacher's drugstore was just one block east of the Moores' childhood home, though those two places were separated by decades. Remember that she used the surname Padgett, her grandmother's maiden name, as a shared pseudonym with her husband Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) in their writing lives. Robert Moore was buried out of Shirley Brothers mortuary, run by the family of Bill Shirley.

I don't know whether there was a pharmacy on the site of Rex Peacher's drugstore before he set up shop in 1956. I don't know where in 1894 H.H. Holmes might have bought his killing drugs. But the house in which he committed his crimes was on Julian Avenue, only about four blocks east of the site of Peacher's drugstore. That house is supposed to exist still. Sometime in the twentieth century, though, it was turned to Good.

The entrance to Peacher Drugs, or Peacher's as we called it, sat at a slant facing the street corner. Upon entering the store, if you turned to the right and went all the way to the rear, you would find a shelf upon which plastic model kits were set up for sale. We didn't have much money when we were kids. Revell models were the high-end brand and were mostly out of reach for us. Monogram models were more affordable. Very often, though, we could afford only models from the Lindberg Line, which sold for $1.25 apiece.

I have always liked airplanes, and when I was a kid I usually bought only airplane models. (I made an exception for Aurora monster models, later for the AMT Gigantics series.) I remember building a Grumman Hellcat, one of my favorites, and a Messerschmitt Bf 109. I remember my older brother had an Me 262. Like kids did in those days, we hung our airplane models from the bedroom ceiling. Airplane models hung from the ceiling of the day room in our barracks at Lackland Air Force Base, too. On our last night there, late into the night, I built a C-119 Flying Boxcar to add to the collection. The next day, I slept almost the whole way on the bus to Sheppard Air Force Base. That's where I learned to work on the real thing, in my case the F-16 Fighting Falcon, sometimes in places far from the Irvington of my childhood, including in two war zones.

When I was a kid, I thought the Lindberg Line models were named after Charles Lindbergh. That seemed logical enough: he was a famous airplane pilot, the Lindberg Line were airplane models, and so the models were named in his honor. Only later did I find out that the Lindberg Line was named for the founder of the company, Paul Lindberg (1904-1988). Again, Lindberg models were cheaper than most other brands. The box art wasn't as good and there were fewer parts and fewer decals. But there were enough parts to put wings on a dream. 

I have been writing about Charles Lindbergh and Donald E. Keyhoe (1897-1988). Like Lindbergh, Keyhoe was an aviator. Born in Iowa, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1919 and became a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps. Keyhoe was injured in a plane crash in Guam in 1922 and later discharged. In his convalescence, he began writing. He wrote about aviation for magazines and newspapers, but he also wrote pulp fiction, including early stories for Weird Tales. Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) also graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. He, too, was discharged for medical reasons and became a writer of pulp fiction. Both men died in the same year, 1988, nigh on forty years ago. Heinlein of course won a far wider fame.

One of the ideas that came out of the Flying Saucer Era is that Earth was visited in ancient times by people from other planets. Although he wrote mostly on the flying saucers of the present, Keyhoe also touched upon this ancient astronaut hypothesis. Modern-day researchers have traced the origins of the ancient astronaut hypothesis to the works of another pulp-fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), especially to "The Call of Cthulhu" (Weird Tales, Feb. 1928) and At the Mountains of Madness (Astounding Stories, Feb.-Mar.-Apr. 1936). I have a feeling the idea goes back farther than that, though perhaps not very much farther. I wonder what, if anything, Charles Fort had to say about the whole matter.

Flying saucers were one of two major religious belief systems to come out of science fiction. The other, Dianetics/Scientology, also draws on the ancient astronaut hypothesis. The story is that a long time ago, in a galactic empire far, far away, an alien named Xenu packed his people into spacecraft that looked like the Douglas DC-8 and proceeded to bring them to Earth. I have seen online images of a Lindberg Line model of the DC-8. One of these bears the Pan Am logo. Remember that in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), there are spacecraft with the same logo. These are shown after a long, wordless opening sequence in which ancient astronauts influence pre-men into becoming men. They do this using a monolith that hums because they don't yet know the words. Anyway, there weren't any parts to make Xenu attached to the sprue of those old Lindberg Line models. If you had wanted him, you would have had to build him from scratch, just as his creator did in the dark depths of his twisted mind. By the way, L. Ron Hubbard served in the U.S. Navy, too, and styled himself a hero. Instead I think he was more or less a nincompoop and a far, far cry from Lindbergh, Keyhoe, and Heinlein.

 Next: More on Keyhoe and then an end.

----- 

For my younger brother, whom we have lost and whose birthday was last week.

----- 

*One street was named for a Federalist, the other for a Romantic, both frontiersman. George Washington never set foot in what is now Indiana, but John James Audubon almost certainly did. By the way, the grandmother of my classmate Mary, named Jean Brown Wagoner (1896-1996), was also an Irvingtonian and also an author. She wrote a biography, Martha Washington: Girl of Old Virginia (1947), among others in the Childhood of Famous Americans series published by Bobbs-Merrill of Indianapolis. She came to talk to us and answer questions when we were in grade school. Her father was Hilton U. Brown (1859-1958) of the Indianapolis News, Indianapolis Newspapers, Inc., Butler University, and the Disciples of Christ Church. If I have this right, he lived across the street from the painter William Forsyth.

Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

The Moon Terror (and other stories)

Published in 1927, The Moon Terror by A.G. Birch was the first Weird Tales book. The publisher was the Popular Fiction Publishing Company of Indianapolis. The uncredited editor was almost certainly Farnsworth Wright. You wouldn't know it by the cover, but there are actually four stories in The Moon Terror. They are:

• "The Moon Terror" by A.G. Birch, a novel of 130 pages, originally serialized in the May and June 1923 issues of Weird Tales.

• "Ooze" by Anthony M. Rud, a novelette of 33 pages, originally the first cover story in Weird Tales, in the March issue of 1923.

• "Penelope" by Vincent Starrett, a comic short story of 16 pages, originally in Weird Tales, May 1923.

and

• "An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension" by Farnsworth Wright, another comic short story of just 9 pages, originally in Weird Tales in October 1923.

There are 192 pages in all in The Moon Terror, the same number of pages as in each of the first two issues of Weird Tales.

"The Moon Terror" is the cover story of The Moon Terror the book. The illustration on the cover, drawn by an unknown artist, is a version of the first illustration to appear in Weird Tales. It shows a human sacrificial ritual in the instant before the knife is plunged into the breast of a naked woman. It's not in the best taste. It's also not an especially good drawing. And that brings up an issue.

If it was published in 1927, then The Moon Terror had about four years' worth of stories on which to draw for its contents. "Ooze" is a good enough story I think. The others are passable, I guess. But there were better stories published in those first four years. Did we really need Starrett's or Wright's story reprinted in book form? Imagine instead The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories, published in 1927, with cover art and interior illustrations by Hugh Rankin! And as for the book itself, it's not an especially well-made volume. My copy is still in good condition (no dust jacket), but, again, it's not the most professional of printing and binding jobs, the paper and boards are not high in quality, and the design is pretty ho-hum.

"The Moon Terror" is a yellow-peril story. The threat emanates from China, and the man who wishes to control the world and every person in it is Chinese. He fancies himself, I think, as a kind of god-emperor. The American scientist Dr. Gresham stands in his way:

"Gentlemen," he said, "I did not come here to argue; I came to help! As surely as I am standing here, our world is upon the brink of dissolution! And I alone may be able to save it! But, if I am to do so, you must agree absolutely to the course of action I propose!" (p. 46)

Three and a half years ago, we experienced another threat emanating from China and its aspiring world-ruler. And we had an American scientist--not just a scientist but a man who went by the self-proclaimed title The Science--tell us that if we were to be saved, we must do whatever he commanded. He alone was able to save us. Call all of this a century-old prognostication made by A.G. Birch. In any case, if you would like to read "The Moon Terror," you should probably do so soon, before President Eleven requires that all traces of it be wiped out and our obeisant government, media, and corporations do as he commands.

I have already written at length about "Ooze" and a little about "Penelope." I'll close with a couple of quick comments on "An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension" by Farnsworth Wright. I don't think that Wright was an especially good writer. Editorship was his true calling (even if he made a few blunders in that department as well.) However, his story in The Moon Terror was an early exploration in Weird Tales of Einsteinian or relativistic physics. For that, Wright deserves some credit.

"An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension" is told in the first person by a man in Chicago who picked up some French expressions while serving in the U.S. Army. As it so happens, Farnsworth Wright lived in Chicago (as well as in Indianapolis), and he was a translator in the Army during the Great War. There are aliens in his story. They arrive on Earth by falling out of the sky in a meteoric missile. You could say that the story is a UFO story before we had a name for these things. With its falling objects, it also has a hint of a Fortean tale. There is mention of transparent steel, which makes me think of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and its manufacture of transparent aluminum.

As they say, there is nothing new under the sun. Or under the moon.

The Moon Terror by A.G. Birch and others (1927), with a cover illustration by an unknown artist.

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Edna Bell Seward at the Indiana Society Dinner

You may have noticed that I haven't written very much lately. That includes not writing replies to comments left on this blog. I'll do my best to catch up, beginning with a reply to a comment left by Anonymous at the bottom of my article on Edna Bell Seward (1877-1963). I last wrote about Edna Bell Seward on November 16, 2018, here. She wrote one letter to "The Eyrie" and one story in Weird Tales. It's called "The Land of Creeping Death" and it appeared in the issue of June 1927, ninety-five years ago this summer.

Edna Bell Seward was married more than once. Her last husband (I think) was George Morton Seward (1856-1926). Seward was from Bloomington, Indiana, home of Indiana University. In the 1920s, he and his wife lived in Chicago, Illinois. For those of you who don't know where Chicago is, it's slightly to the west and a little to the north of Indiana. I don't have to tell you where Indiana is because we all know that already.

In the early part of the twentieth century, a group of Hoosiers, living in exile, formed the Indiana Society of Chicago. George Ade (1866-1944), famous for his Fables in Slang, was a founding member. Ade's friend and fellow Purdue University alumnus John McCutcheon (1870-1949) was also a member. The comment left by Anonymous is actually a link to a newspaper article about the 18th Annual Dinner of the Indiana Society of Chicago, held on December 9, 1922, at the Drake Hotel. The article is called "Indiana Society Honors Mrs. Seward." It's from The Highland Park Press, December 14, 1922, page 1 (column 6) and page 14. Included in the article is a photograph of Mrs. Seward, the same one I used in 2018 when I wrote about her. Click here to see the article. According to the article, "Mrs. Seward wrote the lyrics for all of the satires and songs that were featured during the evening." This was when Americans still had fun.

Reading about that dinner in 1922 led me to a further search on the Internet. As a result I found images of the original program book for the evening's events. These are on a website called Indiana Memory. Here is the URL:

https://indianamemory.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16066coll66/id/20517

In looking through the book, I made another discovery, namely that Mr. Seward was an artist of sorts. Here is his revised map of Indiana for 1922:

It looks like the revisions are to accommodate the Hoosier State's bulging Literary Belt, which is encroaching on neighboring Illinois and Ohio. Note the "Manuscript Special for Eastern Markets." Some of the references here are probably obscure for the unfortunate non-Hoosiers among us. For example, the southwestern-most county in Indiana is named Posey. Look for the flowers. Still others are obscure even for native Indianians. I would have to do a little research to figure out what a couple of these things mean. By the way, that's Abe Martin in the middle, a creation of Kin Hubbard (1868-1930) of Indianapolis.

George Seward's map is from a century ago. Time flies. At the time, Indiana was in its Golden Age of Literature, hence the bulges. In 1922, in fact, Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel Alice Adams (1921). Katherine Hepburn played the title character in a film adaptation of Alice Adams in 1935. The movie poster puts Tarkington's name on prominent display. Unfortunately for him and his fellows, few of the Indiana writers from that Golden Age are read today. But before you dismiss Indiana and its forgotten writers, remember that Weird Tales had its editorial offices in Indianapolis from its founding in 1923 until moving to Chicago in 1926. Remember, too, that, facing ruin, "The Unique Magazine" was saved by Cornelius Printing Company of Indianapolis and that the magazine originated from the Circle City--or Naptown as jazz musicians call it--until 1938 when it was sold to Short Stories, Inc., and made its final move to Manhattan.

Thanks to Anonymous for the link.

Text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

A Season of Discovery and Beginning

Tellers of Weird Tales turned ten years old last week. I first wrote on April 22, 2011. My first entry was on C.L. Moore (1911-1987), who grew up in the same neighborhood in Indianapolis in which I grew up, though half a century before. Being from Indiana and having the pride of a Hoosier in me, I took a special interest in her. In the year before beginning this blog, I began writing an article about her. That article was finally published in the summer of 2019 in Traces, the magazine of the Indiana Historical Society. Its working title was "The Weird and Wondrous Fiction of C.L. Moore." It went to print as "Amazing Tales: The Weird and Wondrous Fiction of C.L. Moore." It's because of my research and writing on C.L. Moore, too, that I have a place on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb), but that's for a different article I wrote, published by Paco Arrelano. I'm not a member of the ISFDb, so I'm not sure that I can add to it. I hope someone will add my article from Traces on my behalf. I would also like to hear from Señor Arrelano in hopes that I can get a copy of his magazine Delirio in which my article appeared.

Although C.L. Moore was the subject of my first entry on this blog, she wasn't the reason for my starting it. The impetus actually came while I was reading Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies, edited by Marvin Kaye (1988). Included in that book is the first Damp Man story by Allison V. Harding. Mr. Kaye's introduction to "The Damp Man" is brief, for at the time almost nothing was known about the pseudonymous Harding. But here in front of me was a mystery, one I was determined to solve. I began on April 26, 2011, ten years ago today. I solved the mystery less than a month later, on May 24, 2011, with my entry entitled "Who Was Allison V. Harding?"

The answer to that question was and is Jean Milligan (1919-2004), later the wife of the former associate editor and art editor of Weird Tales magazine, Lamont Buchanan (1919-2015). And now I see that I have to update my entry on the late Mr. Buchanan. Anyway, I have to admit that I was a little hard on Marvin Kaye for the part he played in the Weird Tales debacle of a few years back, but I also have to thank him for the part he unknowingly played in getting this blog off the ground. I have to reassert, too, that I am the person who discovered the identity of Allison V. Harding and Jean Milligan. No one else did that, and no one else should be taking credit for the discovery or pretending like it's something that just fell out of the sky. (This is where the passive voice, mostly a scourge, comes in handy. In using it, you don't have to say that somebody did something, only that something happened, no doer necessary.) Anyway, I did it. I discovered the identity of Allison V. Harding. It's my work. I expect to be cited for it. And I have this to say to people who like to glom on to the work of others: if you want to be known for your work, then do your work. Get up and do it and don't thieve it from others. And once you have done it, publish it, however you can. Get it out there into the world.

* * *

There has been some controversy recently about Allison V. Harding and Jean Milligan. I might have been a little responsible for that, too, by suggesting that Lamont Buchanan was actually the writer behind the pseudonym. The controversy comes from the idea that we're all trying to take something away from women writers, that somehow we're anti-woman and that we want to erase them and silence them. That isn't my idea at all. In fact, it's closer to the opposite. (Should I point out here that the first three authors and five out of the first ten about whom I wrote on this blog were women?)

My idea that Lamont Buchanan was Allison V. Harding came to me as I was reading the last Damp Man story, "The Damp Man Again," from Weird Tales, May 1949. As I was reading, it occurred to me that this was not the work of a woman, for no woman would write about another woman in this way. Only a man--a bitter and angry man at that--could write about women with this kind of cruelty, mean-spiritedness, and misogyny, writing that has in it even intimations of psychopathy and a desire to hurt and punish women. Feminists might object to my suggestion or belief that Lamont Buchanan was Allison V. Harding, but they should first read "The Damp Man Again"--"Take the Z-Train," too--and see what they think afterwards. It's worth noting here that Lamont Buchanan was still a single man in 1949 when "The Damp Man Again" was published. He and Jean Milligan were not married until 1952, in The Bronx, where they went on to live out their lives together. By the way, there is a Harding Avenue in The Bronx. If we play a word game, then Harding Avenue can become Harding Ave. can become Harding, A.V., can become A.V. Harding . . . you get where I'm going.

* * *

There has been another recent controversy when it comes to Allison V. Harding. I wasn't the first person to have made a connection between Lamont Buchanan and J.D. Salinger (1919-2010) and Salinger's character Holden Caulfield, but I think I was the first to get it out into the world of science fiction and fantasy fandom and scholarship. I don't really believe that J.D. Salinger was Allison V. Harding, and I doubt that Buchanan and Salinger, who may have been friends in their college years, collaborated or talked to each other about writing as late as 1947 or 1949 or 1950. But you never know. There seems to be a hole in the scholarship on J.D. Salinger that hasn't been filled yet. I still want to say to all of the bored academics of this world, "Get up and get busy and forget about all of that woke BS that seemingly occupies everybody in your formerly respectable fields!" That's a little long and not very pithy for an exhortation, but you get the idea. In the meantime, the only people who seem to be interested in the idea that Buchanan was the model for Caulfield are those vying for or writing about Buchanan's estate. Money has its ways.

* * *

I have never counted the number of authors who contributed to Weird Tales. Years ago I estimated it at about 700. I had thought that by now I would be about finished with them. But in writing this blog I have gotten on to things other than biography. Biography and the discovery of lives and identities is fun, but so are other things. In any case, I'm planning to get back to some biographies soon. First I have to finish my current series, which is going on about as long as Burroughs' Mars series. I didn't want this anniversary to go by unobserved, though, and so I will let you know that Tellers of Weird Tales is ten years old in this season of discovery and beginning. I plan to continue writing, even after I go over the 1,000,000-visits mark sometime this summer, even after I have covered all of the magazine's writers and artists.

Ten years is a long time. As one of my entomology professors would say, "Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana."

C.L. Moore at her desk at the bank in Indianapolis, another discovery I have made, and maybe the only photograph of her at work. I presume that the typewriter in front of her is a Royal typewriter and the one that she used in composing her stories. The name of her Venerian character Yarol is an anagram of that brandname. From the Indianapolis Times, May 22, 1939.

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

C.L. Moore in Traces Magazine

The magazine of the Indiana Historical Society, called Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, has published my biographical article on Catherine L. Moore (1911-1987). Entitled "Amazing Tales: The Weird and Wondrous Fiction of C.L. Moore," it appears in the Summer 2019 issue of the magazine. The article is eight pages long and includes photographs as well as full-color reproductions of the covers of Weird Tales and many hardbound and paperbound books.

C.L. Moore grew up in Irvington, the same neighborhood in which my brothers and sisters and I grew up on the east side of Indianapolis. One of the houses in which she lived as a child was only about two blocks away from our own childhood home. Strangely enough, around the corner from the Moores lived the Cornelius family, who later financed and printed Weird Tales. Catherine's house is gone now, but I believe the Cornelius family home is still standing on Layman Avenue.

C.L. Moore was an innovative writer in her chosen field of weird fiction. As a Hoosier, Indianapolitan, and Irvingtonian, I'm proud to recognize and write about her. I'm happy and thankful to Traces magazine and its editor, Ray E. Boomhower, for the opportunity to introduce her to readers and fans of Indiana history.

Copyright 2019, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Orville R. Emerson (1894-1945)-Part Two

I sense two possible connections between Orville R. Emerson and Weird Tales, connections other than his authorship of a story for the first issue of the magazine.

First, Emerson's father, Reverend Frank W. Emerson, was affiliated with the Prohibition Party prior to World War I. Emerson himself was a member of the American Legion, which was established in 1919. In the year of its founding, the American Legion moved its headquarters to Indianapolis, Indiana. That same year, a young man of Pennsylvania, recently out of the U.S. Navy, also relocated to Indianapolis to work on an organ of the Prohibition Party. The young man's name was Jacob Clark Henneberger. In 1922, he formed, with his friend John M. Lansinger, Rural Publishing Corporation. Although the firm was based in Chicago, the editorial offices for its new magazine of 1923, Weird Tales, were in Indianapolis. I think it possible that Orville R. Emerson learned of Weird Tales through his father's connections to the Prohibition Party, more likely through his own connections to the American Legion. Both connections eventually led to Indianapolis, home also of the magazine in which his first and only story was published. By coincidence, the Cornelius Printing Company, which effectively gained control of Weird Tales in 1924, were also the printers of The American Legion Magazine beginning that same year.

Second, Orville R. Emerson was married to Lila Strait, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J.H. Strait of Redlands, California. J.H. Strait was president of Mutual Orange Distributors of Redlands, which was in business for many years inclusive of the 1920s. Well, in 1920, a future teller of weird tales was working as an orange packer in Redlands, and it wasn't Orville Emerson. Rather, it was F. Georgia Stroup (1882-1952), who had her story "The House of Death" in Weird Tales, by strange coincidence the same month in which Emerson's story "The Grave" appeared. So did F. Georgia Stroup work at Mutual Orange Distributors? And did she know Orville R. Emerson? Could they have talked to each other about their stories and about this new magazine Weird Tales? The possibility is fascinating to consider.

Text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Tales in Indiana

Today, December 11, 2016, is the two-hundredth birthday of the State of Indiana. I would like to say Happy Birthday to my home state and to point out that Weird Tales was born here, in Indianapolis in fact. The founder of the magazine, Jacob Clark Henneberger (1890-1969), arrived in Indianapolis in 1919 to work for a weekly newspaper. He alternated between that city and Chicago for a number of years. For example, he was married in Chicago on June 18, 1919. (His bride was Alma K. Schneidewind.) The city directory of Indianapolis, on the other hand, had him living downtown, at 320 North Meridian Street, in 1920. Henneberger published his first magazine, Collegiate World, in Indianapolis beginning in 1920. In 1922, Henneberger and John M. Lansinger founded Rural Publishing Corporation and went about publishing two genre magazines. The first issue of Detective Tales had a cover date of October 1, 1922. The first issue of Weird Tales followed in March 1923.

Henneberger and Lansinger's joint venture went aground in 1924. In an effort to save Weird Tales, Henneberger gave up Detective Tales and more or less ceded financial ownership of his preferred title to Cornelius Printing Company of Indianapolis. Weird Tales returned to print in November 1924 with Farnsworth Wright at the helm. Like Henneberger before him, Wright lived in Indianapolis and had his offices at the old Baldwin Building (not to be confused with the old Baldwin Piano Building on the Circle). In 1926, Weird Tales moved its offices to Chicago. The Indianapolis era presumably did not end until Weird Tales was purchased by Short Stories, Inc., in 1938, at which point the magazine presumably ceased being printed by Cornelius Printing Company.

Weird Tales relied heavily on artists from Indiana in its first couple of years, especially William F. Heitman (1878-1945), a German-born sketch artist for the Indianapolis Star. Heitman created covers for two issues of "The Unique Magazine" in its first year. Known for his speed with a pen, Heitman illustrated whole issues by himself until the triple, first-anniversary issue of May-June-July 1924. Harry Harrison Kroll (1886-1967) and George Olinick were among the other Hoosier artists to contribute to Weird Tales.

Much is made of "The Big Three"--H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith--in Weird Tales. If we were to create a category of "The Big Six" or "The Big Ten," we might include at least one Hoosier on that list, C.L. Moore (1911-1987) of Indianapolis. (She grew up only a few blocks from our childhood home.) H. Bedford-Jones (1887-1949) and E. Hoffmann Price (1898-1988), though not native to Indiana, lived there for a time as well. Another prominent Hoosier contributor to Weird Tales was writer Wallace West (1900-1980). There were of course others, but for now I'll let this brief list stand on its own.

The Coke bottle and Clabber Girl Baking Powder were created in Indiana. So, too, was Weird Tales. With that, I would like to say Happy Birthday to my home state, the Hoosier State of Indiana!

Weird Tales, born in Indianapolis in 1923, a little more than one hundred years after the state (1816) and the city (1821) came into being.

Text copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

William F. Heitman (1878-1945)

Artist, Illustrator, Cartoonist

Born January 31, 1878, Germany

Died January 10, 1945, Miami, Florida

Much of the very early history of Weird Tales magazine is shrouded in mystery. Launched in 1923 by Jacob Clark Henneberger, Weird Tales was based in Indianapolis and drew heavily upon writers and artists from the Midwest for its content. Wherever you read an index of the authors, artists, and stories that appeared in "The Unique Magazine," you're sure to see the name "Heitman" as artist, sometimes the sole artist on a given issue. So who was this mysterious Heitman? The answer, which may very well be revealed here for the first time in print (even if it is digital), is William F. Heitman, a rapid-fire newspaper illustrator of the early twentieth century.

William Fred Heitman, later nicknamed Bill and Heit, was born on January 31, 1878, in Germany and came to the United States as a young child with his parents, Bernard Heitman (1830-1891) and Anna (Santmann) Heitman (1838-1920). As a boy, Heitman lived in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne. He went to work for the Van Camp Company as a sign painter and decided then to become an artist. Heitman studied at the Indiana School of Art under William Forsyth, worked for the Indiana Illustrating Company, and finally landed a job as an illustrator with the Indianapolis News in about 1897. Heitman spent the rest of his career doing layouts, illustrating feature stories, and drawing cartoons and caricatures for newspapers in Indianapolis, Cleveland (the Plain Dealer), and St. Louis (the Globe-Democrat). Other artists with whom he worked included Sidney Smith (later of The Gumps), Johnny Gruelle (Raggedy Ann), and his close friend, Chic Jackson, creator of Roger Bean.

When the year 1923 rolled around, William Heitman was drawing for the Indianapolis Star. Known as one of the fastest penmen in the Midwest, he seems to have been johnny-on-the-spot for J.C. Henneberger, publisher of Weird Tales. The first two issues of the magazine--March and April 1923--lacked interior illustrations. But until Andrew Brosnatch came along in November 1924 (the first issue with Farnsworth Wright as editor), Heitman was the only credited artist on the inside of Weird Tales. He also created two covers for the magazine, the May and June issues of 1923.

Weird Tales expert Robert Weinberg was not kind to Heitman. In his Weird Tales Story (1977), Mr. Weinberg wrote:

The first issue [of Weird Tales] featured no illustrations at all. Artwork used in the next year was poor. All were small pictures with little attempt at the weird or unusual. Artwork was mainly done by Heitman, an artist notable mainly for his complete lack of imagination. Heitman's specialty was taking the one scene in a frightening story that featured nothing at all frightening or weird and illustrating that. It was Heitman who illustrated nearly all of H.P. Lovecraft's early stories in Weird Tales (1) and he succeeded in capturing none of Lovecraft's mood of brooding, building horror.

I haven't seen any of William Heitman's illustrations for the interior of Weird Tales. [Update: That has since changed, as whole issues of Weird Tales are now available on line.] I can judge him only by his covers. We can judge him partly by his covers. His first (May 1923), showing a witch or sorceress and her cauldron, is a passable drawing, although the male figure seems a little stiff. [Update: There's a reason for the difference, as the female figure is a swipe, while the male figure appears to be Heitman's own drawing. Click here to see an explanation.] I hate to say that his second (June 1923), showing an ape attacking a young woman, is practically inept. The female figure is particularly bad.

So why did an otherwise competent artist produce such work for Weird Tales? It could be that J.C. Henneberger or his editor was not particularly interested in illustration. I think it's more likely that they worked with an artist who was: a) close at hand, b) fast, c) cheap, and d) perhaps the only man available to them. I think it's safe to say Heitman was close at hand and fast. I don't have any idea whether he was cheap or not. As for being the only man available: publisher and editor may not have looked very hard. I guess we should remember that Heitman was working full time for the Indianapolis Star at the same time he was drawing pictures for Weird Tales. We might also consider that if it weren't for Heitman, there may not have been any illustrations in Weird Tales during its first year and a half in print.

In any case, Heitman was replaced when Farnsworth Wright became editor. Andrew Brosnatch became the workhorse and carried the magazine through until June 1926. Heitman's last credits were for the issue of June 1925. Heitman continued to work for the Indianapolis Star until retiring in 1943. He died in Miami, Florida, the home city of his daughter, on January 10, 1945. His body was returned to Indianapolis for burial at St. Joseph Catholic Cemetery.

Note

(1) According to Jaffery and Cook's Collector's Index to Weird Tales, the only illustration for a Lovecraft story for which Heitman received credit was "The White Ape" (Apr. 1924).

William F. Heitman's Covers and Interior Illustrations for Weird Tales

Covers

• May 1923
• June 1923, illustrating "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe

Interior Illustrations

May 1923

• "The Floor Above" by M.L. Humphreys

June 1923

• "Desert Madness" by Harold Freeman Miners
• "Jack O'Mystery" by Edwin McLaren
• "The Blade of Vengeance" by George Warburton Lewis

July-Aug. 1923

• "Senorita Serpente" by Earl Wayland Bowman
• "The Room in the Tower" by D.L. Radway

Sept. 1923

• "The People of the Comet" by Austin Hall
• "The Cup of Blood" by Otis Adelbert Kline

Nov. 1923

• "The Closed Room" by Maybelle McCalment
• "The Spider" by Arthur Edwards Chapman

Jan. 1924

• "The Hand of Fatma" by Harry Anable Kniffin

Mar. 1924

• "The Spirit Fakers of Hermannstadt" by Harry Houdini
• "Yellow and White" by George Fuller

Apr. 1924

• "The Hoax of the Spirit Lover" by Harry Houdini
• "The White Ape" by H.P. Lovecraft
• "The Devil Bird" by Hal Halbert
• "The Ghost-Eater" by C.M. Eddy, Jr.

May-June-July 1924

• "The Hand" by H. Francis Caskey
• "The Purple Death" by Edith Lytle Ragsdale
• "An Egyptian Lotus" by Mrs. Chetwood Smith

Feb. 1925

• "The Tomb-Dweller" by Alice I. Fuller
• "Into the Fourth" by Adam Hull Shirk

May 1925

• "Seignior Vanna's Jest" by Stanley S. Schnetzler
• "The Sobbing Bell" by James C. Bardin
• "Imprisoned for Thirty Centuries" by Romeo Poole
• "The Lip" by Arthur Styron

June 1925

• "Black Hill" by Frank Owen
• "The Soul That Waited" by Louis B. Capron

Weird Tales, May 1923, the third issue of the magazine, with cover art by William F. Heitman. [Update: This is a partial swipe from the frontispiece, drawn by an unknown artist, of the book The Lock and Key Library: The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations, Old Time English, edited by Julian Hawthorne (New York: The Review of Reviews Co., 1915). Click here to read more.] 

And the cover for the fourth issue, June 1923, a step down for the artist. I'll have to study the covers of Weird Tales, but this would have to be a candidate for the worst cover of the magazine. It's not that it's poorly conceived or poorly designed, but the handling of the figures, especially that of the woman, seems to be the result either of an artist in a hurry or just plain bad draftsmanship.

Proof that William Heitman could draw: an illustration for a poem by the Indiana poet Tramp Starr (Carl Wilson) from the Indianapolis Star, January 7, 1940. 

And a drawing from the same paper illustrating a feature on the Mechanic Arts School in Evansville, Indiana, May 5, 1940. Experienced in journalistic illustration, Heitman may simply have been ill suited to fantasy art. We should remember that a lot of early fantasy art was not very well done. After all, this was a new world of illustration.

Updated on January 7, 2026, prompted by the comment below. Thank you to Jerimee for the prompt.

Thanks to a reader for corrections and further information.
Text and captions copyright 2012, 2023 by Terence E. Hanley

George W. Crane (1901-1995)

Teacher, Physician, Newspaper Columnist, Author, Public Speaker

Born April 28, 1901, Chicago, Illinois

Died July 17, 1995, Hillsboro, Indiana

Dr. George Washington Crane III was born on April 28, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois, and spent most of his life in the Chicago area. He received four degrees from Northwestern University (the last in 1935) and taught at that institution between 1922 and 1938, taking time out to study psychology at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., in 1925-1929. He seems to have been at the right place at the right time for two early credits in Weird Tales, a magazine also based in Chicago. Crane wrote two stories for "The Unique Magazine," "An Eye for an Eye" (May 1923) and "The Monstrosity" (Jan. 1924). He also wrote an early letter in the May 1923 issue.

Crane got his start as a writer by penning jokes and gags for humor magazines. Weird Tales was founded by Jacob Clark Henneberger, who also published humor magazines, including the first incarnation of College Humor. That may have provided George Crane's introduction to "The Unique Magazine." In any case, beginning in 1932 with Psychology Applied, Crane authored one or two books per decade until the 1960s, including Test Your Horse Sense (1942), Guidebook for Counseling (How to Cash In on Your Worries) (1956), The Quotable Dr. Crane (1968), and Something for Everybody: Smorgasbord for the Varied Hungers of the Spirit (1968), illustrated by the cartoonist Jack Hamm. If those titles sound like self-help books, it's for good reason. Trained in medicine and psychology, Dr. Crane took his work to the people. He wrote two long-running newspaper columns, "Horse Sense" or "Test Your Horse Sense" and "Case Records" or "The Worry Clinic." He also appeared on radio and in 1957 created the first computer dating service through The Scientific Marriage Foundation of Mellott, Indiana.

Politically conservative and active in religion, Crane was the patriarch of a sizable brood who went on to their own successes. His sons Philip M. Crane and Daniel B. Crane served in the U.S. House of Representatives for many years, while their brother, David Crane, followed his father into the field of medicine and psychiatry. The eldest son, Marine Lt. George W. Crane IV, was killed in a jet crash in an airshow in 1956. At the time, Lt. Crane was working on an idea for a Christmas song and storybook. His family picked up the project where Lt. Crane left off, producing a book called Little Sandy Sleighfoot (1957), written by June C. Unwin and illustrated by James Alan Unwin, with lyrics by Philip M. Crane and music by Joseph E. Savarino. Country music singer Jimmy Dean recorded the song "Little Sandy Sleighfoot," released two days before Christmas 1957. It reached #32 on the pop charts. The Crane family followed that success with a comic strip, variously called Little Sandy Sleighfoot, Sandy Sleighfoot, or Sandy, syndicated from 1959-1989. George Crane was credited as writer for part of that time. Jim and June Unwin were also credited.

After a long and very successful career, George W. Crane died at his Hillsboro, Indiana, farm on July 17, 1995. He was ninety-four years old.

George W. Crane's Stories and Letter in Weird Tales

"An Eye for an Eye" (May 1923)

Letter (May 1923)

"The Monstrosity" (Jan. 1924)

Further Reading

There is plenty of reading on and by George W. Crane on the Internet and in his many books.

A sampling of the cover for Little Sandy Sleighfoot (1957), a children's book and song created by June C. Unwin, James Alan Unwin, Philip M. Crane, and Joseph E. Savarino, based on an idea by Lt. George W. Crane IV.

And the comic-strip version of Little Sandy Sleighfoot with art by Jim Unwin.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley