Month: February 2018

Hawkshaw & Howard

On By Rob RoehmIn Howard's Writing, InfluencesLeave a comment

2018 02-02 1 Hawkshaw

[by Rob Roehm. Originally published March 18, 2010, at rehtwogunraconteur.com.]

The February 15, 1923 issue of Brownwood High School’s student newspaper, The Tattler, introduced readers to one of Robert E. Howard’s very first (maybe, the first) series characters, Hawkshaw the Detective. With the Colonel, his blundering sidekick, Hawkshaw appeared in three stories: “Unhand Me, Villain!” “Aha! or The Mystery of the Queen’s Necklace,” and “Halt! Who Goes There?”; this last published in The Yellow Jacket, Howard Payne College’s newspaper, in 1924. For those not familiar with the tales, they are detective parodies along the lines of the Fu Manchu spoofs that appeared in some of Howard’s letters, though these poke fun at Sherlock Holmes and Watson, instead. At least I thought that was where the idea came from.

I was thumbing through an old copy of the Comic Book Price Guide the other day, looking for comics I used to have, when the following title caught my eye: The Adventures of Hawkshaw. “Huh,” I muttered, and then read the following note: “See Hawkshaw the Detective.”

First published in 1917, Hawkshaw the Detective is a 48-page collection of “Sunday strip reprints” by Gus Mager. In 1994 it was worth $160 in near mint condition. A print-on-demand version of this is available at lulu.com.

Robert E. Howard would’ve been eleven years old in 1917, seventeen in 1923 when his first Hawkshaw story appeared in print. I don’t doubt that Howard was reading things in 1917, but would he have remembered a comic book six years later? Well, he didn’t have to. According to Don Markstein’s Toonopedia, Hawkshaw the Detective, the newspaper strip, ran from 1913 to 1922; so, if Howard had access to one of the newspapers that ran the strip, he’d easily remember it a few months later.

The term “hawkshaw” was fairly prevalent in the 1920s and was synonymous with “detective,” so it would be easy to write these two Hawkshaws off as a coincidence, but when you throw in the sidekick Colonel, it becomes unlikely. Have a look and see if the comic strip posted here doesn’t match Howard’s description of the duo from “Unhand Me, Villain!”: “One was a tall, thin man and the other a short stocky man.”

hawkshaw141116

I think it’s safe to assume that Howard, as well as readers of The Tattler, were familiar with the characters from the comic strip long before they appeared in the stories mentioned above. Add Gus Mager to the list of Howard’s influences.

Oh, and Hawkshaw’s fame is enduring, apparently. Hawkshaw the Detective: A Morally Uplifting Melodrama by Tim Kelly was published in 1976 by Hanbury Plays and was recently performed at the Golden Chain Theatre “in scenic Oakhurst,” California.

Dating The Right Hook

On By Rob RoehmIn Biography, Howard's Writing, Lone ScoutsLeave a comment

[by Rob Roehm. Originally published February 9, 2010, at rehtwogunraconteur.com; this version lightly edited.]

The Robert E. Howard Foundation’s recent publication of Sentiment: An Olio of Rarer Works contains the first real publication of The Right Hook numbers 2 and 3; number 1 appeared in a small press publication, Power of the Writing Mind, back in 2003. Consisting of several typewritten sheets, The Right Hook appears to be Robert E. Howard’s version of a “tribe paper” (his second, in fact; the first was The Golden Caliph in the summer of 1923). These were amateur publications produced by boys in the Lone Scouts of America. All three issues appeared in REHupa mailing #117 for September 1992, but only 30 people have that, and I’m not one of them. So we’ve got these three issues of Howard’s amateur paper, and none of them are dated. The best I’ve ever heard is “circa spring 1925.” Let’s see if we can do better than that.

In the first issue, there are a few references that can help date the publication. In “The Great Munney Ring,” Howard discusses Ed “Strangler” Lewis’  loss of the wrestling title to Wayne Munn, a former football star. That event occurred on January 8, 1925.

2018 02-01 2 Ed Lewis

Ed “Strangler” Lewis’

(Photo from Wrestling Museum)

On “The Sporting Page” Howard states that “Louis Kaplan has been given the title vacated by Johnny Dundee who retired some months ago, on the strength of his defeat of Danny Kramer.” Kaplan was awarded the title on January 2, 1925. There is also reference to the Sammy Mandell-Sid Terris boxing match which occurred on February 6, 1925. Other fights mentioned are from February 1925 or earlier.

The only item that argues against a late-February 1925 release is Howard’s mention of Upton Sinclaire’s Mammonart. This book began life as a serial published in late 1924 and into 1925. I’ve been unable to pin down the exact date of the complete book’s release, but a little “internet archaeology” did reveal a couple of mentions in the Harvard Crimson: one on March 21, and the other—a short review—on March 23. Another article in the April 1, 1925, Appleton, Wisconsin, Post-Crescent states that Mammonart was “just published.” All of these items suggest a March 1925 release date for the book. Of course, there’s no way of knowing exactly when Howard picked up the title, or if he even had when he wrote the comments in his paper, all of which could have been culled from newspapers. Perhaps a look at the other Right Hooks will help narrow down the date of the first; after all, it stands to reason that the first issue was published some time before the second. [UPDATE: I scored a first edition of Mammonart. The publication date is listed as “February, 1925.”]

The second issue of The Right Hook begins with the announcement that Munn, mentioned in number 1, has already lost the wrestling title to “Stanilaus Zybissco” (the correct spelling is Stanislaus Zbyszko). That match occurred on April 15, 1925. Another dateable reference in the second issue comes in the form of Howard’s prognostication of the upcoming McTigue-Berlenbach light-heavyweight title match. This contest was decided on May 30, 1925. Howard’s predictions were not accurate.

2018 02-01 2 Munn

(Photo from Online World of Wrestling)

The two items above give us a nice window for The Right Hook #2: it must have come out after April 15 and before May 30, 1925. And, since the first issue had to come out before the second, we can now date that issue as well: The Right Hook #1 appeared sometime between the publication of Mammonart in late March and the Munn-Zbyszko match in mid-April 1925.

(A little side note: Narrowing down the date of the second issue helps us place a comment therein about Tevis Clyde Smith’s trip to the Old South. This helps us date Howard’s mention of that same trip described in his autobiographical novel, Post Oaks and Sand Roughs.)

The third issue of The Right Hook is largely taken up with fiction; therefore, there is little help in dating it. The only factual report in the number is Howard’s attempt to classify boxing champions by skill, hitting ability, toughness, and several other factors. Given the lack of specific fights to track down, the best we can do with this one is say it came after #2. Howard does say, however, that he has “been neglecting this magazine,” which suggests that the time between #2 and #3 was longer than the time between #1 and #2. So let’s say probably in June or July 1925.

To recap, given the evidence presented in each issue, The Right Hook probably had the following publication dates:

The Right Hook Volume 1, Number 1 — March/April 1925
The Right Hook Volume 1, Number 2 — April/May 1925
The Right Hook Volume 1, Number 3 — June/July 1925

These dates square with a period of renewed interest in the Lone Scouts of America by Howard and his friends. Tevis Clyde Smith had produced a tribe paper in 1923 (The All-Around Magazine) with the help of Howard and Truett Vinson. In 1925, Vinson produced The Toreador with the help of Howard, Smith, and Herbert Klatt.

Post Oaks and Football

On By Rob RoehmIn Biography, Howard's Writing1 Comment

2018 02-01 Post Oaks

[by Rob Roehm. Originally published February 3, 2010, at rehtwogunraconteur.com; this version lightly edited.]

I always wonder how we know what we know about Robert E. Howard. Depending on the author, sometimes even his birth date is called into question, which shows that sometimes there is more than one way to interpret information, and we may only be seeing one side—the side that particular writer wants us to see. So, whenever I run into a statement that makes a claim, I always want to know what evidence supports the conclusion. If none is provided, I like to try to find it myself.

For example, we’ve all heard that Post Oaks & Sand Roughs is a “semi-autobiographical” novel; the characters may have different names, but they do many of the things that real people in Howard’s life actually did. Howard uses the name “Steve Costigan” for himself; Clyde Smith becomes “Clive Hilton,” and so on. The first I ever heard of the book was on the old Barbarian Keep website, which states that Post Oaks “relates events that occurred in Howard’s life sometime between 1924 and 1928, when REH was 18-22 years of age.” Well, I wondered, how do we know that? Of course, that was many years ago, and at the time I just didn’t know enough about good ol’ Bob to even begin to try to see how accurate that statement was. Times change.

On a recent trip to the Brownwood Genealogy Library, I actually came prepared. This was no spontaneous, spur of the moment trip: it’d been planned for several months and I had a checklist of things I wanted to research. One of those things was the 1924-28 timeline suggested for Post Oaks.

It’s pretty easy to arrive at the end date, 1928. Toward the end of the novel, page 133 to be exact, we learn that “Hubert Grotz” has died. “Grotz” has been identified as Herbert Klatt, and all the evidence suggests that that identification is solid. Then we have Howard’s letter to Tevis Clyde Smith eulogizing Klatt; the letter is dated circa May 1928. As the novel only runs to 161 pages, and with everything after page 142 entirely fictional, the1928 date seems to be a good one.

2018 02-01 Football

The start date took a little work. The novel begins at a football game between Gower-Penn and Semple Universities. These have been identified as Howard Payne and Simmons (Hardin-Simmons today). Bob attended Howard Payne, so that ID is a no-brainer, and “Semple,” as stated in the novel, is “from Abilene,” which is where Simmons is located. The game is played right at the beginning of the Thanksgiving break. So, how do we know it’s 1924? Wouldn’t Howard Payne face off against Simmons every year? Read on.

There are several elements in Howard’s description of the football game which allow us to determine when it was played. Howard wrote that “the Association title [was] in sight” and that “Gower-Penn” wins that title. He also says that the team’s captain, “Joe Franey,” was playing his last college game. “Franey’s” exploits are described in some detail: he “stepp[ed] back under the very shadow of the Gower-Penn goal posts, he caught the soaring sphere and raced like a ghost down the field. [. . .] he had run a full hundred yards through the center of the entire Semple team for a touchdown!” In the back of Post Oaks, Glenn Lord identifies “Joe Franey” as Joe Cheney. That provides another little nugget for our search.

So, to find the exact start time of the novel, all one has to do is find when the game between Howard Payne and Simmons was played in which Howard Payne wins the Association title and the captain of the team (Joe Cheney, or at least someone) runs the length of the field for a touchdown. And it would also be nice if it were that player’s last game. No problem.

Before leaving for Texas, I did a little “internet archeology” and found the College Football Data Warehouse [now defunct]. As near as I can tell, it lists the scores for practically every college football game that’s ever been played. I found the Howard Payne Yellow Jackets and had a look at their records. From 1920 to 1929 they beat Simmons six times; they tied once and lost the other three. The Howard Payne versus Simmons game was the last game in each of those seasons. The Yellow Jackets were the Texas Collegiate Athletic Conference Champions three times in that ten year span: 1924, 1928, and 1929. Interestingly, the coach for those last two wins was one Joe Bailey Cheaney. Hmm, might that Joe be a former player who had run the length of the field in 1924 to win the conference title? The spelling of the last name notwithstanding. Good enough; now I needed to be in Texas.

Once in Brownwood, I took a trip to the offices of the Brownwood Bulletin and checked out a couple rolls of microfilm. The microfilm viewer is at the genealogy library. From there it was a simple matter to scroll the microfilm to November 28, 1924—the day after the game had been played—and see what I could find. Paydirt.

Under the page five headline, “HOWARD PAYNE CINCHES CHAMPIONSHIP OF T.I.A.A.” is the smaller heading “YELLOW JACKETS BEAT SIMMONS AT PARK HERE BEFORE BIG CROWD.” A few paragraphs later, I read the following:

Captain Joe Bailey Cheaney, the light half of the Yellow Jackets, the signal-calling, line-plunging, passing and kicking captain of the Jackets, playing his last game in the Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association, was the star in the game.

A little later, with tongue firmly in cheek, we learn that “the best [Cheaney] could do [. . .] was to run 100 yards in the early part of the first quarter for the Jacket’s first touchdown.” True, Howard says the run occurred at game’s end, but I think we can chalk that up to Howard wanting to make the win more dramatic. Everything else fits: the Jackets win the title; it’s the captain’s last game; he runs the length of the field for a touchdown; the game is played at the beginning of the Thanksgiving break, which the college’s catalogue says began on November 27, 1924, the same day the game was played.

2018 02-01 Cheaney

Another little note about Cheaney (pictured above): In Post Oaks, Howard says that “Gower-Penn worshiped the youth with a blind passion.” To confirm that, one need only look at the Howard Payne yearbook for the 1924-25 school year. Cheaney’s accomplishments are legion: he was the president of his class for each of the four years he attended; he was captain of the track team his first three years and captain of the football and basketball teams during his senior year, and even tried out for the Olympics in Boston. He was a member of the Press Club—which was affiliated with The Yellow Jacket, so he may have known Bob Howard who had a story published in the paper in September of ’24—he was on the B.S.U. Council, in the Glee Club and the H Club (a letterman’s organization), and served as Athletic Editor for The Lasso yearbook. To top it all off, he was selected “Best All-Round Boy.” I wonder what his grades were like?

Anyway, I think it’s safe to assume that the time period covered in Post Oaks and Sand Roughs is indeed 1924 to 1928, but we can be a little more specific than that. The novel begins on November 27, 1924 around 7:00 p.m.—the newspaper says, after all, that the Simmons Cowboys were boarding their homeward bound train around 8:00. I love it when things work out.

Oh yeah, the score was 23 – 6.