"From Mars to the Midwest: the Geography of one Truly Great American Author

by Crystal Miramontez and L.G. Velez

* * *

Somewhere in the middle of the night, a child gazes at the red planet - so red and small and promising. A dream is born, perhaps.

Why, who knows, this could be happening in Waukegan, Illinois – the birthplace of one truly great American poet and storyteller. In the kingdom of universal literature, this peaceful Midwest town became indeed the proverbial source of inspiration for many of his stories, often tapped from real childhood events and experiences. This is why it has to be the first entry in our attempt to chart the important places in this wonderful poet's life, the kind of places that are always waiting to be rediscovered. There is no need to spell the name in these pages, for it is obvious we are talking about that same writer we all admire and love.

It was precisely in his delightful first novel that Waukegan became immortal under the imaginary name of 'Green Town'. As we turns the pages, one can almost breathe the scent of Genesee Street's primly mowed lawns, the fragrance of those soft, yellow dandelions...

Suddenly, like a whirlwind of autumn leaves, all these memories begin dancing right
in front of us. They evoke those landmarks that many of his diehard
fans have recognized and honored: the dark ravine, the bridge, the
grandparents' house, the back wall of the Academy Motion Picture
Theater. And of course, the basement with the bottles of homemade
dandelion wine, one bottle for every year, the joy of each summer is preseved in its own bottle.

One day, while he was still a teenager, his father was
offered a job in California. The family had to move West. Previously they had
lived for short periods of time in Arizona, where he got his first
typewriter, a toy one, from his parents. After graduation in Los
Angeles High School, the young man did not attend college. For about three
years, he lived through a precarious financial situation, barely supported by selling newspapers from the corner of Olympic and Norton. And yet, somehow, he managed to keep alive his optimism and his dreams.

Torn between his passions for acting and writing, he joined a theater
group while he attended meetings at the Science Fiction League, later
the LASFS, where he met Forrest Ackermann. The Society would meet
every Thursday in the Brown Room of Clifton's Cafeteria (Brookdale)
and eat cheese enchiladas while discussing stories and main issues
involving the sci-fi genre with other fans. Incidentally, Brookdale,
which was one of the two Clifton's at the time, is still alive and
open in downtown Los Angeles (648 South Broadway) and remains the
largest public cafeteria in the world.

It was there, when he was nineteen, that our poet met Robert
Heinlein, a rising author who would eventually become a 'sacred
monster'in Science Fiction literature. A few years his senior,
Heinlein helped him, not only by encouraging him to write, but
even by submitting one of his stories until it was finally published.
And there, too, the young author met Leigh Brackett. She was a talented
mystery writer. More experienced than him in the art of writing, she
coached him every Sunday after her volleyball game out on Muscle Beach
Venice (two miles north of Venice, south of the Santa Monica Pier). In
the beginning, his own mystery stories copied Brackett's style but
eventually we see his own personality shine through in his work.
Brackett would eventually marry writer Edmond Hamilton, and the young author was best
man at the wedding. In time, Brackett would write the screenplay for
The Empire Strikes Back and other singular works. Finally, another
friend for life would join the League: Ray Harryhausen, who would
later become world famous for his outstanding work in film animation,
including monsters from the young author's early work. The Beast From 20,000
Fathoms, for example, was inspired by a Bradbury short story of the
same name. It was first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1951
and later reprinted as 'The Foghorn'.

Back to 1946: in this happy year he meets his future wife, in the L.A. Fowler Brothers bookstore, on Seventh and Flower, where she worked. She had watched him in the store, somewhat concerned
that he could be a thief. An incident had recently occurred with
people stealing books and one look at him in his long trench coat made
her wary of him. Eventually the real thief was caught, while she captured his
heart and they got married in September of 1947 (with Harryhausen as best man). Were it not
for the young author's sweetheart, he may not have been able to hone his craft in writing.
We certainly owe her a debt of gratitude for daring to take a job and
encouraging some of his writing while most women in those days chose to stay at home.

The young author was impressed by the local flavor in Sherwood Anderson's fine
collection of short stories, 'Winesburg, Ohio'. He began to dream of
writing about those same things he found so familiar, combined with
the Mars he had read about in Edgar Rice Burroughs' stories. Little
could he imagine that these early efforts to represent his own
hometown memories and values in the context of another planet would
lead to his first true giant leap into literature.
For a while the newlyweds lived at S. Venice Blvd., on a thirty dollars a month rental sent by Heaven.
It is said that since they could not afford a telephone, when necessary, they had no choice but to use the phone at the gas station across the street. When she became pregnant, the happy circumstance pushed the young author with even more determination to sell his stories in
order to support a family.

Full of hopes and anxiety, he rode a Greyhound bus for four days and
went to New York in the summer of '49. It didn't take long to learn
that short stories were not appealing to publishers, as people
preferred novels in those days. Towards the end of what seemed like a
failed tour, the young author and his lifelong agent met a big time editor for dinner at Luchow's. This
traditional German restaurant in Manhattan is now long gone (it used
to be located in 110-112 East 14th St.); in its golden years, it had
counted among its regulars such highlights as Thomas Wolfe and O.
Henry.

It turns out that Mr. Big Time Editor was only interested in
science fiction, not fantasy or other genres, and he remembered some
of the young author's Mars stories ('Mars is Heaven' and other pieces had already
been published in popular pulp magazines). Moreover, he suggested that
the young author should somehow string them all in one book and call it "The
Martian Chronicles" or something to that effect. The excited writer went back to the William
Sloane House YMCA (34th St. & 9th Av.), where he was staying, and
typed out the outline of the book. The Editor paid him $750 as an advance
for the 'Chronicles' and the same amount for another work in progress,
The Illustrated Man. By then, the young author had already published one novel,
Dark Carnival (Arkham House, 1947). Backed with a positive review
from respected British author Christopher Isherwood, the 'Chronicles'
would go on to become a true American classic and recommended reading
material by many schools nationwide. It would also be censored by many and
included in a banned book list due to some language that was judged to invoke profanity. In the South
American city of Buenos Aires which the young author would visit many years later, the
famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges wrote: "In this book of
ghostly appearance, [our author] has placed his long empty Sundays, his
American tedium, his loneliness, like Sinclair Lewis did on Main
Street." (preface to the first Spanish language edition of The Martian
Chronicles).

Across the Atlantic Ocean, our young author loves Paris - wholeheartedly.
While visiting with his wife, one night in their hotel room, in a bout
of inspiration, he sat down to write. Staying awake until dawn, he
finished a whole novel on his typewriter while she slept soundly on
the nearby bed. In his touching love story, 'The Laurel and Hardy Love
Affair', the climax of the story takes place during a stroll in the
most beautiful avenue in the world, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
For a brief moment, just a flash, we travel back to California. We
discover the 133 step stairway of the 1932 Oscar-winning "Music Box"
described in the story is actually a tourist attraction (923-935
Vendome Street near Del Monte St. at Silverlake). The story had been
inspired by his visit in the late '40s to the Olympia Theater in
Dublin (on 72 Dame Street, across from the Castle), where he had seen
them, Laurel and Hardy, perform live. A sheer strike of luck had caused him to buy the last ticket,
which landed him first row, center, to enjoy an unforgettable
experience.

Our journey takes us now to 1953, to the Green Pastures of
Ireland. The young author had found himself admiring the films of famous and
flamboyant director John Houston. A brief meeting was eventually
arranged and the young author brought John two of his published books; he asked the
director to read them, and should he like them, the young author would work for
him. John had to leave and took them to Africa while he shot 'The
African Queen'. Upon his return, Houston let him know he was impressed
with what he had read. One day "The Devil Himself" asked the young writer to
meet for cocktails at the Beverly Hills Hotel (9641 Sunset Blvd), and
popped the question: Would the writer help him "flense and render down" the
White Whale? What this was really was an invitation for writing the screenplay
for his next movie, Moby Dick. Our aspiring screenwriter accepted the offer the next day,
and spent the following eight months in Ireland. Staying at the Royal
Hibernian Hotel, now demolished, on Dawson Street, he would often work
at Houston's rented estate, Courtown House, just 25 miles from Dublin,
in Kilcock (the imposing mansion and its contained garden still stand
just as lovely and were recently sold in public auction). During this
time, it would be somewhat depressing at times without the company of his wife
and children, but he learned to love the good sides of Dublin and its
Irish charm. Houston's Moby Dick eventually obtained an Oscar
nomination for Best Screenplay, for which Houston had claimed
co-authorship, much to the young author's chagrin. Much later, in the early 90s,
the young author would write a novel about this experiences in Ireland; he
would call it "Green Shadows, White Whale".

Like Houston's, the young author's work shows a fascination with Mexico, which
comes in bottles of different colors, diverse, similar, never
identical, like the sugar skulls at the marketplace on Dia de los
Muertos. A scent of Mexico flows around characters that represent
beautiful, strange, sometimes alien people uttering short words in
limited Spanish. Dark skinned and golden eyed, the Martians were
everywhere around him, concealed in the crowd before his own eyes, and we see them too - yes, the Martians, as we are transported to scenes right out of the Treasure of Sierra Madre in every other page.

For the past fifty years and then some more, he has lived a
charming life in his yellow Cheviot Hills house in California. He very
seldom flies and never drives, yet he spent one of the most wonderful
weeks of his life in Rome, Italy by invitation of Federico Fellini,
another legendary acclaimed film director. They had first met in
London in 1948, and later he wrote to Fellini and suggested he should write a
book. The author has also grown fond of the film works of another
Italian maestro of nostalgia: Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso,
Stanno Tutti Bene, The Legend of 1900). French director Francois
Truffaut shot a splendid version of his all-time masterpiece
Fahrenheit 451. Hopelessly in love with the movies since he was a kid
in Waukegan, the writer would go with his best friends to Eagle Rock and Pasadena and watch She, King Kong and Son of Kong. We hear he has enjoyed thoroughly the new Kong version by Peter
Jackson.

And so we reach the final leg of our trip: a November 2004 visit takes us to Washington DC, to the White House, where he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by the President himself. More recently, in April 2007, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced that he had
won a special citation for "his distinguished, prolific and deeply
influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and
fantasy". Prolific indeed – novels, plays, poems, more than five
hundred fantasy and science fiction short stories. Disney would hire
him as a consultant, for the making of Euro Disney, using many of
his very creative ideas. His own TV show, his love for the theater... there
is so much more to this great American that should not go without mention.
To this day, we hear he still dictates his soul over the phone
to his daughter in the form of intense metaphors. From his wheelchair, still bright and courageous, he smiles and dreams of good stuff, of the places that make
his world so special and he continues to live by writing."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Captain Wilder,

Very nice. Thanks for posting!!!

...and as the pages of the 21st Century's first decade were turned, advanced probes more frequently landed on the Red Planet Mars. Our beloved author was continually thrilled by their amazing images and hints of stories yet to tell. For once again - still and always, like young boys running through the green fields of Illinois discoverying the magic of life, his metaphors truly reached out across millions of miles of this Galaxy...

How appropriate it is "Capt. Wilder" who has so kindly offered such a fine retrospective! Thanks.

Capt. York was unavailable for comment...

Thank you for your kind postings. Glad to be able to share it with all the fans in this great forum.

Speaking of the late Edmond Hamilton (he was mentioned above, honest!), he was recently honoured by his hometown:

http://www.tribtoday.com/page/...525047.html?nav=5005

Hey, Phil: That's great, Ed Hamilton being honored. I knew him for a few years between 71 and 77, along with his wife, Leigh Brackett, who wrote Star Wars II. Ed was a great guy. They both were. Lots of good conversations about a number of things.

Nard, you were very lucky to move in such circles!

Did you know that Leigh Brackett wrote the beginning section of Bradbury's short story "The Scythe"?

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:
Leigh Brackett, who wrote Star Wars II.

V, surely.

quote:

Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:
Leigh Brackett, who wrote Star Wars II.

V, surely.

Douglas: Leigh wrote the screenplay for "The Empire Strikes Back." But unable to completely finish the screenplay because of her death, George Lucas finished it. That's why you see both Leigh and George's name on screenplay credits for Empire.

Phil: Naw. No special circles. Mostly SF conventions and special meetings. You meet everyone there. A.E. Van Vogt, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein. They all were there, walking around for anyone to talk to. Famous list is long at these places. Then belonged to a small science-fiction club in Chicago, where George RR Martin was a struggling writer. My, those are years ago now. Seems just like....yesterday!

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:
Douglas: Leigh wrote the screenplay for "The Empire Strikes Back." But unable to completely finish the screenplay because of her death, George Lucas finished it. That's why you see both Leigh and George's name on screenplay credits for Empire.

I know. Empire was Star Wars 5, tho. Directed by Kersh, who is making a documentary on Ray.

quote:

I know. Empire was Star Wars 5, tho. Directed by Kersh, who is making a documentary on Ray.

Oh Yeah! Duh!

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:

Leigh wrote the screenplay for "The Empire Strikes Back." But unable to completely finish the screenplay because of her death, George Lucas finished it.

Well, at least she had a really good excuse.

The story behind "Empire Strikes Back" is a bit more complex. It seems that Lucas wasn't too happy with Brackett's screenplay, so he turned over the subsequent drafts to Lawrence Kasdan. (The screenplay credit on the film is given to Brackett and Kasdan; the story credit is given to Lucas.)

I would love to see Brackett's screenplay published. She was a better screenwriter than Lucas will ever be!

Stepehn Haffner of Haffner Press was nice enough to send a couple of links regarding the Ed Hamilton Day festivties in Kinsman, Ohio to those on his mailing list. Here they are:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/1...s/72157622286975970/

http://www.rehupa.com/?p=918