Ruth Gruber: Friend, Mentor, Surrogate Grandmother by M. G. Turner

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Ruth Gruber April 2007

A few months ago, while undergoing an ultrasound for something disconcerting I’d found on my body—which mercifully turned out to be, officially, nothing—I was suddenly hit by a wave of gratitude for an old friend: author and photojournalist Ruth Gruber, who despite our wide age gap was one of my closest confidants, and even at times a surrogate grandmother.

The reason for my gratitude was simple: in 1944, as a newly appointed general by the Roosevelt Administration she personally escorted 972 refugees to America; many, though not all, were Jewish. Among these refugees was a man named Alex Margulis who, as chronicled in Ruth’s 1983 book Haven, would go on to invent the CT Scan, MRI, and other examples of medical imaging technology which have saved an unfathomable and beautifully absurd number of lives. As I was having my procedure I couldn’t help but think of Ruth, and all she meant to me, and to the multitude of people who knew her. After passing away in 2016, at the age of 105—nerd that I am, I admit it’s titillating to use the actual numerals for her age, as in the Chicago Manual of Style only numbers under 100 are spelled out—she left behind a legion of admirers, followers, and yes, even fans. I consider myself as belonging to the latter category, but at the start my connection to her was a personal one. Yet beyond personal and professional appreciation lies my aforementioned feeling, gratitude: especially as the technician utilized that life-saving device and informed me with a wink that, because the doctor did not want to see any more, I was “good.”

***

I don’t recall the first time Ruth and I met, but it had to have been around my seventh or eighth year—as in 2004, when I was still very young I subjected her to an interview, filmed by my mother on a camcorder, one steamy day in August, while I was on summer vacation. I still have the video, rendered into digital form but no less evocative of that early VHS period: amid wavy lines there I am, in almost knee-high white socks, sitting lackadaisically in a stuffed armchair, rattling off a list of question I had memorized, forgotten, then memorized again; while Ruth herself, looking dignified and very well at just ninety-three, listened and nodded and tried with honesty and precision to answer my questions—the questions of an eight year old who was very much wowed by her, and kept repeating after her every statement “That’s a great answer!” in an effort to impress a woman who could not have been kinder-hearted or more willing to engage with a young person.

It is important to stress the reason for my early acquaintanceship with her which soon blossomed into a friendship: my father was her editor—and according to a quip she made on more than one occasion at dinner parties and events to the chagrin of some present, he was her favorite editor. This favoritism was likely rooted in her appreciation of his no-nonsense editing style, and his direct, fearless approach to publishing. It matched her own brand of journalism, which was in the words of one of her mentors Edward Steichen to “Take pictures with her heart.” Not only did she take pictures with her heart, she wrote with it too! As any of her readers know there is a declarative majesty to her prose that is only outmatched by her subject matter; she had so much to say and a great deal of life experience to back it up—whether becoming the youngest Ph.D. in the world, doing so in Germany in the mid-thirties and seeing the tail end of the Weimar Republic give way to Nazi Germany; or having tea with Virginia Woolf in London—the very subject of her thesis—and being struck by the author’s corrosive nonchalance, and low-grade anti-semitism, while still managing to hold a nuanced view of her; or when in 1944 she, as mentioned, escorted by ship nearly a thousand refugees who were escaping persecution in Europe, and fighting for them to be accepted by the virulently anti-immigrant State Department, despite President Roosevelt being considered a friend to the Jews.

This is to say, she had something unique—content. Like other, more famous writers and journalists of the time—Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Gellhorn come to mind—after literally living her stories, she put her experiences into words that could be understood by everyone. But her egalitarian style permeated not just her written work but the way she spoke about her career—this held even while speaking about it to me on that sultry day in 2004 when my mom and I stopped by to see her to conduct and impromptu interview. There would be many days and evenings like this, when we would look at each other, and one of us would ask: “Do you want to go see Ruth?” and the answer was always, invariably, the same.

***

Ruth had been living in the Eldorado—a quintessentially regal Central Park West apartment building—for several decades when I first became acquainted with her. Just going over there was a grand experience for me; at the time I had not yet glimpsed New York’s magisterial splendor; the lobby looked like an art deco palace. But visiting Ruth was the start of something more than architectural or stylistic appreciation. I can easily recall these visits as the first time I considered an importance beyond the aesthetic; or rather, that the aesthetic and the moral and meaningful could coalesce into something highly impactful: the notion that one’s life could be an adventure.

Ruth Gruber embarking on the voyage to bring nearly 1000 refugees to America in 1944. They sailed from Naples, Italy, crossing the Atlantic protected by a convoy of US warships. The story is told in her book, “Haven,'” and the 2000 CBS miniseries of the same name, with Natasha Richardson cast as Ruth.

It was this adventurous spirit that Ruth embodied, as well as a presentation of self that prized dignity and demeanor. Whenever we saw her—it didn’t matter if we had come on three consecutive Sundays—she got dressed up; always with her light gold hair perfectly coiffed; her jewelry always tasteful; her greetings broad and demonstrably delighted, as if she wanted us to know, really know, how glad she was that we had stopped by. And we stopped by many times, whether to simply have tea and talk, or to take her out to Central Park, or even have dinner with her.
It was on these nights that my conception of an intellectual community was formed—namely that such a thing could exist, and that I could be a part of it. This feeling carried over into my schooling; in college I had the unique experience of going with my archives class to visit the New York Public Library to see Virginia Woolf’s diaries, which my friend had been mentioned in, however unkindly by the sadly disturbed writer, whom Ruth saw as a woman trapped by her own mind. Though Woolf used an anti-semitic slur in her journal to describe Ruth, she did not hold a grudge beyond feelings of sadness and disappointment.

Ruth Gruber photo “The Embrace”

While I stood with my class looking at Woolf’s pages—most of which were written in a flourishing lavender hand—I knew that among them were those referring to my friend.

Despite Woolf’s callousness, I cherish these kinds of synchronicities. Growing up in New York brings one into the vicinity of great people, particularly if your parents happen to know some of them. These same great people can in their own way sum up entire eras, especially if the person in question is a centenarian. Ruth was born under President Taft and died in November of 2016 while Barack Obama was mercifully still President—though about to leave office to make way for the degraded eventuality that was to come. In one final act of goodness, to add to her litany of mensch-like deeds, the recently turned 105-year-old was taken by her daughter to the polls and cast her last vote for Hillary Clinton. It is unclear whether in the coming hours Ruth was cognizant of the election results, or fully grasped their implication, but it didn’t matter, for she had raised her voice one more time. This was something she’d grown accustomed to, whether from her efforts to counter the anti-semitism and isolationism of the United States government; or in 1944 reporting for the NY Post on the fate of refugees on the ship Exodus; or her early contributions to the newly-named field of Feminism in the 1930s.

***

Ruth Gruber is showing me a hinged, painted case my mother, artist Kyle Gallup, made. Inset in the case is a collage Kyle also made comprised of photos Ruth took documenting the refugees on the Exodus ship. It became part of the cover art for Ruth’s book—”Exodus 1947: The Ship that Launched a Nation”—which my father published with Ruth in 1999.

Despite her far-reaching influence, my dearest recollections of Ruth remain rooted in more personal soil. She was simply an older woman whom I cared for, and who at times felt like a surrogate grandmother to me. Given that my biological grandparents lived far away and I did not see them often, Ruth became a special friend, who was not relation nor teacher, but a figure whose influence was hard to define or put into a single box. It was in fact so unique, that, due to my own immature faculties at the time, I was unable to fully comprehend how lucky we were to know her and be close to her.

Yet where nomenclature fails, one recollection appears to sum up this relationship. And it was that, in my third grade year, she took it upon herself to attend Grandparents Day on my behalf. While most children had their family relations with them, Ruth was at my side, explaining who she was to the awed faces of the class. I remember my mother thanking her, and Ruth saying it was her pleasure—in her parlance everything was almost always “her pleasure”—and walking her back to her Central Park West apartment building where I knew we would soon have another one of our special get-togethers. Sometimes the canvas of memory is confused, disjointed, opaque; but not my memories of Ruth. There is a single beam of clear light which is cast upon all my imagistic renderings of her, and it starkly illuminates the privilege of having sat in her company, of hearing her stories that always seemed to conclude thematically with the victories of dignity over oppression, of passion over indifference—I took these tales to heart without deciding to, for there was something so indelible about her influence. Among her many gifts was the ability to make you feel that life could be made better by the simple act of putting pen to paper, or pressing the camera shutter. Sometimes the simplest actions have the greatest impact; sometimes saving one life can save many others.

Ruth’s influence transcends an easily measurable calculus; many close to her said if she had been a man she would have won the Noble Peace Prize, but Ruth herself did not think in those terms. She simply did the work she was passionate about, and believed to be right, and encouraged others to do the same. For a long life well-lived what more can anyone ask?

M. G. Turner

October 1, 2022

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Sold—Public/Private: My Life with Joe Papp at the Public Theater
by Gail Merrifield Papp

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Delighted to announce that our literary agency Philip Turner Book Productions has sold PUBLIC/PRIVATE: My Life with Joe Papp at the Public Theater by Gail Merrifield Papp to Applause Theater and Cinema Books. News of the deal appeared first in Publishers Weekly’s Deals column today.

The author has worked in the theater world for most of her career, starting at the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, and then at producer Joe Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater from 1965-1991. As Director of New Plays and Musicals Development, she was responsible for some of the Public’s best-remembered productions. Gail Merrifield and Joe Papp married in 1976 and were together until his death in 1991. She lives in New York City.

To offer readers of this blog a sense of the book, below is a portion of the pitch letter I sent to publishers.

Gail Merrifield Papp has written an engrossing and highly entertaining book that blends an affecting memoir of her life alongside the founder of the Public Theater Joe Papp with a behind-the-scenes portrait of the influential theater’s dazzling history. She opens with the Public Theater’s beginnings more than a half-century ago in a narrative that spans the decades-long association the couple enjoyed until Joe’s death in 1991. During that span, the Public mounted hundreds of productions, from Shakespeare in the Park to such plays as for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and Sticks and Bones, to the musicals Hair and A Chorus Line—with many actors whose careers were launched at the Public, including James Earl Jones, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Colleen Dewhurst, Martin Sheen, Gloria Foster, George C. Scott, Diane Venora, Morgan Freeman, and dozens of others.*

In a witty conversational style, the author paints a comprehensive portrait of the creative process of one of America’s most acclaimed theater artists, highlighting the innovative ways the Public operated, driven by Joe’s ambition to create a year-round producing home focused on original plays and musicals from new voices, while employing non-traditional casting which made it a home for scores of the most creative people in American pop culture. In  Public/Private she traces the founding of the Shakespeare Festival, when its role was for a time limited to small venues around New York City, later moving into Central Park where its Shakespeare renditions became an indelible feature of summer in the city, and the Public’s evolution toward cultural renown and national significance, a beacon for social change.

New aspects of Joe Papp’s many battles with the establishment are also highlighted, from tilts with Robert Moses to theater critics to conservative poohbahs in the US Congress. The scourge of AIDs is also documented, in the form of people close to Joe and Gail, Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart, and in the toll it exacted on Joe’s son, Tony.

Her touching remembrances lend the narrative a keen, emotional edge, which will captivate readers and bring a human side to the legendary figure whose theater continues to thrive today, operating at both the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, in the theaters on Astor Place and at Joe’s Pub, a live music venue dedicated in his honor.

At a time when America remains divided over issues of race, identity, and sexual orientation, Public/Private reminds us that theater is a powerful force for social change and community-building, a place for people to gather.

*A marvel of the book will be its impressive appendices of more than thirty pages appearing under the headings: Featured Actors, Choreographers, Composers, Directors, and Playwrights.

To read more about Gail Merrifield Papp and what you can expect to discover in her upcoming book, visit GailPapp.com.

 

 

 

 

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Remembering My Dad, Earl I. Turner, on Father’s Day 2022

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My father, Earl I. Turner (Feb 7, 1918-July 8, 1992), was a dear man who showed me so much about being a kind and decent person. Here’s a letter he wrote for his three children on May 8, 1978, four days after we’d opened Undercover Books, our bookstore in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Jewish tradition embraces the idea that a parent may offer to their children what’s termed an “ethical will,” which is pretty much what he gave us here, with its discussion of ethics in business, while standing up for one’s self. The photograph was taken on a visit he made to the Canadian Rockies in 1982, a sightseeing journey that he gloried in. My own enjoyment of gorgeous scenic views was no doubt inspired by him. His handwriting and signature were very distinctive, and I’m always comforted when I see his script on something, as here. Thank you, Dad, gone thirty years, love for you always.

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“Hearts on Fire: Six Years that Changed Canadian Music, 2000-2005,” the Latest Addition to My CANRock Library

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Really excited to have my hands on a copy of HEARTS ON FIRE: Six Years that Changed Canadian Music, 2000-2005 by Michael Barclay, the latest book in an ongoing series of in-depth histories of independent Canadian rock and folk music. It examines the rise of a couple dozen Canadian bands who broke lots of new artistic and sonic ground—and while sharing few commonalities apart from the fact they largely or partly hailed from Canada—put the Canadian music scene on the global map in a new way in the first decade of this millennium.

The bands and solo artists in the new book represent wide swathes of indie music from Canada: anthemic, quasi-orchestral rock, with Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Stars, Metric, Owen Pallett, and  The New Pornographers; country rock roots-folk sounds with The Sadies and Blue Rodeo, and singer-songwriters Sarah Harmer, Kathleen Edwards, Hawksley Workman, Feist, and Joel Plaskett; headbangers are not overlooked with Constantines, Danko Jones, Black Mountain, and Fucked Up. And The Hidden Cameras, God Speed You Black Emperor, Hot Hot Heat, Peaches, Sam Roberts Band, Royal City, Wolf Parade, The Dears, Tegan and Sara, and AlexisonFire, also appear. A lot of artists whose music I knew already, and a number of others I’m glad to discover.

It’s the latest installment in what amounts to a publishing rarity—a nonfiction trilogy*, though I’m pretty sure the three authors involved, Barclay, Ian A.D. Jack, and Jason Schneider, didn’t envision it as such when they published HAVE NOT BEEN THE SAME: The CANROCK Renaissance 1985-1995 (HNBTS) in 2001; it was very well received by fans and musicians alike, which led to an expanded version in 2011. That’s when I first became aware of the book.

A prefatory note in the second edition explained they’d begun working on the first version in the late 1990s, so collectively this enterprise has been going on now for parts of four decades. They’ve had the same publisher throughout, ECW Press. As an editor and literary agent myself I want add, to ECW’s credit, they have consistently put out well-designed and edited books, very readable volumes that do justice to the authors’ vision for their books.

I got my copy of the sturdily-bound 750-page trade paperback of HNBTS soon after my discovery, in 2009, of the dynamic Internet radio station CBCRadio 3, then a vibrant outpost for independent Canadian rock on the digital airwaves. It offered a passionate tribe of music lovers and fans dozens of hours of music every week. A cadre of talented hosts helmed the live programming with information, patter, contests, a new Track of the Day every weekday, brief interviews with musicians, and each day, a highly interactive blog featuring a Topic-of-the-Day with the hosts reading comments by contributors who minted memorable blog names for themselves. My handle was PSTNYC. According to the wiki on Radio 3, it “had its genesis [within CBC, Canada’s national broadcaster] in a late-1990s proposal to launch a radio network devoted to youth culture, comparable to BBC Radio 1 and Australia’s Triple J.” The station was supported by CBC for more than a decade, but poobahs there seemed to never quite understand the potential of it, even though the hosts—a lively group that included Craig Norris, Lana Gay, Vish Khanna, Amanda Putz, Lisa Christiansen, and Grant Lawrence, and musicians Tariq Hussain (a member of Brasstronaut) Graham Wright (of Tokyo Police Club), Jay Ferguson (from Sloan)—had loyal listeners for whom each host’s daily three-four hour show could be “appointment listening.” Sadly, live hosting was scuttled in 2015, and the station became little more than an algorithmic-driven entity. At its peak, the number of artists who created band profiles on the Radio 3 website and uploaded music to it numbered greater than 30,000. That’s a snapshot of just how active the music scene across Canada was, and is, a country whose population at the time hovered between 30-35 million. I attribute this, at least in part, to the prevalence of music education in Canadian schools. Radio 3 was a potent force for community-building which I still miss, as do the many dozens of friends in Canada and around the world I made in the course of the decade or so I was on the platform. Unfortunately, the website doesn’t even exist anymore as an archive of any sort.

I discovered HNBTS thanks to an album of songs by then-current bands covering songs by artists from the 1985-95 period which appeared in the first version of the book. It was organized, smartly, to promote the 2011 reissue. I heard those new version of older songs played on CBC Radio 3, and bought a digital download of it from Zunior.com, a digital musical seller that’s been a reliable source and supplier to me for many years. It’s operated by Dave Ulrich, a member of Inbreds, a band he played in with Mike O’Neill, included in HNBTS.

Around 2013, I started a companion to this blog called Honourary Canadian: Seeing Canada from Away, and have often written about Canadian indie music for both sites, attending shows by Canadian groups when their tours brought them into NYC. During this period, I also began attending the annual NXNE music festival in Toronto as press, and wrote many posts about the gathering for both of my sites. During the week of NXNE over five consecutive nights, I would hear upwards of four dozen groups at venues all across Toronto—the Horseshoe Tavern, Rivoli, Paddock, Danforth Hall, Dakota Tavern—hanging at the shows with friends from the CBC Radio 3 fan community. We would meet up for a picnic on the Saturday during the festival week, for which musicians would come to play under the trees—and in 2012, even in the trees—when Adrian Glynn and Zach Gray climbed this big beauty with their guitars to play for us.

With three authors to cover the musical waterfront, HNBTS discussed dozens of artists and groups. Here’s a partial list: Stompin’ Tom Connors, Barenaked Ladies, NoMeansNo, the Nils, Rheostatics, Skydiggers, Bruce Cockburn, Hayden, Cowboy Junkies, k.d. lang, Jr. Gone Wild, Sloan, Eric’s Trip, Thrush Hermit, Sarah McLachlan, Blue Rodeo, Tragically Hip, Ron Sexsmith, New Pornographers, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, and the Weakerthans.

The second installment in this troika of titles to be published was WHISPERING PINES: The Northern Roots of American Music…from Hank Snow to The Band, in 2009, by Jason Schneider writing on his own. The narrative in this book actually begins earlier than the other two, in the 1950s with Canadian country music, by looking at the careers of Wilf Carter and Hank Snow. Radio played a key role in spreading their music, especially when American country singer Conway Twitty encouraged them to bring their music to the US. Later chapters cover Ronnie Hawkins (who just died yesterday) & the Hawks, Ian & Sylvia, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Anne Murray, Bruce Cockburn, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Murray McLauchlan, Neil Young, and The Band. Lest you think this all wouldn’t interest you, or would only cover unfamiliar bands, consider that the book’s meaty chapter on Hawkins, the Arkansas rockabilly pioneer,  covers his hiring of the outfit comprised of Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Richard Manual. He dubbed them The Hawks, and of course, later they would be known as The Band. This is pure gold for people who like to read about Bob Dylan and The Band. Simply said, the book offers a superb narrative chronicling the influence of Canadian musicians on the growth of country-rock in North America.

Each of the three books employs a modified oral history approach, with lengthy interviews with musicians, and analysis of social factors, including consideration of what distinguishes Canada from the USA in the cultural realm. For a taste of the writing, see this paragraph from pg 58 of HNBTS of the instrumental trio the aforementioned Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet:

“Formed in 1984, Shadowy Men became one of Canada’s most beloved bands, known for their musicianship, eventful live shows, absurdist wit, and innovative visuals. They are best known around the world for providing music on the Kids in the Hall TV show, including its theme, “Having an Average Weekend.” Featuring Brian Connelly on guitar, Reid Diamond on bass, and Don Pyle on drums, the surf-influenced Shadowy sound was decidedly retro, but considerably more advanced than their peers. The Shadowy Men were extremely talented musicians and boasted underrated compositional skills as well, set to creative and extremely danceable grooves. They also attracted attention via their series of 7″ single between 1985 and 1988, featuring gimmicky packaging such as a game board or a Jiffy Pop container.”

A number of factors have combined to reduce my ardent involvement in Canadian indie music in recent years, beginning with the disappearance of CBC Radio 3, though my appreciation of the music continues unabated, and I still purchase and download music from Zunior.com, especially on their annual Boxing Day sale. During the pandemic I really enjoyed listening to the acoustic Mantle Concerts by my fave Canadian rocker, Matt Mays, still posted on youtube. Other factors in that diminishment included 1) the arrival of the Trump administration, whose border policies made it hard for Canadian musicians to enter the US, especially with their CDs and other merchandise that were always a key money-maker for them; 2) the advent of COVID-19, of course, with venues closed for much of the past three years; 3) and NXNE was downsized for a few years, but I’m happy to see it looks like it will be back at full strength this June, so perhaps I’ll make it up to Toronto for it in 2023. I would love to visit there again, and go back to such venues as The Cameron House, a homey spot where I’ve heard many great shows over the years.

As a closing note, here’s a picture of a shelf of music books in my home library, including a number of titles from my CANRock library. Reading from left to right: Special Deluxe and Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young; The History of Rock N’ Roll in Canada by Bob Mersereau; Lives of the Poets (with Guitars): Thirteen Outsiders Who Changed Modern Music by Ray Robertson; I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons; The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern by David McPherson; Whispering Pines by Jason Schneider, Have Not Been the Same by Barclay, Jack, and Schneider, and Hearts on Fire by Barclay; Return to Solitude: More Desolation Sound Adventures with the Cougar Lady, Russell the Hermit, and the Spaghetti Bandit, The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie, Adventures in Solitude: What to Wear to a Nude Potluck, and Dirty Windshields: The Best and the Worst of the Smugglers’ Tour Diaries (the latter four are all by former CBC Radio 3 host and friend Grant Lawrence); Kick it Till Breaks, and The Trouser Press Record Guide, 4th (which I helped escort to publication as editor at Collier Macmillan Publishers back in 1989) and 5th editions by Ira Robbins; Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band and the Basement Tapes by Sid Griffin; Out of the Vinyl Deeps by Ellen Willis, edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz; Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Joe Jones, as told to Albert Murray, edited by Paul Devlin with an Afterword by Phil Schaap; and Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 by Ryan H. Walsh.

*Some weeks after Hearts on Fire was published, and after I wrote this post, Win Butler of Arcade Fire was credibly accused in a number of news outlets including Pitchfork, of a history of behaving predatorily toward women. He claimed all the conduct was consensual, but the preponderance of public revelations weighed against him. When and if a paperback edition of Michael Barclay’s book is published I will be watching for any new prefatory material the author includes by way of reporting on this issue.

**While nonfiction trilogies are scarce, there are many in fiction, such as Canadian novelist Robertson Davies‘ Deptford Trilogy, comprised of Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders.

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Manhattan’s Metro Theater, Reopening at Last

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In 2012, I was excited I could report this on my blog, some good news for denizens of my Manhattan neighborhood, and other New Yorkers.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Coming to NYC!

Following Sept 11, 2001, which hit NY’s infrastructure and economy so hard, and Superstorm Sandy in 2012, which added to the damage, it would have been a real shot in the arm for the city to have the renovated movie theater open just four blocks from my apartment, but alas, in 2015, this was the outcome to Alamo’s interest.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Abandons Renovation of Metro Theater in NYC

Last week with my wife—artist Kyle Gallup, who made a collage of the Metro marquee seen below—we were walking up Broadway at 98th Street in front of the old Metro, where we were surprised to see the building’s omnipresent steel doors had been raised and people were working inside. Kyle took a picture:

Now this week comes the welcome news, first in via Westside Rag, and then today in Gothamist that the Metro will finally be reopening. Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine told Gothamist reporter Ben Yakas that though he himself had been skeptical himself—due to the past abandonment by Alamo—he’d spoken to the CEO of the as-yet unnamed exhibitor, who told him that the company has actually signed a lease. Renovations will begin soon to turn it into a cinema complex with multiple screens and an event space, to reopen in 2023.

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Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Pioneer and Childhood Hero by M. G. Turner

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When I was eight years old I had the privilege of meeting one of the greats—in fact the greatest cinema special effects pioneer of the 20th Century. That man’s name was Ray Harryhausen, and to movie fans worldwide he represents the start of a great age in filmmaking, where the previously unthinkable could be projected on screen, using two primary techniques, known as Stop-Motion Animation, and Dynamation, which each pushed the boundaries of what had previously been possible in the fantasy, adventure, and sci-fi realms. But to me, Ray Harryhausen, for all his cinematic splendor and cultural renown, represented something else: magic. For me, this took the form of an idea, that art was not only impressive and important, that it could also be fun.

I can’t recall which Harryhausen movie I saw first, but it was probably Jason and the Argonauts, which remains my favorite of his films, though Mysterious Island is a close second. In those days—the early 2000s—I used to watch films on our bulbous, analog TV set. This included VHS tapes and eventually DVDs that we rented from our neighborhood video store and some of the first films I watched were Harryhausen’s. Something I used to do, in lieu of being in a real theater, was use chairs, pillows, and then a large bed-sheet to create a kind of makeshift fort, inside of which I could watch films. This had a curious cave-like effect and helped pull my focus to the images on screen, which were dazzling, especially to my young, uncritical mind. This was long before IMAX, and 48 frames per second, and on the fly CGI; this was an only child discovering one of his first artistic heroes, a man I would go on to meet, whom I would initially correspond with over a series of letters, first sent in the fall of 2003.

At that time I was starting second grade, and for my first two years in school had faced a great deal of bullying and harassment from other kids. I was always shy and quiet, preferring to read Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings instead of running wild with my classmates on the playground. As many people are subjects of bullying and intimidation early in their school years, I don’t suggest I was unique in this, but do think it intensified my wish to escape into other worlds, to lose myself in some grand swashbuckling action. I was looking for something to fill the void, and though the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the Star Wars space opera did some of the work, it was really Harryhausen who made me feel complete, Harryhausen who opened my mind and showed me that movies could be both entertaining and meaningful. In short, that they could be art.

With my mother herself being a visual artist, I already knew that art was an important element of one’s emotional and intellectual life, but I didn’t know it could also be fun. Seeing Harryhausen’s creatures come to life not only felt like the most special sort of magic trick, but an experience akin to walking through the halls of a wondrous and thought-provoking museum, which in those difficult days of 1st Grade helped me see that there was something outside of the difficult, tedious, and at times Kafkaesque experience of New York public school with its inane standardized tests, its lack of discipline, and myriad bureaucratic cruelties.

Thus I escaped into Harryhausen’s movies, watching them on the weekends, and sometimes on school nights. I even watched all the Sinbad films in succession when recovering from a traumatic ear operation. Because I was so moved by them, and because they meant so much to me, and because they had granted me my first glimpse into seeing film as an art-form, and not just a mode of entertainment, I decided to write him a letter.

I was luckier than most kids in this endeavor, because my father was and still is an influential book editor and was able to obtain Harryhausen’s address through his publishing house. In the letters, which I wrote the summer before first grade began, I told him how much I liked his films, that I wanted to be an animator when I grew up, and even included some drawings depicting his monsters. I simply wanted to connect with the man who’d brought wonder into my life, to convey to him, in no uncertain terms, my appreciation, childlike as it might have been. Of course, in our overly critical culture some might look back and say the Harryhausen icons such as the skeletons in Jason, or his Emir from 20,000,000 Miles to Earth, or any of the other colossal creatures which graced his films, didn’t look real per se, it didn’t matter and still doesn’t. There is a suspension of disbelief necessary for appreciating a Harryhausen film, a suspension that modern audiences have become poorly practiced at, but remains important to one’s overall aesthetic health. For a child it was easy to deploy this ability, and to derive enjoyment from the visions he conjured, and so I felt a letter was the best way to express my, well, gratitude.

We waited a month or two, and in that time worried that the letter might have gone astray or hadn’t reached him, until finally from England, where the great man lived, a reply came, a photo of which is depicted below. I remember holding the letter in my hands in disbelief, a similar disbelief to the kind I felt when I watched his movies: utter amazement, combined with sheer joy. Reading the letter over and over, I felt I had finally made contact with someone who understood me, and who, in a sense, had freed me from the fear and worry that pervaded so much of my existence. We exchanged another letter or two over the course of the next few months, and after a time our correspondence faltered.

But it did not falter for long, as roughly a year later, my parents received word that a special “Harryhausen Night” was being held at Lincoln Center. Our eventual meeting occurred on a rainy evening in the autumn of 2004, after I had turned eight years old. My mother had discovered that for the release of his heavily illustrated book Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life (co-authored with Tony Dalton, Watson-Guptill, 2004), the man himself would be speaking and signing copies at Lincoln Center. And like a great New Yorker who knows what she wants and how to get it, she took me to meet him, and managed to get us to the front of the line.

There he was: a handsome, distinguished older gentleman with fraying white hair and a round, inviting face, who in some ways reminded me of my own grandfather, a civil engineer who had his own meticulous pursuits. I remember being nervous but Harryhausen being welcoming in a way that went beyond simple politeness; he seemed genuinely touched that we’d come out to see his classic films, and touched by the nervousness we both showed. And luckily Ray and I were not complete strangers! My mother and I were sure to remind Ray—he was now Ray in my mind—that we’d had a brief correspondence. To this, he said he remembered us and that he was happy to finally meet me in person. It didn’t matter if this was true or not—for all I know he could have received hundreds of fan letters a year from kids like me—but this was all I needed to feel like I had been seen and heard and accepted.

While we stood there, with a legion of people behind us, each waiting anxiously for their own moment with him, I repeated how much I loved Jason and the Argonauts, and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and him smiling and saying how he appreciated my interest. He was also extremely patient as my mother attempted to take a photo of us. After several failed tries—in the picture below you can see in my eyes the fear that this moment would be lost—she managed to snap a few good ones. Ray smiled at us and signed our book and the line continued moving.

There was a screening happening in tandem with the in-person event, and soon we found our seats in the Walter Reade Cinema at Lincoln Center, settling in for a night of his classic films. Previously I had only been to the theater to see The Lord of the Rings, so this was a special night for me—perhaps one of the most special nights of my young life, and something I consider to be a personal success, though it occurred when age was still in single digits. I was having an experience that most people had not had since the sixties and seventies when his films first hit theaters and later the small screen. In fact, I don’t believe I had had such a unique experience until then, unique because I not only got to see his films in a more enjoyable setting—a great improvement over my unwieldy TV set, over which I had thrown a literal tarp—but meeting my hero in person and being touched by his genuine warmth.

Later, during a break between movies, we met the actress Kathy Crosby (listed in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad as Kathryn Grant) who starred in that film alongside Kerwin Mathews; she was lovely and down to earth and I think this was the first time I realized that actors and artists and performers were heroes, not only because they achieved the astounding feats of slaying dragons, and fencing with skeletons, and battling evil sorcerers, but because they were, just like Ray, real people. Real people, with the ability to practice a kind of cinematic magic, a shamanistic talent at making the impossible possible. The fact that Harryhausen had not forfeit the interests of his own childhood lent me hope I could participate someday in a great creative enterprise, or even make a career out of it, just as he and his lifelong friend, the renowned sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury had, whose work I was also beginning to discover.

I did not meet Ray Harryhausen again that night; nor did I meet him ever again. He passed away in 2013, long after I had garnered new heroes and new experiences. I changed schools; took up acting; picked up the guitar. My interests waxed and waned. I was drawn more to writing. But even with all the changes I went through, both mental and physical, I never forgot the person who had first made me believe in the unbelievable, who had altered my perception of the movies and made them a place where art happened and not just entertainment. He’d taught me that art, whether it be the manipulation of molded figures, or the manipulation of words on a page, or some other equally valid creative endeavor, is worthwhile and can be meaningful. Sure, you can become discouraged by the elements of creativity; you can be stymied by the logistics of plot and character; you can be interrupted in your painstaking work by a ringing phone or a director calling “Cut!”; you can be disheartened and lose interest altogether in the projects you’d previously been bound to—all that being true, Harryhausen’s lesson is one we can all learn from and take to heart. And it was that magic matters. Stories matter; they make our lives richer. To an only child who had faced some difficulty early in his life, I can honestly say that Harryhausen saved me, not only by his technical prowess, and controlled mayhem, and the delight of sharp teeth and clashing swords, but by the kindness he showed, in replying to a seven-year-old’s hopeful letter. Sometimes the best magic is the kind exchanged from person to person. Or to put it another, clearer, more perfect way: sometimes kindness is the real magic.

M. G. Turner
February 2022

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Looking Back on 2021, Our Year in Editing and Agenting

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Yesterday I began totaling up the volume of our business in 2021, to prepare for writing an annual year-end blog post, and I’m pleased to confirm it was by far the best year Philip Turner Book Productions has had since I began operating outside the staff job/corporate publishing world in 2009. My son Ewan, 25, has been working with me for the past two years; it’s good to have a colleague and partner. As Executive Editor and Literary Agent, he heads up our New Stories division, devoted to cultivating new work in fiction, narrative nonfiction, and memoir.

Looking back on the year that ends today, I see that in 2021,

  • We edited manuscripts and book proposals from twenty-five different authors;
  • We sold ten new titles to book publishers, books that will be published in 2022 and beyond. and one title to an audiobook company which came out in 2021. We dispersed advances and royalties to fifteen authors and rights holders. Our sales this year were:
  1. THE BARRENS: A Novel of Love & Death in the Canadian Arctic by father-daughter duo Kurt Johnson and Ellie Johnson, sold to Arcade Publishing, who will publish it on May 3, 2022. This is the first title we’ve sold under our New Stories rubric.
  2. PICTURE SHOW PLAYLIST: Pop Music in Film from the Crystals to Rihanna by Nate Patrin, sold to University of Minnesota Press, whose first book Bring that Beat Back: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop, we also sold to UMP, which they published in 2020.
  3. LURKING UNDER THE SURFACE: Horror, Religion, and the Questions that Haunt Us by Brandon Grafius, sold to Broadleaf Books, which will be published around Halloween 2022.
  4. YOURS, FOR PROBABLY ALWAYS: Martha Gellhorn’s Letters of Love & War, 1930-1949 by Janet Somerville, sold to Penguin Random House Audio with actress Ellen Barkin as the narrator of the audiobook, published in May 2021.
  5. CINEMA OF SWORDS: A Popular Guide to Movies & TV Shows About Knights, Pirates, and Vikings (Plus Samurai and Musketeers) by Lawrence Ellsworth, translator of Alexandre Dumas, sold to Applause Theater and Cinema Books

    6. .

  6. THE ULTIMATE PROTEST: Malcolm W. Browne, Vietnam, and the Photo that Stunned the World by Ray E. Boomhower, sold to University of New Mexico Press, which in November 2021 published Boomhower’s Richard Tregasksis: Reporting Under Fire from Guadalcanal to Vietnam
  7. ROOSEVELT SWEEPS NATION: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal by David Pietrusza, sold to Diversion Books, to be published August 2022.
  8. LAST CIRCLE OF LOVE, a novel by Lorna Landvik, acquired by the Lake Union imprint, Amazon Publishing
  9. HEROES ARE HUMAN: Lessons in Resiliency, Courage and Wisdom from the COVID Front Lines by Bob Delaney with Dave Scheiber, co-authors of the bestselling Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob, placed with City Point Press, distributed by Simon & Schuster, to be published Fall 2022.
  10. THE KREMLIN’S NOOSE: Vladimir Putin’s Blood Feud with the Oligarch Who Made Him Ruler of Russia by Amy Knight, sold to Northern Illinois University Press distributed by Cornell University Press; we earlier sold Knight’s Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder (St Martin’s Press, 2017).

In 2021, books that we had sold in earlier years were published:

1) Ten Garments Every Man Should Own: A Practical Guide to Building a Permanent Wardrobe by Pedro Mendes, published by Dundurn Press.
2) Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theater by Alexis Greene, published by Applause Theater and Cinema Books
3) Between Two Kings: A Sequel to The Three Musketeers (Musketeers Cycle, Book 5) by Alexandre Dumas, translated by Lawrence Ellsworth, published by Pegasus Books
4) Richard Tregaskis: Reporting Under Fire from Guadalcanal to Vietnam by Ray E. Boomhower, published by University of New Mexico Press, and as an audiobook by Blackstone Publishing.
5) The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing (The Pot Thief Mysteries Book 9) by J. Michael Orenduff, published by Open Road Media.
6) In addition, a manuscript I edited in 2021, THE MOST PRECIOUS GIFT: Memories of the Holocaust, A Legacy of Lisette Lamon, was self-published by David Mendels, the late author’s son.

Also, coming in 2022 will be an anthology about the book business, Among Friends: An Illustrated Oral History of 20th Century Publishing and Bookselling edited by Buz Teacher, co-founder of Running Press. It will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, and I have contributed a personal essay entitled, “The Education of a Bookselling Editor.”

Ewan continues to write his own fiction, having completed a story collection in the realm of anthology horror, and is working on a novel. As he likes to say, his touchstones fall somewhere between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Rod Serling. His work may be read upon request.

After 2022, we eagerly anticipate publication of DEVOURING TIME: Jim Harrison, a Life by Todd Goddard, the first biography of the acclaimed fiction writer, master of the novella, gourmand, ardent friend, hunter and fisher, which we sold to Blackstone Publishing.

Entering what will be my thirteenth year working as an independent editor and literary agent—a longer tenure than any of my in-house positions—I am more energized than ever by the opportunities to work closely with authors, more than closely than I was able to do during my latter years in corporate publishing. Even with the many challenges the book industry is facing, such as many bookstores open for only limited, distanced hours due to the lingering pandemic, I am optimistic about the book business, as readers are eager to have the companionship of books, and writers are driven to tell their singular stories.

We work on a wide range of material with special affinity for imperative books that really matter in people’s lives. I’m always interested in first-person work from authors who’ve passed through some crucible of experience that leaves them uniquely equipped to write their book. If you have a project you’re developing, or a personal essay, and want to discuss your work, or a project you think may be ready to offer to publishers, please don’t hesitate to contact one or both of us. We already have a number of terrific projects lined up to edit and represent in the new year, and we’re hopeful 2022 will be a strong year in publishing and the book business, , and a better year for us all. 

As always, please get in touch if you or someone you know is seeking guidance about publishing. Ewan can be reached at ewanmturner [@] gmail [.] com, while my contact info is philipsturner [@] gmail [.] com.

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William Blake and My Close Friend Rob Adams

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When I woke up this last morning of the long Thanksgiving weekend, I looked at Twitter on my iPhone and saw that this date November 28 is the birthday of the timeless artist William Blake (1757-1843). Immediately, I thought I would share an image of the precious work I have by him, an engraving from his hand, given to me years ago by my close friend, Robert Henry Adams (1955-2001).

After I shared a social media post seen here, on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, I realized I could also do a fuller post that links to earlier blog essays I’ve shared on this website (here, here, and here) about Rob, our meaningful friendship, and a third Franconia College friend pal with whom we constituted a troika, Karl Petrovich.

The Blake gift doesn’t exhaust the fine art that Rob gave me, or occasionally, that I bought from him. There are no less than a dozen such pieces in my Manhattan apartment, such as a print I bought of a circus aerialist by British artist Dame Laura Knight. Another is the framed Lincoln portrait by Civil War-era photographer Alexander Gardner shown here. Sometime in the late 1980s Rob spotted it at an auction, and bought it relatively cheaply due to the unfortunate crease in the middle. Always one to see the bright side, despite the defect, Rob had also spotted the signature, “Your Obt Servt A. Lincoln“, seeming to him in pencil or faded ink, and not a mechanical or mass-reproduced autograph. This made it all but certain it was from Lincoln and Gardner’s time, done in the sixteenth president’s own hand. FYI, the printing near the bottom of the picture reads, from left to right,

A. Gardner, Photographer.         Published by Philip & Solomons, Washington D.C.               Washington

Rob didn’t want to try re-selling it because of the imperfection, and so gave it to me, a (probably) autographed Lincoln photograph. Pretty amazing, right?!

There was some sweet symmetry to the Lincoln gift, because earlier, in the 1970s, for Rob’s wedding to Chicago fashion historian Sandra Adams, I had given him the oversized photography book The Face of Lincoln (Viking, 1979, 15″ x 11 1/2 inches), collecting every known photograph of Lincoln, which at my family’s bookstore in Cleveland, Undercover Books, we were then stocking and selling.  

 

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