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61-439: Emanuel Haldeman-Julius and his wife, Marcet , set out to publish small low price paperback pocketbooks that were intended to sweep the ranks of the working class as well as the "educated" class. Their goal was to get works of literature , a wide range of ideas, common sense knowledge and various points of view out to as large an audience as possible. These books, at approximately 3½ by 5 inches (8.9 by 12.7 cm) easily fit into

122-426: A Jew" by Clarence Darrow ). Shorter works from many popular authors such as Jack London and Henry David Thoreau were published, as were a number of anti-religious tracts written by Robert Ingersoll , ex-Catholic priest Joseph McCabe , and Haldeman-Julius himself. A young Will Durant wrote a series of Blue Books on philosophy which were republished in 1926 by Simon & Schuster as The Story of Philosophy ,

183-515: A Pal , published in True Gang Life . Two lean disappointing years passed after that, and then, in 1938, his stories began appearing in pulp magazines fairly regularly. Along with other adventure and crime stories, L'Amour created the character of mercenary sea captain Jim Mayo. Starting with East of Gorontalo , the series ran through nine episodes from 1940 until 1943. L'Amour wrote only one story in

244-510: A Wandering Man , was published posthumously in 1989. He was survived by his wife Kathy, their son Beau, and their daughter Angelique. (including series novels) L'Amour often wrote series of novels and short stories featuring previously introduced characters, the most notable being the Sackett clan. In fictional story order (not the order written). There are also two Sackett-related short stories: Sacketts are also involved in

305-456: A blurb from John Wayne stating that " Hondo was the finest Western Wayne had ever read". During the remainder of the decade L'Amour produced a great number of novels, both under his own name as well as others (e. g. Jim Mayo). Also during this time he rewrote and expanded many of his earlier short story and pulp fiction stories to book length for various publishers. Many publishers in the 1950s and '60s refused to publish more than one or two books

366-461: A few film and theater students, who were taught the process by Beau L'Amour and the more prolific writers from earlier adaptations. The majority of productions were done in New York City. In the early years the pace of production was six shows a year but in the mid-1990s it slowed to four. At this time the running time for all the programs was roughly sixty minutes. The cast members were veterans of

427-415: A new title, often creating a hit. For instance, "The Tallow Ball" by Guy de Maupassant sold 15,000 copies one year, but 54,700 the next year after the title was changed to "A French Prostitute's Sacrifice". Many famous people grew up on Little Blue Books. Louis L'Amour cites them as a major source of his own early reading in his autobiography Education of a Wandering Man . Other writers who recall reading

488-434: A pamphlet, he would then, at staggered intervals, send them 50 pamphlets which he would be able to print with the upfront money. Things went very well: Five thousand readers took me up, which meant I had $ 25,000 to work with. I hurried through the 50 titles (and they were good ones, too, for I haven't believed in trash at any time in my life) and got many letters expressing satisfaction with the venture. Encouraged, I announced

549-676: A popular work that remains in print today. Demand for existing titles remained steady throughout the Depression although only about 300 new titles were released during the 1930s, the bulk appearing prior to 1932. Following World War II , the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover viewed the Little Blue Books' inclusion of such subjects as socialism, atheism, and frank treatment of sexuality as a threat and put Haldeman-Julius on their enemies list, getting him convicted of income tax evasion. This persecution caused

610-497: A prototype show and L'Amour's son Beau came into the program as Supervising Producer. Between 1986 and 2004 the team had completed over sixty-five dramatized audio productions. Several different styles of show were produced over the years. The first several shows were "transcriptions", literal breakdowns of the exact L'Amour short story into lines for the different characters and narrator. Later productions used more liberally interpreted adaptations written by screenwriters, playwrights and

671-451: A rapid decline in the number of bookstores carrying the Little Blue Books, and they slowly sank into obscurity by the 1950s, although still well remembered by older people who had read them in the 1920s and 1930s. The Cardinal Francis Spellman FBI file contains clear indications concerning the interest of the FBI on Haldeman-Julius Publications by 1955, after an anonymous letter in late 1954 alerted

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732-502: A school, where she taught. During her youth Marcet had spent many summers with her aunt, Jane Addams, at Hull House ; she credited Addams with much of her inspiration and over the years the two of them discussed Marcet's clubs both in person and through correspondence. In 1916 she married activist and publisher Emanuel Julius . At her aunt Jane's suggestion, both partners adopted the surname Haldeman-Julius. They wrote both separately and together, their most well-known collaboration being

793-399: A second batch of 50 titles, and called for $ 5 subscriptions...Meanwhile, the booklets were selling well to readers who hadn't subscribed for batches of 50. In 1919 they began printing these works at a rate of 24,000 a day in a series called Appeal's Pocket Series on cheap pulp paper , stapled and bound with a red stiff paper cover for 25 cents. The name changed over the first few years (as did

854-476: A series of bank failures devastated the economy of the upper Midwest, Dr. LaMoore and Emily took to the road. Removing Louis and his adopted brother John from school, they headed south in the winter of 1923. Over the next seven or eight years, they skinned cattle in west Texas, baled hay in the Pecos Valley of New Mexico, worked in the mines of Arizona, California and Nevada, and in the sawmills and lumber camps of

915-454: A socialist weekly which had seen better days and that Haldeman-Julius edited. Though the Appeal to Reason was not the influential newspaper it had been, its printing presses (and more importantly the 175,000 names on its subscriber lists) would prove to be crucial. Before anything had even been printed, Haldeman-Julius asked Appeal to Reason 's subscribers to send him an advance of $ 5; at 10 cents

976-576: A time when the William Boyd films and new television series were becoming popular with a new generation. L'Amour read the original Hopalong Cassidy novels, written by Clarence E. Mulford , and wrote his novels based on the original character under the name "Tex Burns". Only two issues of the Hopalong Cassidy Western Magazine were published, and the novels as written by L'Amour were extensively edited to meet Doubleday 's thoughts of how

1037-519: A working man's back pocket or shirt pocket. The inspiration for the series were cheap 10-cent paperback editions of various expired copyright classic works that Haldeman-Julius had purchased as a 15-year-old (the Ballad of Reading Gaol being especially enthralling). He wrote: It was winter, and I was cold, but I sat down on a bench and read that booklet straight through, without a halt, and never did I so much as notice that my hands were blue, that my wet nose

1098-432: A year by the same author. Louis's editor at Gold Medal supported his writing up to three or four but the heads of the company vetoed that idea even though Louis was publishing books with other houses. Louis had sold over a dozen novels and several million copies before Bantam Books editor-in-chief Saul David was finally able to convince his company to offer Louis a short term exclusive contract that would accept three books

1159-473: A year. It was only after 1960, however, that Louis's sales at Bantam would begin to surpass his sales at Gold Medal. L'Amour's career flourished throughout the 1960s and he began work on a series of novels about the fictional Sackett family. The Daybreakers , published in 1960 and the first, was actually not in the chronological order of the series of novels. Initially he wrote five books about William Tell Sackett and his close relatives; however, in later years

1220-600: Is a paraphrase of the one W. K. Clifford wrote for himself: "I was not, and was conceived. I loved, and did a little work. I am not, and am content." Her papers are held at Kansas State University Libraries, Bryn Mawr, Pittsburg State University , the University of Illinois at Chicago and Indiana University. See [REDACTED] Media related to Anna Marcet Haldeman at Wikimedia Commons. Louis L%27Amour Louis Dearborn L'Amour ( / ˈ l uː i l ə ˈ m ʊər / ; né LaMoore ; March 22, 1908 – June 10, 1988)

1281-417: Is there nothing really new in the basic structure of his stories, even L'Amour's social Darwinism , which came to characterize his later fiction, was scarcely original and was never dramatized in other media the way it was in works based on Zane Grey 's fiction. But Tuska also notes "At his best, L'Amour was a master of spectacular action and stories with a vivid, propulsive forward motion." In May 1972 he

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1342-628: The Presidential Medal of Freedom . L'Amour is also a recipient of North Dakota's Roughrider Award and the MPTF Golden Boot Award . L'Amour, a non-smoker, died from lung cancer at his home in Los Angeles on June 10, 1988, and was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California . His autobiography detailing his years as an itinerant worker in the west, Education of

1403-540: The WPA Guide Book to Oklahoma, but the dozens of short stories he was churning out met with little acceptance. Finally, L'Amour placed a story, Death Westbound , in "10 Story Book", a magazine that featured what was supposed to be quality writing ( Jack Woodford , author of several books on writing, is published in the same edition as L'Amour) alongside scantily attired or completely naked young women. Several years later, L'Amour placed his first story for pay, Anything for

1464-701: The 1921 novel Dust . "She travelled to the Soviet Union in 1931-1932 to report on the status of the Russian Revolution for The American Freeman . […] In the 1930s she did numerous articles and short stories with John W. Gunn, a writer for the Haldeman-Julius press." In 1932 she was a delegate to the National Convention of the Socialist Party of America and that same year Emanuel ran for Senate on

1525-401: The 1970s his writings were translated into over ten languages . Every one of his works is still in print. Many of the L'Amour titles have been produced in the "single voice" style. In the early days, however, when the fledgling Bantam Audio Publishing (now Random House Audio) came to L'Amour about converting some of his old short stories into audio, he insisted that they do something to offer

1586-655: The Bank of Girard. When her mother Alice died in 1915, Marcet once again returned to her hometown, where she took over management of the bank. That same year she founded The Jolly Club in nearby Radley , for the benefit of the many young immigrants (from numerous countries, but especially Italy) who had come to work in the area's mines. The Jolly Club provided English lessons, practical training and safe diversion. The following year she began to found other clubs as well, including one for younger boys and an Italian language club. These became quite popular and in 1921 she turned one of them into

1647-556: The French spelling of the name L'Amour). His mother had Irish ancestry, while his father was of French-Canadian descent. His father had arrived in Dakota Territory in 1882. Although the area around Jamestown was mostly farm land, cowboys and livestock often traveled through Jamestown on their way to or from ranches in Montana and the markets to the east. Louis played " Cowboys and Indians " in

1708-453: The New York stage, film and advertising worlds and came together for a rehearsal and then a day of recording the show. Sound effects were created by effects man Arthur Miller in the studio as the lines were being recorded and narration was done. Although many of the programs were written and produced in a modified "Old Time Radio" style, attempts were also made to modernize the approach. Whenever

1769-494: The Pacific Northwest. It was in colorful places like these that Louis met a wide variety of people, upon whom he later modeled the characters in his novels, many of them actual Old West personalities who had survived into the 1920s and 1930s. Making his way as a mine assessment worker, professional boxer, and merchant seaman, Louis traveled the country and the world, sometimes with his family, sometimes not. He visited all of

1830-622: The Socialist Party ticket. Marcet and Emanuel had two children, Alice (1917–1991) and Henry (1919–1990) and adopted a third, Josephine (b. 1910). "In 1933 the couple legally was separated but continued to live in the same house", though she "spent a lot of her time at the [Addams] family farm in Cedarville ." Marcet died of cancer in Girard in 1941 and is buried in Cedarville, Illinois. Her epitaph

1891-403: The audience more value than just having an actor read a bunch of old pulp stories. Together he and Bantam executive Jenny Frost created the concept of a series of "Radio Drama" style productions that would combine a large cast of actors, sound effects and music to produce a modern audio drama of each story. The team of David Rapkin (Producer) and Charles Potter (Director) was employed to produce

Little Blue Book - Misplaced Pages Continue

1952-717: The average citizen. The St. Louis Dispatch called Haldeman-Julius "the Henry Ford of literature". Among the better known names of the day to support the Little Blue Books were Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia , W. E. B. Du Bois , Admiral Richard Byrd , who took along a set to the South Pole , and Franklin P. Adams of Information, Please! Most were sold by mail order and promoted through sensationalistic advertisements (e.g. “At last! Books are cheaper than hamburgers!”) in newspapers and magazines such as Life , Popular Science , and Ladies’ Home Journal . To save ad space, only

2013-512: The book titles were listed, organized by topic headings such as “Philosophy,” “How-To,” or “Sex.” Many classics were cut down to fit the publishing requirements, which Haldeman-Julius justified as "boring text", pioneering the concept later used by Reader's Digest . A pioneer in guerrilla marketing , Haldeman-Julius sold his books not only in bookstores but everywhere he could reach the consumer, including drugstores, toy stores, even his own line of vending machines. Mail-order customers checked-off

2074-549: The character should be portrayed in print. Strongly disagreeing—L'Amour preferred Mulford's original, much rougher characterization of Cassidy—for the rest of his life he denied authoring the novels. In the 1950s, L'Amour began to sell novels. L'Amour's first novel, published under his own name, was Westward The Tide , published by World's Work in 1951. The short story The Gift of Cochise was printed in Colliers (5 July 1952) and seen by John Wayne and Robert Fellows , who purchased

2135-582: The closest friends and confidantes of the poet Marianne Moore . After three years she left the college to continue her stage acting, graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1910. Between 1910 and 1915 she performed with the Orpheum Players and other stock companies in Newark, New York, Montreal, St. Louis and other cities, under the name Jean Marcet. Marcet's father and mother ran

2196-663: The color of the binding), at times known as the People's Pocket Series, the Appeal Pocket Series, the Ten Cent Pocket Series, the Five Cent Pocket Series, and finally the one that took, Little Blue Books in 1923. The price remained at 5-cents a copy for many years. In just nine years the idea caught on all around the globe as the Little Blue Books were finding their ways into the pockets of laborers, scholars, and

2257-401: The cutting edge of societal norms. Alongside books on making candy (#518 - "How to Make All Kinds of Candy" by Helene Paquin) and classic literature (#246 - Hamlet by William Shakespeare ) were ones exploring same-sex love (#692 - "Homo-Sexual Life" by William J Fielding) and agnostic viewpoints (#1500 - "Why I Am an Agnostic: Including Expressions of Faith from a Protestant a Catholic and

2318-464: The family barn, which served as his father's veterinary hospital, and spent much of his free time at the local library, the Alfred E. Dickey Free Library , particularly reading the works of 19th-century British historical boys' author G. A. Henty . L'Amour once said, "[Henty's works] enabled me to go into school with a great deal of knowledge that even my teachers didn't have about wars and politics." After

2379-419: The first Louis L'Amour novel to be turned into a drama. Considerably more complex than earlier shows it had a cast of over twenty mid-level Hollywood actors, a music score was created by John Philip Shenale and recorded specifically for the production and sound effects completely recorded in the field in many locations across the west. Produced as sort of a "profitable hobby" Beau L'Amour and Paul O'Dell created

2440-595: The government to a book that was under press "vilifying" the Cardinal. At the time of Emanuel Haldeman-Julius's death on July 31, 1951, the series supported 1873 active titles. The works continued to be reprinted until the Girard printing plant and warehouse was destroyed by fire in 1978 with 1914 total titles published. In the 1950s the San Diego, California-based atheist-Freethinker publication The Truth Seeker bought out most of their supply and raised prices. Collections of

2501-462: The history of the genre. Indeed, at the time of his death his sales had topped 200,000,000. What I would question is the degree and extent of his effect "upon the American Imagination". His Western fiction is strictly formulary and frequently, although not always, features the ranch romance plot where the hero and the heroine are to marry at the end once the villains have been defeated. Not only

Little Blue Book - Misplaced Pages Continue

2562-408: The plot of 10 other novels: (Note: The Talon and Chantry series are often combined into one list for a total of eight) Originally published under the pseudonym "Tex Burns". Louis L'Amour was commissioned to write four Hopalong Cassidy books in the spring and summer of 1950 by Doubleday's Double D Western imprint. They were the first novels he ever had published and he denied writing them until

2623-511: The production while working around their day-to-day jobs. Since this allowed them no more than nine or ten weeks a year, the show took four years to complete. During the 1960s, L'Amour intended to build a working town typical of those of the 19th century Western frontier, with buildings with false fronts situated in rows on either side of an unpaved main street and flanked by wide boardwalks before which, at various intervals, were watering troughs and hitching posts. The town, to be named Shalako after

2684-456: The protagonist of L'Amour's novel of the same name , was to have featured shops and other businesses that were typical of such towns: a barber shop, a hotel, a dry goods store, one or more saloons, a church, a one-room schoolhouse, etc. It would have offered itself as a filming location for Hollywood motion pictures concerning the Wild West. However, funding for the project fell through, and Shalako

2745-411: The screen rights from L'Amour for $ 4,000. James Edward Grant was hired to write a screenplay based on this story changing the main character's name from Ches Lane to Hondo Lane. L'Amour retained the right to novelize the screenplay and did so, even though the screenplay differed substantially from the original story. This was published as Hondo in 1953 and released on the same day the film opened with

2806-507: The scripts from the L'Amour series have been produced as live theater pieces, including The One for the Mojave Kid and Merrano of the Dry Country . The L'Amour program of Audio Dramas is still ongoing but the pace of production has slowed considerably. Beau L'Amour and Paul O'Dell released Son of a Wanted Man , the first L'Amour Drama in half a decade in 2004. Son of a Wanted Man is also

2867-418: The series are housed in the libraries at Pittsburg State University , Kent State University , Bowling Green State University , and California State University, Northridge . Anna Marcet Haldeman Marcet Haldeman-Julius ( née Anna Marcet Haldeman; June 18, 1887 – February 13, 1941) was an American feminist , actress , playwright , civil rights advocate, editor, author, and bank president. She

2928-486: The series in their youth include Saul Bellow , Harlan Ellison , Jack Conroy , Ralph Ellison , William S. Burroughs and Studs Terkel . The works covered were frequently classics of Western literature . Goethe and Shakespeare were well represented, as were the works of the Ancient Greeks , and more modern writers like Voltaire , Émile Zola , H. G. Wells . Some of the topics the Little Blue Books covered were on

2989-608: The series spread to include other families and four centuries of North American history. It was an ambitious project and several stories intended to close the gaps in the family's time line were left untold at the time of L'Amour's death. L'Amour also branched out into historical fiction with The Walking Drum , set in the 11th century, a contemporary thriller, Last of the Breed , and science fiction with The Haunted Mesa . L'Amour eventually wrote 100 novels, over 250 short stories, and (as of 2010) sold more than 320 million copies of his work. By

3050-420: The story material supported it a more contemporary style was used in the writing and more and more high tech solutions to the effects and mix found their way into the productions. While hiring and supervising the writers, mostly out of Los Angeles, Beau L'Amour created a few programs on his own. The techniques used by him and producer/editor Paul O'Dell were more in line with motion picture production, simply taping

3111-488: The time of his death, almost all of his 105 existing works (89 novels, 14 short-story collections, and two full-length works of nonfiction) were still in print, and he was "one of the world's most popular writers". Louis Dearborn LaMoore was born in Jamestown, North Dakota , on March 22, 1908, the seventh child of Emily Dearborn and veterinarian, local politician, and farm equipment broker Louis Charles LaMoore (who had changed

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3172-410: The titles they wanted and mailed in the order form, with $ 1 (20 books) being the minimum order. Many bookstores kept a book rack stocked with many Little Blue Book titles. Their small size and low price made them especially popular with travelers and transient working people. If a book sold less than 10,000 copies in one year, Haldeman-Julius would remove it from his line, but usually only after trying

3233-424: The voices of the actors in the studio and then recording the majority of sound effects in the field. This called for a great deal more editing, both in cutting the actor's performances and the sound effects, but it allowed for a great deal more control. In the mid-1990s a series of the L'Amour Audio Dramas was recut for radio. Louis L'Amour Theater played on over two hundred stations for a number of years. Several of

3294-600: The western genre prior to World War II , 1940's The Town No Guns Could Tame . L'Amour continued as an itinerant worker, traveling the world as a merchant seaman until the start of World War II . During World War II, he served in the United States Army as a lieutenant with the 362nd Quartermaster Truck Company. In the two years before L'Amour was shipped off to Europe, L'Amour wrote stories for Standard Magazine . After World War II, L'Amour continued to write stories for magazines; his first after being discharged in 1946

3355-460: The western states plus England, Japan, China, Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, Arabia, Egypt, and Panama, finally moving with his parents to Choctaw, Oklahoma in the early 1930s. There, he changed his name to the original French spelling "L'Amour" and settled down to try to make something of himself as a writer. He had success with poetry, articles on boxing and writing and editing sections of

3416-605: Was Law of the Desert Born in Dime Western Magazine (April 1946). L'Amour's contact with Leo Margulies led to L'Amour agreeing to write many stories for the Western pulp magazines published by Standard Magazines, a substantial portion of which appeared under the name "Jim Mayo". The suggestion of L'Amour writing Hopalong Cassidy novels also was made by Margulies who planned on launching Hopalong Cassidy's Western Magazine at

3477-604: Was an American novelist and short story writer. His books consisted primarily of Western novels, though he called his work "frontier stories". His most widely known Western fiction works include Last of the Breed , Hondo , Shalako , and the Sackett series . L'Amour also wrote historical fiction ( The Walking Drum ), science fiction ( The Haunted Mesa ), non-fiction ( Frontier ), and poetry and short-story collections. Many of his stories were made into films. His books remain popular and most have gone through multiple printings. At

3538-533: Was awarded an Honorary PhD by Jamestown College , as a testament to his literary and social contributions. In 1979, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement . Bendigo Shafter (1979) won the U.S. National Book Award in the one-year category Western . In 1982 he received the Congressional Gold Medal , and in 1984 President Ronald Reagan awarded L'Amour

3599-828: Was born in Girard, Kansas , the daughter of physician Henry Winfield Haldeman and his wife Alice . Alice was the sister of social activist Jane Addams , with whom Marcet maintained a close relation until the end of the Addams's life. Marcet studied at the Rockford Seminary for Young Ladies ( alma mater also of her aunt Jane ) and then the Dearborn Seminary in Chicago, until the death of her father in 1905, followed by Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. While at Bryn Mawr she became one of

3660-579: Was never built. When interviewed not long before his death, he was asked which among his books he liked best. His reply: I like them all. There's bits and pieces of books that I think are good. I never rework a book. I'd rather use what I've learned on the next one, and make it a little bit better. The worst of it is that I'm no longer a kid and I'm just now getting to be a good writer. Just now. The critic Jon Tuska, surveying Western literature, writes: I have no argument that L'Amour's total sales have probably surpassed every other author of Western fiction in

3721-401: Was numb, and that my ears felt as hard as glass. Never until then, or since, did any piece of printed matter move me more deeply...I'd been lifted out of this world - and by a 10¢ booklet. I thought, at the moment, how wonderful it would be if thousands of such booklets could be made available. In 1919 they purchased a publishing house in Girard, Kansas from their employer Appeal to Reason ,

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