Daniel Pratt Mannix IV
Encyclopedia
Daniel Pratt Mannix IV born in Bryn Mawr
, Pennsylvania
, was an author, journalist, photographer, side-show performer, stage magician, animal trainer, and film-maker. His best-known works are the 1958 book Those About to Die, which remained in continuous print for three decades, and the 1967 novel The Fox and the Hound
which in 1981 was adapted into an animated film
by Walt Disney Productions.
, and Mannix' father, Daniel P. Mannix, III, was an American naval officer. His mother would often join her husband on his postings, and the Mannix children would stay at their grandparents' farm outside Philadelphia. It was there that Mannix began to keep and raise various wild animals. In time, the cost of feeding them led him to write his first book, The Back-Yard Zoo.
during World War II
. His varied career included time spent as a sword swallower and fire eater
in a traveling carnival
sideshow
, where he performed under the stage name The Great Zadma. His magazine articles about these experiences, co-written with his wife Jule Junker Mannix, proved very popular and were reprinted several times in 1944 and 1945, and later expanded into book form in his 1951 account of carnival life Step Right Up, which in turn was reprinted in 1964 as Memoirs of a Sword Swallower. He was also at times a professional hunter, a collector of wildlife for zoos and circuses, and a bird trainer. The latter skill was showcased in the 1956 short film Universal Color Parade: Parrot Jungle, in which he is credited as the writer, actor, director, producer, photographer, and bird trainer.
Mannix covered a wide variety of subject matter as an author. His books ranged from fictional animal stories for children, the natural history of animals, and adventurous accounts about hunting big game to sensational adult non-fiction topics such as a biography of the occultist Aleister Crowley
, sympathetic accounts of carnival
performers and sideshow
freak
s, and works describing, among other things, the Hellfire Club
, the Atlantic slave trade, the history of torture
, and the Roman games
. In 1983, he edited The Old Navy: The Glorious Heritage of the U.S. Navy, Recounted through the Journals of an American Patriot by Rear Admiral Daniel P. Mannix, 3rd, his father's posthumously-published autobiographical account of his life and naval career from the Spanish-American War
of 1898 until his retirement in 1928.
In his role as a photo-journalist, Mannix witnessed the death of the famed herpetologist Grace Olive Wiley
when she was fatally bitten by a venomous snake. On July 20, 1948, Wiley, then 64 years old, invited Mannix to her home in Cypress, California
, to photograph her collection of snakes. She posed for him with a venomous Indian cobra
she had recently acquired, and the snake bit her on the finger. At her instruction, Mannix put tourniquet
s on her arm, but unfortunately, in trying to administer her only vial of cobra antivenom he found the needle was rusty, and he accidentally broke the vial. At her request, he took her to Long Beach
Municipal Hospital, but the hospital only had antivenom serums for North America
n snakes. Wiley was placed in an iron lung
to assist her breathing, but to no avail; she was pronounced dead less than two hours after being bitten. Fifteen years later, Mannix wrote an account of the event in his book All Creatures Great and Small, in which he titled Wiley the "Woman Without Fear."
Mannix was also a skilled stage magician, magic historian, and collector of illusions and apparatus. In 1957, he was one of the 16 charter members who co-founded the Munchkin Convention of the International Wizard of Oz Club. He contributed numerous articles to The Baum Bugle
, including on the subject of the 1902 musical extravaganza, The Wizard of Oz.
From 1950 onward, Daniel and Jule Mannix lived in the same house in East Whiteland
, near Malvern, Pennsylvania. Jule Mannix died May 25, 1977. Mannix died on January 29, 1997, at the age of 85, and was survived by his son and daughter, three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
's screenplay for the 2000 movie Gladiator
.
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
Bryn Mawr from Welsh for "big hill") is a census-designated place in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, just west of Philadelphia along Lancaster Avenue and the border with Delaware County...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, was an author, journalist, photographer, side-show performer, stage magician, animal trainer, and film-maker. His best-known works are the 1958 book Those About to Die, which remained in continuous print for three decades, and the 1967 novel The Fox and the Hound
The Fox and the Hound (novel)
The Fox and the Hound is a 1967 novel written by American novelist Daniel P. Mannix and illustrated by John Schoenherr. It follows the lives of Tod, a red fox raised by a human for the first year of his life, and Copper, a half-bloodhound dog owned by a local hunter, referred to as the Master...
which in 1981 was adapted into an animated film
The Fox and the Hound (film)
The Fox and the Hound is a 1981 animated feature loosely based on the Daniel P. Mannix novel of the same name, produced by Walt Disney Productions and released in the United States on July 10, 1981...
by Walt Disney Productions.
Childhood
The Mannix family had a long history of service in the United States NavyUnited States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
, and Mannix' father, Daniel P. Mannix, III, was an American naval officer. His mother would often join her husband on his postings, and the Mannix children would stay at their grandparents' farm outside Philadelphia. It was there that Mannix began to keep and raise various wild animals. In time, the cost of feeding them led him to write his first book, The Back-Yard Zoo.
Career
Mannix served as a naval lieutenant with the Photo-Science Laboratory in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. His varied career included time spent as a sword swallower and fire eater
Fire eater
A fire eater is an entertainer, often a street artist or part of a sideshow. The performer places flaming objects into their mouth and extinguishes them by cutting off oxygen. They also practice controlling and transferring the flame....
in a traveling carnival
Traveling carnival
A traveling carnival is an amusement show that may be made up of amusement rides, food vendors, merchandise vendors, games of chance and skill, thrill acts, animal acts or sideshow curiosities. A traveling carnival is not set up at a permanent location, like an amusement park, but is moved from...
sideshow
Sideshow
In America, a sideshow is an extra, secondary production associated with a circus, carnival, fair or other such attraction.- Types of attractions :There are four main types of classic sideshow attractions:...
, where he performed under the stage name The Great Zadma. His magazine articles about these experiences, co-written with his wife Jule Junker Mannix, proved very popular and were reprinted several times in 1944 and 1945, and later expanded into book form in his 1951 account of carnival life Step Right Up, which in turn was reprinted in 1964 as Memoirs of a Sword Swallower. He was also at times a professional hunter, a collector of wildlife for zoos and circuses, and a bird trainer. The latter skill was showcased in the 1956 short film Universal Color Parade: Parrot Jungle, in which he is credited as the writer, actor, director, producer, photographer, and bird trainer.
Mannix covered a wide variety of subject matter as an author. His books ranged from fictional animal stories for children, the natural history of animals, and adventurous accounts about hunting big game to sensational adult non-fiction topics such as a biography of the occultist Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
, sympathetic accounts of carnival
Carnival
Carnaval is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February. Carnaval typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, mask and public street party...
performers and sideshow
Sideshow
In America, a sideshow is an extra, secondary production associated with a circus, carnival, fair or other such attraction.- Types of attractions :There are four main types of classic sideshow attractions:...
freak
Freak
In current usage, the word "freak" is commonly used to refer to a person with something unusual about their appearance or behaviour. This usage dates from the so-called freak scene of the 1960s and 1970s. "Freak" in this sense may be used either as a pejorative, a term of admiration, or a...
s, and works describing, among other things, the Hellfire Club
Hellfire Club
The Hellfire Club was a name for several exclusive clubs for high society rakes established in Britain and Ireland in the 18th century, and was more formally or cautiously known as the "Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe"...
, the Atlantic slave trade, the history of torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
, and the Roman games
Gladiator
A gladiator was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their legal and social standing and their lives by appearing in the...
. In 1983, he edited The Old Navy: The Glorious Heritage of the U.S. Navy, Recounted through the Journals of an American Patriot by Rear Admiral Daniel P. Mannix, 3rd, his father's posthumously-published autobiographical account of his life and naval career from the Spanish-American War
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
of 1898 until his retirement in 1928.
In his role as a photo-journalist, Mannix witnessed the death of the famed herpetologist Grace Olive Wiley
Grace Olive Wiley
Grace Olive Wiley was an American herpetologist best known for her work with venomous snakes. She died of a snakebite she received while posing for a photographer at the age of 64.-Background:...
when she was fatally bitten by a venomous snake. On July 20, 1948, Wiley, then 64 years old, invited Mannix to her home in Cypress, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, to photograph her collection of snakes. She posed for him with a venomous Indian cobra
Indian Cobra
Indian Cobra or Spectacled Cobra is a species of the genus Naja found in the Indian subcontinent and a member of the "big four", the four species which inflict the most snakebites in India. This snake is revered in Indian mythology and culture, and is often seen with snake charmers...
she had recently acquired, and the snake bit her on the finger. At her instruction, Mannix put tourniquet
Tourniquet
An emergency tourniquet is a tightly tied band applied around a body part sometimes used in an attempt to stop severe traumatic bleeding. Tourniquets are also used during venipuncture and other medical procedures. Severe bleeding means the loss of more than 1,000 ml of blood. This flow of blood...
s on her arm, but unfortunately, in trying to administer her only vial of cobra antivenom he found the needle was rusty, and he accidentally broke the vial. At her request, he took her to Long Beach
Long Beach, California
Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...
Municipal Hospital, but the hospital only had antivenom serums for North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
n snakes. Wiley was placed in an iron lung
Iron lung
A negative pressure ventilator is a form of medical ventilator that enables a person to breathe when normal muscle control has been lost or the work of breathing exceeds the person's ability....
to assist her breathing, but to no avail; she was pronounced dead less than two hours after being bitten. Fifteen years later, Mannix wrote an account of the event in his book All Creatures Great and Small, in which he titled Wiley the "Woman Without Fear."
Mannix was also a skilled stage magician, magic historian, and collector of illusions and apparatus. In 1957, he was one of the 16 charter members who co-founded the Munchkin Convention of the International Wizard of Oz Club. He contributed numerous articles to The Baum Bugle
The Baum Bugle
The Baum Bugle: A Journal of Oz is the official journal of The International Wizard of Oz Club. The journal was founded in 1957, with its first issue released in June of that year . It publishes three times per year, with issues dated Spring, Autumn, and Winter; Issue No. 1 of Volume 50 appeared in...
, including on the subject of the 1902 musical extravaganza, The Wizard of Oz.
Personal life
Mannix and his wife and sometime co-author Jule Junker Mannix travelled around the world and raised exotic animals. Jule Mannix wrote the book Married to Adventure in 1954 as an autobiographical account of her adventurous life with Mannix. The couple had a son, Daniel Pratt Mannix, V, and a daughter, Julie Mannix Von Zernick.From 1950 onward, Daniel and Jule Mannix lived in the same house in East Whiteland
East Whiteland Township, Pennsylvania
East Whiteland Township is a township in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 10,650 at the 2010 census.-History:...
, near Malvern, Pennsylvania. Jule Mannix died May 25, 1977. Mannix died on January 29, 1997, at the age of 85, and was survived by his son and daughter, three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Literary Influence
According to Martin M Winkler's book, Gladiator: Film and History, Mannix's 1958 non-fiction book Those about to Die (reprinted in 2001 as The Way of the Gladiator) was the inspiration for David FranzoniDavid Franzoni
David Harold Franzoni is an American screenwriter. His best known screenplays include King Arthur, Gladiator, Amistad, and Jumpin' Jack Flash....
's screenplay for the 2000 movie Gladiator
Gladiator (2000 film)
Gladiator is a 2000 historical epic film directed by Ridley Scott, starring Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Ralf Möller, Oliver Reed, Djimon Hounsou, Derek Jacobi, John Shrapnel and Richard Harris. Crowe portrays the loyal Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius, who is betrayed...
.
Books
- The Back-Yard Zoo, Coward-McCann, 1934
- Step Right Up!, Harper & Bros., 1951; reprinted as Memoirs of a Sword Swallower, Ballantine, 1964
- King of the Sky, 1953
- Tales of the African Frontier (with J.A. Hunter), Harper & Bros., 1954
- The Wildest Game (with Peter Ryhiner), J.B. Lippincott, 1958
- Those About to Die, Ballantine, 1958; reprinted as The Way of the Gladiator, 2001
- The Hellfire Club, Ballantine, 1959
- The Beast: The Scandalous Life of Aleister Crowley, Ballantine, 1959
- Black Cargoes; A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1518-1865 (with Malcolm Cowley), Viking Press, 1962
- All Creatures Great and Small, McGraw-Hill, 1963
- The History of Torture, Dell, 1963 (paperback); Hippocrene Books, 1986
- A Sporting Chance: Unusual Methods of Hunting, E.P. Dutton, 1967
- The Fox and the Hound, E.P. Dutton, 1967
- The Last Eagle, 1967
- Troubled Waters: The Story of a Fish, a Stream and a Pond (with Patricia Collins), E P Dutton, 1969
- The Healer, E.P. Dutton, 1971
- Drifter, E.P. Dutton, 1974
- The Secret of the Elms, Crowell, 1975
- Freaks: We Who Are Not As Others, Re/Search Publications, 1976
- The Wolves of Paris, (hardcover) 1978; Avon (paperback), 1979, 1983
- The Old Navy: The Glorious Heritage of the U.S. Navy, Recounted through the Journals of an American Patriot by Rear Admiral Daniel P. Mannix, 3rd, as edited by Daniel P. Mannix 4th, Macmillan, 1983
Magazine articles
(Some of these were co-written with Jule Junker Mannix)- "Raiders of the Night" in St. Nicholas Magazine, August, 1930
- "Two Texas Goblins" in St. Nicholas Magazine June, 1933)
- "Gladiators of the Gods" in The Saturday Evening Post, May 25, 1935
- "Hunting Dragons with an Eagle" in The Saturday Evening Post, January 18, 1941
- "Death on Swift Wings" in The Saturday Evening Post, November 8, 1941
- "We're in the Money" in The Saturday Evening Post, January 16, 1943
- "How to Swallow a Sword" by The Great Zadma as told to Jule Junker Mannix in Collier's Magazine, July 22, 1994; reprinted in Collier's December 2, 1944; reprinted in Reader's Digest, March 1945
- "Fire-eating is Fun" by The Great Zadma in Pocket Book Weekly, February 3, 1945
- "Tracked by Bloodhounds" in The Saturday Evening Post, April 9, 1949
- "The Father of The Wizard of Oz" in American Heritage, December, 1964
Filmography
- King of the Sky, 1953 (documentary short) (writer, actor, director, producer, bird trainer)
- Universal Color Parade: Parrot Jungle, 1958 (short) (writer, director, producer, photographer, bird trainer)
- Killers of Kilimanjaro, 1959 (book "African Bush Adventures")
- The Fox and the Hound, 1981 (book)
- The Fox and the Hound 2, 2006 (book "The Fox and the Hound" - uncredited)