Fawcett Publications
Encyclopedia
Fawcett Publications was an American publishing company founded in 1919 in Robbinsdale, Minnesota
by Wilford Hamilton "Captain Billy" Fawcett (1885-1940). At the age of 16, Fawcett ran away from home to join the Army, and the Spanish-American War
took him to the Philippines. Back in Minnesota, he became a police reporter for the Minneapolis Journal
. While a World War I
Army captain, Fawcett's experience with the Army publication Stars and Stripes
gave him the notion to get into publishing, and his bawdy cartoon
and joke
magazine
, Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, became the launch pad for a vast publishing empire embracing magazines, comic book
s and paperback books
.
The title Captain Billy's Whiz Bang combined Fawcett's military moniker with the nickname of a destructive World War I artillery shell. According to one account, the earliest issues were mimeographed pamphlets, typed on a borrowed typewriter and peddled around Minneapolis by Captain Billy and his four sons. However, in Captain Billy's version, he stated that when he began publishing in October, 1919, he ordered a print run of 5,000 copies because of the discount on a large order compared with rates for only several hundred copies. Distributing free copies of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang to wounded veterans and his Minnesota friends, he then circulated the remaining copies to newsstands in hotels. With gags like, "AWOL means After Women Or Liquor", the joke book caught on, and in 1921, Captain Billy made the highly inflated claim that his sales were "soaring to the million mark."
The book Humor Magazines and Comic Periodicals notes:
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang is immortalized in the lyrics to the song "Trouble" from Meredith Willson
's The Music Man
(1962): "Is there a nicotine stain on his index finger? A dime novel
hidden in the corncrib? Is he starting to memorize jokes from Captain Billy's Whiz Bang?" Yet this is an anachronism, since The Music Man takes place in River City, Iowa, during 1912, seven years before the magazine's premiere issue. A similar anachronism occurs in the premiere episode of the 1966-67 television series "The Time Tunnel
". Titled "Rendezvous with Yesterday" and set aboard the RMS Titanic (again 1912), in one of the scenes set in the Marconigram office, a copy of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang is seen lying on one of the desks.
and World War veteran and is dedicated to the Fighting Forces of the United States and Canada." With its 64-page, saddle-stitched, digest-sized format, the humor publication soon saw a dramatic increase in sales. By 1923, the magazine had a circulation of 425,000 with $500,000 annual profits.
, founded in 1933. It had an influence on many other digest-sized cartoon humor publications, including Charley Jones Laugh Book
, which was still being published during the 1950s.
Captain Billy's success as a publisher prompted him to create the Breezy Point Resort on Pelican Lake
in Breezy Point, Minnesota
. Since celebrity visitors came to the resort, Captain Billy had the road from Breezy Point into Pequot Lakes
blacktopped at his own expense. His building program at the Resort included the construction of a massive lodge, planned to accommodate 700 people, using native Norway pines, some 70 feet (21.3 m) in length. Celebrities who stayed at Breezy Point included Carole Lombard
, Tom Mix
and Clark Gable
. The Fawcett House, Captain Billy's personal log mansion, is made available for public rental today. Decorated with elk and deer skins, Fawcett House has ten bedrooms and eight baths. The living room has a cathedral ceiling, a loft, a bar and a large field rock fireplace.
Harry Truman was another Breezy Point guest. Edward McKim, a friend of Truman's since World War I, told of visits to the Resort in 1932 and Truman's success at the Breezy Point slot machine:
In some issues of Whiz Bang, Captain Billy wrote about his vacations in Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Paris, along with items about his celebrity friends, including Jack Dempsey
, Sinclair Lewis
and Ring Lardner
.
, Daring Detective, Dynamic Detective, Family Circle
, Motion Picture, Movie Story, Rudder (later merged with Sea), Screen Secrets, Secrets, Triple-X Western and True. Woman's Day
, added to the line-up in 1948, had a circulation of 6,500,000 by 1965.
The flagship of Fawcett magazines was Mechanix Illustrated
. It began in the 1920s as Modern Mechanics and Inventions, was retitled Modern Mechanix and Inventions, shortened to Modern Mechanix and then altered to Mechanix Illustrated before it became Home Mechanix in 1984. Acquired by Time Inc., it was retitled yet again to become Today's Homeowner in 1993.
became a Fawcett staffer in 1927 after doing some spot illustrations for Fawcett editor Weston "Westy" Farmer, and Saunders' first cover illustration was for the August, 1929 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. He continued to do covers for Fawcett into the 1930s, and when Fawcett opened Manhattan offices in 1934, Saunders and other staffers relocated in New York.
Larry Eisinger, the workshop and science editor of Mechanix Illustrated, spearheaded the national "do-it-yourself" movement as the editor-in-chief of Fawcett's How-To book series and special interest magazines. He created Fawcett's Mechanix Illustrated Do-It-Yourself Encyclopedia and The Practical Handyman's Encyclopedia, which had combined sales of almost 20 million copies. In 1959 Electronics Illustrated
was created for the hobbyist. It was merged into Mechanix Illustrated at the end of 1972.
After the huge growth during the early 1930s, Fawcett Publications relocated its offices to both New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut
in 1940. Corporate headquarters was in Greenwich, and the book publishing division, known as Fawcett World Library, operated out of New York City, at 67 West 44th Street.
Wilford Fawcett's sons continued the expansion of the company after their father's death on February 7, 1940. That same year, the company launched Fawcett Comics
, as recalled by circulation director Roscoe Kent Fawcett: "I was responsible, I feel, for Captain Marvel
. I got us into the comic book business. I said, 'Give me a Superman, only have his other identity be a 10 or 12-year-old boy rather than a man.' I put Al Allard in charge of coordinating the project with some assistance from editorial director Ralph Daigh."
In 1939, Daigh put the project in the hands of Fawcett writer William Parker
and Fawcett staff artist Charles Clarence Beck
. The character they devised, Captain Marvel, was introduced in Whiz Comics #2 (February, 1940) and quickly caught on, moving into his own title, Captain Marvel Adventures, early in 1941. The success prompted spin-off characters, beginning with Captain Marvel, Jr. in 1941 and Mary Marvel
in 1942. Fawcett's line of comics expanded with such colorful characters as Captain Midnight
, Bulletman and Bulletgirl
, Nyoka the Jungle Girl
and Spy Smasher
(who became Crime Smasher after World War II). The circulation of Captain Marvel Adventures continued to soar until it outsold Superman
during the mid-1940s. Captain Marvel Jr. had such an impact on Elvis Presley
that he borrowed the character's poses, hairstyle and lightning flash chest insignia, as described in Elaine Dundy
's biography, Elvis and Gladys.
to distribute their Mentor and Signet titles. This contract prohibited Fawcett from becoming a competitor by publishing their own paperback
reprints. In 1949, Roscoe Fawcett wanted to establish a line of Fawcett paperbacks, and he felt original paperbacks would not be a violation of the contract. In order to test a loophole
in the contract, Fawcett published two anthologies – The Best of True Magazine and What Today's Woman Should Know About Marriage and Sex – reprinting material from Fawcett magazines not previously published in books. When these books successfully sailed through the contract loophole, Fawcett announced Gold Medal Books
, their line of paperback originals. It was a revolutionary turning point in paperback publishing. Fawcett's editor-in-chief was Ralph Daigh, who had been hired by Captain Billy in 1928, and the art director for Gold Medal was Al Allard, who also had been with Fawcett since 1928.
Gold Medal's first editor was Jim Bishop, a former Collier's
editor later known for his series of best-selling non-fiction titles: The Day Lincoln Was Shot, The Day Christ Died and The Day Kennedy Was Shot. When Bishop left after a year, he was replaced by William Charles Lengel (1888-1965), a veteran magazine editor, agent, short story author and novelist (Forever and Ever, Candles in the Wind). In February 1951, former Hollywood story editor Richard Carroll signed on as an editor with Gold Medal. Carroll was once described as "the Maxwell Perkins of Gold Medal."
Another early Gold Medal editor was former literary agent Knox Burger, who recalled, "Through its Gold Medal series, Fawcett was able to give many now well-known authors a chance at book publication early in their careers – among them John D. MacDonald
and Kurt Vonnegut
. It also gave established writers like William Goldman
and MacKinlay Kantor
a chance to flex their creative muscles under pseudonyms."
Radcliffe graduate Rona Jaffe
, who joined the company in the early 1950s as a file clerk, was promoted to an associate editor position. After four years at Fawcett, she left to pursue a writing career. Her best-selling 1958 novel, The Best of Everything, obviously drawn from her experiences at Fawcett and Gold Medal, was adapted for a 1959 film and a 1970 TV series. At the time of Jaffe's departure from Fawcett in 1955, the new associate editor who stepped in was Leona Nevler, formerly with Little, Brown but best known in 1950s publishing circles as the person who saw the potential of Grace Metalious' best-selling Peyton Place
after picking it from the slush pile at publisher Julian Messner. During her 26 years at Fawcett, Nevler became the editorial director in 1972.
Beginning their numbering system at 101, Gold Medal got underway with Alan Hynd's We Are the Public Enemies, the anthology Man Story (102) and John Flagg's The Persian Cat (103). Writing about the demise of pulp magazines in The Dime Detectives, Ron Goulart observed, "Fawcett dealt another blow to the pulps when, in 1950, it introduced its Gold Medal line. What Gold Medal specialized in was original novels. Some were merely sleazy, but others were in a tough, hard-boiled style that seemed somehow more knowing and more contemporary than that of the surviving pulps. Early Gold Medal authors included John D. MacDonald, Charles Williams
and Richard S. Prather
." Others were Benjamin Appel, Bruno Fischer, David Goodis
, Day Keene, Dan J. Marlowe, Wade Miller, Jim Thompson
, Lionel White and Harry Whittington.
Interviewed by Ed Gorman
in 1984, MacDonald recalled, "In late 1949, I wrote a long pulp novelette. My agent, Joe Shaw, asked me to expand it. I resisted, but complied. I hate puffing things. Cutting is fine. Everything can use cutting. But puffing creates fat. Gold Medal took it for their new line of originals. It was titled The Brass Cupcake." Numbered as Gold Medal 124, The Brass Cupcake was John D. MacDonald's first novel.
Gold Medal 129 was an unusual graphic novel experiment, John Millard's Mansion of Evil, an original color comic book story packaged as a paperback. Other 1950 Gold Medal originals included the Western Stretch Dawson by William R. Burnett
and three mystery-adventure novels – Nude in Mink by Sax Rohmer
, I'll Find You by Richard Himmel. After Donald E. Keyhoe
's article "Flying Saucers Are Real" in True (January 1950) created a sold-out sensation, with True going back to press for another print run, Keyhoe expanded the article into a top-selling paperback, The Flying Saucers Are Real, published by Fawcett that same year.
Sales soared, prompting Ralph Daigh to comment, "In the past six months we have produced 9,020,645 books, and people seem to like them very well." However, hardcover publishers resented Roscoe Fawcett's innovation, as evidenced by Doubleday's LeBaron R. Barker, who claimed that paperback originals could "undermine the whole structure of publishing."
With an increase from 35 titles in 1950 to 66 titles in 1951, Gold Medal's obvious success in issuing paperback originals revolutionized the industry. While Fischer, MacKinlay Kantor
, Louis L'Amour
, John D. MacDonald, Richard Matheson
and Richard Prather were joining Gold Medal's roster of writers, other paperback publishers were soon asking agents for original manuscripts. Literary agent Donald MacCampbell stated that one publisher "threatened to boycott my agency if it continued to negotiate contracts with original 25-cent firms."
Prather had a bank account of $100 when his wife handed him a telegram from literary agent Scott Meredith on July 7, 1950 indicating his first sale. Although Prather's first novel was unsold, Gold Medal liked his second novel and his Shell Scott character enough to offer a four-book contract, and Prather's Case of the Vanishing Beauty soon set sales records.
In 1950, Bruno Fischer's House of Flesh sold 1,800,212 copies. In 1951, Charles Williams' Hill Girl sold 1,226,890 copies, Gil Brewer's 13 French Street sold 1,200,365 and Cassidy's Girl by David Goodis sold 1,036,497. Authors were attracted to Gold Medal because royalties were based on print runs rather than actual sales, and they received the entire royalty instead of a 50-50 split with a hardback publisher. Gold Medal paid a $2000 advance on an initial print run was for 200,000 copies. When a print run increased to 300,000, the advance was $3000.
Mickey Spillane
's I, the Jury
paperback bestseller got a huge boost from Fawcett, as Spillane explained to interviewer Michael Carlson:
In 1952, when their contract with NAL expired, Fawcett immediately began doing reprints through several imprints. Red Seal started April 1952 and published 22 titles before it folded a year later. Launched September 1955, Premier Books offered non-fiction titles, such as The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet. Crest Books, which also started September 1955, spanned all genres with an emphasis on Westerns and humor, including Best Cartoons from True and Lester Grady's Best from Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, and one successful Crest title was their movie tie-in edition of Robert Bloch
's Psycho. The managing editor of Crest and Premier was Leona Nevler.
Between 1960 and 1993, Gold Medal was the exclusive American publisher of Donald Hamilton
's Matt Helm
spy novel series. In the early 1960s, John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series got underway after Knox Burger contacted MacDonald: "At the request of Knox Burger, then at Fawcett, I attempted a series character. I took three shots at it to get one book with a character I could stay with. That was in 1964. Once I had the first McGee book, The Deep Blue Good-by
, they held it up until I had finished two more, Nightmare in Pink
and A Purple Place for Dying
, then released one a month for three months. That launched the series."
After his retirement in 1972, Daigh recalled, "From our entrance into the paperback business, we paid authors at a more generous rate than had been the custom. In 1955, when we started the Crest line to reprint hardcover books, we extended this practice to what we offered for softcover rights. It caused quite a sensation in the trade when we paid $101,505 for James Gould Cozzens
' By Love Possessed and later $700,000 for James A. Michener
's The Source. Giving the author a bigger share of the pie paid off handsomely. However, I gather that the practice has been overdone in recent years and has led to some of the book industry's current troubles."
Captain Billy and Claire Fawcett had four sons and a daughter: Roger, Wilford, Marion Claire, Gordon Wesley and the youngest, Roscoe. As a boy, Roscoe Kent Fawcett (February 7, 1913 – December 23, 1999) attended Minneapolis schools and was assigned tasks such as dusting furniture and beach cleaning at his father's Breezy Point Resort before he became a vice president and circulation manager for the family publishing company. After Captain Billy's death, his sons, including Roscoe Fawcett, managed the Breezy Point Resort for a short time before they sold it. However, Roscoe Fawcett also maintained his own private hunting retreat, the Tsawhawbitts Lodge , in Jarbidge, Nevada. This two acre (8,000 m2) riverfront bed and breakfast estate, now valued at $1 million, has 7,500 square feet (700 m2) of living area in three buildings—the seven-bedroom log house, the guest house with garage and shop, and the party house with full kitchen, bar and barbecue patio.
Roscoe Fawcett was a veteran of World War II
, serving in the anti-aircraft division of the U.S. Army, and later was in charge of entertainment for Camp Haan
in Riverside, California
. He was married twice, had four sons and died at the age of 86 in Brainerd, Minnesota
. One of his sons, Roscoe Fawcett Jr., became the publisher of American Fitness magazine.
Born in Minneapolis in 1912, Gordon Fawcett graduated from the University of Minnesota
in 1934. He married Vivian Peterson in 1935 and moved to Los Angeles where he was Fawcett Publications' office manager. He held the title of secretary-treasurer when the company moved to Greenwich, Connecticut in 1940, and he was 81 when he died in West Palm Beach, Florida
, on January 16, 1993. Gordon Fawcett had four children: Vivian Creigh of Springfield, Vermont
, and his three sons, Dennis of Greenwich; David of Stuart, Florida; and Gordon Jr. of San Diego. Fawcett Publications was very much a family affair, as indicated by a list of the company's stockholders: Claire Sue Bagg, James Wesley Bagg, Marion Fawcett Bagg, William Bagg, Gordon W. Fawcett, Helen Aline Fawcett, John Fawcett, John Roger Fawcett, Mary Blair Fawcett, Blair Redding Fawcett, Michael Blair Fawcett, Roger K. Fawcett, Roscoe Kent Fawcett, Marie F. Fawcett, Thomas Knowlton Fawcett, Vivian D. Fawcett, W.H. Fawcett, Jr., W.H. Fawcett III, William Blair Fawcett, Mrs. Virginia Kerr, Mira King, Gloria Fawcett Leary and Mrs. Eva Roberts. Internet consultant Travis Fawcett, living in San Diego, is the son of John Roger Fawcett. Wilford Hamilton "Buzz" Fawcett IV is an attorney in Washington D.C.
Fawcett Publications had offices at 67 West 44th Street in Manhattan
where vice-president Roger Fawcett liked to show visitors around the publishers' penthouse and serve them drinks dispensed through the gold penis of a nude male statue. Roger Fawcett felt a family history was needed, and in 1970, he began writing Notes on the Fawcett Family:
Because of his cancer, Roger Fawcett stopped writing his family history at that point, and he did not return to it.
), resulted in Fawcett folding its line of comic books. Lash Larue, Nyoka, Strange Suspense Stories
and other titles were sold to Charlton Comics
. In 1972, DC Comics licensed Captain Marvel, featuring him in new stories. In 1991, DC purchased the entire Marvel Family and related characters.
In 1970, Fawcett acquired Popular Library
from Perfect Film & Chemical Corporation
and renamed it Fawcett Books. Fawcett Publications was bought by CBS Publications in 1977 for $50 million. When Ballantine Books
(a division of Random House
) acquired Fawcett Books in 1982 while Popular was sold to to Warner Communications
, it inherited a mass market paperback list with such authors as William Bernhardt
, Amanda Cross
, Stephen Frey
, P. D. James
, William X. Kienzle
, Anne Perry
, Daniel Silva, Peter Straub
and Margaret Truman
. Fawcett also became the official home of Ballantine's mass market mystery program. The imprint stopped being used on new books at the beginning of the 21st century.
In 1987, Fawcett senior executive Peter G. Diamandis and a management team negotiated a $650 million leveraged buy out, then sold six titles to raise $250 million. Diamandis Communications, Inc. was then sold the next year to Hachette Publications
for $712 million.
An annual four-day festival held in Robbinsdale, Minnesota
is Whiz Bang Days. Robbinsdale's city celebration, recalling the glory years of Fawcett Publications, began during World War II. The original Fawcett Publications building, which remained standing in Robbinsdale for decades, was torn down during the mid-1990s. It was located at what is now the terrace for the restaurant La Cucina di Nonna Rosa's, at 4168 West Broadway Avenue.
Robbinsdale, Minnesota
Robbinsdale is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 13,953 at the 2010 census.-Geography:According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it is water....
by Wilford Hamilton "Captain Billy" Fawcett (1885-1940). At the age of 16, Fawcett ran away from home to join the Army, and 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...
took him to the Philippines. Back in Minnesota, he became a police reporter for the Minneapolis Journal
Star Tribune
The Star Tribune is the largest newspaper in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is published seven days each week in an edition for the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. A statewide version is also available across Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota. The...
. While a World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Army captain, Fawcett's experience with the Army publication Stars and Stripes
Stars and Stripes (newspaper)
Stars and Stripes is a news source that operates from inside the United States Department of Defense but is editorially separate from it. The First Amendment protection which Stars and Stripes enjoys is safeguarded by Congress to whom an independent ombudsman, who serves the readers' interests,...
gave him the notion to get into publishing, and his bawdy cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
and joke
Joke
A joke is a phrase or a paragraph with a humorous twist. It can be in many different forms, such as a question or short story. To achieve this end, jokes may employ irony, sarcasm, word play and other devices...
magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
, Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, became the launch pad for a vast publishing empire embracing magazines, comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
s and paperback books
Paperback
Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...
.
The title Captain Billy's Whiz Bang combined Fawcett's military moniker with the nickname of a destructive World War I artillery shell. According to one account, the earliest issues were mimeographed pamphlets, typed on a borrowed typewriter and peddled around Minneapolis by Captain Billy and his four sons. However, in Captain Billy's version, he stated that when he began publishing in October, 1919, he ordered a print run of 5,000 copies because of the discount on a large order compared with rates for only several hundred copies. Distributing free copies of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang to wounded veterans and his Minnesota friends, he then circulated the remaining copies to newsstands in hotels. With gags like, "AWOL means After Women Or Liquor", the joke book caught on, and in 1921, Captain Billy made the highly inflated claim that his sales were "soaring to the million mark."
The book Humor Magazines and Comic Periodicals notes:
Few periodicals reflect the post-WW I cultural change in American life as well as Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang. To some people [it] represented the decline of morality and the flaunting of sexual immodesty; to others it signified an increase in openness. For much of the 1920s, Captain Billy’s was the most prominent comic magazine in America with its mix of racy poetry and naughty jokes and puns, aimed at a small-town audience with pretensions of "sophistication".
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang is immortalized in the lyrics to the song "Trouble" from Meredith Willson
Meredith Willson
Robert Meredith Willson was an American composer, songwriter, conductor and playwright, best known for writing the book, music and lyrics for the hit Broadway musical The Music Man...
's The Music Man
The Music Man
The Music Man is a musical with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson, based on a story by Willson and Franklin Lacey. The plot concerns con man Harold Hill, who poses as a boys' band organizer and leader and sells band instruments and uniforms to naive townsfolk before skipping town with...
(1962): "Is there a nicotine stain on his index finger? A dime novel
Dime novel
Dime novel, though it has a specific meaning, has also become a catch-all term for several different forms of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S...
hidden in the corncrib? Is he starting to memorize jokes from Captain Billy's Whiz Bang?" Yet this is an anachronism, since The Music Man takes place in River City, Iowa, during 1912, seven years before the magazine's premiere issue. A similar anachronism occurs in the premiere episode of the 1966-67 television series "The Time Tunnel
The Time Tunnel
The Time Tunnel is a 1966–1967 U.S. color science fiction TV series. The show was created and produced by Irwin Allen, his third science fiction television series. The show's main theme was Time Travel Adventure. The Time Tunnel was released by 20th Century Fox and broadcast on ABC. The show ran...
". Titled "Rendezvous with Yesterday" and set aboard the RMS Titanic (again 1912), in one of the scenes set in the Marconigram office, a copy of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang is seen lying on one of the desks.
Captain Billy
The magazine often featured a picture of Captain Billy in uniform along with the comment, "This magazine is edited by a Spanish-AmericanSpanish-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...
and World War veteran and is dedicated to the Fighting Forces of the United States and Canada." With its 64-page, saddle-stitched, digest-sized format, the humor publication soon saw a dramatic increase in sales. By 1923, the magazine had a circulation of 425,000 with $500,000 annual profits.
Expansion
With the rising readership of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Fawcett racked up more sales with Whiz Bang annuals, and in 1926, he launched a similar publication, Smokehouse Monthly. The popularity of Whiz Bang peaked during the 1920s. It continued into the 1930s, but circulation slowed as readers graduated to the more sophisticated humor of EsquireEsquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
, founded in 1933. It had an influence on many other digest-sized cartoon humor publications, including Charley Jones Laugh Book
Charley Jones Laugh Book
Charley Jones' Laugh Book Magazine, aka Charley Jones' Laugh Book and Laugh Book, was a monthly digest-size cartoon and joke magazine published by Charley E. Jones at 438 North Main Street in Wichita, Kansas. Edited by Charley Jones, Ceora K. Raymond and Ken Berglund, it ran from 1943 into the...
, which was still being published during the 1950s.
Captain Billy's success as a publisher prompted him to create the Breezy Point Resort on Pelican Lake
Pelican Lake Township, Minnesota
Pelican Lake Township is a township in Grant County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 425 at the 2000 census.-Geography:According to the United States Census Bureau, the township has a total area of 35.4 square miles , of which, 27.2 square miles of it is land and...
in Breezy Point, Minnesota
Breezy Point, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 979 people, 413 households, and 306 families residing in the city. The population density was 74.7 people per square mile . There were 899 housing units at an average density of 68.6 per square mile...
. Since celebrity visitors came to the resort, Captain Billy had the road from Breezy Point into Pequot Lakes
Pequot Lakes, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 947 people, 479 households, and 231 families residing in the city. The population density was 653.8 people per square mile . There were 564 housing units at an average density of 389.4 per square mile...
blacktopped at his own expense. His building program at the Resort included the construction of a massive lodge, planned to accommodate 700 people, using native Norway pines, some 70 feet (21.3 m) in length. Celebrities who stayed at Breezy Point included Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard was an American actress. She was particularly noted for her comedic roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s...
, Tom Mix
Tom Mix
Thomas Edwin "Tom" Mix was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies. He made a reported 336 films between 1910 and 1935, all but nine of which were silent features...
and Clark Gable
Clark Gable
William Clark Gable , known as Clark Gable, was an American film actor most famous for his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh...
. The Fawcett House, Captain Billy's personal log mansion, is made available for public rental today. Decorated with elk and deer skins, Fawcett House has ten bedrooms and eight baths. The living room has a cathedral ceiling, a loft, a bar and a large field rock fireplace.
Harry Truman was another Breezy Point guest. Edward McKim, a friend of Truman's since World War I, told of visits to the Resort in 1932 and Truman's success at the Breezy Point slot machine:
Captain Billy was quite a shot with a shotgun. He was on the American Olympic team at one time. He had some traps out there, so we did a little shooting with him. He had a couple of guests, one of whom was Dr. Joe Mayo, the son of Dr. Charlie Mayo. Dr. Joe was killed a few years later in an automobile accident. He was the brother of Dr. Chuck Mayo who just retired from the Mayo Foundation. We did a little trap shooting at that time, but we went up there almost every night for dinner. It was a 35 or 40 miles (64.4 km) drive. We stopped at a barber shop at BrainerdBrainerd, MinnesotaBrainerd is a city in Crow Wing County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 13,590 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Crow Wing County and one of the largest cities in Central Minnesota...
going up, and he hit the jackpot in a machine in the lower lobby of the hotel. Then he hit the jackpot up at Breezy Point the same night.
In some issues of Whiz Bang, Captain Billy wrote about his vacations in Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Paris, along with items about his celebrity friends, including Jack Dempsey
Jack Dempsey
William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey was an American boxer who held the world heavyweight title from 1919 to 1926. Dempsey's aggressive style and exceptional punching power made him one of the most popular boxers in history. Many of his fights set financial and attendance records, including the first...
, Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
and Ring Lardner
Ring Lardner
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre.-Personal life:...
.
March of the magazines
During the 1930s, Fawcett and his sons established a line of magazines which eventually reached a combined circulation of ten million a month in newsstand sales. True Confessions alone had a circulation of two million a month. However, during the World War II paper shortages Fawcett folded 49 magazines and kept only 14. Magazines published by Fawcett over the decades included Battle Stories, CavalierCavalier (magazine)
Cavalier is an American magazine that was launched by Fawcett Publications in 1952 and has continued for decades, eventually evolving into a Playboy-style men's magazine...
, Daring Detective, Dynamic Detective, Family Circle
Family Circle
Family Circle is an American women's magazine published 15 times a year by Meredith Corporation. It began publication in 1932 as a magazine distributed at supermarkets such as Piggly Wiggly and Safeway. Cowles Magazines and Broadcasting bought the magazine in 1962. The New York Times Company bought...
, Motion Picture, Movie Story, Rudder (later merged with Sea), Screen Secrets, Secrets, Triple-X Western and True. Woman's Day
Woman's Day
Woman's Day is aimed at a female readership, covering such subjects as food, nutrition, fitness, beauty and fashion. The magazine edition is one of the "Seven Sisters", a group of women's service magazines....
, added to the line-up in 1948, had a circulation of 6,500,000 by 1965.
The flagship of Fawcett magazines was Mechanix Illustrated
Mechanix Illustrated
Mechanix Illustrated was an American magazine founded in the first half of the 20th century to compete against the older Popular Science and Popular Mechanics...
. It began in the 1920s as Modern Mechanics and Inventions, was retitled Modern Mechanix and Inventions, shortened to Modern Mechanix and then altered to Mechanix Illustrated before it became Home Mechanix in 1984. Acquired by Time Inc., it was retitled yet again to become Today's Homeowner in 1993.
Illustrators and editors
The illustrator Norman SaundersNorman Saunders
Norman Blaine Saunders was a prolific commercial artist who produced paintings for pulp magazines, paperbacks, men's adventure magazines, comic books and trading cards...
became a Fawcett staffer in 1927 after doing some spot illustrations for Fawcett editor Weston "Westy" Farmer, and Saunders' first cover illustration was for the August, 1929 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. He continued to do covers for Fawcett into the 1930s, and when Fawcett opened Manhattan offices in 1934, Saunders and other staffers relocated in New York.
Electronics Illustrated
Electronics Illustrated was an American magazine started in May 1958 by Fawcett Publications, the publishers of Mechanix Illustrated. The magazine was published monthly from 1959 to 1961 then bi-monthly until November 1972...
was created for the hobbyist. It was merged into Mechanix Illustrated at the end of 1972.
After the huge growth during the early 1930s, Fawcett Publications relocated its offices to both New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich, Connecticut
Greenwich is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town had a total population of 61,171. It is home to many hedge funds and other financial service companies. Greenwich is the southernmost and westernmost municipality in Connecticut and is 38+ minutes ...
in 1940. Corporate headquarters was in Greenwich, and the book publishing division, known as Fawcett World Library, operated out of New York City, at 67 West 44th Street.
Wilford Fawcett's sons continued the expansion of the company after their father's death on February 7, 1940. That same year, the company launched Fawcett Comics
Fawcett Comics
Fawcett Comics, a division of Fawcett Publications, was one of several successful comic book publishers during the Golden Age of Comic Books in the 1940s...
, as recalled by circulation director Roscoe Kent Fawcett: "I was responsible, I feel, for Captain Marvel
Captain Marvel (DC Comics)
Captain Marvel is a fictional comic book superhero, originally published by Fawcett Comics and later by DC Comics. Created in 1939 by artist C. C. Beck and writer Bill Parker, the character first appeared in Whiz Comics #2...
. I got us into the comic book business. I said, 'Give me a Superman, only have his other identity be a 10 or 12-year-old boy rather than a man.' I put Al Allard in charge of coordinating the project with some assistance from editorial director Ralph Daigh."
In 1939, Daigh put the project in the hands of Fawcett writer William Parker
Bill Parker
William "Bill" H. Parker, Jr. was an American comic book writer and editor. He is best known for creating Fawcett Comics' most popular character, Captain Marvel, in 1940, along with artist C. C. Beck....
and Fawcett staff artist Charles Clarence Beck
C. C. Beck
Charles Clarence Beck was an American cartoonist and comic book artist, best known for his work on Captain Marvel at Fawcett Comics and DC Comics....
. The character they devised, Captain Marvel, was introduced in Whiz Comics #2 (February, 1940) and quickly caught on, moving into his own title, Captain Marvel Adventures, early in 1941. The success prompted spin-off characters, beginning with Captain Marvel, Jr. in 1941 and Mary Marvel
Mary Marvel
Mary Marvel is a fictional character, a comic book superheroine, originally published by Fawcett Comics and now owned by DC Comics. Created by Otto Binder and Marc Swayze, she first appeared in Captain Marvel Adventures #18 in...
in 1942. Fawcett's line of comics expanded with such colorful characters as Captain Midnight
Captain Midnight
Captain Midnight is a U.S. adventure franchise first broadcast as a radio serial from 1938 to 1949. Sponsored by the Skelly Oil Company, the radio program was the creation of radio scripters Wilfred G. Moore and Robert M...
, Bulletman and Bulletgirl
Bulletman and Bulletgirl
Bulletman was a Fawcett Comics superhero created by Bill Parker and Jon Smalle for Nickel Comics #1 in May, 1940.-Fictional character biography:...
, Nyoka the Jungle Girl
Nyoka the Jungle Girl
Nyoka the Jungle Girl is a fictional character created for the screen in the 1941 serial Jungle Girl, starring Frances Gifford as Nyoka Meredith. The character of Nyoka is often described as having been created by Edgar Rice Burroughs...
and Spy Smasher
Spy Smasher
Spy Smasher is the name of two fictional characters appearing in comics published by DC Comics. The first is a superhero that was formerly owned and published by Fawcett Comics...
(who became Crime Smasher after World War II). The circulation of Captain Marvel Adventures continued to soar until it outsold Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
during the mid-1940s. Captain Marvel Jr. had such an impact on Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
that he borrowed the character's poses, hairstyle and lightning flash chest insignia, as described in Elaine Dundy
Elaine Dundy
Elaine Dundy was an American novelist, biographer, journalist, actress and playwright.-Early life:Born Elaine Rita Brimberg in New York City, of Latvian maternal descent, her Polish father was an office furniture manufacturer and a violent bully...
's biography, Elvis and Gladys.
Gold Medal Books
Fawcett was also an independent newsstand distributor, and in 1945, the company negotiated a contract with New American LibraryNew American Library
New American Library is an American publisher based in New York, founded in 1948; it produced affordable paperback reprints of classics and scholarly works, as well as popular, pulp, and "hard-boiled" fiction. Non-fiction, original, and hardcopy issues were also produced.Victor Weybright and Kurt...
to distribute their Mentor and Signet titles. This contract prohibited Fawcett from becoming a competitor by publishing their own paperback
Paperback
Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...
reprints. In 1949, Roscoe Fawcett wanted to establish a line of Fawcett paperbacks, and he felt original paperbacks would not be a violation of the contract. In order to test a loophole
Loophole
A loophole is a weakness that allows a system to be circumvented.Loophole may also refer to:*Arrowslit, a slit in a castle wall*Loophole , a short science fiction story by Arthur C...
in the contract, Fawcett published two anthologies – The Best of True Magazine and What Today's Woman Should Know About Marriage and Sex – reprinting material from Fawcett magazines not previously published in books. When these books successfully sailed through the contract loophole, Fawcett announced Gold Medal Books
Gold Medal Books
Gold Medal Books, launched by Fawcett Publications in 1950, is a U.S. book publisher known for introducing paperback originals, a publishing innovation at the time. Fawcett was also an independent newsstand distributor, and in 1949 the company negotiated a contract with New American Library to...
, their line of paperback originals. It was a revolutionary turning point in paperback publishing. Fawcett's editor-in-chief was Ralph Daigh, who had been hired by Captain Billy in 1928, and the art director for Gold Medal was Al Allard, who also had been with Fawcett since 1928.
Gold Medal's first editor was Jim Bishop, a former Collier's
Collier's Weekly
Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....
editor later known for his series of best-selling non-fiction titles: The Day Lincoln Was Shot, The Day Christ Died and The Day Kennedy Was Shot. When Bishop left after a year, he was replaced by William Charles Lengel (1888-1965), a veteran magazine editor, agent, short story author and novelist (Forever and Ever, Candles in the Wind). In February 1951, former Hollywood story editor Richard Carroll signed on as an editor with Gold Medal. Carroll was once described as "the Maxwell Perkins of Gold Medal."
Another early Gold Medal editor was former literary agent Knox Burger, who recalled, "Through its Gold Medal series, Fawcett was able to give many now well-known authors a chance at book publication early in their careers – among them John D. MacDonald
John D. MacDonald
John Dann MacDonald was an American crime and suspense novelist and short story writer.MacDonald was a prolific author of crime and suspense novels, many of them set in his adopted home of Florida...
and Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
. It also gave established writers like William Goldman
William Goldman
William Goldman is an American novelist, playwright, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.-Early life and education:...
and MacKinlay Kantor
MacKinlay Kantor
MacKinlay Kantor , born Benjamin McKinlay Kantor, was an American journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He wrote more than 30 novels, several based on the American Civil War, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1956 for his 1955 novel Andersonville, about the Confederate prisoner of war camp...
a chance to flex their creative muscles under pseudonyms."
Radcliffe graduate Rona Jaffe
Rona Jaffe
Rona Jaffe was a popular American novelist, publishing numerous works from 1958-2003. She may have been best known for her controversial novel, Mazes and Monsters...
, who joined the company in the early 1950s as a file clerk, was promoted to an associate editor position. After four years at Fawcett, she left to pursue a writing career. Her best-selling 1958 novel, The Best of Everything, obviously drawn from her experiences at Fawcett and Gold Medal, was adapted for a 1959 film and a 1970 TV series. At the time of Jaffe's departure from Fawcett in 1955, the new associate editor who stepped in was Leona Nevler, formerly with Little, Brown but best known in 1950s publishing circles as the person who saw the potential of Grace Metalious' best-selling Peyton Place
Peyton Place (novel)
Peyton Place is a 1956 novel by Grace Metalious. It sold 60,000 copies within the first ten days of its release and remained on the New York Times best seller list for 59 weeks. It was adapted as both a 1957 film and a 1964–69 television series....
after picking it from the slush pile at publisher Julian Messner. During her 26 years at Fawcett, Nevler became the editorial director in 1972.
Beginning their numbering system at 101, Gold Medal got underway with Alan Hynd's We Are the Public Enemies, the anthology Man Story (102) and John Flagg's The Persian Cat (103). Writing about the demise of pulp magazines in The Dime Detectives, Ron Goulart observed, "Fawcett dealt another blow to the pulps when, in 1950, it introduced its Gold Medal line. What Gold Medal specialized in was original novels. Some were merely sleazy, but others were in a tough, hard-boiled style that seemed somehow more knowing and more contemporary than that of the surviving pulps. Early Gold Medal authors included John D. MacDonald, Charles Williams
Charles Williams (U.S. author)
Charles Williams was an American writer of hardboiled crime fiction. He is regarded by critics as one of the finest suspense novelists of the 1950s and 1960s. His 1951 debut, the pulp paperback novel Hill Girl, sold over a million copies...
and Richard S. Prather
Richard S. Prather
Richard Scott Prather was an American mystery novelist, best known for creating the "Shell Scott" series. He also wrote under the pseudonyms David Knight and Douglas Ring.- Early life and career :...
." Others were Benjamin Appel, Bruno Fischer, David Goodis
David Goodis
David Loeb Goodis was an American noir fiction writer.Born to a respectable Jewish family in Philadelphia, Goodis had two younger brothers, but one died of meningitis at the age of three...
, Day Keene, Dan J. Marlowe, Wade Miller, Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson (writer)
James Myers Thompson was an American author and screenwriter, known for his pulp crime fiction....
, Lionel White and Harry Whittington.
Interviewed by Ed Gorman
Edward Gorman
Ed Gorman is an award-winning American author best known for his crime and mystery fiction. He wrote The Poker Club which is currently in post production for a film of the same name directed by Tim McCann....
in 1984, MacDonald recalled, "In late 1949, I wrote a long pulp novelette. My agent, Joe Shaw, asked me to expand it. I resisted, but complied. I hate puffing things. Cutting is fine. Everything can use cutting. But puffing creates fat. Gold Medal took it for their new line of originals. It was titled The Brass Cupcake." Numbered as Gold Medal 124, The Brass Cupcake was John D. MacDonald's first novel.
Gold Medal 129 was an unusual graphic novel experiment, John Millard's Mansion of Evil, an original color comic book story packaged as a paperback. Other 1950 Gold Medal originals included the Western Stretch Dawson by William R. Burnett
William R. Burnett
William Riley Burnett , often credited as W. R. Burnett, was an American novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for the crime novel, Little Caesar, whose film adaptation is considered the first of the classic American gangster movies.Burnett was born in Springfield, Ohio, U.S...
and three mystery-adventure novels – Nude in Mink by Sax Rohmer
Sax Rohmer
Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward , better known as Sax Rohmer, was a prolific English novelist. He is best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr...
, I'll Find You by Richard Himmel. After Donald E. Keyhoe
Donald Keyhoe
Donald Edward Keyhoe was an American Marine Corps naval aviator, writer of many aviation articles and stories in a variety of leading publications, and manager of the promotional tours of aviation pioneers, especially of Charles Lindbergh.In the 1950s he became well-known as an UFO researcher,...
's article "Flying Saucers Are Real" in True (January 1950) created a sold-out sensation, with True going back to press for another print run, Keyhoe expanded the article into a top-selling paperback, The Flying Saucers Are Real, published by Fawcett that same year.
Sales soared, prompting Ralph Daigh to comment, "In the past six months we have produced 9,020,645 books, and people seem to like them very well." However, hardcover publishers resented Roscoe Fawcett's innovation, as evidenced by Doubleday's LeBaron R. Barker, who claimed that paperback originals could "undermine the whole structure of publishing."
With an increase from 35 titles in 1950 to 66 titles in 1951, Gold Medal's obvious success in issuing paperback originals revolutionized the industry. While Fischer, MacKinlay Kantor
MacKinlay Kantor
MacKinlay Kantor , born Benjamin McKinlay Kantor, was an American journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He wrote more than 30 novels, several based on the American Civil War, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1956 for his 1955 novel Andersonville, about the Confederate prisoner of war camp...
, Louis L'Amour
Louis L'Amour
Louis Dearborn L'Amour was an American author. His books consisted primarily of Western fiction novels , however he also wrote historical fiction , science fiction , nonfiction , as well as poetry and short-story collections. Many of his stories were made into movies...
, John D. MacDonald, Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson
Richard Burton Matheson is an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He is perhaps best known as the author of What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return, A Stir of Echoes, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and I Am Legend, all of which have been...
and Richard Prather were joining Gold Medal's roster of writers, other paperback publishers were soon asking agents for original manuscripts. Literary agent Donald MacCampbell stated that one publisher "threatened to boycott my agency if it continued to negotiate contracts with original 25-cent firms."
Prather had a bank account of $100 when his wife handed him a telegram from literary agent Scott Meredith on July 7, 1950 indicating his first sale. Although Prather's first novel was unsold, Gold Medal liked his second novel and his Shell Scott character enough to offer a four-book contract, and Prather's Case of the Vanishing Beauty soon set sales records.
In 1950, Bruno Fischer's House of Flesh sold 1,800,212 copies. In 1951, Charles Williams' Hill Girl sold 1,226,890 copies, Gil Brewer's 13 French Street sold 1,200,365 and Cassidy's Girl by David Goodis sold 1,036,497. Authors were attracted to Gold Medal because royalties were based on print runs rather than actual sales, and they received the entire royalty instead of a 50-50 split with a hardback publisher. Gold Medal paid a $2000 advance on an initial print run was for 200,000 copies. When a print run increased to 300,000, the advance was $3000.
Mickey Spillane
Mickey Spillane
Frank Morrison Spillane , better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American author of crime novels, many featuring his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally...
's I, the Jury
I, the Jury
I, The Jury is Mickey Spillane's first novel featuring private investigator Mike Hammer.-Plot summary:New York City, summer 1944. Although she runs a successful private psychiatric clinic on New York's Park Avenue, Dr. Charlotte Manning — young, beautiful, blonde, and well-to-do —...
paperback bestseller got a huge boost from Fawcett, as Spillane explained to interviewer Michael Carlson:
In 1952, when their contract with NAL expired, Fawcett immediately began doing reprints through several imprints. Red Seal started April 1952 and published 22 titles before it folded a year later. Launched September 1955, Premier Books offered non-fiction titles, such as The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet. Crest Books, which also started September 1955, spanned all genres with an emphasis on Westerns and humor, including Best Cartoons from True and Lester Grady's Best from Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, and one successful Crest title was their movie tie-in edition of Robert Bloch
Robert Bloch
Robert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer, primarily of crime, horror and science fiction. He is best known as the writer of Psycho, the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock...
's Psycho. The managing editor of Crest and Premier was Leona Nevler.
Between 1960 and 1993, Gold Medal was the exclusive American publisher of Donald Hamilton
Donald Hamilton
Donald Bengtsson Hamilton was a U.S. writer of novels, short stories, and non-fiction about the outdoors. His novels consist mostly of paperback originals, principally spy fiction but also crime fiction and Westerns such as The Big Country...
's Matt Helm
Matt Helm
Matt Helm is a fictional character created by author Donald Hamilton. He is a U.S. government counter-agent—a man whose primary job is to kill or nullify enemy agents—not a spy or secret agent in the ordinary sense of the term as used in spy thrillers.-The character and the series:The...
spy novel series. In the early 1960s, John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series got underway after Knox Burger contacted MacDonald: "At the request of Knox Burger, then at Fawcett, I attempted a series character. I took three shots at it to get one book with a character I could stay with. That was in 1964. Once I had the first McGee book, The Deep Blue Good-by
The Deep Blue Good-by
The Deep Blue Good-by is the first of 21 novels in the Travis McGee series by American author John D. MacDonald. Commissioned in 1964 by Fawcett Publications editor Knox Burger, the book establishes for the series an investigative protagonist in a residential Florida base—as well as a...
, they held it up until I had finished two more, Nightmare in Pink
Nightmare in Pink
Nightmare in Pink is the second novel in the Travis McGee series written by John D. McDonald. In it, McGee is asked by a friend from his military days to help his sister Nina in the investigation of her fiance's death and the large sum of money involved. The book's title is a reference to the...
and A Purple Place for Dying
A Purple Place for Dying
A Purple Place for Dying is the third novel in the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald.-Plot summary:McGee is drawn away from his usual haunt of Florida by a job offer from Mona Yeoman, who suspects that her estranged husband has stolen from her considerable trust fund. Before the...
, then released one a month for three months. That launched the series."
After his retirement in 1972, Daigh recalled, "From our entrance into the paperback business, we paid authors at a more generous rate than had been the custom. In 1955, when we started the Crest line to reprint hardcover books, we extended this practice to what we offered for softcover rights. It caused quite a sensation in the trade when we paid $101,505 for James Gould Cozzens
James Gould Cozzens
James Gould Cozzens was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.He is often grouped today with his contemporaries John O'Hara and John P. Marquand, but his work is generally considered more challenging. Despite initial critical acclaim, his popularity came gradually...
' By Love Possessed and later $700,000 for James A. Michener
James A. Michener
James Albert Michener was an American author of more than 40 titles, the majority of which were sweeping sagas, covering the lives of many generations in particular geographic locales and incorporating historical facts into the stories...
's The Source. Giving the author a bigger share of the pie paid off handsomely. However, I gather that the practice has been overdone in recent years and has led to some of the book industry's current troubles."
The Fawcett family
Roscoe Fawcett was a veteran of 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...
, serving in the anti-aircraft division of the U.S. Army, and later was in charge of entertainment for Camp Haan
March Joint Air Reserve Base
March Joint Air Reserve Base is located in Riverside County, California between the cities of Riverside and Moreno Valley. It is the home to the Air Force Reserve Command's 4th Air Force Headquarters and the 452d Air Mobility Wing , the largest air mobility wing of the 4th Air Force...
in Riverside, California
Riverside, California
Riverside is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, and the county seat of the eponymous county. Named for its location beside the Santa Ana River, it is the largest city in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metropolitan area of Southern California, 4th largest inland California...
. He was married twice, had four sons and died at the age of 86 in Brainerd, Minnesota
Brainerd, Minnesota
Brainerd is a city in Crow Wing County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 13,590 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Crow Wing County and one of the largest cities in Central Minnesota...
. One of his sons, Roscoe Fawcett Jr., became the publisher of American Fitness magazine.
Born in Minneapolis in 1912, Gordon Fawcett graduated from the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
in 1934. He married Vivian Peterson in 1935 and moved to Los Angeles where he was Fawcett Publications' office manager. He held the title of secretary-treasurer when the company moved to Greenwich, Connecticut in 1940, and he was 81 when he died in West Palm Beach, Florida
West Palm Beach, Florida
West Palm Beach, is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and is the most populous city in and county seat of Palm Beach County, the third most populous county in Florida with a 2010 population of 1,320,134. The city is also the oldest incorporated municipality in South Florida...
, on January 16, 1993. Gordon Fawcett had four children: Vivian Creigh of Springfield, Vermont
Springfield, Vermont
Springfield is a town in Windsor County, Vermont, United States. The population was 9,373 at the 2010 census.-History:One of the New Hampshire grants, the township was chartered on August 20, 1761 by Governor Benning Wentworth and awarded to Gideon Lyman and 61 others...
, and his three sons, Dennis of Greenwich; David of Stuart, Florida; and Gordon Jr. of San Diego. Fawcett Publications was very much a family affair, as indicated by a list of the company's stockholders: Claire Sue Bagg, James Wesley Bagg, Marion Fawcett Bagg, William Bagg, Gordon W. Fawcett, Helen Aline Fawcett, John Fawcett, John Roger Fawcett, Mary Blair Fawcett, Blair Redding Fawcett, Michael Blair Fawcett, Roger K. Fawcett, Roscoe Kent Fawcett, Marie F. Fawcett, Thomas Knowlton Fawcett, Vivian D. Fawcett, W.H. Fawcett, Jr., W.H. Fawcett III, William Blair Fawcett, Mrs. Virginia Kerr, Mira King, Gloria Fawcett Leary and Mrs. Eva Roberts. Internet consultant Travis Fawcett, living in San Diego, is the son of John Roger Fawcett. Wilford Hamilton "Buzz" Fawcett IV is an attorney in Washington D.C.
Fawcett Publications had offices at 67 West 44th Street in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
where vice-president Roger Fawcett liked to show visitors around the publishers' penthouse and serve them drinks dispensed through the gold penis of a nude male statue. Roger Fawcett felt a family history was needed, and in 1970, he began writing Notes on the Fawcett Family:
Because of his cancer, Roger Fawcett stopped writing his family history at that point, and he did not return to it.
Acquisition and recent history
A declining comics market in the 1950s, along with a major lawsuit (National Comics Publications v. Fawcett PublicationsNational Comics Publications v. Fawcett Publications
National Comics Publications v. Fawcett Publications, 191 F.2d 594 , was a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in a twelve-year legal battle between National Comics and the Fawcett Comics division of Fawcett Publications, concerning Fawcett's Captain Marvel...
), resulted in Fawcett folding its line of comic books. Lash Larue, Nyoka, Strange Suspense Stories
Strange Suspense Stories
Strange Suspense Stories was a comic book published in two volumes by Fawcett Comics and Charlton Comics in the 1950s and 1960s. Starting out as a horror/suspense title, the first volume gradually moved toward eerie fantasy and weird science fiction, before ending as a vehicle for the superhero...
and other titles were sold to Charlton Comics
Charlton Comics
Charlton Comics was an American comic book publishing company that existed from 1946 to 1985, having begun under a different name in 1944. It was based in Derby, Connecticut...
. In 1972, DC Comics licensed Captain Marvel, featuring him in new stories. In 1991, DC purchased the entire Marvel Family and related characters.
In 1970, Fawcett acquired Popular Library
Popular Library
Popular Library was a New York paperback book company established in 1942 by Leo Margulies and Ned Pines, who at the time was a major pulp magazine, newspapers and magazine publishers...
from Perfect Film & Chemical Corporation
Cadence Industries
Cadence Industries Corporation, formerly Perfect Film & Chemical Corporation, was an American conglomerate owned by Martin "Marty" S. Ackerman. From 1968 through 1986, Perfect/Cadence was the parent company of the publisher of Marvel Comics....
and renamed it Fawcett Books. Fawcett Publications was bought by CBS Publications in 1977 for $50 million. When Ballantine Books
Ballantine Books
Ballantine Books is a major book publisher located in the United States, founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. It was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann AG in 1998 and remains part of that company today. Ballantine's logo is a...
(a division of Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
) acquired Fawcett Books in 1982 while Popular was sold to to Warner Communications
Warner Communications
Warner Communications or Warner Communications, Inc. was established in 1971 when Kinney National Company spun off its non-entertainment assets, due to a financial scandal over its parking operations and changed its name....
, it inherited a mass market paperback list with such authors as William Bernhardt
William Bernhardt
William Bernhardt is an American thriller/mystery/suspense fiction author best known for his "Ben Kincaid" series of books.Bernhardt has sold more than 10 million books in several different countries throughout the world. He has twice won the Oklahoma Book Award for Best Fiction, in 1995 and 1999,...
, Amanda Cross
Carolyn Gold Heilbrun
Carolyn Gold Heilbrun was an American academic and prolific feminist author of both important academic studies and popular mystery novels under the pen name of Amanda Cross....
, Stephen Frey
Stephen Frey
Stephen Frey is a best-selling author who writes novels set in the financial world. He is a managing director at a private equity firm, and lives in Florida...
, P. D. James
P. D. James
Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL , commonly known as P. D. James, is an English crime writer and Conservative life peer in the House of Lords, most famous for a series of detective novels starring policeman and poet Adam Dalgliesh.-Life and career:James...
, William X. Kienzle
William X. Kienzle
William X. Kienzle was born in Detroit, Michigan. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1954 and spent twenty years as a Roman Catholic parish priest. Kienzle left the priesthood in 1974 because of his disagreement with its refusal to remarry divorcees...
, Anne Perry
Anne Perry
Anne Perry is an English author of historical detective fiction. Perry was convicted of the murder of her friend's mother in 1954.-Early life:Born Juliet Marion Hulme in Blackheath, London, the daughter of Dr...
, Daniel Silva, Peter Straub
Peter Straub
Peter Francis Straub is an American author and poet, most famous for his work in the horror genre. His horror fiction has received numerous literary honors such as the Bram Stoker Award, World Fantasy Award, and International Horror Guild Award, placing him among the most-honored horror authors in...
and Margaret Truman
Margaret Truman
Mary Margaret Truman Daniel , also known as Margaret Truman or Margaret Daniel, was an American singer who later became a successful writer. The only child of US President Harry S...
. Fawcett also became the official home of Ballantine's mass market mystery program. The imprint stopped being used on new books at the beginning of the 21st century.
In 1987, Fawcett senior executive Peter G. Diamandis and a management team negotiated a $650 million leveraged buy out, then sold six titles to raise $250 million. Diamandis Communications, Inc. was then sold the next year to Hachette Publications
Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S.
Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc. , orgin ally known as CBS Publications, was a subsidiary of Hachette Filipacchi Médias , and was based in New York City.-History:...
for $712 million.
An annual four-day festival held in Robbinsdale, Minnesota
Robbinsdale, Minnesota
Robbinsdale is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 13,953 at the 2010 census.-Geography:According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it is water....
is Whiz Bang Days. Robbinsdale's city celebration, recalling the glory years of Fawcett Publications, began during World War II. The original Fawcett Publications building, which remained standing in Robbinsdale for decades, was torn down during the mid-1990s. It was located at what is now the terrace for the restaurant La Cucina di Nonna Rosa's, at 4168 West Broadway Avenue.