Paul Gallico
Encyclopedia
Paul William Gallico was a successful American novelist, short story
and sports writer. Many of his works were adapted for motion pictures. He is perhaps best remembered for The Snow Goose
, his only real critical success, and for the novel The Poseidon Adventure, primarily through the 1972 film adaptation.
in 1919 and first achieved notability in the 1920s as a sportswriter, sports columnist, and sports editor of the New York Daily News
.
Gallico's career was launched by an interview with boxer Jack Dempsey
in which he asked Dempsey to spar with him, and described how it felt to be knocked out by the heavyweight champion. He followed up with accounts of catching Dizzy Dean
's fastball and golfing with Bobby Jones
. He became a national celebrity and one of the highest-paid sportswriters in America. He founded the Golden Gloves
amateur boxing competition. His 1941 book, Lou Gehrig
: Pride of the Yankees was adapted into the classic sports movie The Pride of the Yankees
(1942), starring Gary Cooper
and Teresa Wright
.
, first writing an essay
about this decision entitled "Farewell to Sport" (published in an anthology of his sports writing, also titled Farewell to Sport (1938)), and became an extremely successful writer of short stories for magazines, many appearing in the then-premier fiction outlet, The Saturday Evening Post
. Many of his novels, including The Snow Goose, are expanded versions of his magazine stories.
Gallico once told New York Magazine
"I'm a rotten novelist. I'm not even literary. I just like to tell stories and all my books tell stories.... If I had lived 2,000 years ago I'd be going around to caves, and I'd say, 'Can I come in? I'm hungry. I'd like some supper. In exchange, I'll tell you a story. Once upon a time there were two apes.' And I'd tell them a story about two cavemen."
The Snow Goose was published in 1941 in The Saturday Evening Post and won the O. Henry Award
for short stories in 1941. Critic Robert van Gelder called it "perhaps the most sentimental
story that ever has achieved the dignity of a Borzoi [prestige imprint of publisher Knopf] imprint. It is a timeless legend that makes use of every timeless appeal that could be crowded into it." A public library puts it on a list of "tearjerker
s." Gallico made no apologies, saying that in the contest between sentiment and "slime", "sentiment remains so far out in front, as it always has and always will among ordinary humans that the calamity-howlers and porn merchants have to increase the decibels of their lamentations, the hideousness of their violence and the mountainous piles of their filth to keep in the race at all."
His short story, "The Man Who Hated People" was reworked into his book Love of Seven Dolls, which was adapted into the Oscar-winning
motion picture Lili
(1953), and later staged as a musical, Carnival!
(1961). The versions differ significantly, but all center around the story of a relationship between a puppeteer and a painfully shy and confused young woman. Overhearing her talking to herself about her emotional distress, he speaks to her through his puppets and she develops a relationship with him through them. He has severe emotional problems of his own and bitterly mistreats her.
In the 1950s, Gallico spent time in Liechtenstein
, where he wrote Ludmila, the retelling of a local legend.
His novel Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris (1958) was a bestseller, and became the first of four books about the lovable charlady
, 'Mrs. 'Arris'. Negotiations for film rights began as early as 1960, when he was resident in Salcombe, on the South Devon Coast, though it was not produced until a TV movie with Angela Lansbury
in 1992.
During his time in Salcombe, Gallico serialised an account of the sinking of the MV Princess Victoria
, the ferry which plied between Larne and Stranraer, an event which caused the death of every woman and child on board. It was his habit, at this time, to wander in his garden dictating to his assistant, Mel Menzies, who would then type up the manuscript in the evening, ready for inclusion in the newspaper.
The Silent Miaow (1964) purports to be a guide written by a cat, "translated from the feline", on how to obtain, captivate, and dominate a human family. Illustrated with photographs by Suzanne Szasz, it is considered a classic by cat lovers. Other Gallico cat books include Jennie (1950) (American title The Abandoned), Thomasina: The Cat Who Thought She Was God (1957), filmed in 1964 by the Walt Disney Studios as The Three Lives of Thomasina
(which was very popular in the former USSR
in the early 1990s, inspiring the Russian remake Bezumnaya Lori), and Honorable Cat (1972), a book of poetry and essays about cats.
Gallico's 1969 book The Poseidon Adventure, about a group of passengers attempting to escape from a capsized ocean liner
, attracted little attention at the time. The New York Times
gave it a one-paragraph review, noting that "Mr. Gallico collects a Grand Hotel [a reference to the 1930 Vicki Baum
novel] full of shipboard dossiers. These interlocking histories may be damp with sentimentality as well as brine—but the author's skill as a storyteller invests them with enough suspense to last the desperate journey." In contrast, Irwin Allen
's motion picture adaptation of Gallico's book was instantly recognized as a great movie of its kind. In his article "What makes 'Poseidon' Fun?", reviewer Vincent Canby
coined the term "ark movie" for the genre including Airport, The High and the Mighty
, A Night to Remember, and Titanic
(the 1953 movie). He wrote that "the Poseidon Adventure puts the Ark Movie back where God intended it to be, in the water. Not flying around in the air on one engine or with a hole in its side." The movie was enormously successful, spawned a whole decade of disaster films, and is a cult classic today.
In his New York Times obituary, Molly Ivins
said that "to say that Mr. Gallico was prolific hardly begins to describe his output." He wrote 41 books and numerous short stories, twenty theatrical movies, twelve TV movies, and had a TV series based on his Hiram Holliday short stories.
For example, consider Molly Ivins
' summary of The Snow Goose:
Andrea Park, in a review of Love of Seven Dolls, notes that Gallico's work has power only as a textural whole. "It is difficult to describe and impossible to pinpoint the tenuous, even nebulous word magic that successfully carries a reader into the world of fantasy and make-believe. It is perhaps delineated as a quality, a kind of fragile atmosphere that, once established, cannot be broken. Mr. Gallico creates this atmosphere when he writes the sequences with Mouche and the puppets."
Beginning writers are often advised to show rather than to describe. One of the mysteries of Gallico's style is its effectiveness despite his constant violation of this rule. When he wants us to know that a Peyrot is cynical, he says "Wholly cynical, he had no regard or respect for man, woman, child, or God." When he wants us to know that Mouche is innocent, he tells us of her "innocence and primitive mind." When he wants us to know that Rhayader has a warm heart in his crippled body, he says "His body was warped, but his heart was filled with love for wild and hunted things." Much of Gallico's stories are told as a string of assertion
s and generalities, illuminated only by touches of the particular and specific.
Gallico sometimes sets the scene by describing his stories as legends. Within the text of The Snow Goose he says that "this story... has been garnered from many sources and from many people. Some of it comes in the form of fragments from men who looked upon strange and violent scenes." Later he writes "Now the story becomes fragmentary, and one of these fragments is in the words of the men on leave who told it in the public room of the Crown and Arrow, an East Chapel pub." Given this presentation, it is hardly surprising that it has been taken to be a retelling of an actual legend; Gallico writes that "the person and character of the painter are wholly fictional as is the story itself, although I am told that in some quarters the snow goose appearing over Dunkirk has been accepted as legend and I have been compelled to reply to many correspondents that it was sheer invention."
Martin Levin wrote that "Mr. Gallico has long had a way with the quasi-human—puppets (Love of Seven Dolls), cows (Ludmila,) geese (The Snow Goose)" as well as no fewer than five books about cats.
Often, Gallico's point of view implies that the nonhuman character in some way really possesses a human spirit, or a portion of a human spirit. In The Love of Seven Dolls, the puppeteer's relation to his puppets suggests at least a resemblance to dissociative identity disorder
or "multiple personality" disorder, a disorder which was well-known to the lay public in the 1950s. It is significant that Gallico never even hints at such a thing. He notes that the puppeteer's "primitive" Senegal
ese assistant "looked upon the puppets 'as living, breathing creatures.'" and that "the belief in the separate existence of these little people was even more basic with Mouche for it was a necessity to her and a refuge from the storms of life with which she had been unable to cope." One could go so far as to say that he leaves it deliberately ambiguous whether the relation between the puppeteer and his puppets is purely natural or whether there could be at least a trace of the supernatural in it. This ambiguity is hinted at in the close of the movie adaptation, Lili
. Although the puppeteer Paul's hands are engaged in embracing Lili, the four puppets somehow peek around the puppet stage proscenium to smile their happy approval (and applaud), apparently under their own power.
The treatment contrasts with the 1954 Danny Kaye
vehicle, Knock on Wood, which turns on the similar theme of a ventriloquist
who can express his true self only through his dummy. This movie not only hints at a psychiatric undertone, it revels in it; Kaye's character's love interest is a "lady psychiatrist" (in the phrase used by a contemporary reviewer). The pop-psychiatric point of view was prevalent during the late 1940s and 1950s, the same period that brought us the psychoanalytic musical Lady in the Dark
and the book The Three Faces of Eve
. Gallico's distancing of his writing from this "modern" point of view and his use of the language of legend and fairy-tale seems deliberate, the literary equivalent of what painter Thomas Kinkade
does today in his painting. However, some fans of Gallico and critics of Kinkade would argue that Gallico's literary art is more comparable to the paintings of nineteenth century Russian painter Victor Vasnetsov, as Vastenov's works are more firmly rooted in genuine sentimentality and folk tradition as opposed to Kinkade's work which is often criticized as "cheezy," "schmaltz," and "cookie-cutter pop-art."
declared that Gallico's 1968 Manxmouse
was one of her favorite childhood books. In fact the boggart
s appearing in Rowling's Harry Potter
books closely resemble Manxmouse's "clutterbumph" which takes the form of whatever the viewer fears the most. Manxmouse was illustrated by Anne and Janet Grahame-Johnstone who also illustrated The Hundred and One Dalmatians
by Dodie Smith
. The Japanese animation studio Nippon Animation
adapted this tale into a feature-length anime
film in 1979, directed by Hiroshi Saito
. The anime, titled Tondemo Nezumi Daikatsuyaku: Manxmouse (Manxmouse's Great Activity) in Japanese, was dubbed into English in the 1980s, broadcast on Nickelodeon
, and released on video by Celebrity Home Entertainment.
A television series, The Adventures of Hiram Holliday
(starring Wally Cox
) was adapted from a series of Gallico's stories about a newspaper proofreader who had many adventures dealing with Nazis and spies in Europe on the eve of World War II.
In Fredric Brown
's science-fiction novel What Mad Universe
a magazine editor from our own world is accidentally sent to a parallel Earth significantly different from ours; in this parallel world, the editor reads a biography written of a dashing space hero, a figure central to the novel's narrative, which is supposedly written by Paul Gallico.
In 1975, the British progressive rock band Camel
released an album of work based on Gallico's The Snow Goose. Although the author was initially opposed to the album's release, legal action was evaded on the condition that the band used the words Music Inspired by The Snow Goose on the album's cover.
Television
Radio
Stage musical
Music
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
and sports writer. Many of his works were adapted for motion pictures. He is perhaps best remembered for The Snow Goose
The Snow Goose
The Snow Goose: A Story of Dunkirk is a short novella by the American author Paul Gallico. It was first published in 1940 as a short story in The Saturday Evening Post, then he expanded it to create a short novella which was first published on April 7, 1941.The Snow Goose was one of the O. Henry...
, his only real critical success, and for the novel The Poseidon Adventure, primarily through the 1972 film adaptation.
Early life and career
Gallico was born in New York City. His father was an Italian, and his mother came from Austria; they had emigrated to New York in 1895. Gallico graduated from Columbia UniversityColumbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in 1919 and first achieved notability in the 1920s as a sportswriter, sports columnist, and sports editor of the New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
.
Gallico's career was launched by an interview with boxer 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...
in which he asked Dempsey to spar with him, and described how it felt to be knocked out by the heavyweight champion. He followed up with accounts of catching Dizzy Dean
Dizzy Dean
Jay Hanna "Dizzy" Dean was an American Major League Baseball pitcher. He was the last National League pitcher to win 30 games in one season. Dean was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1953....
's fastball and golfing with Bobby Jones
Bobby Jones (golfer)
Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones Jr. was an American amateur golfer, and a lawyer by profession. Jones was the most successful amateur golfer ever to compete on a national and international level...
. He became a national celebrity and one of the highest-paid sportswriters in America. He founded the Golden Gloves
Golden Gloves
The Golden Gloves is the name given to annual competitions for amateur boxing in the United States. The Golden Gloves is often the term used to refer to the National Golden Gloves competition, but it also can represent several other amateur tournaments, including regional golden gloves...
amateur boxing competition. His 1941 book, Lou Gehrig
Lou Gehrig
Henry Louis "Lou" Gehrig , nicknamed "The Iron Horse" for his durability, was an American Major League Baseball first baseman. He played his entire 17-year baseball career for the New York Yankees . Gehrig set several major league records. He holds the record for most career grand slams...
: Pride of the Yankees was adapted into the classic sports movie The Pride of the Yankees
The Pride of the Yankees
The Pride of the Yankees is a 1942 American film directed by Sam Wood and starring Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, and Walter Brennan. The film is a tribute to the legendary New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig, who died only one year before the film's release, at age 37, from amyotrophic lateral...
(1942), starring Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
and Teresa Wright
Teresa Wright
Teresa Wright was an American actress. She received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1942 for her performance in Mrs. Miniver. That same year, she received an Academy Award for Best Actress nomination for her performance in Pride of the Yankees opposite Gary Cooper...
.
Mature career as a fiction writer
In the late 1930s, he abandoned sports writing for fictionFiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
, first writing an essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
about this decision entitled "Farewell to Sport" (published in an anthology of his sports writing, also titled Farewell to Sport (1938)), and became an extremely successful writer of short stories for magazines, many appearing in the then-premier fiction outlet, The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
. Many of his novels, including The Snow Goose, are expanded versions of his magazine stories.
Gallico once told New York Magazine
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
"I'm a rotten novelist. I'm not even literary. I just like to tell stories and all my books tell stories.... If I had lived 2,000 years ago I'd be going around to caves, and I'd say, 'Can I come in? I'm hungry. I'd like some supper. In exchange, I'll tell you a story. Once upon a time there were two apes.' And I'd tell them a story about two cavemen."
The Snow Goose was published in 1941 in The Saturday Evening Post and won the O. Henry Award
O. Henry Award
The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....
for short stories in 1941. Critic Robert van Gelder called it "perhaps the most sentimental
Sentimentality
Sentimentality originally indicated the reliance on feelings as a guide to truth, but current usage defines it as an appeal to shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason....
story that ever has achieved the dignity of a Borzoi [prestige imprint of publisher Knopf] imprint. It is a timeless legend that makes use of every timeless appeal that could be crowded into it." A public library puts it on a list of "tearjerker
Tearjerker
Tearjerker is something that provokes sadness or pathos, as the name suggests.Tearjerker may refer to:* "Tearjerker" , a 2008 episode of American Dad!* "Tearjerker" , a 1995 song by Red Hot Chili Peppers...
s." Gallico made no apologies, saying that in the contest between sentiment and "slime", "sentiment remains so far out in front, as it always has and always will among ordinary humans that the calamity-howlers and porn merchants have to increase the decibels of their lamentations, the hideousness of their violence and the mountainous piles of their filth to keep in the race at all."
His short story, "The Man Who Hated People" was reworked into his book Love of Seven Dolls, which was adapted into the Oscar-winning
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
motion picture Lili
Lili
Lili is an American film. An MGM release, it stars Leslie Caron as a touchingly naïve French girl, whose emotional relationship with a carnival puppeteer is conducted through the medium of four puppets...
(1953), and later staged as a musical, Carnival!
Carnival!
Carnival is a 1961 musical with the book by Michael Stewart and music and lyrics by Bob Merrill. The musical is based on the 1953 film Lili.-Background:...
(1961). The versions differ significantly, but all center around the story of a relationship between a puppeteer and a painfully shy and confused young woman. Overhearing her talking to herself about her emotional distress, he speaks to her through his puppets and she develops a relationship with him through them. He has severe emotional problems of his own and bitterly mistreats her.
In the 1950s, Gallico spent time in Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein
The Principality of Liechtenstein is a doubly landlocked alpine country in Central Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over , and it has an estimated population of 35,000. Its capital is Vaduz. The biggest town is Schaan...
, where he wrote Ludmila, the retelling of a local legend.
His novel Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris (1958) was a bestseller, and became the first of four books about the lovable charlady
Charlady
A charlady, char or charwoman was an English house cleaner. The term has the same roots as "chore woman," one hired to do odd chores around the house. A char or chare was a turn in the sixteenth century, and which gave rise to prefix being used to denote people that worked in domestic situations...
, 'Mrs. 'Arris'. Negotiations for film rights began as early as 1960, when he was resident in Salcombe, on the South Devon Coast, though it was not produced until a TV movie with Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury
Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
in 1992.
During his time in Salcombe, Gallico serialised an account of the sinking of the MV Princess Victoria
MV Princess Victoria
MV Princess Victoria was one of the earliest roll-on/roll-off ferries. Built in 1947, she operated from Stranraer to Larne. During a severe European windstorm on 31 January 1953, she sank in the North Channel with the loss of 133 lives, the deadliest maritime disaster in United Kingdom waters...
, the ferry which plied between Larne and Stranraer, an event which caused the death of every woman and child on board. It was his habit, at this time, to wander in his garden dictating to his assistant, Mel Menzies, who would then type up the manuscript in the evening, ready for inclusion in the newspaper.
The Silent Miaow (1964) purports to be a guide written by a cat, "translated from the feline", on how to obtain, captivate, and dominate a human family. Illustrated with photographs by Suzanne Szasz, it is considered a classic by cat lovers. Other Gallico cat books include Jennie (1950) (American title The Abandoned), Thomasina: The Cat Who Thought She Was God (1957), filmed in 1964 by the Walt Disney Studios as The Three Lives of Thomasina
The Three Lives of Thomasina
The Three Lives of Thomasina is a 1964 British-American Disney fantasy feature film starring Patrick McGoohan, Susan Hampshire, and child actress Karen Dotrice in a story about a cat and her influence on a family. The screenplay was written by Robert Westerby and Paul Gallico and was based upon...
(which was very popular in the former USSR
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in the early 1990s, inspiring the Russian remake Bezumnaya Lori), and Honorable Cat (1972), a book of poetry and essays about cats.
Gallico's 1969 book The Poseidon Adventure, about a group of passengers attempting to escape from a capsized ocean liner
Ocean liner
An ocean liner is a ship designed to transport people from one seaport to another along regular long-distance maritime routes according to a schedule. Liners may also carry cargo or mail, and may sometimes be used for other purposes .Cargo vessels running to a schedule are sometimes referred to as...
, attracted little attention at the time. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
gave it a one-paragraph review, noting that "Mr. Gallico collects a Grand Hotel [a reference to the 1930 Vicki Baum
Vicki Baum
Hedwig Baum was an Austrian writer. She is known for Menschen im Hotel , one of her first international successes....
novel] full of shipboard dossiers. These interlocking histories may be damp with sentimentality as well as brine—but the author's skill as a storyteller invests them with enough suspense to last the desperate journey." In contrast, Irwin Allen
Irwin Allen
Irwin Allen was a television and film director and producer nicknamed "The Master of Disaster" for his work in the disaster film genre. He was also notable for creating a number of television series.- Biography :...
's motion picture adaptation of Gallico's book was instantly recognized as a great movie of its kind. In his article "What makes 'Poseidon' Fun?", reviewer Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
coined the term "ark movie" for the genre including Airport, The High and the Mighty
The High and the Mighty (film)
The High and the Mighty is a 1954 American "disaster" film directed by William A. Wellman and written by Ernest K. Gann who also wrote the novel on which his screenplay was based. The film's cast was headlined by John Wayne, who was also the project's co-producer...
, A Night to Remember, and Titanic
Titanic (1953 film)
Titanic is a 1953 American drama film directed by Jean Negulesco. Its plot centers on an estranged couple sailing on the maiden voyage of the , which took place in April 1912.-Plot:...
(the 1953 movie). He wrote that "the Poseidon Adventure puts the Ark Movie back where God intended it to be, in the water. Not flying around in the air on one engine or with a hole in its side." The movie was enormously successful, spawned a whole decade of disaster films, and is a cult classic today.
In his New York Times obituary, Molly Ivins
Molly Ivins
Mary Tyler "Molly" Ivins was an American newspaper columnist, populist, political commentator, humorist and author.-Early life and education:Ivins was born in Monterey, California, and raised in Houston, Texas...
said that "to say that Mr. Gallico was prolific hardly begins to describe his output." He wrote 41 books and numerous short stories, twenty theatrical movies, twelve TV movies, and had a TV series based on his Hiram Holliday short stories.
Paul Gallico's style and themes
Gallico is a self-described "storyteller." Many of his stories are told in the apparently artless style of a folk tale or legend. Like other "storyteller" writers, the charm and power lie in something about the cumulative effect of plainly told detail after plainly told detail. A summary outline of a Gallico story may sound uninteresting, even bordering on ludicrous; an individual quotation broken out of its context falls flat; their essence exists only in their entirety.For example, consider Molly Ivins
Molly Ivins
Mary Tyler "Molly" Ivins was an American newspaper columnist, populist, political commentator, humorist and author.-Early life and education:Ivins was born in Monterey, California, and raised in Houston, Texas...
' summary of The Snow Goose:
- The Snow GooseThe Snow GooseThe Snow Goose: A Story of Dunkirk is a short novella by the American author Paul Gallico. It was first published in 1940 as a short story in The Saturday Evening Post, then he expanded it to create a short novella which was first published on April 7, 1941.The Snow Goose was one of the O. Henry...
is a tale about a disabled painter living in a lonely lighthouse on the coast of the county of EssexEssexEssex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
in England. One day a girl brings to him a wounded snow goose, which he nurses back to health. The goose returns each year, as does the girl, and a romance develops between the girl and the artist. But the artist is killed rescuing soldiers after the evacuation of Dunkirk, while the snow goose flies overhead.
Andrea Park, in a review of Love of Seven Dolls, notes that Gallico's work has power only as a textural whole. "It is difficult to describe and impossible to pinpoint the tenuous, even nebulous word magic that successfully carries a reader into the world of fantasy and make-believe. It is perhaps delineated as a quality, a kind of fragile atmosphere that, once established, cannot be broken. Mr. Gallico creates this atmosphere when he writes the sequences with Mouche and the puppets."
Beginning writers are often advised to show rather than to describe. One of the mysteries of Gallico's style is its effectiveness despite his constant violation of this rule. When he wants us to know that a Peyrot is cynical, he says "Wholly cynical, he had no regard or respect for man, woman, child, or God." When he wants us to know that Mouche is innocent, he tells us of her "innocence and primitive mind." When he wants us to know that Rhayader has a warm heart in his crippled body, he says "His body was warped, but his heart was filled with love for wild and hunted things." Much of Gallico's stories are told as a string of assertion
Assertion
The term assertion has several meanings:* Assertion , a computer programming technique* Logical assertion, logical assertion of a statement* Proof by assertion, an assertion as opposed to an argument...
s and generalities, illuminated only by touches of the particular and specific.
Gallico sometimes sets the scene by describing his stories as legends. Within the text of The Snow Goose he says that "this story... has been garnered from many sources and from many people. Some of it comes in the form of fragments from men who looked upon strange and violent scenes." Later he writes "Now the story becomes fragmentary, and one of these fragments is in the words of the men on leave who told it in the public room of the Crown and Arrow, an East Chapel pub." Given this presentation, it is hardly surprising that it has been taken to be a retelling of an actual legend; Gallico writes that "the person and character of the painter are wholly fictional as is the story itself, although I am told that in some quarters the snow goose appearing over Dunkirk has been accepted as legend and I have been compelled to reply to many correspondents that it was sheer invention."
Martin Levin wrote that "Mr. Gallico has long had a way with the quasi-human—puppets (Love of Seven Dolls), cows (Ludmila,) geese (The Snow Goose)" as well as no fewer than five books about cats.
Often, Gallico's point of view implies that the nonhuman character in some way really possesses a human spirit, or a portion of a human spirit. In The Love of Seven Dolls, the puppeteer's relation to his puppets suggests at least a resemblance to dissociative identity disorder
Dissociative identity disorder
Dissociative identity disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis and describes a condition in which a person displays multiple distinct identities , each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment....
or "multiple personality" disorder, a disorder which was well-known to the lay public in the 1950s. It is significant that Gallico never even hints at such a thing. He notes that the puppeteer's "primitive" Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
ese assistant "looked upon the puppets 'as living, breathing creatures.'" and that "the belief in the separate existence of these little people was even more basic with Mouche for it was a necessity to her and a refuge from the storms of life with which she had been unable to cope." One could go so far as to say that he leaves it deliberately ambiguous whether the relation between the puppeteer and his puppets is purely natural or whether there could be at least a trace of the supernatural in it. This ambiguity is hinted at in the close of the movie adaptation, Lili
Lili
Lili is an American film. An MGM release, it stars Leslie Caron as a touchingly naïve French girl, whose emotional relationship with a carnival puppeteer is conducted through the medium of four puppets...
. Although the puppeteer Paul's hands are engaged in embracing Lili, the four puppets somehow peek around the puppet stage proscenium to smile their happy approval (and applaud), apparently under their own power.
The treatment contrasts with the 1954 Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian...
vehicle, Knock on Wood, which turns on the similar theme of a ventriloquist
Ventriloquism
Ventriloquism, or ventriloquy, is an act of stagecraft in which a person manipulates his or her voice so that it appears that the voice is coming from elsewhere, usually a puppeteered "dummy"...
who can express his true self only through his dummy. This movie not only hints at a psychiatric undertone, it revels in it; Kaye's character's love interest is a "lady psychiatrist" (in the phrase used by a contemporary reviewer). The pop-psychiatric point of view was prevalent during the late 1940s and 1950s, the same period that brought us the psychoanalytic musical Lady in the Dark
Lady in the Dark
Lady in the Dark is a musical with music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and book and direction by Moss Hart. It was produced by Sam Harris. The protagonist, Liza Elliott, is the unhappy female editor of a fashion magazine, Allure, who is undergoing psychoanalysis...
and the book The Three Faces of Eve
The Three Faces of Eve
The Three Faces of Eve is a 1957 American film adaptation of a case study by Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley. It was based on the true story of Chris Costner Sizemore, also known as Eve White, a woman who suffered from Dissociative Identity Disorder formerly known as multiple personality...
. Gallico's distancing of his writing from this "modern" point of view and his use of the language of legend and fairy-tale seems deliberate, the literary equivalent of what painter Thomas Kinkade
Thomas Kinkade
Thomas Kinkade is an American painter of popular and commercial realistic, bucolic, and idyllic subjects. He is notable for the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products via The Thomas Kinkade Company...
does today in his painting. However, some fans of Gallico and critics of Kinkade would argue that Gallico's literary art is more comparable to the paintings of nineteenth century Russian painter Victor Vasnetsov, as Vastenov's works are more firmly rooted in genuine sentimentality and folk tradition as opposed to Kinkade's work which is often criticized as "cheezy," "schmaltz," and "cookie-cutter pop-art."
Popular culture
in 2000 J. K. RowlingJ. K. Rowling
Joanne "Jo" Rowling, OBE , better known as J. K. Rowling, is the British author of the Harry Potter fantasy series...
declared that Gallico's 1968 Manxmouse
Manxmouse
Manxmouse: The Mouse Who Knew No Fear is a 1968 children's novel by Paul Gallico. The plot is an epic narrative of the adventures of a creature called a Manx Mouse as he meets and interacts with other people, climaxing in a meeting with a Manx cat who characters say is destined to eat him.-Plot...
was one of her favorite childhood books. In fact the boggart
Boggart
In Englishfolklore, a boggart is a household fairy which causes things to disappear, milk to sour, and dogs to go lame. Always malevolent, the boggart will follow its family wherever they flee...
s appearing in Rowling's Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
books closely resemble Manxmouse's "clutterbumph" which takes the form of whatever the viewer fears the most. Manxmouse was illustrated by Anne and Janet Grahame-Johnstone who also illustrated The Hundred and One Dalmatians
The Hundred and One Dalmatians
The Hundred and One Dalmatians, or the Great Dog Robbery is a 1956 children's novel by Dodie Smith. A sequel entitled The Starlight Barking continues from the end of the first novel....
by Dodie Smith
Dodie Smith
Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith was an English novelist and playwright. Smith is best known for her novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Her other works include I Capture the Castle and The Starlight Barking....
. The Japanese animation studio Nippon Animation
Nippon Animation
is a Japanese animation studio. The company is headquartered in Tokyo, with chief offices in the Ginza district of Chūō and production facilities in Tama City....
adapted this tale into a feature-length anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
film in 1979, directed by Hiroshi Saito
Hiroshi Saito
is a former governor of Yamagata Prefecture. He was first elected in 2005. A native of Yamagata, Yamagata, he joined the Bank of Japan upon graduation from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in 1981. He also received MIPP in 1989 and MA in 1990 from Paul H...
. The anime, titled Tondemo Nezumi Daikatsuyaku: Manxmouse (Manxmouse's Great Activity) in Japanese, was dubbed into English in the 1980s, broadcast on Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
, and released on video by Celebrity Home Entertainment.
A television series, The Adventures of Hiram Holliday
The Adventures of Hiram Holliday
Adventures of Hiram Holliday is a 1939 novel by Paul Gallico, later adapted to a TV series, The Adventures of Hiram Holliday, a half-hour filmed comedy/adventure series which ran for 20 episodes on the NBC Television Network and is now better known than the literary original.-Broadcast dates:The...
(starring Wally Cox
Wally Cox
Wallace Maynard Cox was an American comedian and actor, particularly associated with the early years of television in the United States. He appeared in the U.S. TV series Mr. Peepers , plus several other popular shows, and as a character actor in over 20 films...
) was adapted from a series of Gallico's stories about a newspaper proofreader who had many adventures dealing with Nazis and spies in Europe on the eve of World War II.
In Fredric Brown
Fredric Brown
Fredric Brown was an American science fiction and mystery writer. He was born in Cincinnati.He had two sons: James Ross Brown and Linn Lewis Brown ....
's science-fiction novel What Mad Universe
What Mad Universe
What Mad Universe is a science-fiction novel, written in 1949 by the American author, Fredric Brown.-Synopsis:Keith Winton is a journalist for a science-fiction review. With his glamorous co-worker girlfriend, Betty, he visits his friends one day in their elegant estate in the Catskills,...
a magazine editor from our own world is accidentally sent to a parallel Earth significantly different from ours; in this parallel world, the editor reads a biography written of a dashing space hero, a figure central to the novel's narrative, which is supposedly written by Paul Gallico.
In 1975, the British progressive rock band Camel
Camel (band)
Camel are an English progressive rock band formed in 1971. An important group in the Canterbury scene, they have been releasing studio and live recordings steadily, with considerable success, since their formation.-1970s:...
released an album of work based on Gallico's The Snow Goose. Although the author was initially opposed to the album's release, legal action was evaded on the condition that the band used the words Music Inspired by The Snow Goose on the album's cover.
Select list of adaptations
Film- 1942, Pride of the Yankees
- 1953, LiliLiliLili is an American film. An MGM release, it stars Leslie Caron as a touchingly naïve French girl, whose emotional relationship with a carnival puppeteer is conducted through the medium of four puppets...
, based on The Love of Seven Dolls - 1964, The Three Lives of ThomasinaThe Three Lives of ThomasinaThe Three Lives of Thomasina is a 1964 British-American Disney fantasy feature film starring Patrick McGoohan, Susan Hampshire, and child actress Karen Dotrice in a story about a cat and her influence on a family. The screenplay was written by Robert Westerby and Paul Gallico and was based upon...
, based on Thomasina: The Cat Who Thought She Was God (1957) - 1971, The Snow GooseThe Snow GooseThe Snow Goose: A Story of Dunkirk is a short novella by the American author Paul Gallico. It was first published in 1940 as a short story in The Saturday Evening Post, then he expanded it to create a short novella which was first published on April 7, 1941.The Snow Goose was one of the O. Henry...
- 1972, The Poseidon Adventure
- 1972, Honorable Cat
- 1991, Bezumnaya Lori (Russia), based on Thomasina
Television
- 1974, The Zoo GangThe Zoo GangThe Zoo Gang was a 1974 ITC Entertainment drama series that ran for six one-hour colour episodes, based on the 1971 book of the same name by Paul Gallico....
- 1956-57, The Adventures of Hiram HollidayThe Adventures of Hiram HollidayAdventures of Hiram Holliday is a 1939 novel by Paul Gallico, later adapted to a TV series, The Adventures of Hiram Holliday, a half-hour filmed comedy/adventure series which ran for 20 episodes on the NBC Television Network and is now better known than the literary original.-Broadcast dates:The...
- Tondemo Nezumi Daikatsuyaku: Manxmouse (Manxmouse's Great Activity)
Radio
- 2010, The Lonely
Stage musical
- Carnival!Carnival!Carnival is a 1961 musical with the book by Michael Stewart and music and lyrics by Bob Merrill. The musical is based on the 1953 film Lili.-Background:...
, based on The Love of Seven Dolls
Music
- 1975, Music Inspired by The Snow Goose, album by the British progressive rock band CamelCamel (band)Camel are an English progressive rock band formed in 1971. An important group in the Canterbury scene, they have been releasing studio and live recordings steadily, with considerable success, since their formation.-1970s:...
, based on The Snow Goose