SCATTERGOOD DISCOVERS THE DESERT
An Interview with Clarence Budington Kelland
From Desert
Magazine August 1943
Conducted by Oren Arnold
(illustration of CBK from Desert Magazine)
True fans of the desert may not like it
but a western formula developed by Clarence Budington Kelland has been a potent
force in publicizing the Southwest country. Oren Arnold gives us a close up
view of the author of Scattergood Baines stories who a few years ago "went
desert" in a serious energetic way. He bought a home near Phoenix,
Arizona, and promptly started to turn out one novel after another telling the
country at large about the adventure and romance still to be found in the
desert. -Editors
A lovely eastern girl inherited a ranch in the
Arizona desert. She came west to run things, and two gents fell in love with her.
She married the one with the quickest pistol and the fewest buck teeth—then
faded with him and the saguaro cactus into the sun setting in Skeleton canyon. The End
THAT beautiful formula has
done more to publicize the desert country in the past 10 years than all the
desert chambers of commerce combine. It is the plot pattern used by Clarence Budington
Kelland, highest paid author in the world.
Whether or not it is a "good formula is
beside the point. It is good for Kelland. And it is good for the desert. With
variations, it has been written, broadcast and screened so many times that all
of us Americans should be sick of it. We aren't. It was an oId plot when
Kelland was born, and it will be new when he dies, We Americans like to see the
lovely girl triumph with her hero, and we especially like to see the
picturesque desert land, which is naturally keyed to adventure and romance.
Bud Kelland can turn out three novels a year and
do a lot of short stories, radio talks, politics, horseback riding, and
loafing, on the side. He is not a desert citizen by birth or rearing. In fact
he started his personal and professional life away hack East, began writing
nearly fourty years ago on tile once distinguished American Boy magazine. He
created Scattergood Baines, a Vermont philosopher. He did a lot of
miscellaneous romance.
But he
didn't—by his own admission—get his journalistic stride until he discovered the
desert. And that happened by accident, He was rolling from civilization to
California (a New York neighbor said that!) when his trailer house broke down
in that wild western region called Arizona. For several hours he had to wait
there amid loneliness and prickly pears. A rancher rode by looking for steers.
"Good afternoon,- Mr. Kelland greeted.
"Howdy, pardner. Nice day."
"Yep it is. Say I want to know something about this country. I am
Clarence Burlington Kelland."
-Um," grunted the rancher, "right smart stretch of name, stranger, What
do yore friends call you?"
The distinguished author swallowed. "Bud," he said then, grinning.
"All right, Bud. Mine's Ike. Ike Bane, Now this country is a great place for
either cows or minin'. Me, I'm in the cow business here, you want a cigarette
makin'?—because they are more shore. A man cain't eat a gold mine he don't
find, but I can always manage to eat my own beef if I have to. Hanh?"
That was enough! Two smart men, each salty and wise in his own way,
had all they needed in common. They didn't stay strangers long.
Bud eventually
came on into Phoenix, and walked around down
town. Several people in the banks and the hotels discovered he was Clarence
Budington Kelland—but not a doggone one fell over himself begging for
autographs! Nobody gasped and looked at him with awe. Yes, they knew about him.
Kelland, the famous author. What of it? Looks like a good egg. Lots of good
fellows come out here. How do you do, Mr. Kelland; make yourself at home.
It was a new live-and-let-live sincerity. He
hadn't expected it. These Westerners, these desert folk, just didn't give a
whoop how important he was; they liked him because he was likeable. So Bud
Kelland promptly bought himself a $50,000 home near this desert town of
Phoenix, and he expects to grow old gracefully and die there.
It wasn't many months after that when the
Saturday Evening Post burst out with the first of the famous Arizona trilogy in
fiction. It was a serial called "Arizona." The girl this time was
even more impossible than his heroines usually were and more lovable. She baked
pies and she swung a blacksnake whip—remember? The Post circulation jumped up.
The book version of the story sold fast. The motion picture was filmed on the
open desert near Tucson—in the grandest set ever created out of Hollywood, a
re-creation of historic old Tucson, adobe walls and all.
Next one was about Prescott and third one about
Phoenix, the same plot retold with new details, the same general setting. Again
they clicked high everywhere. The Post ballyhooed them on its cover. The screen
called them epics, which they weren't. The public loved them. "Valley of
the Sun" was the Phoenix story, and it was partially true. It got Mr.
Kelland in good with the citizens of his new home town.
Since then he has done several other desert stories—nobody ever tries
to keep up with his titles, because they come too fast‑
and all of them
have ranged toward best-seller class. As recently as 1940 Bud Kelland was rated
by the profession (as reported in Writer's Digest) as the highest paid author
in the world, and 90 percent of his output was concerned with the desert. He
sees in every storied hill a new setting for his romance. He reads a bit of
history about an old mine, a picturesque rancho, a wagon train, an Indian raid,
and goes to his workshop out back of his residence, He types for three hours,
then rides a horse on the desert nearby. Next day he types some more. That's
all the "inspiration" he seems to require.
Bud Kelland is no arty author. His
stories lack the pompous importance of Zane Grey's westerns, and because of
that is probably closer to real literature than anything Grey ever wrote, Kelland's
novels are sassy, pert, cute; never heavy or profound. Dialogue is as rich and
spicy as a high school girl's. Philosophies are elemental and sound and so
simple that Ike Bane can understand them, are in reality Scattergood Baines'
reasoning redressed for desert use. In short, Kelland stories are not the
enduring classics we might like them to be, but they are tops in
entertainment. That's all their author ever has claimed for them. That's the
only goal he has ever set.
As a craftsman, he is good enough now never to rewrite, edit
or even read his own stuff. (Among us lesser hacks, that fact will be
phenomenal.)
"At nine o'clock each morning I sit
down at my typewriter," says he. "I put in a clean white sheet and
three carbons. 1 pause a moment, and then I begin to type.
"By 12 o'clock, almost invariably,
I have done about 1,000 words. That's where I quit for the day. One thousand
words a day is enough for any writer. That means 30,000 words a month. That
means a novel complete in two months, or a little more.
"I do not bother to read what I
have written. It is not necessary. I do not edit my own stuff, nor have any one
else do it. I do not even have it copied. If some young squirt editor back east
wants to change a word or two, it's up to him,"
Actually, the young squirts don't
bother. Bud Kelland has them all bluffed, has editors begging him for
manuscripts night and day at his own rates—which automatically makes him the
patron saint of all other writers, who have been slaves to hope and revision!
It
wasn't always like that with Kelland. And in this lies the inspiration for us
all. His career, no less than Lincoln's and any
other rags-to-riches man's, started from scratch. About the turn of this
century, 25-year-old Buddie Kelland had been striving to sell fiction for seven
long years before one story finally clicked. An editor paid him $7.50 for
it
He spent the next six months in
celebration, went back to work and eventually sold a second yarn for $10.
Since then, some statistician has estimated, Americans have spent 10,000 years
reading Bud Kelland stories. (Figuring the average time to read the average
story, by the average number of readers of magazines in which his stories
appear.) Many more aggregate centuries have been spent by us Americans looking
at his stories on the screen. In his 60's now, his production is still amazing,
and demand for his work is greater than ever. There's no guessing what sort of
desert romance may pour out of his agile brain when he turns loose on desert
army camps, aviation centers and the like. The war situation is bound to
influence him.
Now with such a phenomenon as that
publicizing the desert —what is the desert people's opinion of him? Do they
approve of him? Do they like him personally? Does he "belong"?
To the latter question, the answer is
yes and no. He offended a great many folk by being superficial in his
historical novels of Arizona. It was a justifiable offense—most of us feeling
that some great (which is different from popular) writer could have made
"Arizona" as distinguished a novel for the West as "Gone
With the Wind" is for the South. Answer to that, however, is that the gate
is still open. America has known only two truly epic periods of history, the
antebelium South and the Wild West. Margaret Mitchell did the former in her
incomparable novel. Who among us will do the West?
Kelland
is regarded as an eccentric now. Which means he has to maintain a sort of
crusty guard against pests who bedevil him to read manuscripts and to speak to
the ladies' society pink tea. He is not tough, or hard to talk to. He is
exceedingly fond of children, He loves horses, dogs, and wild critters that
bark and yap and scream in the desert nights.
His idea of a good time is to play a round of golf with some
salty friend like Guy Kibbee, who plays Scattergood in the movies, then go for
a desert horseback ride. Often he rides alone. He may just sit out on a desert
rock and think—or, as the feller says, just sit. It's a pretty good form of
recreation.
Any famous author is held to be wise, and perhaps that is
so. This wise Mr. Kelland, then, admits in formal interview that life is sadly confusing, and that he isn't
sure what he'd do with the U.S.A. if somebody thrust a dictatorship into his
lap. He will occasionally venture a generality or two.
"Work, work, work!" he almost
shouted at me once, when I asked him how to prevent unemployment. Work to
prevent unemployment? It calls to mind another sage observation made by another
wise man; Calvin Coolidge himself once said, "When a great many people are out of work, unemployment
results!"
But when he isn't dodging, Bud Kelland does better. "I
think we grew into a spoiled-brat nation," said he, on another occasion,
"because we had too much luxury. Luxury is enervating. When the reaction
set in, we soon had thousands of people floundering around like cry babies, and
eventually we had to face a war because of it.
"America wasn't made in the first place by whiners. It
was made by pioneers who felt not that the country owed them a living, but that
they owed the country a living."
And that statement ought to bring nods of agreement around
anybody's campfire.
(Final novel in the Arizona Trilogy, set in Prescott.)
Watch for new paperback and ebook editions of the entire trilogy in 2017 from Digital Parchment Press.
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