Tag Archives: writer

O. Henry: The Life of an American Phenomenon

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O. Henry, whose Forever® stamp is now available online and in Post Offices nationwide, may have been a phenomenally successful author, but many details of his life (including how he arrived at that pseudonym, for example) remain uncertain. He gave varying answers to questions about himself. He had also spent time in prison, which may have made him reluctant to be photographed or interviewed—at least in part.

We do know that O. Henry was born William Sydney Porter on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. As a boy, he was known as Will. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was small, and his father, a physician, fell into alcoholism and debt. Will was left mostly in the care of his grandmother and an aunt, who taught him to read and encouraged his artistic interests. By the time he was 15 years old, he was working at his uncle’s drugstore; he became a licensed pharmacist while still in his teens.

The O. Henry stamp was issued September 11, 2012, in Greensboro, North Carolina. First Day Covers from the event are still available.

As a young man, Porter went to Texas, where he worked at various jobs and married the daughter of a businessman in Austin. When funds at a bank where he had worked turned up short, Porter came under suspicion. Rather than stand trial, he left the country and went to Honduras. Concern for his terminally ill wife drew him back to Texas; she died in 1897, and the following year he was tried, found guilty despite his plea of innocence, and sentenced to the penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. There, he served more than three years of a five-year sentence and worked in the prison pharmacy.

While in prison, he also began writing stories under the name of “O. Henry.” Upon his release in 1901, he stayed briefly in Pittsburgh and then moved on to New York, where he began to earn a regular income by writing for newspapers and magazines. By the time of his death on June 5, 1910, O. Henry was the most widely read storyteller in America and admired worldwide. He wrote nearly 300 stories, most in the final eight years of his life.

The O. Henry Prize Stories, an anthology published annually since 1919, testifies to O. Henry’s continuing influence on American letters. After his death, his friends established the yearly collection to honor him and to encourage the ongoing development of the art of the short story.

What’s In A Name? The Origins of “O. Henry”

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Many people are aware that O. Henry wrote short stories with surprise endings, but no one knows for sure how he chose his pen name. Growing up in Greensboro, North Carolina, he was called Will Porter. As a young man, he went to Texas, where he worked at various jobs. After funds at a bank where he had worked turned up short, Porter was tried, found guilty of embezzlement despite his plea of innocence, and sentenced to the penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. There, beginning in 1898, he served more than three years of a five-year sentence.

This collectible keepsake includes a pane of 20 stamps plus an envelope with an affixed O. Henry stamp and an official First Day of Issue Digital Color Postmark (click for more information).

In prison, he began writing stories under the name of “O. Henry.” Porter gave different answers when people asked where the name came from. One scholar has suggested that it stems from Porter’s fascination with codes, and may be composed of three pairs of letters from the words “Ohio State Penitentiary.”

Upon his release in 1901, O. Henry began to earn a regular income by writing for newspapers and magazines. By the time of his death just nine years later, he was the most widely read storyteller in America. At least partly as a result of the time he spent in prison, this phenomenally successful author was reluctant to be photographed or interviewed, and gave varying answers to questions about his life and how he chose his pseudonym.

If you were going to publish work under a pen name, what would it be?

Edgar Rice Burroughs: Curiosity on Mars

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So what does a postage stamp have to do with the successful landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars? According to one of the planet’s biggest Mars geeks, this incredible scientific achievement might not have been possible without the inspiration of recent stamp honoree Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Digital Color Postmark Keepsake (click image to order)

In a far-ranging interview, the late Ray Bradbury, author of The Martian Chronicles (1950), cited Burroughs as the writer who encouraged scientists to chase their Martian dreams.

“Edgar Rice Burroughs never would have looked upon himself as a social mover and shaker with social obligations,” Bradbury mused. “But as it turns out—and I love to say it because it upsets everyone terribly—Burroughs is probably the most influential writer in the entire history of the world.”

Bradbury enjoyed teasing snobs who cringed at the influence of science fiction, but he was making a serious point. Although Edgar Rice Burroughs wasn’t a scientist, his romantic visions of other planets sparked the dreams of generations of space explorers.

“I’ve talked to more biochemists and more astronomers and technologists in various fields, who, when they were ten years old, fell in love with John Carter and Tarzan and decided to become something romantic,” Bradbury said. “Burroughs put us on the moon. All the technologists read Burroughs. I was once at Caltech with a whole bunch of scientists and they all admitted it. Two leading astronomers—one from Cornell, the other from Caltech—came out and said, Yeah, that’s why we became astronomers. We wanted to see Mars more closely.”

Caltech, which manages the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA, has already begun posting remarkable images from the surface of Mars, with many more to come. As we continue to “see Mars more closely,” remember what Burroughs bequeathed to us: a legacy of curiosity.

Tarzan™ Owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. and Used by Permission.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Stamp Swings Into Post Offices Today

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“I have been writing for nineteen years and I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing, and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.”

So wrote Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) in the June 1930 issue of Writer’s Digest. And entertain he did. By 1930, Burroughs had published more than 40 novels, 13 of them about his most iconic character—Tarzan. By the end of his life he had written more than 70 books, including historical fiction and several popular series of science fiction tales.

Today we issue a new Forever® stamp in honor of Burroughs, one of the most popular and prolific writers of the early 20th century. (Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce rate.) The artwork for the stamp features Tarzan, his most iconic character, clinging to a vine, with a profile of Burroughs in the background. The depiction of Tarzan is an interpretation of the character by artist Sterling Hundley. To create the portrait of Burroughs, Hundley used a photograph taken by the author’s son, Hulbert Burroughs. The 1934 photograph shows Burroughs reading a hardcover copy of Tarzan and the Lion Man, which was published the same year.

The first Tarzan story, “Tarzan of the Apes,” was published in the October 1912 issue of All-Story magazine and issued as a book in 1914. “I do not say the story is true, for I did not witness the happenings which it portrays,” writes Burroughs in the first chapter, “but the fact that in the telling of it to you I have taken fictitious names for the principal characters quite sufficiently evidences the sincerity of my own belief that it may be true.”

And with that, America was hooked. Tarzan grew into a phenomenon that has transcended the printed word.

First Day Cover (click image to order)

In the years that followed, Burroughs’s Tarzan stories were published in magazines, syndicated in newspapers, and republished in more than 24 books. In 1918, the silent film Tarzan of the Apes became the first of more than 50 Tarzan movies. Tarzan was the subject of a comic strip beginning in 1929, radio series in the 1930s and the 1950s, and several television series in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Burroughs also wrote prolifically beyond the Tarzan series. He published dozens of stories in pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories, Argosy All-Story, and Blue Book, resulting in eleven books about John Carter of Mars and six books in the Pellucidar series, which focused on a world at the center of the Earth—a world also visited by Tarzan in the 1930 book Tarzan at the Earth’s Core. He wrote novels about Apache warriors, samurai, prehistoric islands, and adventurers on the planet Venus, and, in an interesting departure, he also explored the modern world in The Girl From Hollywood, a 1922 novel about stardom, drug abuse, murder, and power.

The Edgar Rice Burroughs stamp was issued today at a ceremony in (where else?) Tarzana, California. Those who missed the celebration can still pick up a ceremony program from the event.

Tarzan™ Owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. and Used by Permission.

Raucous and Witty Director Billy Wilder’s Films Show Us Our “Wilder” Side

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Nearly all of Billy Wilder’s films display his satiric wit. He worked successfully in various genres, from the noir of Double Indemnity to the wild farce of Some Like It Hot, and created several of Hollywood’s most unforgettable pictures. Among the many iconic images in Wilder’s movies, none are more memorable than Audrey Hepburn, playing the title role in Sabrina, sitting lovelorn in a tree, or Marilyn Monroe standing on a grate, her skirt billowing, in The Seven Year Itch. In the final scene of Some Like It Hot, when Jack Lemmon removes his wig and reveals that “Daphne” is a man in drag, the oblivious suitor (expertly played by Joe E. Brown) delivers one of the cinema’s most famous last lines: “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

Wilder was born on June 22, 1906, in an Austro-Hungarian province now part of Poland. As a young man, his break in the film industry was the opportunity to co-write People on Sunday [Menschen am Sonntag], made in Germany. He continued to write film scenarios there until the Nazis rose to power. After a short time working in France, Wilder arrived in Hollywood.

His first major success in America was Ninotchka (1939), a screwball comedy starring Greta Garbo and directed by Ernst Lubitsch, a German-born director who was a strong influence on Wilder. (A sign reading “How would Lubitsch do it?” hung in Wilder’s office for many years.) One of his collaborators on Ninotchka, Charles Brackett, became an important writing partner for Wilder.

The first film Wilder directed in Hollywood was The Major and the Minor (1942). Ginger Rogers played a woman pretending to be a child in order to get a reduced-fare train ticket, and Ray Milland was an Army officer disconcerted by his attraction to her.

With Raymond Chandler, Wilder wrote the screenplay for Double Indemnity (1944), with Barbara Stanwyck as a woman who teams up with an insurance agent (played by Fred MacMurray) to murder her husband. This film, considered risky material for its time, set conventions for later noir films and brought Wilder his first Academy Award nomination for best direction.

The Lost Weekend (1945), frequently cited as the screen’s first serious treatment of alcoholism, starred Ray Milland as a troubled writer. Wilder won Academy Awards for his direction and writing (with Brackett); Milland won for his acting; and the film was voted Best Picture.

Wilder, who had become an American citizen, joined the U.S. Army near the end of World War II. One of his duties was to help develop guidelines for the reconstituted German film industry. He also edited a documentary (Death Mills) on the Nazi concentration camps, using footage shot immediately after the camps were liberated. Wilder’s mother had perished at Auschwitz.

Digital Color Postmark Keepsake (click to preorder)

Sunset Boulevard (1950), written with Brackett and D.M. Marshman, Jr., was another career milestone. A dark satire of Hollywood, it showcased Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a star of the silent screen who is planning her comeback. In a memorable exchange, when Joe Gillis (played by William Holden) remarks that she “used to be big,” Desmond replies, “I ambig. It’s the pictures that got small.”

Wilder’s next important writing partnership, beginning in 1957, was with I.A.L. Diamond, with whom he created Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, and other films. Some Like It Hot (1959) starred Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as musicians who, when pursued by gangsters, dress as women and join an all-girl band; Marilyn Monroe unforgettably played the group’s singer, Sugar Kane. The Apartment (1960) starred Lemmon as a corporate striver who scores points by letting his married boss use his apartment for romantic trysts. For the latter film, Wilder won three Academy Awards—for writing, directing, and producing (“Best Picture”). Among Wilder’s many other works are the World War II comedy-drama Stalag 17 (1953); the courtroom thriller Witness for the Prosecution (1957); and The Fortune Cookie (1966), a comedy pairing Lemmon with Walter Matthau. Wilder received 21 “Oscar” nominations in his career and in 1987 was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Award for “a producer whose body of work reflects a consistently high quality.” He received many other awards and tributes as well, including the National Medal of Honor from President Bill Clinton. Four of his films—Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, and The Apartment—were included on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 greatest movies.

Despite winning so many honors, Wilder maintained a workmanlike attitude: “I just make a picture and I hope that it’s going to be good, that it’s going to entertain people and going to show them something which they have not seen yet.” Like Lubitsch, Wilder put greater emphasis on story and language than on visual effects. His movies were often thought cynical; the world in his films, not unlike the one he had experienced in his youth, belonged to those who could think fast and adapt to various situations. Disguise was a frequent thematic motif in his work.

Billy Wilder died at age 95 on March 27, 2002, at his home in Beverly Hills. Recalling the end of Some Like It Hot, his tombstone is inscribed: “I’m a writer but then nobody’s perfect.”

Billy Wilder is one of four directors featured on the Great Film Directors pane. The stamps will be issued on May 23 in Silver Spring, Maryland, but you can preorder them today!

Some Like It Hot © 1959 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.