Newsletter No. 2: February 2006
THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY celebrates the life and works of John O'Hara, Pennsylvania's pre-eminent contemporary author and America's greatest short-story writer. The JOHS studies, publishes, and diffuses works by and about the author. Membership is free. For details, contact the JOHS's Corresponding Secretary, Richard Carreño, via Philabooks@yahoo.com. © MMXXVI John O'Hara Society.
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John O'Hara - (1905-1970) | ||||
| John O'Hara: 1905-1970 | ||||
John O'Hara, considered in his day a gifted yet controversial writer of both novels and short stories, was born on January 31, 1905 in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. He spent time in Pennsylvania for the early part of his childhood until his parents decided to send him off to Niagara Preparatory School in Niagara, New York. He graduated in 1924. When O'Hara's father died, his family went into poverty. http://www.biography.com For that reason, O'Hara couldn't go to college. He went to work as a reporter for various newspapers in Pennsylvania until 1926. For the rest of the twenties he traveled around the country until he settled in New York and got a job with the Hollywood columnist Heywood Broun. In 1928, O'Hara's published his first short story in The New Yorker Magazine. He would eventually become a regular contributor to the magazine. In 1934, O'Hara published his first novel Appointment in Samarra. This novel was a major success along with his second novel Butterfield 8. These novels established O'Hara as a big time novelist. In 1940, one of O'Hara's novel Pal Joey was turned into a musical with the help of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. The original run wasn't successful, but another run in 1952 was a huge success. During World War II, O'Hara became a correspondent in the Pacific. After the war, O'Hara concentrated on becoming a screenwriter. He was involved in the writing of On Our Merry Way , and even novels that brought him success in the past. The 1950's and 1960's brought more success to the novelist. He wrote the novels A Rage To Live, From a Terrace, and Ten North Fredrick , (which won O'Hara the National Book Award in 1955). O'Hara settled in Princeton, New Jersey where he died on April 11, 1970. II. Major Works Appointment in Samarra when released in 1934 was widely received by the public, but was criticized for its frank discussion of sex. The book delves into the social lives of the upper middle class of the fictional town of Gibbsville, Pennsylvania. The novel's main character, Jullian English, is a man who is well employed. He gets in trouble at a Christmas party when he gets plastered and throws a drink in his boss' face. O'Hara's development of the characters in this book through their dialogue shows why John O'Hara is considered one of the greatest storytellers of this century. Butterfield 8 (1935) is another novel where John O'Hara shows the flaws ofa society in the New York Speakeasy Society. The story centers on the death of Starr Faithful and the insuing investigation surrounding her death. O'Hara has won acclaim for his satire of upper middle class. This book was made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor. III. Literary Works Appointment in Samarra (1934) The Doctor's Son and Other Stories (1935) Butterfield 8 (1935) Hope of Heaven (1938) Files on Parade (1939) Pal Joey (1940) A Rage To Live (1949) Ten North Fredrick (1955) From The Terrace (1958) IV. Sources O'Hara, John. Biography. 9 Apr 2000 O'Hara, John. Encarta. 9 Apr 2000 http://encarta.msn.com O'Hara, John. Amazon. 12 Apr 2000 http://www.amazon.com This essay was submitted by a student of Cheryl Petersohn, a teacher at Harriton High School in Rosemont, Pennsylvania. | ||||
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100 Years Old
BUtterfield 8: Starr Power
Although Starr Faithfull lived for only 25 years, she inspired several authors to write about her. Born January 26, 1906 in Evanston, IL, Starr died in June 1931 after a Long Island boat party.
The second issue [May 1952] of Strange: The Magazine of True Mystery, fighting to establish an audience, featured Starr Faithfull on the cover. Inside their readership could peruse this article by Tony Field:
• • The tragic fate of Starr Faithfull
___ ___
Source:http://starrfaithfull.blogspot.com/atom.xml
• • On January 31, 1905 John O'Hara was born in Pottsville, PA.
• • And born on January 26, 1906 in Evanston, Illinois was the beauty who inspired O'Hara to write his 1935 bestseller: Butterfield 8.
• • Though O'Hara may have called it a roman a clef, the truth really took a beating.
• • • Butterfield 8 • • •
"ON THIS SUNDAY morning in May, this girl who later was to be the cause of a sensation in New York, awoke much too early for her night before. One minute she was asleep, the next she was completely awake and dumped into despair. . . ."
• • On June 8, 1931, the dead body of a 25-year-old woman named Starr Faithfull was found on a Long Island beach, clad in expensive clothes, her nails manicured, her neck bruised and broken. Was it an accident, a murder, a suicide? Though the circumstances of her death were never resolved, the official inquest kept Jefferson Market Court buzzing for almost six months. Widespread coverage in the daily newspapers mesmerized Americans as well as the British. When the reporters finally tired of the sensational headlines, the novelists jumped aboard. O’Hara [1905 - 1970] was the first author to spin Starr's fatality into self-advancement; others followed the Benjamins.
• • Let's celebrate the 100th anniversity of Starr's birth [26 January 2006] by revealing the truth. BUtterfield 8 would never have been her telephone exchange. Starr was a Greenwich Village girl.
• • She lived with her mother, sister, and step-father at 35 West 9th Street, then at 12 St. Luke's Place.
• • Starr liked to drink and party, which is how O'Hara met her: at a literary affair.
• • When young, she was sexually molested by the Mayor of Boston [a trusted family friend], but Starr was NEVER a callgirl, a thief, nor attached to a brothel.
• • O'Hara took as many liberties with Starr in death as the Mayor had in her youth, ruining her reputation perhaps to stoke his.
• • Jefferson Market Court, where her autopsy photos were passed around to the media like potato chips, was the hottest place in town during the summer of 1931 - - a spectacle for gawkers and rumor-runners.
• • It will take more than this, Starr Faithfull, to clear your name. But you are not forgotten.
___ ___
Source:http://starrfaithfull.blogspot.com/atom.xml
http://jeffersonmarketcourthouseny.blogspot.com/atom.xml
- an excerpt: Time Magazine 29 June 1931 -
. . . But the paucity of essential facts was more than made up for to the Press by Starr Faithfull's background and home life. The family, occupying one floor of a brownstone house, consisted of Starr, her sister, her mother and stepfather, Stanley Faithfull, a not prosperous chemist and salesman for a pneumatic mattress concern. Lean, gimlet-eyed, red-whiskered, bewildered, he talked and talked to the thronging news hawks who came away with many conflicting stories and white lies. For some reason his daughter was made an "heiress" by the first sensational stories, a description soon dropped by all but the tabloids. But other newspapers kept the family endowed with an air of gentility, apparently as an excuse to give the story special attention.
Officials of the United Press, impressed by the national demand for the story, set out to get all they could of it. Believing that reporters on the case were using wrong strategy, they simply asked for, and with the immediately parents. obtained, a They won private Faithfull's interview confidence, persuaded him that a full explanation of Starr's makeup would mitigate the impression of promiscuity which had gone forth. The result, an "exclusive" for the U. P., was the full details of how the girl had been induced to unnatural sexual antics at the age of eleven by the elderly man, a trusted friend of the family; how he had repeatedly over a period of years taken her on automobile trips, stopping at hotels, with knowledge and consent of the parents who never dreamed that his interest was other than fatherly: how Starr, who was emotionally unbalanced as a result, finally made known the facts to her parents; how they obtained a $20,000 settlement from the despoiler to pay for treatment of Starr by psychiatrists and neurologists. For all their effort, they said, Starr never fully recovered normality. With their full knowledge if not their consent she had run around with (and after) all kinds of men in all kinds of places "looking for happiness." In return for the story, Faithfull insisted only on a letter which would prove that no payment was being made for it to him or his family.
The New York World-Telegram and other United Press subscribers embellished Father Faithfull's sad story with facsimiles of erotic pages from Starr's memory book, letters, telegrams. Star writers were put on the lurid story to treat it as an epic of injured innocence, a cause celebre of the decade. Fresh interest, fresh front-page stories (again including the Times) were supplied by the arrival from England of a Cunard Line doctor who revealed that Heroine Faithfull had come to see him on shipboard just before she disappeared from home, that he had sent her away because she was drunk, that she had written him she was going to commit suicide. The doctor's picture now made display material as the epic passed into its third week. Observers marveled at what the great U.S. Press could do with the conjunction of a perfect front-page name, a sexy death mystery, and a spell of hot weather. ...
- - from "The Press: Five Starr Faithfull"
- - excerpt: Time Magazine 29 June 1931 - -
http://StarrFaithfull.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Ellen: Of all your books, do you have a favorite? Which one and why?
Sandra: Some Unknown Person. That was published in 1977. It's also based on a true case. The victim was named Starr Faithfull. I did a lot of research because the book takes place between 1901 and 1930. This case was never solved and I solve it fictionally. Half the book is based on my father's family, the other half is the Faithfull story. I've never written an autobiographical novel and this was a way to write about my parents and their families without writing about me, although I make a cameo appearance. I'd written some of my Young Adult novels already but this was my first for adults. . . .
http://StarrFaithfull.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Starr Faithfull
Pforzheimer Student Fellowships Awarded to 14 Undergraduates
Carol K. Pforzheimer Student Fellowships have been awarded to 14 undergraduates to conduct research at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. The students will research their senior honors theses or independent projects during this academic year.
The recipients and their topics are:
Leah Newkirk of Adams House and Albany, N.Y.: "Telling the Faithfull Story: Historical Definitions of Violence Against Women and the Assault of Starr Faithfull"; . . . etc.
.
The Pforzheimer Student Fellowship Program is administered by the Schlesinger Library. The awards are supported by an endowed fund given to Radcliffe College by the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation, Inc., in honor of Carol K. Pforzheimer, who attended Radcliffe College from 1927-1930, and received a bachelor of arts from Barnard College in 1931. A director of the Radcliffe College Alumnae Association from 1964 to 1967, Carol Pforzheimer was a trustee of the College from 1967-1979. She and her late husband, Carl H. Pforzheimer Jr., '28, MBA '30, received Harvard Medals in June 1987 for their extraordinary service to the University. . . .
* * The awards, which range from $100 to $2,500, can cover expenses, or beused as a stipend in lieu of term or summer employment. Projects on women's work and the family, women and health, the history of community service and volunteer work, and the culinary arts are of special interest. These topics reflect the interests of Pforzheimer and those of five of her grandchildren who studied at Harvard and Radcliffe.
Excerpt: The Harvard University Gazette
Printed: December 11, 1997
Copyright 1998 President & Fellows of Harvard College
http://StarrFaithfull.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Starr Faithfull
In the summer of 1931, Starr's mother and step-father were dogged by news men, who hung around their Greenwich Village residence - - 12 Saint Lukes Place - - hungrily awaiting a scrap of gossip that could be stretched into a meal fit for a hungry City Room editor.
Friday, September 02, 2005
Title: WOMAN IN THE CASE [London: Robert Hale, 1967]
Hardcover: 2nd Edition, 188pp + illus.
.
WOMAN IN THE CASE is a study of nine women involved in some of the most infamous crimes. Includes Starr Faithfull; Charlotte Bryant; Gay Gibson; Marguerite Diblanc (Belgian cook and murderess); Jeannette Edmonds, who set off a sex and murder scandal in Gloucestershire in 1871; Valerie Storie and the A-6 murder for which James Hanratty was hanged, etc. [True Crime. First published 1963.]
Although Starr Faithfull lived for only 25 years, she inspired several authors to write about her. Born January 26, 1906 in Evanston, IL, Starr died in June 1931 after a Long Island boat party.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Starr Faithfull: Strange
The second issue [May 1952] of Strange: The Magazine of True Mystery, fighting to establish an audience, featured Starr Faithfull on the cover. Inside their readership could peruse this article by Tony Field:
• • The tragic fate of Starr Faithfull
___ ___
Source:http://starrfaithfull.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Starr's 100th Anniversary
Janus the Roman god of doorways here! While Old Jeff is away visiting the Jeffersons, I'm here to look both ways and spill a few secrets.
• • On January 31, 1905 John O'Hara was born in Pottsville, PA.
• • And born on January 26, 1906 in Evanston, Illinois was the beauty who inspired O'Hara to write his 1935 bestseller: Butterfield 8.
• • Though O'Hara may have called it a roman a clef, the truth really took a beating.
• • • Butterfield 8 • • •
"ON THIS SUNDAY morning in May, this girl who later was to be the cause of a sensation in New York, awoke much too early for her night before. One minute she was asleep, the next she was completely awake and dumped into despair. . . ."
• • On June 8, 1931, the dead body of a 25-year-old woman named Starr Faithfull was found on a Long Island beach, clad in expensive clothes, her nails manicured, her neck bruised and broken. Was it an accident, a murder, a suicide? Though the circumstances of her death were never resolved, the official inquest kept Jefferson Market Court buzzing for almost six months. Widespread coverage in the daily newspapers mesmerized Americans as well as the British. When the reporters finally tired of the sensational headlines, the novelists jumped aboard. O’Hara [1905 - 1970] was the first author to spin Starr's fatality into self-advancement; others followed the Benjamins.
• • Let's celebrate the 100th anniversity of Starr's birth [26 January 2006] by revealing the truth. BUtterfield 8 would never have been her telephone exchange. Starr was a Greenwich Village girl.
• • She lived with her mother, sister, and step-father at 35 West 9th Street, then at 12 St. Luke's Place.
• • Starr liked to drink and party, which is how O'Hara met her: at a literary affair.
• • When young, she was sexually molested by the Mayor of Boston [a trusted family friend], but Starr was NEVER a callgirl, a thief, nor attached to a brothel.
• • O'Hara took as many liberties with Starr in death as the Mayor had in her youth, ruining her reputation perhaps to stoke his.
• • Jefferson Market Court, where her autopsy photos were passed around to the media like potato chips, was the hottest place in town during the summer of 1931 - - a spectacle for gawkers and rumor-runners.
• • It will take more than this, Starr Faithfull, to clear your name. But you are not forgotten.
___ ___
Source:http://starrfaithfull.blogspot.com/atom.xml
http://jeffersonmarketcourthouseny.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Sunday, December 11, 2005
The paucity of essential facts
The Press: Five Starr Faithfull
- an excerpt: Time Magazine 29 June 1931 -
. . . But the paucity of essential facts was more than made up for to the Press by Starr Faithfull's background and home life. The family, occupying one floor of a brownstone house, consisted of Starr, her sister, her mother and stepfather, Stanley Faithfull, a not prosperous chemist and salesman for a pneumatic mattress concern. Lean, gimlet-eyed, red-whiskered, bewildered, he talked and talked to the thronging news hawks who came away with many conflicting stories and white lies. For some reason his daughter was made an "heiress" by the first sensational stories, a description soon dropped by all but the tabloids. But other newspapers kept the family endowed with an air of gentility, apparently as an excuse to give the story special attention.
Officials of the United Press, impressed by the national demand for the story, set out to get all they could of it. Believing that reporters on the case were using wrong strategy, they simply asked for, and with the immediately parents. obtained, a They won private Faithfull's interview confidence, persuaded him that a full explanation of Starr's makeup would mitigate the impression of promiscuity which had gone forth. The result, an "exclusive" for the U. P., was the full details of how the girl had been induced to unnatural sexual antics at the age of eleven by the elderly man, a trusted friend of the family; how he had repeatedly over a period of years taken her on automobile trips, stopping at hotels, with knowledge and consent of the parents who never dreamed that his interest was other than fatherly: how Starr, who was emotionally unbalanced as a result, finally made known the facts to her parents; how they obtained a $20,000 settlement from the despoiler to pay for treatment of Starr by psychiatrists and neurologists. For all their effort, they said, Starr never fully recovered normality. With their full knowledge if not their consent she had run around with (and after) all kinds of men in all kinds of places "looking for happiness." In return for the story, Faithfull insisted only on a letter which would prove that no payment was being made for it to him or his family.
The New York World-Telegram and other United Press subscribers embellished Father Faithfull's sad story with facsimiles of erotic pages from Starr's memory book, letters, telegrams. Star writers were put on the lurid story to treat it as an epic of injured innocence, a cause celebre of the decade. Fresh interest, fresh front-page stories (again including the Times) were supplied by the arrival from England of a Cunard Line doctor who revealed that Heroine Faithfull had come to see him on shipboard just before she disappeared from home, that he had sent her away because she was drunk, that she had written him she was going to commit suicide. The doctor's picture now made display material as the epic passed into its third week. Observers marveled at what the great U.S. Press could do with the conjunction of a perfect front-page name, a sexy death mystery, and a spell of hot weather. ...
- - from "The Press: Five Starr Faithfull"
- - excerpt: Time Magazine 29 June 1931 - -
http://StarrFaithfull.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Monday, December 05, 2005
Starr Faithfull: Unknown
ELLEN HART Interviewed SANDRA SCOPPETTONE:
Ellen: Of all your books, do you have a favorite? Which one and why?
Sandra: Some Unknown Person. That was published in 1977. It's also based on a true case. The victim was named Starr Faithfull. I did a lot of research because the book takes place between 1901 and 1930. This case was never solved and I solve it fictionally. Half the book is based on my father's family, the other half is the Faithfull story. I've never written an autobiographical novel and this was a way to write about my parents and their families without writing about me, although I make a cameo appearance. I'd written some of my Young Adult novels already but this was my first for adults. . . .
http://StarrFaithfull.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Starr Faithfull
Monday, October 17, 2005
Starr's Saga Told at Harvard
Pforzheimer Student Fellowships Awarded to 14 Undergraduates
Carol K. Pforzheimer Student Fellowships have been awarded to 14 undergraduates to conduct research at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. The students will research their senior honors theses or independent projects during this academic year.
The recipients and their topics are:
Leah Newkirk of Adams House and Albany, N.Y.: "Telling the Faithfull Story: Historical Definitions of Violence Against Women and the Assault of Starr Faithfull"; . . . etc.
.
The Pforzheimer Student Fellowship Program is administered by the Schlesinger Library. The awards are supported by an endowed fund given to Radcliffe College by the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation, Inc., in honor of Carol K. Pforzheimer, who attended Radcliffe College from 1927-1930, and received a bachelor of arts from Barnard College in 1931. A director of the Radcliffe College Alumnae Association from 1964 to 1967, Carol Pforzheimer was a trustee of the College from 1967-1979. She and her late husband, Carl H. Pforzheimer Jr., '28, MBA '30, received Harvard Medals in June 1987 for their extraordinary service to the University. . . .
* * The awards, which range from $100 to $2,500, can cover expenses, or beused as a stipend in lieu of term or summer employment. Projects on women's work and the family, women and health, the history of community service and volunteer work, and the culinary arts are of special interest. These topics reflect the interests of Pforzheimer and those of five of her grandchildren who studied at Harvard and Radcliffe.
Excerpt: The Harvard University Gazette
Printed: December 11, 1997
Copyright 1998 President & Fellows of Harvard College
http://StarrFaithfull.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Starr Faithfull
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Starr Residence: 12 St. Lukes Place
Scandal is no stranger to Saint Luke's Place.
In the summer of 1931, Starr's mother and step-father were dogged by news men, who hung around their Greenwich Village residence - - 12 Saint Lukes Place - - hungrily awaiting a scrap of gossip that could be stretched into a meal fit for a hungry City Room editor.
Friday, September 02, 2005
"Infamous" Starr
Author: Charles Franklin
Title: WOMAN IN THE CASE [London: Robert Hale, 1967]
Hardcover: 2nd Edition, 188pp + illus.
.
WOMAN IN THE CASE is a study of nine women involved in some of the most infamous crimes. Includes Starr Faithfull; Charlotte Bryant; Gay Gibson; Marguerite Diblanc (Belgian cook and murderess); Jeannette Edmonds, who set off a sex and murder scandal in Gloucestershire in 1871; Valerie Storie and the A-6 murder for which James Hanratty was hanged, etc. [True Crime. First published 1963.]
About Me
- Name: Mae West NYC
- Location: New York, New York, United States
native New Yorker
Assignation
- Another Appointment
O'Hara did for fictional Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, what Faulkner did for Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi: surveyed its social life and drew its psychic outlines. But he did it in utterly worldly terms, without Faulkner's taste for mythic inference or the basso profundo of his prose. Julian English is a man who squanders what fate gave him. He lives on the right side of the tracks, with a country club membership and a wife who loves him. His decline and fall, over the course of just 72 hours around Christmas, is a matter of too much spending, too much liquor and a couple of reckless gestures. (Now Julian, don't throw that drink in the well-connected Irishman's face. Don't make that pass at the gangster's mistress.) That his calamity is petty and preventable only makes it more powerful. In Faulkner the tragedies all seem to be taking place on Olympus, even when they're happening among the lowlifes. In O'Hara they could be happening to you.—R.L.From the TIME Archive:
O'Hara writes with swift realism, wisely avoids sentimentality 
—TIME Magazine, Aug. 20, 1934 (Read This Review)
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