by Philip Nel
Crockett Johnson, cover of Barnaby Quarterly, July 1945. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Ruth Krauss, Stewart I. Edelstein, Executor. All Rights Reserved.
For assistance in revising the story, Krauss brought the manuscript to the Bank Street Writers Laboratory in July 1945. Established by Lucy Sprague Mitchell in 1938, the laboratory helped authors create books that recognized that young children’s speech reflects their “immersion in the here-and-now world of the sensory realm,” that children learn language not to communicate but because it is fun to play with words, and above all, that adults must trust the child’s imagination.5
Ursula Nordstrom, n.d. From Leonard Marcus, Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon (1992; New York: Quill/Morrow, 1999). Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
That trust came naturally to Krauss because she took children’s ideas seriously. According to Mischa Richter’s son, Dan, “She just talked to children as though they were just other people.” She saw him as a friend, not as a seven-year-old, and took him to see the original theatrical release of The Razor’s Edge (1946). Recalled Richter, “Most adults are like these faces that are bending over, talking to you in sort of abridged English,” but Ruth “didn’t talk down to me or baby me at all.” Her treatment of children as equals made the Bank Street Writers group a good fit for her.6
She met with the Bank Street group and “let the whole bunch go to town on” her manuscript. Krauss was “wary of the general prejudice against comicbooks,” and Nordstrom had suggested that the boy’s superhero costume be changed because “the American Library Association will object. And many parents will object.” To avoid this problem, Krauss decided on a “mixed-hero costume”—the boy would wear aspects of different heroic costumes, such as “an Indian Chief’s hat,” a “football suit with big padded shoulders,” and “cowboy boots with spurs.”7
The Bank Street writers had different ideas. One person said, “If I were a child and someone gave me an Indian hat and didn’t finish up the Indian costume, but gave me something else instead, I’d be awful mad.” Another said, “He ought to be a sort of glorified policeman.” After three hours’ discussion, Krauss got the sense that “the suit should be like a supersuit, but not the supersuit; that is, it should be generally glorious and symbolic of ability—but nothing specific. This was very helpful.” She went home to revise some more.8
The mid-1940s also saw the beginning of Ruth and Dave’s long and close relationship with Phyllis Rowand, her husband, Gene Wallace, and their daughter, Nina, who was born in New York City in November 1945. The following March, four-month-old Nina took her first trip to “the country”— Connecticut. The members of the Rowand-Wallace family piled into a car with Simon and Schuster vice president Jack Goodman; his wife, Agnes, an editor; and their Great Dane, Sam, and drove up to Rowayton. That June, Gene, Phyllis, and Nina moved up to Rowayton, renting the Goodmans’ cottage at 89 Rowayton Avenue, just four houses up the street from Ruth and Dave.9
Wallace, a World War II veteran and naval architect, shared many of Dave’s interests: Both men liked to sail, enjoyed making things with their hands, and played a good game of chess. They spent many an afternoon working on their boats or smoking their pipes and chatting over the chess board. Rowand, who wrote for Woman’s Day and created ads for Houbigant Perfume and other clients, had been thinking about branching out into children’s books. Even before moving to Rowayton, she had begun collaborating with Ruth on The Growing Story, a tale of a little boy who notices that the grass, flowers, and trees are growing. After learning that chicks and a puppy will also grow, he asks, “Will I grow, too?” As the year passes, he notices that the plants and animals are growing but cannot see any changes in himself. When he puts on his winter clothes, however, they have become too small. He runs out into the yard to tell the chickens, “I’m growing too.”10
Though Ruth and Dave did not raise chickens, their new home definitely felt like the country. Located in South Norwalk, Rowayton was a nineteenth-century oystering community that had become a popular summer destination for vacationers, artists, and progressives. Dave liked to call the tiny village “the Athens of South Norwalk.” Ruth and Dave soon became close to other neighbors in addition to Wallace and Rowand. Actor Stefan Schnabel and his wife, singer/actress Marion Schnabel, and their children became good friends. Sculptor Harry Marinsky and his partner, Paul Bernard, moved in just across Crockett Street from the Johnson-Krauss house. The presence of an openly gay couple did not bother Ruth and Dave or anyone else in the neighborhood. However, as an out gay couple, Marinsky and Bernard were atypical. Johnson and Krauss’s other gay friends—Ursula Nordstrom and Maurice Sendak—did not make their sexuality public knowledge. In contrast, Marinsky and Bernard were living as a married couple some sixty years before Connecticut recognized gay marriage.11
Fred Schwed Jr., Harriet Schwed, and Crockett Johnson, n.d. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Ruth Krauss, Stewart I. Edelstein, Executor. All Rights Reserved.
Dave and Ruth also became particularly close to neighbors Fred Schwed Jr., a magazine writer and former stockbroker, and his wife, Harriet. Fred Schwed was the author of the satirical Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?; or, A Good Hard Look at Wall Street (1940), which expressed the same sort of sentiments present in the brilliant satire of Wall Street that Johnson presented in Barnaby from February to May 1945. O’Malley becomes a Wall Street tycoon not through shrewd investing but because of the speculative nature of market economics. By having a character whom adults regard as imaginary use purely imaginary assets to become a wealthy financier, Johnson blurs the line between real and imagined to suggest that free-market capitalism is inherently precarious and that Wall Streeters’ romantic view of the marketplace ill equips them to differentiate between profitable fantasies and market realities. As Schwed wrote, “The notion that the financial future is not predictable is just too unpleasant to be given any room at all in the Wall Streeter’s consciousness.” Those who work on Wall Street “are all romantics, whether they be villains or philanthropists. Else they would never have chosen this business which is a business of dreams.”12
The Barnaby episode begins when O’Malley phones stockbrokers to ask about purchasing 51 percent of Hunos-Wattall Ltd. (pronounced Who-knows-what-all) but unknowingly talks only to an office boy. He thinks O’Malley is a “bigshot” and word gets out that “international financier” O’Malley is starting a new company. Since no one wants to admit that they have never heard of O’Malley, investors back his company, real people begin running it, and the stock soars. But speculation becomes O’Malley Enterprises’ undoing: When O’Malley offers to pay cash to tailors Cuttaway and Sons for his trousers, they are insulted that he does not charge the purchase to his account. Word spreads that his credit is no longer good, and the stock plummets, bringing down the company with it. Only a few years after the end of the Great Depression and with many people worried that the conclusion of World War II might end wartime prosperity, Johnson was making a very serious point about the instability of capitalist economies. As O’Malley says about a week prior to O’Malley Enterprises’ collapse, “I’ll admit, Barnaby, at times I nourish misgivings about the entire venture.”13
As the country drifted to the right, the popularity of market-driven economics revived. The death of President Franklin Roosevelt in April 1945 and the end of the war four months later marked the beginning of the end of the Popular Front. Its decline did not change Johnson, who continued to support progressive ideals. When the Independent Voters Committee of the Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt became the Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions (ICCASP) in December 1944, Johnson remained an active member, regularly attending meetings of the group’s Norwalk chapter and winning election to the branch’s executive committee in January 1946. At the national ICCASP’s annual meeting in New York the following month, he was elected one of thirty
-two members of the group’s board of directors, along with Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Gene Kelly, Langston Hughes, Howard Fast, Moss Hart, Lillian Hellman, John Hersey, Bill Mauldin, Hazel Scott, and Orson Wells. One of the ICCASP’s goals was passage of the Wagner-Murray-Dingell Bill, which promised national health insurance and money devoted to building more hospitals. To aid that cause, Johnson illustrated the Physicians Forum’s For the People’s Health, a pamphlet supporting the measure.14
Crockett Johnson, cover of For the People’s Health (New York: Physicians Forum, 1946). Image courtesy of Toby Holtzman. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Ruth Krauss, Stewart I. Edelstein, Executor. All Rights Reserved.
That bill met defeat, but some of Johnson’s causes thrived. In 1945, he signed on to the Committee for the Reelection of Benjamin J. Davis, a Communist serving on the New York City Council who won reelection by a wide margin. That same year, Johnson joined Davis in supporting the End Jim Crow in Baseball Committee, whose members also included Rockwell Kent, Paul Robeson, and Langston Hughes. In August 1945, at Stamford’s Russian Relief Headquarters, both Johnson and Krauss served as sponsors and participants in the Books for Russia Committee of the American Society for Russian Relief. Krauss’s involvement was unusual: She rarely expressed her political convictions by joining organizations.15
The story about the boy dreaming of being a superhero acquired a title, The Great Duffy, and Krauss hoped that Johnson would provide illustrations, as he had for The Carrot Seed. When his other commitments prevented him from doing so, Krauss turned to Mischa Richter, now a successful New Yorker cartoonist. Johnson, however, did the layout, chose the type (fourteen-point Bodoni bold), and created some sample drawings.16
Mischa Richter, cover of Ruth Krauss, The Great Duffy (New York: Harper, 1946). Image courtesy of the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection, Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs. Used by permission of the Estate of Mischa Richter.
Perhaps inspired by Johnson’s efforts to bring Barnaby to the stage, Krauss drafted a movie treatment for The Great Duffy. The film would have “the usual blacks and greys to symbolize reality” and “Technicolor to symbolize imagination.” Each time six-year-old Duffy (renamed Buzzie in the movie version) encounters a major disappointment, he launches into a fantasy. Just before each daydream, the film dramatizes his feelings of “being very little in a very big world” by making everything larger: “Adults would enlarge to giants, ordinary furniture would take on architectural and engineering qualities.” As the film switches to Technicolor, objects return to their normal size and Buzzie drifts into his fantasy world. After several such episodes, the movie concludes with him facing the challenge of crossing the street by himself but not retreating into daydreaming: To Buzzie, dealing with traffic was “as adventurous as his daydreams.” He succeeds and feels “a little surer of himself.”17
Krauss’s adaptation of The Great Duffy expresses a deep understanding of young people’s relative powerlessness in the world, a theme that remained on her mind in the fall of 1945. On 31 October, she visited Nordstrom to discuss several ideas for future books, including a short chapter book “on being small” and a picture book on the same subject. Krauss also proposed a collaboration with child psychologist Stephanie Barnhardt to edit a series of books covering “common problems,” such as “fear of the dark, first day at school, refusal to eat, the new baby in the family, temper tantrums, etc.” Nordstrom demurred, saying that Margaret Wise Brown’s books already “did this sort of thing subtly and artistically”: Brown’s Night and Day (1942) addressed the fear of the dark; Little Chicken (1943) concerned the first day of school; and The Runaway Bunny (1942) offered the “reassurance of mother’s love.” Krauss pressed her idea, arguing that a series “sponsored by well-known educators would sell well,” and Nordstrom acquiesced. Krauss also proposed a book inspired by her husband’s tendency to let his dogs be themselves that Nordstrom thought “could be extremely funny and good.” The tale about “Why the Dog Is Man’s Best Friend” shows a puppy gradually “taking over a human’s entire life, home, time, money.”18
While Krauss was gearing up to write more stories, Barnaby was wearing Johnson out. In early November 1945, he met with Ted Ferro and Jack Morley to see if they would take over the strip. Johnson would sit in on story conferences and share in the strip’s profits, but he wanted Ferro to take over writing and Morley to take over drawing. They agreed. Johnson was earning 50 percent of the net receipts of Barnaby reprints, with the other half going to PM. Johnson reduced his share to 20 percent, giving Ferro and Morley 15 percent each. Beginning on 31 December 1945, Crockett Johnson’s name no longer appeared on Barnaby.19
11
ART AND POLITICS
Who ever would think a Fairy Godfather could be a nuisance?
—BARNABY, in Crockett Johnson, Barnaby, 28 Apri l1942
Freed from the daily obligation of writing and drawing Barnaby strips, Crockett Johnson at last had some time for all his other Barnaby-related projects. The second issue of the Barnaby Quarterly appeared in November 1945, with the third issue following three months later. Johnson was working on a third Barnaby book, not a collection of redrawn daily strips but “an illustrated story.” Having already illustrated two children’s books and drawn a comic strip that appealed to young people, Johnson was considering writing for children. The new book never appeared, likely because the Barnaby play needed extensive revisions. The idea of making it a musical fell by the wayside, and Jerome Chodorov, cowriter of the successful stage adaptation of My Sister Eileen, began working on it.1
Though Johnson remained active on the left, the Popular Front coalition unraveled, and its members began to attract suspicion. In March 1946, former British prime minister Winston Churchill gave what would become known as his Iron Curtain speech, warning the United States that the Soviets sought the “indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines.” American conservatives took note. A month later, when the Philadelphia Record wanted to claim that the Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions had communist influence, the paper pointed to Johnson: “Suppose we look at the directors of the ICASP. Among them are the following, all closely tied with the Communist Party and/or Daily Worker: Howard Fast, Henrietta Buckmaster, Jose Ferrer, Crockett Johnson, Lillian Hellman (whose trip to Russia was paid for by the U.S.S.R.), and Paul Robeson.” Further arousing the Record’s suspicion was the fact that Johnson supported New York’s 1946 May Day parade, as did William Gropper, Rockwell Kent, Edward Chodorov (Jerome’s brother), Fast, Clifford Odets, and Jerome Robbins.2
Though Johnson was not secretly working for Soviet Russia, the Record’s claims had some merit. Like many in the communist and peace movements, Johnson hoped that the wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union could be extended into the postwar period, marking a new era of peaceful cooperation. On 14 May, he donated one hundred dollars and attended a New Haven “Peace and Security Rally” sponsored by the Communist Party of Connecticut. He joined the National Committee to Win the Peace, which sponsored the Win the Peace Conference at New York’s Manhattan Center near the end of June 1946. As the group’s ad in the Daily Worker noted, its members hoped “to carry forward F.D.R.’s policies of peace based on Big Three unity.” Insinuating that Win the Peace was a communist-front group, Time magazine reported that at the conference, “in a strong Russian accent, delegates clamored for destruction of all atom bombs, [and] acceptance of the Soviet plan for ‘outlawing’ atomic war.”3
Reflecting Johnson’s activism, Barnaby both grew more politically engaged and conveyed wariness about political engagement. Although Johnson was no longer drawing and writing the daily strips, he remained involved in their planning. He was influential in developing a plot line that began in July 1946 about O’Malley persuading the mayor and town council to solve the postwar housing crisis with tent cities. That month and the next, Barnaby’s father, Mr. Baxter, initiated peti
tions and organized protests, rallying citizens against the tent cities and in favor of proper housing. By the end of the month, Baxter’s efforts had persuaded the council to build low-cost housing, though he received no credit for the idea. Baxter says he is satisfied with the results, but the many meetings tire him: “I’m through with politics. You make friends. But you also make enemies. Life’s too short.”4
While Johnson was attending lots of meetings, Jerome Chodorov’s draft of Barnaby and Mr. O’Malley had become a hot Hollywood property. For the film rights, Columbia Pictures bid one hundred thousand dollars plus 5 percent of the film’s profits if the play ran for five weeks, with an additional 1 percent for each week up to 30 percent. The authors would receive 60 percent of that money—half to Johnson and half to Chodorov. RKO then outbid Columbia, with a down payment of one hundred thousand dollars and a final amount that might rise as high twice that, depending on the play’s success. Having created Barnaby in hopes of gaining a steady income, Johnson was now poised to become quite wealthy.5
Producers Barney Josephson and James D. Proctor likewise thought they would do very well with their first venture. To direct, they secured Charles Friedman, director of the hit Broadway musicals Pins and Needles (1937–40) and Carmen Jones (1943–45). Offering to help Friedman stage Barnaby and Mr. O’Malley was playwright Moss Hart, author of You Can’t Take It With You (1936–38) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939–41), both of which became successful films. Director Elia Kazan read Chodorov’s draft and thought the play would be great. Chodorov had focused the story on two main narratives. First, the Baxters’ concern about their son’s “imaginary” fairy godfather prompts them to consult a child psychiatrist. The doctor advises the boy’s father to make himself “more glamorous in the child’s eyes,” so he runs for the New York State Assembly. In a variation on O’Malley’s campaign for Congress in Johnson’s strip, Baxter competes against the well-funded Homer Mintleaf, whom O’Malley criticizes for wasting “thousands of dollars on cheap exhibitionism like that sky writing campaign…. The voters are being asked to support a businessman—well, if this wholesale waste of money is Mintleaf’s idea of business give me a starry-eyed idealist every time!” Barnaby repeats these remarks to reporters, drumming up support for John Baxter. The play ends with O’Malley flying off to Albany to assist Baxter in his new political career. Much of Johnson’s dialogue appears intact, but Chodorov also invents material to stitch together the narrative strands. In mid-August 1946, rehearsals for Barnaby and Mr. O’Malley began, with Irish-born Broadway veteran J. M. Kerrigan in the role of O’Malley. More than six hundred boys tried out to play Barnaby, with the part going to seven-year-old Tommy Hamilton, whom Johnson said looked “more like Barnaby than any real child I ever expected to meet.” To prepare for its arrival on Broadway in early October, Barnaby and Mr. O’Malley would open in Wilmington, Delaware, on 6 September, moving to Baltimore on 9 September and to Boston a week later.6
