by Paula Becker
CHAPTER SEVEN. BETTY IN HOLLYWOODLAND
1“ ‘Egg and I’ Bought for Colbert Film,” New York Times, April 19, 1946. International Pictures merged with Universal in July 1946, becoming Universal-International Pictures, For the sake of clarity, it is hereafter referred to as Universal-International. Betty’s contract guaranteed her one hundred thousand dollars in four installments, plus ten thousand for each remake or spin-off.
2Bob Rains to Bud Ernst, June 22, 1946, Correspondence, Box 411, Universal-International Pictures Collection, University of Southern California (USC) Cinematic Arts Library.
3Both wires June 10, 1946, MacDonald family archives.
4Florabel Muir, “The Hen, The Egg, and Betty,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 2, 1947.
5Betty MacDonald to Brownie Stewart, July 25, 1946, emphasis in original.
6W. S. McClintic to Betty MacDonald, May 23, 1947. Geoducks are the world’s largest burrowing clams, native to the Pacific Northwest.
7Harriet Putnam was played by the Universal contract player Louise Allbritton.
8Memo, William Gordon to Leonard Goldstein, September 13, 1946, Folder 21390 (Production Code), Box 669, Universal-International Pictures Collection, USC Cinematic Arts Library.
9This figure is at variance with the judgment amount mentioned in 1944 court documents. The men who located Bob were the Universal-International employee John Beck and the former FBI agent H. Frank Angell.
10Folder 25692, Box 817, Universal-International Pictures Collection, USC Cinematic Arts Library. The studio filmed the exterior shots in Southern California, near Big Bear; at the Pasadena YMCA Meadow; at Shay Ranch; and on U.S. Forest Service land in the Mount Slattery Range. The rest of the movie was shot on Universal’s stage number 12.
11The Egg and I never specifies the years in which it is set. Betty makes several references that are anachronistic for the 1920s.
12The film is in black and white, but wardrobe notes indicate the colors of the garments.
13Claudette Colbert was not satisfied with Adrian’s take on checkered farm dresses, rejecting four of them. The dresses that appeared in the film were manufactured in Universal’s wardrobe department.
14Jack D. Grant, “The Egg and I,” Hollywood Reporter, March 24, 1947.
15Sydney’s presence in one on-set photograph indicates that she joined them at some point.
16“Women of the Year,” Frederick Post (Maryland), January 4, 1947.
17Trenton Evening News (New Jersey), April 7, 1949.
18“Crosley Sets the Pace Again,” magazine advertisement, ca. November 1951, in the possession of the author.
19Heskett’s release specifically released use of his first name and story as it appeared in The Egg and I to Betty, Lippincott, and Universal-International.
20Work Orders, Box 239, Universal-International Pictures Collection, USC Cinematic Arts Library.
21Trailer Continuity and Dialogue, Folder 803, Box 109, Universal-International Pictures Collection, USC Cinematic Arts Library.
22“Hollywood & I, or Betty in Screenland,” ST Rotogravure, April 27, 1947.
23Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, February 11, 1947.
24No prints of this trailer have apparently survived. These descriptions are extrapolated from animation cels reproduced in the press book for the movie, in the Press Book Collection, USC Cinematic Arts Library.
25“The Egg and I,” Daily Variety, March 24, 1947.
26Clive Hirschhorn, The Universal Story (New York: Crown, 1983), 157.
27Playdates, Folder 23010, Box 709, Universal-International Pictures Collection, USC Cinematic Arts Library.
CHAPTER EIGHT. AUTHING
1Robert van Gelder, “Interview with a Best-Selling Author: Betty MacDonald,” Cosmopolitan, November 1947, 11.
2Sydney then sold the house, carrying the mortgage, which provided her with a modest monthly income.
3Mary Bard Jensen to Bernice Baumgarten, February 15, 1958, Baumgarten mss., Manuscripts Department, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
4Betty MacDonald to Mrs. DeGoojer, October 18, 1945.
5This manuscript still exists in the MacDonald family archives. Although not dated, the byline reads “Betty Bard,” indicating that the draft predated her marriage to Don MacDonald.
6Betty MacDonald to Mrs. DeGoojer, October 18, 1945.
7MacDonald, Plague, 15.
8Ibid., 28.
9Betty MacDonald to J. A. McKaughan, July 20, 1948.
10J. A. McKaughan to Betty MacDonald, September 27, 1948. Since 1872, Smith Brothers cough drops have been marketed in boxes bearing their likenesses.
11Betty MacDonald to J. Crissey, August 6, 1948.
12Dr. F. B. Trudeau to Miss Suzanne G. Rhoads, October 8, 1948, copy in Betty MacDonald family archives.
13MacDonald, Plague, 59.
14Ibid., 121.
15Ibid., 233.
16Jean South, “Review: The Plague and I,” American Journal of Nursing 49, no. 2 (February 1949): 42.
17“Betty M’Donald’s New Book Set for October,” ST Magazine, June 27, 1948, 22.
18Stephanie Benet, “TB Treat,” Saturday Review, November 20, 1948, 17.
19After Gwen Croxford, Betty’s sister Dede Bard Goldsmith and then Elizabeth (Beth) McKimmons helped with correspondence and retyping manuscripts.
20Betty MacDonald to Norah Flannery, August 13, 1948.
21Stony Wold patients to Betty MacDonald, May 26, 1947; Betty MacDonald to Stony Wold patients, June 10, 1947.
22Betty MacDonald to Kazi [Monica Sone], December 30, 1948.
23Monica Sone, Nisei Daughter (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953), 139.
24Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, dated January 8, 1952, but contextually obviously from 1953.
25Nisei Daughter was the only book Betty endorsed, despite requests from many other authors.
26Betty outlined her projects, and Baumgarten sold them to Lippincott based on the outlines. Lippincott then issued Betty an advance, and Betty and Baumgarten began the writing and editorial process.
27Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, August 27, 1948.
28Bernice Baumgarten to Betty MacDonald, September 8, 1948.
29Van Gelder, “Interview with a Best-Selling Author.”
30Betty MacDonald to Carol V. Bird, November 22, 1950, Folder 1950, Accession 11708, Boxed with 11679, University of Virginia Special Collections, Charlottesville, Virginia. Betty was putting a positive spin on her writing process. Almost without exception, her letters to family, friends, and Bernice Baumgarten describe how little writing time she had and complain that the time she did carve out was fragmented.
31Sample reply letters, Betty MacDonald collection, Vashon Heritage Museum Archives, Vashon Island, Washington.
32Notes for a 1955 speech to insurance agents in Enumclaw, Washington, MacDonald family archives.
33Maggie Spivey to Betty MacDonald, February 4, 1955.
CHAPTER NINE. THE NAME’S KETTLE
1Paraphrased from Betty MacDonald and George Fisher radio transcript, n.d., Folder Promotion, Box 411, Universal-International Pictures Collection, USC Cinematic Arts Library.
2The Superior Court of the State of Washington for King County, No. 382791, Memorandum filed September 27, 1947, PSRA. The damages they sought would amount to $932,000 in 2014 dollars.
3The Superior Court of the State of Washington for King County, No. 382791, Complaint filed March 29, 1947, PSRA.
4No date, but the context and use of Basket rather than Kettle as the family name indicates that Betty wrote this note in early 1945. A list of suggested changes for The Egg and I, also undated and written by either Bernice Baumgarten or a Lippincott staff member, includes the line, “Suggest changing name Basket to something else because it is too much like Bishop, the family’s name.”
5Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, March 12, 1945.
6Betty MacDonald, draft for night letter telegram to Bernice Baumgarten, A
pril 20, 1945.
7Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, May 12, 1945.
8Stipulation, King County Civil Court Case 412157, PSRA. The stores were Eisenbeis Stationers and Harry Hirtzier’s on Water Street in Port Townsend and Olympic Stationers in Port Angeles. Lippincott shipped 223 copies of the book to Olympic Stationers in the final months of 1945, 542 copies during 1946, 50 copies in 1947, 4 in 1948, and 3 in 1949.
9MacDonald, Egg, 125.
10Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, June 20, 1946.
11Judge Hugh Todd, Memorandum Opinion No. 382791, Superior Court of the State of Washington for King County, filed September 27, 1947, PSRA.
12August 8, 1946, MacDonald family archives.
13The other plaintiffs were Herbert, Wilbur, Eugene, Arthur, Charles, and Walter Bishop, Edith Bishop Stark, Madeline Bishop Holmes, and Herbert Bishop’s wife, Janet Bishop.
14The consolidated suit is King County Civil Court Case 412157, PSRA.
15To clarify, two extensive families in Jefferson County are named Bishop. The patriarchs of the two families were William Bishop (a state senator) and Albert Bishop. In 1900, the marriage of William Bishop and Madeline Ammeter joined the two Bishop families, since Madeline Ammeter and Albert’s wife, Susanna Ammeter Bishop, were sisters. William Bishop’s first wife had been a Snohomish Native American woman known as Sally [Lagwah]. The couple divorced around 1895.
16“Betty MacDonald Gets Movie Pay without Writing a Word,” ST, October 15, 1949. In the book, the Kettle family is depicted as having fifteen children, not eighteen.
17MacDonald, Egg, 114.
18Ibid., 117.
19“Edward Leroy ‘Bud’ Bishop, Logger and Custom Farmer of Chimacum Valley,” Jefferson County Historical Society Oral History Project, Volume 42, p. 6, 1992, Jefferson County Historical Society Research Center, Port Townsend, Washington.
20After Alfred Larson’s death, Anita Larson kept a twenty-acre parcel where her house stood and where Betty and Bob’s house had been, selling the other twenty acres. Dave Larson and Ilah Moody Larson told me that over time, the family lost track of the visitor’s book.
21The publisher of the Pt. Townsend Leader, Richard F. McCurdy, was deposed by Betty’s attorney, George Guttormsen, on February 1, 1951. McCurdy told Guttormsen that Madeline Bishop Holmes visited the newspaper office to arrange for a story publicizing a Bishop family reunion at the Bishops’ house which, she said, was known as the Kettle home.
22“Notes on Conference with Betty MacDonald, The Egg and I, Re: the Bishop suits, Date: January 27, 1950,” Betty MacDonald Collection, Vashon Heritage Museum Archive, Vashon Island, Washington.
23Probably Quilcene or Brinnon.
24DeWitt Williams appeared for the Bon Marché.
25The Bon Marché, Inc., was dismissed as a defendant because Allied Stores, Inc., actually operated the Bon Marché store at the time.
26“Betty M’Donald Is Sued,” ST, February 7, 1951.
27“Gold Bar Woman Never Denied Being a ‘Kettle,’ ” ST, February 13, 1951.
28Lucille Cohen, “Witness Says He’s Crowbar in ‘Egg’ Trial,” SP-I, February 14, 1951.
29Lucille Cohen, “Witness Steals the Show at ‘Egg’ Trial,” SP-I, February 8, 1951.
30“ ‘Crowbar,’ ‘Clamface,’ ‘Geoduck’ References Highlight ‘Egg’ Suit,” ST, February 8, 1951.
31Lucille Cohen, “ ‘Egg’ Author Denies Depicting Bishop Family in Best-Seller,” SP-I, February 16, 1951. Another witness, William Cundiff, contradicted Baird’s testimony on this point the following day, testifying that he’d attended every one of the barn dances in question and had never seen Albert Bishop introduced from the stage as Pa Kettle.
32Blanche Hamilton Hutchings to Betty MacDonald, n.d. [February 1951].
33“Betty MacDonald Flees Courtroom While under Cross-Examination,” ST, February 16, 1951.
34“Resemblances ‘Coincidence,’ Author of ‘Egg’ Testifies,” ST, February 16, 1951.
35“Betty Tells Jurors ‘The Egg’ Imaginary,” SP-I, February 17, 1951.
36George Guttormsen, Memorandum of Authorities regarding admissibility of offers to compromise or executed compromise, King County Civil Court Case 412157, PSRA.
37Lucile Cohen, “Betty MacDonald Winner in Suit by Unanimous Verdict,” SP-I, February 21, 1951.
38Instructions to Jurors, King County Civil Court Case 412517, PSRA.
39Instruction 19, Instructions to Jurors, King County Civil Court Case 412517, PSRA.
40“ ‘Egg’ Author Relaxes after Suit Verdict,” SP-I, February 21, 1951.
41William J. Wilkins, The Sword and The Gavel: An Autobiography by the Last of the Nuremberg Judges (Seattle: Writing Works, n.d. [ca. 1981]), 288. Wilkins served as a member of the U.S. military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, in the trial of the Krupp Munitions case after World War II.
42“ ‘Egg’ Author Relaxes after Suit Verdict.”
43Betty MacDonald to jury foreman Frank Bishop, February 26, 1951. Frank Bishop was not related to the Bishops who brought suit.
44Paula Becker interview with Aldena Bishop, Dave Larson, Ilah Larson Moody, and Katy McCoy, Chimacum, Washington, June 13, 2014.
45“Edward Leroy ‘Bud’ Bishop, Logger and Custom Farmer.”
46The book has been redesigned and reset over the years. These versions are technically new editions, but, other than the correction of a few typographical errors in early printings, the text is unchanged.
CHAPTER TEN. FAMILY MATTERS
1“Miss Anne MacDonald Takes Vows,” ST, January 23, 1949.
2“To a New Home in California,” ST, January 22, 1950.
3“Glamorous Grandmothers,” Coronet, February 1951, 123.
4Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, August 26, 1949.
5Tillie Olsen, “Wives, Mothers, Enablers,” in Silences (New York: Delacorte Press, 1978).
6Paula Becker telephone interview with Brian Tobey Callahan, November 9, 2012.
7Betty MacDonald to Joanie and Jerry [Joan Keil and Jerry Keil], August 2, 1950.
8MacDonald family archives.
9Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, September 12, 1947.
10Betty MacDonald to Sissie [Mary Bard Jensen], May 19, 1957.
11“Former Mate of ‘Egg and I’ Author Slain,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 24, 1951.
12“In the matter of the adoption of Anne Elizabeth Strunk and Joan Dorothy Keil,” King County Superior Court Decree of Adoption #122895, MacDonald family archives.
CHAPTER ELEVEN. ANYBODY CAN WRITE BOOKS
1MacDonald, Anybody, 9.
2Betty MacDonald to Joan Forrest, January 23, 1951.
3Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, August 26, 1949.
4Lucile McDonald, “There’s No More Privacy Once You’re a Best-Seller,” ST, August 20, 1950.
5MacDonald, Anybody, 256.
6Brown section, Seattle Sunday Times, January 1, 1933. The event was cosponsored by the American Legion and the Black Ball Ferry Lines, which was one of Mary Bard’s major advertising clients. “The Winners,” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 26, 1937.
7Josephine Lawrence, “The Executives and I,” Saturday Review of Literature, September 16, 1950.
8Betty MacDonald to editors of the Saturday Evening Post, March 22, 1950.
9Tay Hohoff to Betty MacDonald, December 2, 1949.
10Bertram Lippincott to Betty MacDonald, December 23, 1949.
11Lawrence, “The Executives and I.”
12Samuel T. Williamson, “Betty’s Adventures (Con’t.),” New York Times, August 27, 1950.
13Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, February 11, 1947.
14Mary Bard, Just Be Yourself (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1956), 11, 12. Salli’s name is spelled Sally in Mary’s books, as Salli herself spelled it during part of her youth.
15Betty MacDonald to Helen Dean Fish, June 2, 1951.
16Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, June 2, 1951.
17Bett
y MacDonald to Joanie and Jerry [Joan Keil and Jerry Keil], August 2, 1950.
18Julie Risdon, “Author Betty MacDonald Turns from Eggs to Cows at Los Laureles Ranch,” Monterey Peninsula Herald, June 24, 1952, 6.
19Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, April 21, 1954.
20Betty MacDonald to Don MacDonald, April 29, 1954.
21Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, March 9, 1953.
22Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, n.d., but marked by family as dating from June 1954.
23The MacDonald family archives contain a draft of “Sandra Surrenders,” which Betty states in Anybody was one of the few things she’d written prior to Egg. The draft, dated February 10, 1931, carries Mary’s byline. While she was revising Egg, Betty sent Bernice Baumgarten a short story called “The Red Satin Raincoat.” Baumgarten thought it needed work, and with the excitement of Egg’s publication, Betty never returned to the project.
24Betty MacDonald to Bernice Baumgarten, April 28, 1953.
25MacDonald, Onions, 43.
26Although The Egg and I depicts a marriage, Betty functions more as lackey than helpmate.
27MacDonald, Onions, 16.
28George Stevens to Bernice Baumgarten, July 7, 1954.
29Betty MacDonald to George Stevens, n.d., but responding to a letter from Stevens, sent July 7, 1954.
30Betty Lyon, “Meet Betty (Robinson Crusoe) MacDonald,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 15, 1955.
31Richard L. Neuberger, “Delightful Discomfort,” New York Times Book Review, May 15, 1955, 3.
32The mythical lumberjack Paul Bunyan, while ostensibly “born” in Maine, was closely associated with the Western and Pacific Northwestern regions of the United States and Canada. The character was used extensively to promote the lumber industry. Widely depicted in popular culture and advertising, Bunyan captured the public’s imagination.
CHAPTER TWELVE. GOODBYE, GOODBYE TO EVERYTHING
1Betty MacDonald to Sissy, Jensie, Mari, Salli, and Heidi and Irene [Mary Bard Jensen, Clyde Jensen, Mari Jensen, Salli Jensen, and Heidi Jensen. Irene may have been the Jensen’s dog.], April 1, 1955.
