Tag Archives: Salome Sun

The Laughing Desert

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Dick Wick Hall

The Laughing Desert, a new book about Jane Hall’s father, humorist Dick Wick Hall, and his nationally syndicated newspaper feature that made the town of Salome, Arizona, famous in the 1920s, has been released just in time for the  celebration of Dick Wick Hall days on October 6. The book includes a complete replica of the 1925-1926 Salome Sun and previously unpublished material about Dick and his family. An introduction places the Sun in its historical context, and an epilogue reviews Dick’s legacy. I’ve added several new photos of Salome and the Hall family, love poems from Dick to his wife, Daysie Sutton Hall, plus images of Arizona’s McMullen Valley in the 1920s. Arizona’s Official State Historian and a prolific author, Marshall Trimble, wrote the Foreword. He’s a sought-after entertainer and ingenious storyteller. (I’ve heard him sing on two CDs and they are great fun. What a voice!)

The fourth issue of the syndicated Salome Sun. December 13, 1925.

Between November 22, 1925, and June 27, 1926, the 8 x  11 inch four-column Sun was released as a humorous feature for the Sunday editions of papers across the country.* It is full of Dick’s stories, poems, tongue-in-cheek news reports, and homegrown philosophy. Just as his daughter, Jane Hall, would do ten years later, Dick poked fun at all forms of pretension. He also came up with delightful anecdotes about small-town journalism, golf and golfers, and desert life. Claude “Put” Putnam’s engaging illustrations of Arizona Outback critters and characters such as Chloride Kate, the Reptyle Kid, Cactus Callie, Gila Monster Jake, and cub reporter Archie Bald Doveface, make The Laughing Desert a great book for readers of all ages.

Over the past several months, I’ve been deeply touched by the citizen-historians of Arizona’s McMullen Valley who want to keep the memory of Dick Wick Hall alive. Several organizations joined forces to raise the funds for a new fence around Dick’s grave and create a plaque in his honor. Other activities are planned as part of this Founder’s Square Renovation Project— an Arizona Centennial Legacy Project (details in the book).

These efforts inspired me to create a digital copy of The Salome Sun from a master copy I bought many years ago.  With the help of print-on-demand technology, it’s been possible to produce the first edition of this book** as part of the Founder’s Square Project. In fact, books are now being printed for each of the 139 students at Salome High School, the “Home of the Fighting Frogs,” and they should arrive in Salome before October 1.

Anyone who loves the history, literature, humor, romance and colorful landscape unique to the American West will find treasures in The Laughing Desert. As an early ad for the paper put it, if you enjoy the great outdoors and laugh at the West of Mark Twain, Owen Wister and Charlie Chaplin, “you will be hilarious over the Salome Sun.”

My research for this book made me realize why Dick had such a great influence on his daughter Jane Hall. Her diaries reveal that his lively imagination, forceful personality, and untimely death shaped her own search for fame as a writer as well as the choices she made as a young woman. (She must have known that Dick would have enjoyed lampooning New York’s cafe society and her debutante antics.)  After Jane arrived in Hollywood at the end of 1937, she wrote to a friend that her fellow writers at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer all “remember Daddy.” In the next post, we’ll return to the experiences that gave Jane the material for the stories and screenplays she wrote after 1934.

*The original mimeographed edition of the Sun was an informal handout at the Salome Service Station. Only a few copies exist (1921-1924) in the Arizona State Library in Phoenix, and the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson.

**In 1998 and 2004, I put together a photocopied booklet about the paper for the Dick Wick Hall Days Celebrations in Salome that is mentioned in search engines, but those books were never intended for wide distribution.

 FOR ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS PLEASE USE THE CONTACT TAB. For an article about the book that appeared in the Yuma Sun check out : http://www.yumasun.com/articles/salome-83109-hall-cutler.html

“Old ladies and old gentlemen are my weakness . . .”

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“I don’t want you to be too grown up when you come – I just want a sweet little girl and everyone will love you. I think Randy will be crazy about you.” Rose Hicks wrote from her office in the Fisk Building at 250 West 57th Street* as she watched the majestic S.S. Leviathan steam out of its birth on the North (Hudson) River. “Someday we’ll sail on her,” she promised Jane. In June 1930 Rose had so many plans for their future together. First Jane and her brother Dick had to travel from Manhattan Beach to her Manhattan. Rose would insist — as soon as the court order came through allowing the children to leave California — that they come by ship. As the summer wore on, the correspondence between Rose and her niece was more affectionate and more playful. But when Rose mentioned that she’d heard Jane was overweight and Dick was too thin, Jane bristled.

“I am very healthy thanks to the powers that be, and 15 years of the right bringing up, but fat! God forbid. Everyone around here still calls me “Little Jane” but I know you will think I am enormous as I’ve grown so much since you were here. I’m 5 foot 1 1/2 inches.” It was a Saturday late in June and Jane was “making the manse sparkle” while Dick drove their grandmother in Teresa into Los Angeles “to water Gram’s yard.” Jane loathed housework — “I do love to cook but that’s all.”

Most of all she wanted to impress her Uncle Randolph whom she had never met. She had chosen “slogans” from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar for people she liked. This one (slightly misquoted) she told him, seemed to suit him: “His was a gentle life and the elements so mixed in him, that Nature might stand up and say to all the world –’this is a man.’”

Jane Hall — Some Early Sketches

And how happy she was that he admired her sketches! ” I’m so glad Uncle Randolph likes the foolish little things I draw. I love ART but not the kind they teach at Redondo High . . ” The art teacher had told her she had “marvelous ability” but did not like the fact that Jane drew “cartoons” of people and animals on the sides of her mechanical drawing sheets. So Jane, alas, had never had an “A” in Art.

According to Daysie Hall’s will, “Mrs. Randolph Hicks of New York,” was  the custodian of her two children “with full power of attorney to take care of their interests in the way she deems best.” Because she lived in New York and Virginia, Rose would not officially be their legal guardian until the end of 1930 when Jane and Dick had spent some time with her. In the meantime, she and her 60-year-old husband prepared to become    parents for the first time. One thing was clear. Randolph Hicks could no longer afford to retire — the financial roller coaster that was to plague even the most prosperous families during the 1930s had only just begun. Still, the Hickses were among the more fortunate Americans as they focused on their priorities for Jane and her college-age brother.

Rose Sutton Parker Hicks in Virginia circa 1939

At forty-eight, Rose Hicks’ ebony hair had  turned white but her large black eyes still intrigued new friends and intimidated others when she was displeased.** She was a polished, well-read and well-traveled woman with a keen mind and unlimited curiosity. Her husband, a scholar of Latin and history as well as the law, appreciated her high standards and her intellect. And, she would tell her niece, “he loves me because I have a lot of character—he likes that better than anything else.” By the time they married in 1919, Randolph Hicks had kept his business interests in Norfolk, Virginia but transferred his law practice to the prestigious firm of Satterlee, Canfield and Stone on Wall Street. Rose’s and Randolph’s social life was an extension of his work; they moved in exclusive circles among accomplished men and their  prominent wives. (Herbert Satterlee’s wife, Louisa, was the eldest daughter of J.P. Morgan.)

R.Randolph Hicks at Poplar Springs in Virginia circa 1939

An eminent trial lawyer, Randolph was also indispensable to his former partner, Arthur J. Morris, who had established the Morris Plan system of industrial banks that gave average Americans installment credit for the first time. Throughout Daysie Hall’s illness, he had done everything he could to support her and his niece and nephew: “The house in Virginia is gradually being built and when it is finished we shall expect to have you there, perhaps we may be able to find a horse for you,” he wrote to Jane as the finishing touches were being put on his fieldstone home at Poplar Springs Farm in Fauquier County, Virginia.

Although Jane may not have known all the details of her uncle’s career or the full extent of her aunt’s plans for her, she was aware that her life was about to change dramatically. Over the next decade the question would be could she remain true to herself in this new world? Rose had asked  if she had ever been out on a date without a chaperone. “Far from it,” Jane fired back. She assured her aunt that she had “no desire to make herself ‘common.’ I have never been “‘out’” at all anyway. Old ladies and old gentleman are my weakness.” Some of the boys she had met called her a “wisey” and were not too keen on her sassy personality. So she had no beaux, “some good friends, that’s all. Boys are very amusing, yes?”  And she continued, “I love things with a polish too, Aunt Rose, but how I detest anything or anybody that’s ALL polish, and nothing underneath! I don’t like anything crude or raw except nature.”

During moments when she was alone with her thoughts, Jane grappled with her faith; she had remained a Catholic ever since Rosa Sutton—their Gram– had taken both Jane and Dick to St. Vincent’s Catholic Church in Los Angeles to sponsor their baptism on Christmas Eve, 1919. (Dickie was then seven and Jane four.) Jane adored her Gram — they had the same strong-willed streak that Rose also shared. She went to a Catholic Church on Sundays even after her mother leaned toward Christian Science, and she loved being around the sisters whose good, clean, plain, faces “make you feel a little holy to talk to them.” Jane had been to a Catholic school in the first grade. In 1928 – before it was clear that her mother was desperately ill – she had hoped to go to St. Mary’s Academy for girls in Los Angeles as a boarder. That would have pleased her grandmother who had been educated in a convent school, but it was not to be. Fortunately, Redondo Union High School had worked out well.

So Rose would have to make sure that her free-spirited and quite spiritual niece fit into the narrow slice of New York and Virginia society that she and her husband frequented. She had been a newcomer to this world just ten years earlier and knew what was expected of the family of an attorney with old Virginia (British, protestant and patriarchal) roots, and memberships in The (Episcopalian) Church Club of New York and the all-male Gilded Age Metropolitan Club. A private school for young ladies that fostered strong values and a sense of propriety might be just right for Jane’s last two years of high school. After all, she was unusually smart, perceptive and eager to please —  that would help.

How relieved Rose must have been that Dick’s immediate future had been settled. He would attend The University of Virginia – her husband’s alma mater — and Rose had no doubt that his scholarly abilities would serve him well. But just to be sure he made a good impression among their friends, she would list him in the New York Social Register*** as “Richard Hall;” the name “Dick Wick” did not sound quite right. How that list of socially prominent families would have amused Dick’s father whose “Salome Sun” poked fun at just such pretensions!

 

*For a time, Rose worked for Randolph’s close friend and client William C. Durant after they all lost a great deal during the Depression. His offices were probably on a high floor. (See link above for the description of the building and its history.)

**During the 1909 high-profile naval investigation into her brother’s death, reporters commented on the then Mrs. Parker’s mesmerizing black eyes.

***Originally there were 18 annual volumes of this list of notable families (usually with Dutch and English ancestry) representing 26 cities. Today there is one definitive book “listing the nation’s foremost families.”

This is post number 13 in the series. Please use the contact tab at the top of the page for any comments or suggestions. For the entire series so far go to the Blog tab at the top of the page and scroll down to the beginning.

 

 

Christmas in Salome, Arizona 1925

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Happy Holidays to all!

This illustration of ”Our Christmas Tree“ (unsigned but possibly by Claude G. Putnam)* appeared in The Salome Sun in 1925. No one imagined it would be Dick Wick Hall’s last Christmas (see prior post).  Dick added the following thoughts using  the sporadic upper case letters that became his signature and some deliberately questionable grammar:  ”Christmas comes pretty near getting by here without noticing us much Much and Vice Versa and Nobody remembered it was Christmas Day until December 25, which happened to be Christmas day – even if we didn’t think of it . . .Archie Bald Doveface reminded us of it.… He also said Folks out here ought to Respect Christmas because Christ come from the desert – but Scar Face Scroggs says if he did he sure had Sense Enough to Leave it; all of which I don’t pretend to Argue About. . . . You can’t very well have a Tree out here where there ain’t nothing much but greasewood and sagebrush, so we compromised by using the Big Cactus near our Office and everybody had a Good Time excepting Happy Jack Aagaard, who volunteered to act as Santa Claus and had to climb up to Light the Candles and Get the Presents while the Reptyle Kid played A Hot Time on the Harmonica . . . The Frog got more Presents than anybody, including a Canteen of Water and a Bath Tub.”

If Dick Wick Hall were alive today you can be sure he would have fun writing posts about ways to improve life in what is now La Paz County (and used to be Yuma County), about the challenges of Golf in the Desert, the adventures of his Frog, the trouble with Easterners and promoting his latest business venture; many posts would poke fun at Society Ladies. And, as Dick was buried near this very same Saguaro, we will end the year on December 31 with a few observations about his ghost and his legacy–with some more insights from Tom Masson who thought Dick never really died. And he has a point about that.

Next month we will follow the Hall family to Los Angeles and Manhattan Beach, California where Jane kept on writing and made quite a success of it . So let’s give Dick the last word and see what he had to say about California: “Folks who have Never Been to California, or those who have Been There Once and can’t get back again, they all Dream of it – a good deal like Women who have Never Had any Pink Silk Undies, or those who Have Had Them and can’t get any more. California, in many ways, Is a good deal like Pink Silk Undies. It Takes Money to live in or Explore the Wonders and Beauties of California –and that is what a Lot of us are Working for –the Money to get either into California  or Pink Silk Undies – and Dreaming of the Good Times we will have When We Get There.”*

*From The Salome Sun. Putnam was the illustrator for the syndicated version of the Sun and for some of Dick’s stories.

PLEASE USE THE CONTACT TAB AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE FOR ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS.

It All Started in Salome in 1925

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On summer days, Salome, Arizona, was so hot, dry, and shade free in the midday sun that its sand hills seemed to be populated only by greasewood and saguaro. In 1925, the would-be town, which had a population of less than two dozen people, sat in a valley framed on its northern edge by the Harcuvar and Harquahala mountains. Devoid of much vegetation, their orange, violet and grey contours changed by the hour as the sun moved across a cloudless sky. Clear air, inspiring vistas, and above all precious minerals drew miners to the southwest end of the Harcuvar Range. Salome was near a railroad track, but its residents waited expectantly for a paved road from Phoenix to Los Angeles. Dick Wick Hall fought hard for this road, and he was sure that someday the town would be “Some Place.” His daughter, Jane, was far more convinced than her mother, Daysie, that it would be, for she was captivated by the desert and by her father’s imagination.

Dick’s rustic office was a one-room adobe building with a mission-style desk and a Smith Premier typewriter that had “lost a Lot of Its Teeth.” There, when he was not writing to potential investors, or urging Yuma County to Salome-Where She Dancedimprove the roads, he created unforgettable characters out of local personalities and creatures: horned lizards, Gila monsters, coyotes, jack rabbits, snakes, scorpions, and centipedes. A seven-year-old bullfrog who could not swim and wore a canteen on his back would become the town’s mascot. (Even today, the high school football team is “The Fighting Frogs.”) When he had time, Dick used these characters in a compilation of local “news,” humor and philosophy spread out over two sides of a legal-sized mimeographed sheet and decorated with his rough sketches. He did this at first for his own amusement and certainly that of his children. His “Salome Sun” was full of anecdotes that poked fun at Eastern tourists, bankers, Wall Street, high society folks, Democrats, and even the town and its environs.

“Salomey Jane,” as he called her, often came into her father’s office to draw and write poems and stories of her own. She was delighted when her father brought her ink so she didn’t have to do all her work with a pencil. Before long, he would teach her to use a typewriter, and how to send out work that appealed to the editors of magazines and newspapers.

Outside in the sprawling desert landscape of the Arizona Outback, barely a handful of buildings made up the town. One of these was a modest, one-story wood house with a  small patch of green grass and a rose garden in the front. This was home to Jane and her family. Behind the house, her father’s one-of-a-kind “Greasewood Golf Lynx” stretched twenty-three miles up into the mountains and took 46 days to play with caddies on horseback—if you were lucky. For Jane, this make-believe course was primarily a place to ride “Sunny Boy,” aka “The Killer,” a Cayuse pony that belonged to Mrs. Lillian (“Mike”) Thomas, who was her “best friend” in the desert.  When she was not in the saddle, Jane played a fierce game of cards, excelled at miniature golf and loved to roast spuds and marshmallows. A fearless little girl, at least fifty percent tomboy, she took great pride in a brown leather pencil case embossed with the words “Outlaw Jane Salome Arizona.”

In 1925, her father’s work had become popular– The Saturday Evening Post, one of the most successful magazines in America, now featured excerpts from Dick’s small town newssheet and his stories. But “Little Jane” was not about to be outdone by the father she adored. She had joined the Junior Club of The Los Angeles Times which brought out work by young writers every Sunday on “Aunt Dolly’s Page.”

That summer she had sent in her first story,”Bill’s Greatest Victory.” The protagonist is an eleven-year-old boy who learns to control his temper. But Jane was impatient. As she tells it: “Picture a little girl who was always scribbling away on a piece of paper, trying to write a story, but hardly ever succeeding, then imagine her sending a story to ‘Aunt Dolly’ and waiting, and waiting” for months with no word. Then, suddenly, the “most thrilling moment” of Jane’s short life occurred. The train from Los Angeles brought her a letter from The Times with a money order for $2.50. Her story came out on November 8; for ten-year-old Jane, the possibilities seemed endless.

See the Gallery for images of Dick’s Frog and The Salome Sun. Claude G. Putnam’s engaging drawings illustrated the paper. The town is in the McMullen Valley in what is now La Paz County. See also The Laughing Desert:Dick Wick Hall’s Salome Sun (2012) with a Foreword by Arizona State historian Marshall Trimble, and a replica of the syndicated paper that appeared in 1926 and 1926. (Available on Amazon.)