Making Blood-Splattered Words Dance Off a Typewriter

Until I read a comment from Richard Polt on my post about it being Far From Over for typewriters, I thought I knew a lot about Ernest Hemingway and a fair bit about Red Smith (below, this time with an Olympia standard).

I was familiar with the quotation about "sitting at a typewriter and opening a vein", but had never felt inclined to question whether the widely accepted wisdom was right, that it came from Hemingway. It seems I was far from alone in this, and I note that, having commented on Richard's comment, Taylor Harbin is now contemplating a change to the sub-head on his Oblivion Sphere blog.

It turns out Red Smith didn't actually write this line, but spoke it (in various combinations of words) - after being "dragooned" into addressing New York Herald Tribune advertising salesmen, and also in interviews:

These pages are from Robert Schmuhl's introduction to his book Making Word Dance: Reflections on Red Smith, Journalism and Writing (for which the prologue was written by Red's son Terence Smith):

Schmuhl also wrote:

The truth about the "bleeding" quotation was (at least partially) uncovered in a blog called The Kill Zone: Insider Perspectives from Top Thriller and Mystery Writers in November 2012. In a post called "The Perils of Internet Information" by James Scott Bell, the author wrote:

"Recently, I’ve seen another bastardised quotation zapping around the Internet. It’s a quote attributed to Ernest Hemingway. As a Hemingway-phile, I was quite interested. The quote goes like this: 'There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.' I was immediately suspicious. Something was rotten in the state of Bartlett, for it was the great sports writer Red Smith who said, 'There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and just open a vein.' (There are some variations on this, but the source is clear.)"

Bell then linked to Wikipedia, which says, "Smith is one plausible source for the quotation, 'Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.' In 1946, sportswriter Paul Gallico wrote, 'It is only when you open your veins and bleed on to the page a little that you establish contact with your reader.' In 1949, columnist Walter Winchell wrote, 'Red Smith was asked if turning out a daily column wasn't quite a chore ... "Why, no", dead-panned Red. "You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed."'

Bell went on: "This quote, in fact, became the basis of a book on writing, Just Open a Vein, edited by William Brohaugh (Writer’s Digest Books, 1987). The Red Smith quote, with attribution, was printed right on the cover. So how did these words get into Ernest Hemingway’s mouth, and thence to the wide world of the Internet?

"A TV writer did it, that’s how! As I investigated this further, I came across an Entertainment Weekly article from May 28, 2012, by Ken Tucker. It was a review of an HBO movie about Hemingway and his third wife, Martha Gellhorn. Tucker writes: 'There’s a lot of dialogue that sounds as studied as Hemingway must have intended it to sound as he declaimed it (“Let me tell you about writers — the best ones are all liars”) and stuff that’s almost certainly cobbled together from various sources. (I was particularly amused when a negative review of the movie today in The New York Times made a point of ridiculing one Hemingway line - “There’s nothing to writing, Gellhorn - all you do is sit down to your typewriter and bleed” - but failed to realise it most likely derived from a New York Times sportswriter Red Smith’s wry dictum, “Writing it easy; all you have to do is open a vein and bleed.”).'"

Clive Owen as Hemingway

Bell added: "So there you have it. It seemed like a good line to give to Hemingway in a biopic. But there’s another problem with having him say this (besides the fact that he never said it). The problem is he never would have said it! 

"Because Hemingway drafted in longhand, and he drafted standing up! He stood because of injuries sustained during his service in World War I. It was easier on him to be on his feet.

"He usually only got to a maximum of 500 words in a single day, because he was famously trying to write 'one true sentence' followed by another, and so on. (NOTE: There’s a famous author photo of Hemingway at a typewriter for the back cover of For Whom the Bell Tolls. But this was a staged photo to emphasise the Hemingway field reporter mythos).

"So let’s be clear, when doing the hard work (the 'bleeding') of a first draft, Hemingway:

"Did not sit.

"Did not use a typewriter."

Sorry, Mr Bell, but Hemingway DID sit and he DID use a typewriter. These are NOT staged photos:

Anyway, back to Red Smith:

Smith, in pink shirt, interviews Muhammad Al in Manila in 1975

Note the quotation under the images above.

I love this tribute, from Frank Boggs, published on January 18, 1982, eight days after Smith died:

Red Smith:

the greatest typewriter player

of our time

Red Smith was the only sports writer in history whom the rest of us also saw as an accomplished musician.

He played the typewriter. It sang so beautifully, even though he used nothing more than the forefinger of each hand. He would sit in the hullabaloo of a World Series or Kentucky Derby or Super Bowl pressbox and write his column. When he would finish, and we would see him put his musical instrument back into the typewriter case, we knew he had just completed another masterful job of putting the dictionary's words into better order than Webster.

Walter Wellesley Smith died Friday. He was 76. He had been writing four sports columns a week for the New York Times, but in the last column he wrote he said his output was being reduced to three.

For most of his life, and for all of mine and probably yours, Red Smith was acknowledged as the best sports columnist ever. His lead was considered so great that nobody finished second.

Last July, when the Los Angeles Times did a study of sports columnists, Smith was quoted on today's writing breed. "Some of these amateur psychologists on the sports pages bore me. Some columnists today give me the distinct impression that they actively dislike sports. They should have a decent regard for their field. I like to see them laugh now and then. Sports are good fun. We should view them with a light heart."

Unlike the pages we write for, newspapers do not list rosters of sports writers. But Red Smith was a small man, about 5-8 I would think. Weight around 150. I first met him about 20 years ago and wondered when his hair had been red. His face was a little reddish, but his hair was white.

He was the sort who stood back in a crowd. He listened much more than he talked. His manners were as impeccable as his writing. He was a thoroughbred gentleman.

It was when he wrote that he stood out in the crowd.

When he was interviewed a few years back for Jerome Holztman's book, No Cheering in the Press Box, Smith said: "I like to report on the scene around me, on the little piece of the world as I see it, as it is in my time. And I like to do it in a way that gives the reader a little pleasure, a little entertainment. I've always had the notion that people go to spectator sports to have fun and then they grab the paper to read about it and have fun again."

And he also said, "The guy I admire most in the world is a good reporter, and I'd like to be called that. I'd like to be considered good and honest and reasonably accurate."

I am sure we never imagined Red Smith would not be with us, or that at next week's Super Bowl he would not be present, so that all of us who are taller could look up to him. Because he was good and honest and accurate.

And the greatest musician of our time. 

Red Smith as a baby, far right:

Announcing a Grandchild

My son Danny and his wife Emily were finally able last evening to officially announce an upcoming addition to the family, after a series of ultrasound and blood tests showed everything is coming up roses. Emily and Danny came up with a very novel way to make the announcement, to the delight of their many friends and to family members. I've already found the temerity to suggest that, if it's a boy, they should call him Remington Royal Hansen-Writing Ball-Messenger!

Meanwhile, my bonny grandson in England is now more than a year old, and already frequenting bars!:

Bath Ruth's Ghostwriter

This shot of Bath Ruth talking to his ghostwriter was organised by Ruth's agent Christy Walsh and taken in New York in 1922.

Walter Christy Walsh, born in St Louis on December 2, 1891, is considered baseball's first agent. As a young man he played the part of a gravedigger in an amateur production of Hamlet, providing an omen for his future.

He was introduced to the art of ghostwriting in 1912, when working for the Los Angeles Herald he secured an interview with baseballer Christy Mathewson, who was vacationing in California. After over-spruiking the story to his editors, they decided it sounded too good for a cub reporter to write, so handed it to Adela Nora Rogers St Johns (1894-1988), the later novelist who wrote screenplays for silent movies but is best remembered for her groundbreaking exploits as "The World's Greatest Girl Reporter" during the 1920s and 30s and her celebrity interviews for Photoplay magazine. Her soon-to-be-husband, chief copy editor William Ivan St Johns, remarked to Walsh, "That, young man, is your first lesson in the art of ghostwriting." Walsh later recalled, "And indeed it was. Having one's notes transcribed and set down in flowing phrases by such scriveners as W. Somerset Maugham, S. S. Van Dine or Adela Rogers St Johns is the last word in the ancient and honourable craft of literary make-believe. So I learned about ghosting from Adela."
A would-be sports cartoonist, Walsh went on to form a highly successful syndicate of ghostwriters for baseball’s most celebrated players, cementing the term “ghostwriter” in the vocabulary in the process. Among Ruth's early ghostwriters was the great Westbrook Pegler, but Ruth's most famous ghostwriter was Ford Christopher Frick, later baseball's third commissioner.

One of Walsh’s most heralded PR feats was to get a team of doctors to administer tests to Ruth to determine whether Ruth possessed any extra physical or psychological advantages.  The results were reported in a Popular Science Monthly article - "Why Babe Ruth is Greatest Home-Run Hitter" - and picked up by The New York Times. 

After working as a reporter and part-time cartoonist in Los Angeles, and in advertising for Maxwell-Chalmers automobiles, Walsh saw an opportunity for ghostwriting. He began by ghostwriting for World War I air ace Eddie Rickenbacker, describing the 1921 Indianapolis 500 and earning a half share in $874. In 1921 Walsh staked out the Ansonia Hotel, where Ruth and his wife were staying, and got the chance to stand in for a beer-boy to deliver grog to Ruth’s room.

In his 40-page 1937 memoir Adios to Ghosts, Walsh described how the next day he produced "a badly wrinkled contract in the form of a short, informal letter and without question, [Ruth] inscribes 'George Herman Ruth' in the correct spot and I go in search of a ghost to do the writing". Walsh's team of stars and ghostwriters quickly grew - to 34 in the case of the reporters, who included Damon Runyon (below).

Baseballer Walter Johnson was pursued by Walsh into the Pullman’s washroom of a train station in New Haven, Connecticut, to sign up for the syndicate. The syndicate, wrote Walsh, was "founded as a matter of dire necessity by an out-of-a-job cartoonist, started on a shoestring; and in 1937, after having weathered 16 October classics in the ball parks of seven major league cities, voluntarily shuffled off its World's Series coil."  

Shirley Povich, above, wrote a column in the Washington Post describing Ruth’s failed plans to cover the 1924 World Series. "My neighbour in the press box, according to the seating plan,  was to be, of all people, Babe Ruth. He had signed on to cover the World Series for the Christy Walsh Syndicate. That sort of thing was commonplace for the game’s big stars. They would be provided a press box seat, along with a ghostwriter and a telegraph operator, and never set their pen to paper. But minutes before the game, the word had come over the wires that Ruth had suffered an appendicitis and had been rushed to Emergency Hospital.  His ghostwriter also dismissed himself for the day. When Christy Walsh arrived and was told about Ruth’s absence, and why, he bellowed quickly, 'Get me an operator!' Walsh took Ruth’s seat and began to dictate: 'Washington DC, October 1, by Babe Ruth, paragraph, quote.  As I lie here, in Washington’s Emergency Hospital, as a native New Yorker my heart is with the Giants, but as an American Leaguer, it is my duty to root for the Senators.' And so it went."
Walsh was sports director for the 1939-40 World’s Fair in New York City. He died on December 29, 1955, in North Hollywood.

Ford C. Frick was commissioner of baseball from 1951-65, having been elected unanimously to replace Happy Chandler by the 16 club owners on September 20, 1951, after Cincinnati Reds president Warren Giles withdrew from the contest. Frick had served 17 years as National League president, where he was succeeded by Giles.
Born on December 19, 1894, in Wawaka, Indiana, Frick attended high school in Rome City and DePauw University in Green Castle, graduating in 1915. In the fall of 1916, Frick joined the Colorado High School faculty as an English teacher. He also began working for the Colorado Springs Gazette and soon gave up teaching to concentrate on newspaper work. In 1918 he became supervisor of training in the rehabilitation division of the War Department for four states - Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming. In early 1919, he worked for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver before returning to Colorado Springs to open an advertising agency and write an editorial column for the Colorado Springs Telegraph. Frick went east in 1922 to join the sports staff of the New York American. In August 1923, he moved to the Evening Journal. While employed there, he covered the Yankees and joined Walsh's team to became a ghostwriter for Ruth, writing everything from newspaper articles to books, including Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball.
During his National League presidency he was instrumental in saving the Brooklyn, Philadelphia and Boston franchises from bankruptcy and also helped place the Cincinnati and Pittsburgh clubs on firmer financial footing. In 1947 Frick threatened to ban players on the St Louis Cardinals who had proposed to sit out in response to Jackie Robinson’s debut in the National League. “If you do this you are through, and I don’t care if it wrecks the league for 10 years,” Frick told the strikers. “You cannot do this, because this is America.” Frick retired in November 1965 and died on April 10, 1978, aged 83.

Booking Hero uses Consul 222.1 Semi-Portable Typewriter to write Great Dutch Novel

Further evidence that it's Far From Over for the typewriter and that the manual portable is on the way back comes in the Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam Booking.com Booking Hero commercial released last month. The ad was made by production company MJZ and directed by Dante Ariola.

It's a great promotion for the typewriter, as a man's most cherished dreams come to reality after he stays at a hostel he found on Booking.com.

And that includes getting to use a Czechoslovakian-made Consul 222.1 semi-portable typewriter in a log cabin to write the great (Dutch? Czech? American?) novel.

Oddly, however, the storyline for the commercial doesn't even mention the typewriter!

It says: "One man's life changed when he stayed at a hostel he found on Booking.com. The last night he spent there turned into the first day of the rest of his life. An unforgettable journey soon began as he got engaged at a romantic chateau, got married, had children and led a life of exploration. Later in his life, while staying at a log cabin, he writes [ON A TYPEWRITER, FOR GOODNESS SAKE!!!] the story that was living inside of him. That story becomes a masterpiece and the book release is announced at a Tokyo five-star hotel. As he celebrates with his wife and children at a tropical paradise by going hang gliding, he takes in the full life he's been living. When you get your booking right, life can get as extraordinary as this one."
AS LONG AS YOU REMEMBER TO TAKE YOUR PORTABLE TYPEWRITER!

See post about my Consul 222.1 here.

It's Far From Over

If memory serves me right - and on the subject of the Sport of Kings, it's some furlongs from being infallible - it was Richard Polt who first pointed out there is a champion racehorse in Jamaica called Typewriter. (In the mid-1970s there was also an American thoroughbred called Typewriter, by Donut King out of Via Bendita.)

Indeed, just last week Typewriter was unanimously voted Jamaica's 2014 Horse of the Year, beating off Potcheen (which takes its name from smokin' Irish moonshine, Poitín) and Perfect Neighbour. Not sure how Typewriter got its name, but it's by Western Classic out of Doc's Paladin, and is part-owned by a lady called Valentine. Typewriter was also voted champion stayer.
Mention of staying brings me to footage of a horse race at the New York Racing Association's Aqueduct Racetrack in Queen's, NYC, which I stumbled across on the Irish Press Facebook page yesterday. I'm no expert of racing, but this performance SO put me in mind of typewriters ...

I think the evidence suggests the run of typewriters is Far From Over! Typewriters have hung in there, while overtaken by electrics and wedges and word processors and whatever, but they might still finish up in front.

W.C.Heinz with his Remington portable typewriter

On the subject of horse racing in Jamaica, I am reminded of the wonderful tribute paid to the great New York sportswriter W.C.Heinz by ESPN's Gare Joyce when Heinz died, aged 93, in a Bennington, Vermont, nursing home, almost exactly seven years ago.

Joyce pointed out that Heinz was covering a race meeting in Jamaica in July 1949 when he wrote for the New York Sun one of the all-time classic pieces of sports journalism, Death of a Racehorse. Of course, this was not Jamaica in the West Indies, where Typewriter runs, but another Queen's, NYC, racetrack. Ten years after Heinz wrote his famous piece, this Jamaica racetrack was redeveloped as a housing project. Rochdale Village now stands there.

Joyce said, "The impact on sportswriting of W.C. Heinz cannot be overestimated." His 1949 story about a horse called Air Lift "would have left only a hoofprint on the heart of his owner when he broke down if W.C. Heinz had not witnessed it from a seat behind a typewriter on press row at a racetrack in Jamaica." Joyce described the story as "a classic piece of literature. Not sports literature, mind you. No, a short story that would stand up with those knocked out by the acknowledged American master of the form, Ernest Hemingway."

"Death of a Racehorse is not even a 1000 words long, but any abridged version insults it. Heinz kept it short, what turned out to be a favor to a couple of generations of sportswriters who tried to memorize it over the years. And in keeping it short, Heinz probably made it easier for a couple of his other longer stories to appear alongside it in the Best American Sports Writing of the Century, a collection edited by David Halberstam. Heinz was the only writer that Halberstam rated as deserving three entries in the anthology."

Joyce said Heinz's story, written in less than an hour, "one draft, on a manual typewriter, in the rain" was "as close to perfection as sportswriting could be".

Joyce made a forceful argument for a posthumous Red Smith Award for Heinz. I must confess my own first sports writing award, in 1979, was for a story about horse racing, although in my case it was harness racing and, happily, a horse didn't die. But I like to think it was written, if unconsciously, in the style of Heinz, and with an awareness of what the horse goes through, perhaps unwittingly, for the sake of the unfeeling punter. My story was about a match race between Pure Steel and Satinover, and it's timely for me to recall it, on the eve of the Interdominion in Sydney, a once great sporting event to which few in Australia now pay much attention, such are the vagaries of the sporting and punting public.

Red Smith covering the Floyd Patterson-Ingemar Johansson world heavyweight title fight on an Olivetti Lettera 22 in Miami in March 1961.

Finally, mention of Red Smith brings me to this lovely "Mulligan's Stew" column, headed Typewriter Thoroughbred: Best of Breed and written by the Associated Press's Hugh Mulligan in February 1982:

Thirty odd years on, try finding a sports columnist who can write like that today. Or even a match in writing about sports writing.

Red Smith switches to an Olympia SF to cover the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston fight beside Jimmy Breslin on a Royal in Maine in May 1965 

*Robert Messenger will present "Fans With Typewriters: A History of Sports Writing" at the University of the Third Age in Hughes, Canberra, on March 11.