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Lloyd C(assel) Douglas (1877-1951) |
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American writer who published popular novels about religious and moral issues. Lloyd C. Douglas produced his first novel, Magnificent Obsession (1929), at the age of 52. It was a huge success, although the work had been rejected by two major publishers, Harper & Brothers and Doubleday. Issued by a small religious publishing house of Willett, Clark & Company, Magnificent Obsession sold in a few years three million copies. In the 1930s, Douglas was one of the most popular novelist in the United States. His other novels include The Robe (1942), which was made into a lavish Technicolor film in 1953, starring Richard Burton, Jean Simmons, and Victor Mature. It received five Academy Award nominations and won two. The novel remained at the head of the bestseller list for nine months. "'Well — you can be sure there is some reasonable explanation,' rasped Paulus. 'These people are as superstitious as our Thracian slaves. Why — they even believe that this man came to life — and has been seen!'" (The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas, Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1948, p. 356) Lloyd Cassel Douglas was born in Columbia City, Indiana, the son of Alexander Jackson Douglas, a Lutheran clergyman, and Sarah Jane (Cassel) Douglas. He was educated as a minister at Wittenberg Seminary in Springfield, Ohio. After his ordination, he served as pastor in North Manchester, Indiana. In 1904, he married Bessie Lo Porch, a minister's daughter. They two daughters, Besse and Virginia, who later published a biography on their parents. In
1905, Douglas moved to Lancaster, Ohio, and in 1908 to
Washington, D.C.
From 1911 to 1915, he was chaplain and director of religious work at
the University of Illinois. At the same time Douglas switched form
Lutheran to the Congretional churc. Later Douglas became a pastor of
First
Congretional Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Many of the students from nearby University of Michigan attended his sermons, famous for the lively narrative style. After living in college towns, Douglas spent many years as the pastor of churches in Akron, Montreal, and Los Angeles. Much of the knowledge of medical terminology and procedures of his books, Douglas picked up while conducting pastoral care visits to patients at Midwestern teaching hospitals. Douglas finished Magnificent Obsession while he was
living in Los Angeles and it came out just after the market crash of
1929. After 45 printings, Willett, Clark, and Colby sold their right to
Houghton Mifflin. In 1931, the work reached the bestseller list. Upon
its success, Douglas
retired from the ministry in 1933, to write
novels, in which the spiritual message was more important than what was
considered as "good literature." He even enjoyed his position as a
successful writer of lowbrow fiction. During his new career, Douglas formed his own notions of the
craft, such as: "Never start a chapter with conversation. Always start
a new page with some care. Start with a paragraph of three or four
lines without conversation. Minor characters must be endeared at once
..." ('Lloyd C. Douglas: Best-selling author of The
Robe, Green Light, Magnificent Obsession is a
specialist in miracles whose own career is a major literary miracle' by
Noel F. Busch, Time, May 27,
1946) Douglas usually wrote 3,000
words a day, of which 1,500 were often rewrite of the previous day's
chore. In spite of public's enthusiasm, Magnificent Obsession
received mixed reviews in literary journals. "If the thing hasn’t gripped you a little by now, put it down, please, and think no more about it. . . . If however you seriously wish to proceed, let me counsel you, as Randolph counselled me, that you are taking hold of high tension! Once you have touched it, you will never be able to let go. . . ." (Magnificent Obsession by Lloyd C. Douglas, Chicago; New York: Willet, Clark & Company, 1929, p. 144) The novel introduced themes that
constantly appeared in the author's books – a medical setting, the
wealthy background, the conversion of the atheist hero to a practicing
Christian due to feelings of guilt – and in this particular story, when
Robert Merrick, a rich playboy, causes the death of an eminent brain
surgeon, Wayne Hudson. He is a genius, who believes that if a man
harbors
any sort of fear, no matter how benign and apparently harmless, it
percolates through all his thinking and damages his personality. One of
the characters, Dr. Malcolm Pyle, says: "whosoever loveth a genius is
out of luck with his
devotion except he beareth all things, endureth all things, suffereth
long and is kind." (Ibid., p. 7) When reviewed from today's perspective, book has not held up
well at all. "Robert Merrick in Lloyd Douglas' Magnificent Obsession,
a typical medical miracle worker, begins his adult life as a very
convincing playboy. After an improbable Pauline conversion, Merrick
decides on a career change and turns into (what else?) a brain surgeon.
Within a few weeks of graduation he has inventedan electrocautery
apparatus, which he uses to restore his future wife's eyesight." (The Doctor in Literature:
Satisfaction or Resentment? by Solomon Posen, foreword by Edward
J. Huth, Oxford; Seattle: Radcliffe Publishing, 2005, p. 149) Doctor Hudson's Secret
Journal (1939) was a prequel
to Magnificent Obsession.
Medical practice among the poor did not appeal to Dr. Hudson, or as he
states: "On Wednesdays and Saturdays, that summer, I was on duty in the
Out-patient Department of our Free Clinic. This assignment was
extremely distasteful. Ailing indigence, bathed and fumigated and in
bed, clad in a sterilized hospital gown, was one thing; sick poverty,
on its feet — with black fingernails, greasy clothes, a musty smell,
and a hangdog air — was offensive to me." (Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal by
Lloyd C. Douglas, New York: P. F. Collier & Son Corporation, 1939,
p. 32) Forgive Us Our
Trespasses
(1932), a bildungsroman of a young man, had "better treatment at the
hand of the critics than I deserved or expected," said Douglas. "It
pleases me to see the book rated so well in the lists of best sellers." (The Shape of Sunday: An Intimate Biography of Lloyd C.
Douglas by Virginia Douglas Dawson and Betty Douglas Wilson,
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952, p. 250) Some of Douglas's books have been adapted to screen, Magnificent
Obsession twice. Frank Borzage's Green
Light (1937), starring
Errol Flynn, was a medical melodrama. After Captain Blood
(1935) and The Charge of
the Light Brigade (1936), Flynn was labelled a swashbuckler, but in
Green Light the
was a protegé of a famous surgeon, Dr. Endicott, and takes the blame
when Endicott's patient dies. "Green
Light exacted from me a noblesse I
myself cannot pretend," said Flynn. "I am not constituted for noble
sacrifice
or suffering and so I don't think the character was really the best I
could have been given." (Errol Flynn: The Life and Career by
Thomas McNulty, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2004, p. 44)
The Robe (1942), written in the
tradition of Ben Hur (1880) by Lew
Wallace and Quo
Vadis
by Henryk Sienkiewicz (1896), sold millions of
copies. The idea for the novel came from a woman in Ohio, who asked
Douglas if he had ever heard the legend of the Roman soldier, who won
Jesus' robe through a dice game after the crucifixion. "It set me think
and I decided to do a little story about it." The Catholic press was
not happy about the book and its somewhat "rationalist" descriptions of
miracles. "Dr. Douglas has woven, in The Robe,
an almost unrivalled fabric of old clichés," wrote Edmund Wilson in his
review, "in which one of the only attempts at a literary heightening af
effects is the substitution for the simple "said" of other more
pretentious verbs-so that the characters are always shrilling, barking,
speculating, parrying, wailing, wheedling or gruntling whatever they
have to say." ('"You Can't Do This to Me!" shrilled Celia,' in Classics and Commercials: A Literary Chronicle of the Forties by Edmund Wilson, New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1951, p. 206) The Robegained also a wide audience as the first
film
in Cinemascope. Douglas had sold the screen right in 1942, while still
working on the novel. Frank Ross, who bought the rights, wanted the
film to depict "a conflict between Roman decadence and Christian purity
[that] would present a parallel with the persecutions currently being
instigated by Hitler and Mussolini". (quoted in Big Screen Rome by Monica Silveira Cyrino, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005, p. 55) But it took 11 years before the screen adaptation
was ready
for public viewing. With the release of the movie, a cheaper "movie edition" of the book came out. The title refers to the crusifixion
garment worn by Jesus. The protagonist of the story is a young Roman
soldier, Marcellus, in charge of the Crusifixion, who wins in a dice
game Christ's robe. Marcellus then starts to his quest to find the
truth about Jesus, and eventually becomes a convert and a martyr in
Colosseum to the new religion. Richard Burton, acting as Tribune
Marcellus Gallio in the film version – in a short Roman mini skirt –
was in his first great role; Jay Robins was Galicula. Burton had only
relatively little film experience but he threw himself wholeheartedly
in his role, and even
slept in his togas at home. Albert Maltz, who wrote the original screenplay, was blacklisted by Hollywood studios, and his name was removed from the script. Maltz's credits were not restored until the 1990s. John Belton has argued that the film "casts Caligula as a witch-hunting, McCarthyesque figure and the Christians are persecuted victims of his demonic attempts to purge the Roman empire of potentia subversives." (Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist: Reading the Hollywood Reds by Jeff Smith, Berkeley Los Angeles London: University of California Press, 2014, p. 173) "If my novels are entertaining I am glad, but they are not written so much for the purpose of entertainment as of inspiration," Douglas once said in an interview. "There are many people who realize their great need of ethical and spiritual counsel, but are unwilling to look for it in a serious homily or didactic essay." ('Douglas, Lloyd Cassel,' in World Authors: 1900-1950: Volume One, Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens, New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1996, p. 736) His last novel, The Big Fisherman (1948), shared the same New Testament world of Palestine and Rome and focused on Jesus, Peter, and a pair of young lovers, Esther and Voldi. "Although not lacking historical accuracy—the Roman world of the early Christian Church is carefully drawn—a sense of period is curiously absent . . . One can hear his characters speaking with American accents." ('Douglas, Lloyd C(assel)' by Ferelith Hordon, in Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers, edited by Lesley Henderson, Chicago and London: St. James Press, 1990, p. 191) For a modern reader, the style is perhaps too tendentious. On the other hand, Douglas's works were not overly didactic and his Midwestern characters have "down-to-earth" nature. After the death of his wife in 1944, Douglas moved from
Bel-Air, California, to the wing of a house belonging to his daughter
Betty and her husband, on the outskirts Las Vegas, Nevada. Unhappy with
the production of The Robe, Douglas did not allow this sequel
to be made into a motion picture during his lifetime. However, it was
filmed in 1959 by Frank Borzage. Time To Remember (1951), Douglas's autobiography which also contained much of his philosophy, was continued by his two daughters in The Shape of Sunday (1952). Lloyd C. Douglas died of a heart ailment in Los Angeles, on February 13, 1951. His last words were, "I'm happy." Douglas was buried in the Sanctuarity of the Good Shepherd at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. For further reading: The Shape of the Sunday: An Intimate Biography of Lloyd C. Douglas by Virginia Douglas Dawson and Betty Dougls Wilson (1952); Seventy Years of Best Sellers: 1895-1965 by Alice Payne Hackett (1967); 'Douglas, Lloyd C(assel)' by Ferelith Hordon, in Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers, edited by Lesley Henderson (1990); Whitley County and Its Families: 1835-1995 by Turner Publishing (1995); 'Lloyd C(assel) Douglas' by Susan Bourrie, in Dictionary of Midwestern Literature: Volume One: The Authors, edited by Philip A. Greasley (2001); 'Lloyd Douglas: Raising white Banners Over disputed Passages—Writing as Craft and Collaboration,' in The Rise of Corporate Publishing and Its Effects on Authorship in Early Twentieth-century America by Kim Becnel (2008); 'Douglas, Lloyd C.,' in Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Fiction: From C.S. Lewis to Left Behind by Nancy M. Tischler (2009) Selected works:
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